Democracy today and tomorrow [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION This book contains, without any major changes, my lectures on the problems of democracy, which were delivered at the University of Chicago in March, April and May, 1939. I could wish that I had had more time to complete, or, at least, to adapt some chapters of the book for the enlightenment of European readers. Though that has not been possible, I am glad to have the opportunity this preface provides to add a few words for my British readers. Since early youth I have been a student of Anglosaxon civilisation. As a University student I studied with the greatest interest the history of the British people, and I came often to this country in order to familiarise myself with its life, its moral, social and economic conditions, and with its political evolution. As a student of law I came here from Paris for the first time in 1906, and set myself to study the whole system of British parliamentary history, to understand the fight which has been waged for political liberty in England and to learn all that has helped to create the conception of modern British citizenship. I freely admit that the history of British freedom and the political history of France in the last two centuries, have both profoundly influenced my own political ideas, and are the foundation of the ideology I have defended in the last twenty-five years of my active political life. Since my early youth I have admired the United States of America, its people, its advance and growth, which nothing can check, its noble traditions, its struggles for liberty, for democracy, for the free development of the individual and of the whole nation and state, and the great place in the history of modern humanity which it has acquired and which will be even greater in future. v