Here, then, is the summation of the matter. We had thought, the decent people in all countries, that government by the people under democracy, and with it equal liberty for all, were things definitely achieved. We were forgetting the long struggle and the heroic sacrifice that gave them to the world. Bygone tyrannies and cruelties were forgotton in the nearer perspective of lesser things. Hence came a kind of inertia - a little slumber, a little sleep, a little folding of the hands to sleep - and thereby a creeping paralysis that made us almost let freedom slip from our hands
— Stephen Leacock
