It is only the continuance of the war and the extraordinary conditions which it imposes and forces upon us all that justifies us in remaining together as a Parliament. I certainly could not take the responsibility of making far-reaching controversial changes which I am not convinced are directly needed for the war effort, without a Parliament refreshed by contact with the electorate.

Sometimes the threat to popular government comes from political interests, sometimes from economic interests, sometimes we have to beat off all of them together.

The United States Constitution has proven itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

If by democratic methods people get a government strong enough to protect them from fear and starvation, their democracy succeeds; but if they do not, they grow impatient.

We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.

There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate - that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future - and that freedom is an ebbing tide. But we Americans know that this is not true.