It demands, to be sure, that the progressive principle be realized without any violation of fundamental national ties.

It demands that any national action taken for the benefit of the progressive principle be approved by the official national organization.

But it also serves as a ferment quite as much as a bond.

It bids the loyal national servants to fashion their fellow-countrymen into more of a nation; and the attempt to perform this bidding constitutes a very powerful and wholesome source of political development.

It constitutes, indeed, a source of political development which is of decisive importance for a satisfactory theory of political and social progress, because a people which becomes more of a nation has a tendency to become for that very reason more of a democracy.
The assertion that a people which becomes more of a nation becomes for that very reason more of a democracy, is, I am aware, a hazardous assertion, which can be justified, if at all, only at a considerable expense.