Professional socialists may cherish the notion that their battle is won
as soon as they can secure a permanent popular majority in favor of a
socialistic policy; but the constructive national democrat cannot
logically accept such a comfortable illusion. The action of a majority
composed of the ordinary type of convinced socialists could and would in
a few years do more to make socialism impossible than could be
accomplished by the best and most prolonged efforts of a majority of
malignant anti-socialists. The first French republicans made by their
behavior another republic out of the question in France for almost sixty
years; and the second republican majority did not do so very much
better. When the republic came in France it was founded by men who were
not theoretical democrats, but who understood that a republic was for
the time being the kind of government best adapted to the national
French interest. These theoretical monarchists, but practical
republicans, were for the most part more able, more patriotic, and
higher-minded men than the convinced republicans; and in all probability
a third republic, started without their cooeperation, would also have
ended in a dictatorship.
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