PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

consular service, the Bureau of Internal Revenue give representation
to persons, ideas, and objects which would never automatically find
themselves represented in this perspective by an election. The
Children's Bureau is the spokesman of a whole complex of interests and
functions not ordinarily visible to the voter, and, therefore,
incapable of becoming spontaneously a part of his public opinions.
Thus the printing of comparative statistics of infant mortality is
often followed by a reduction of the death rate of babies. Municipal
officials and voters did not have, before publication, a place in
their picture of the environment for those babies. The statistics made
them visible, as visible as if the babies had elected an alderman to
air their grievances.
In the State Department the government maintains a Division of Far
Eastern Affairs. What is it for? The Japanese and the Chinese
Governments both maintain ambassadors in Washington. Are they not
qualified to speak for the Far East? They are its representatives. Yet
nobody would argue that the American Government could learn all that
it needed to know about the Far East by consulting these ambassadors.
Supposing them to be as candid as they know how to be, they are still
limited channels of information. Therefore, to supplement them we
maintain embassies in Tokio and Peking, and consular agents at many
points. Also, I assume, some secret agents. These people are supposed
to send reports which pass through the Division of Far Eastern Affairs
to the Secretary of State. Now what does the Secretary expect of the
Division? I know one who expected it to spend its appropriation. But
there are Secretaries to whom special revelation is denied, and they
turn to their divisions for help. The last thing they expect to find
is a neat argument justifying the American position.
What they demand is that the experts shall bring the Far East to the
Secretary's desk, with all the elements in such relation that it is as
if he were in contact with the Far East itself. The expert must
translate, simplify, generalize, but the inference from the result
must apply in the East, not merely on the premises of the report. If
the Secretary is worth his salt, the very last thing he will tolerate
in his experts is the suspicion that they have a "policy." He does not
want to know from them whether they like Japanese policy in China. He
wants to know what different classes of Chinese and Japanese, English,
Frenchmen, Germans, and Russians, think about it, and what they are
likely to do because of what they think. He wants all that represented
to him as the basis of his decision. The more faithfully the Division
represents what is not otherwise represented, either by the Japanese
or American ambassadors, or the Senators and Congressmen from the
Pacific coast, the better Secretary of State he will be. He may decide
to take his policy from the Pacific Coast, but he will take his view
of Japan from Japan.