But we must understand that these are not permanent things. Democracy is no heirloom to be possessed and passed on like a Governor Winthrop desk. It is an endowment like life that must be purchased in every generation. Sympathy and reason and true democracy can be destroyed overnight. They can be destroyed by a conqueror, as in Norway; they can be taken from us by our own selfishness, as in France. Every bureaucrat who tampers with freedom of the press, every newspaper publisher who willfully suppresses or distorts or minimizes the truth; every unreasonable citizen who nurses his own prejudices and refuses to listen sympathetically to the other fellow's point of view, is, we must clearly understand, endangering these principles for which we are fighting. Never before in the history of the republic has it been so important that we understand this fact, for in time of war these principles are often threatened at the top by a small minority of officials who would curtail our freedom to know, and at the bottom by a number of people who, even in the face of the enemy, cannot shelve their own prejudices or abandon the interests of their particular groups.