PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

what proportion, by the motives of Wilson and the motives of Harvey
and all kinds of hybrids of the two. People enlisted and fought,
worked, paid taxes, sacrificed to a common end, and yet no one can
begin to say exactly what moved each person to do each thing that he
did. It is no use, then, Mr. Harvey telling a soldier who thought this
was a war to end war that the soldier did not think any such thing.
The soldier who thought that _thought that_. And Mr. Harvey, who
thought something else, thought _something else_.
In the same speech Mr. Harvey formulated with equal clarity what the
voters of 1920 had in their minds. That is a rash thing to do, and, if
you simply assume that all who voted your ticket voted as you did,
then it is a disingenuous thing to do. The count shows that sixteen
millions voted Republican, and nine millions Democratic. They voted,
says Mr. Harvey, for and against the League of Nations, and in support
of this claim, he can point to Mr. Wilson's request for a referendum,
and to the undeniable fact that the Democratic party and Mr. Cox
insisted that the League was the issue. But then, saying that the
League was the issue did not make the League the issue, and by
counting the votes on election day you do not know the real division
of opinion about the League. There were, for example, nine million
Democrats. Are you entitled to believe that all of them are staunch
supporters of the League? Certainly you are not. For your knowledge of
American politics tells you that many of the millions voted, as they
always do, to maintain the existing social system in the South, and
that whatever their views on the League, they did not vote to express
their views. Those who wanted the League were no doubt pleased that
the Democratic party wanted it too. Those who disliked the League may
have held their noses as they voted. But both groups of Southerners
voted the same ticket.
Were the Republicans more unanimous? Anybody can pick Republican
voters enough out of his circle of friends to cover the whole gamut of
opinion from the irreconcilability of Senators Johnson and Knox to the
advocacy of Secretary Hoover and Chief Justice Taft. No one can say
definitely how many people felt in any particular way about the
League, nor how many people let their feelings on that subject
determine their vote. When there are only two ways of expressing a
hundred varieties of feeling, there is no certain way of knowing what
the decisive combination was. Senator Borah found in the Republican
ticket a reason for voting Republican, but so did President Lowell.
The Republican majority was composed of men and women who thought a
Republican victory would kill the League, plus those who thought it
the most practical way to secure the League, plus those who thought it
the surest way offered to obtain an amended League. All these voters
were inextricably entangled with their own desire, or the desire of
other voters to improve business, or put labor in its place, or to
punish the Democrats for going to war, or to punish them for not