PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

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subject which would not only ignore 1912 but would avoid also the explosive conflicts of 1916. The speaker skilfully selected the spoils system in diplomatic appointments. "Deserving Democrats" was a discrediting phrase, and Mr. Hughes at once evokes it. The record being indefensible, there is no hesitation in the vigor of the attack. Logically it was an ideal introduction to a common mood. Mr. Hughes then turns to Mexico, beginning with an historical review. He had to consider the general sentiment that affairs were going badly in Mexico; also, a no less general sentiment that war should be avoided; and two powerful currents of opinion, one of which said President Wilson was right in not recognizing Huerta, the other which preferred Huerta to Carranza, and intervention to both. Huerta was the first sore spot in the record... "He was certainly in fact the head of the Government in Mexico." But the moralists who regarded Huerta as a drunken murderer had to be placated. "Whether or not he should be recognized was a question to be determined in the exercise of a sound discretion, but according to correct principles." So instead of saying that Huerta should have been recognized, the candidate says that correct principles ought to be applied. Everybody believes in correct principles, and everybody, of course, believes he possesses them. To blur the issue still further President Wilson's policy is described as "intervention." It was that in law, perhaps, but not in the sense then currently meant by the word. By stretching the word to cover what Mr. Wilson had done, as well as what the real interventionists wanted, the issue between the two factions was to be repressed. Having got by the two explosive points "_Huerta_" and "_intervention_" by letting the words mean all things to all men, the speech passes for a while to safer ground. The candidate tells the story of Tampico, Vera Cruz, Villa, Santa Ysabel, Columbus and Carrizal. Mr. Hughes is specific, either because the facts as known from the newspapers are irritating, or because the true explanation is, as for example in regard to Tampico, too complicated. No contrary passions could be aroused by such a record. But at the end the candidate had to take a position. His audience expected it. The indictment was Mr. Roosevelt's. Would Mr. Hughes adopt his remedy, intervention? "The nation has no policy of aggression toward Mexico. We have no desire for any part of her territory. We wish her to have peace,
stability and prosperity. We should be ready to aid her in binding up her wounds, in relieving her from starvation and distress, in giving her in every practicable way the benefits of our disinterested friendship. The conduct of this administration has created difficulties which we shall have to surmount.... _We shall have to adopt a new policy,_ a policy of _firmness_ and consistency through which alone we can promote an enduring _friendship._" The theme friendship is for the non-interventionists, the theme "new policy" and "firmness" is for the interventionists. On the non-contentious record, the detail is overwhelming; on the issue everything is cloudy. Concerning the European war Mr. Hughes employed an ingenious formula: "I stand for the unflinching maintenance of _all_ American rights on land and sea." In order to understand the force of that statement at the time it was spoken, we must remember how each faction during the period of neutrality believed that the nations it opposed in Europe were alone violating American rights. Mr. Hughes seemed to say to the pro-Allies: I would have coerced Germany. But the pro-Germans had been insisting that British sea power was violating most of our rights. The formula covers two diametrically opposed purposes by the symbolic phrase "American rights." But there was the Lusitania. Like the 1912 schism, it was an invincible obstacle to harmony. "... I am confident that there would have been no destruction of American lives by the sinking of the Lusitania." Thus, what cannot be compromised must be obliterated, when there is a question on which we cannot all hope to get together, let us pretend that it does not exist. About the future of American relations with Europe Mr. Hughes was silent. Nothing he could say would possibly please the two irreconcilable factions for whose support he was bidding. It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Hughes did not invent this technic and did not employ it with the utmost success. But he illustrated how a public opinion constituted out of divergent opinions is clouded; how its meaning approaches the neutral tint formed out of the blending of many colors. Where superficial harmony is the aim and conflict the fact, obscurantism in a public appeal is the usual result. Almost always vagueness at a crucial point in public debate is a symptom of cross-purposes.
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TO FAYE LIPPMANN Wading River, Long
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CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION THE WORLD
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Far less should he go to the Antipo
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darkened brains toward him as towar
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Pennsylvania mining town, plunged s
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of American marines on the Dalmatia
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describe. Yet these fictions determ
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[Footnote: _Cf_. Wallas, _Our Socia
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p. 151.] What for a sociologist is
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task of a political science that ha
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eal one was. But a few days later a
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already at the front. There will re
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treaties, or when Mr. Hughes invest
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that a change in the art of shipbui
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iological clan. Membership is intim
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It is no part of our inquiry to att
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ated themselves at more than fiftee
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Chicago business men in 1916 for pr
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It is doubtful whether a supreme ma
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"A native of an unfriendly country.
