PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

every corner of the earth. No document negotiated and made of public
record existed to correct the confusion. [Footnote: The American
interpretation of the fourteen points was explained to the allied
statesmen just before the armistice.] And so, when the day of
settlement came, everybody expected everything. The European authors
of the treaty had a large choice, and they chose to realize those
expectations which were held by those of their countrymen who wielded
the most power at home.
They came down the hierarchy from the Rights of Humanity to the Rights
of France, Britain and Italy. They did not abandon the use of symbols.
They abandoned only those which after the war had no permanent roots
in the imagination of their constituents. They preserved the unity of
France by the use of symbolism, but they would not risk anything for
the unity of Europe. The symbol France was deeply attached, the symbol
Europe had only a recent history. Nevertheless the distinction between
an omnibus like Europe and a symbol like France is not sharp. The
history of states and empires reveals times when the scope of the
unifying idea increases and also times when it shrinks. One cannot say
that men have moved consistently from smaller loyalties to larger
ones, because the facts will not bear out the claim. The Roman Empire
and the Holy Roman Empire bellied out further than those national
unifications in the Nineteenth Century from which believers in a World
State argue by analogy. Nevertheless, it is probably true that the
real integration has increased regardless of the temporary inflation
and deflation of empires.
6
Such a real integration has undoubtedly occurred in American history.
In the decade before 1789 most men, it seems, felt that their state
and their community were real, but that the confederation of states
was unreal. The idea of their state, its flag, its most conspicuous
leaders, or whatever it was that represented Massachusetts, or
Virginia, were genuine symbols. That is to say, they were fed by
actual experiences from childhood, occupation, residence, and the
like. The span of men's experience had rarely traversed the imaginary
boundaries of their states. The word Virginian was related to pretty
nearly everything that most Virginians had ever known or felt. It was
the most extensive political idea which had genuine contact with their
experience.
Their experience, not their needs. For their needs arose out of their
real environment, which in those days was at least as large as the
thirteen colonies. They needed a common defense. They needed a
financial and economic regime as extensive as the Confederation. But
as long as the pseudo-environment of the state encompassed them, the