The world war represents not the triumph, but the birth of democracy. The true ideal ofdemocracy-the rule of a people by the demos, or group soul-is a thing unrealized.How then is it possible to consider or discuss an architecture of democracy-theshadow of a shade? It is not possible to do so with any degree of finality, but by anintention of consciousness upon this juxtaposition of ideas-architecture anddemocracy-signs of the times may yield new meanings, relations may emergebetween things apparently unrelated, and the future, always existent in every presentmoment, may be evoked by that strange magic which resides in the human mind.Architecture, at its worst as at its best, reflects always a true image of the thing thatproduced it; a building is revealing even though it is false, just as the face of a liar tellsthe thing his words endeavor to conceal. This being so, let us make such architectureas is ours declare to us our true estate.The architecture of the United States, from the period of the Civil War, up to thebeginning of the present crisis, everywhere reflects a struggle to be free of a vicious anddepraved form of feudalism, grown strong under the very ægis of democracy. Thequalities that made feudalism endeared and enduring; qualities written in beauty on thecathedral cities of mediaeval Europe-faith, worship, loyalty, magnanimity-were eithervanished or banished from this pseudo-democratic, aridly scientific feudalism, leavingan inheritance of strife and tyranny-a strife grown mean, a tyranny grown prudent, butfull of sinister power the weight of which we have by no means ceased to feel.