Two other things were needed; the willingness of those that were of draft age to come and say so; and the confidence of the public in a fair drawing. The latter was secured by the use of master numbers applicable to every district; the former came naturally as a result of the system itself. Every man of draft age became qualifiedly a volunteer, and marched to the polling place, saying: "Here I am when wanted." To this the abolition of bounties and substitutes, the curses of the old system, largely contributed.
These are three of the great things for which we should give thanks on this Fourth of July: the solidarity of Americanism; the leadership of our Universities, and a practical and popularly acceptable method, now a precedent for all time, of calling up the man power of the nation. A fourth is the resultant of them all: a great army of young men (as has been said many times), future leaders in political life, keenly alive to the real freedom of our American system and determined to uphold it and to stand no nonsense about it. But for the consciousness of our possessing this element, and but for our faith in it, we might well look with most anxious foreboding at many troublesome and dangerous questions now uppermost in our national life.
For in the midst of triumph sounds the note of anxiety--many discordant notes in fact. Will the treaty finally be ratified? Will peace last? Will the Germans respect their promises and fulfill them? Or will they, already talking again of a scrap of paper, straightway begin to prepare for a fresh coup twenty-five years or so hence? Must the peace-loving peoples of the world still apply themselves to that most distasteful of all tasks, the invention and manufacture and practice of means of destroying life and property in war? And what about internal affairs? Are individual enterprise and talent to be smothered by rule? Is the Constitution of the United States a worn-out old one-horse shay, ready to drop to pieces all at once? Is the Senate a back number? Is the peaceful rule by majority to be exchanged for Bolshevik dictatorship? Is our transportation industry to be ruined by taxes and rate control at one end and cost of labor at the other? Should we take an active part in the affairs of the Eastern hemisphere, and invite European and Asiatic powers to help regulate our continent; in short should the national policy called the Monroe Doctrine be abolished?