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9% increase of clang in the second
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difference between Frege and Peano,
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otherwise vague and wavering." But
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_Cf._ also his comment on _Dante's
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painter, for example, or a cultivat
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world, however, during the last few
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have arranged their lives as if the
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happens. If the man is no longer pl
Page 57 and 58: an ecclesiastical bearing and "conf
Page 59 and 60: once more the purely technical conc
Page 61 and 62: overcrowding; they pointed with pri
Page 63 and 64: will be known by the governors. In
Page 65 and 66: uildings which rose, and the bank a
Page 67 and 68: misjudged the facts, imagined the a
Page 69 and 70: professing the same stock of religi
Page 71 and 72: of thing is, I believe, less preval
Page 73 and 74: that it seems less dangerous to fig
Page 75 and 76: tells me it is three miles and thin
Page 77 and 78: seasons. If born in winter, we shou
Page 79 and 80: the main highway for ninety-nine ye
Page 81 and 82: and assistance "until such time as
Page 83 and 84: the most troublesome employee or th
Page 85 and 86: time, and sampling. We must note no
Page 87 and 88: Morgan or the King become ideas and
Page 89 and 90: to be easily popular where the mark
Page 91 and 92: they find, or pay the price of frus
Page 93 and 94: lives that seem at first glance dul
Page 95 and 96: sharply separated. He would say tha
Page 97 and 98: are never exercised again in the wh
Page 99 and 100: Thus it may be true enough, as Jame
Page 101 and 102: described in economic materialism w
Page 103 and 104: _Op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 390.] "ever
Page 105 and 106: what proportion, by the motives of
Page 107: that wizardry which popular leaders
Page 111 and 112: People differ widely in their susce
Page 113 and 114: pervaded the whole of western Europ
Page 115 and 116: All these considerations entered in
Page 117 and 118: every corner of the earth. No docum
Page 119 and 120: end of symbols which once provoked
Page 121 and 122: likely as not, too busy to be consu
Page 123 and 124: services in a feudal system, to job
Page 125 and 126: same reaction takes place in many p
Page 127 and 128: CHAPTER XV LEADERS AND THE RANK AND
Page 129 and 130: most practiced, and reaches to high
Page 131 and 132: impinge upon the private habits of
Page 133 and 134: e indicated by them. Where the inci
Page 135 and 136: persuasion has become a self-consci
Page 137 and 138: infallible origin for the new socia
Page 139 and 140: dignity of all men, were immediatel
Page 141 and 142: 2 To circumvent this conclusion one
Page 143 and 144: They looked about them. In the city
Page 145 and 146: consent or community beyond the fro
Page 147 and 148: without the labor of earning new tr
Page 149 and 150: They could not consider in their ca
Page 151 and 152: Jefferson who first taught the Amer
Page 153 and 154: sense of common interest, have torn
Page 155 and 156: document has to thank the enterpris
Page 157 and 158: impose law and order on the localit
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141.] Everyone who shares that hope
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constitute the internal affairs of
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about other people's views of that
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gather together its strength, and f
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absorbed by one interest: self-gove
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was to come from on which the will
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difficult and often dangerous servi
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undertakes to discuss the press. Mr
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a number of obscure elements that i
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imaginary people, with whose gorgeo
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set of well founded hopes, which ar
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in a crudely overt act. Smith's fri
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tradition of privacy, they may not
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worker in the Pittsburgh district,
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phase of a situation. It comes from
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headline of the second is "Mrs. Sti
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eport that he is dead from a source
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encouraged a democracy, still bound
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system of truth than that which ari
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conclusions of a sort that could no
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shaking the foundations of society.
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2 It is no accident that the best d
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in order to effect a truly logical
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lumber, hire carpenters, or constru
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the national university and teacher
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isolated community of people whose
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some study of this material by news
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the intelligence men for wage table
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fate, but with the fate of the oute
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When Plato came to the point where
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slower than the rate at which actio
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quality which a human being has exh
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PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

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