Page:Back to the Republic.djvu/11

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PREFACE


THE three words uppermost in the minds of the people throughout all the world to-day are "autocracy," "democracy" and "republic"

What do you mean when you use the word "autocracy"?

What do you mean when you use the word "democracy"?

What do you mean when you use the word "republic"?

Write down your own definitions of those three words, stop the first hundred people you meet and ask each of them the above three questions. Compile their replies, and you will have a compilation that would win a prize in a museum of curiosities.

If you should journey to the national capital and, beginning with the President, ask the hundred men who are most prominently identified with the national government those same three questions, you would have material for a scrapbook the reading of which would be confusing to the mind.

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