Excerpt from The British Revolution and the American Democracy: An Interpretation of British Labour Programmes
"The old party slogans have lost their significance and will mean nothing to the voter of the future. For the war is certain to change the mind of Europe, as well as the mind of America...
"The men in the trenches, who have been freed from the economic serfdom to which some of them have been accustomed, will, it is likely, return to their homes with a new view and a new impatience of all mere political phrases, and will demand real thinking and sincere action."
"For a long time this country has lacked one of the institutions which freemen have always and everywhere held fundamental. For a long time there has been no sufficient opportunity of counsels among the people... I conceive it to be one of the needs of the hour to restore the processes of common counsel...
What are the right methods of politics? Why, the right methods are those of public discussion... We have been told that it is unpatriotic to criticize public opinion. Well, if it is, there is a deep disgrace resting upon the origins of this nation. This nation originated in the sharpest sort of criticism of public policy... The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend on the understanding of one man, but to depend upon the common counsel of all."
"Every man should have the privilege, unmolested and uncriticized to utter the real convictions of his mind... I believe that the weakness of the American character is that there are so few growlers and kickers amongst us... Difference of opinion is a sort of mandate of conscience... We have forgotten the very principle of our origin if we have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate, how to pull down and build up, even to the extent of revolutionary practices, if it be necessary to re-adjust matters."
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