PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

pictures of the world, we can try to see the vista of a longer
duration of events, and wherever it is possible to escape from the
urgent present, allow this longer time to control our decisions. And
yet, even when there is this will to let the future count, we find
again and again that we do not know for certain how to act according
to the dictates of reason. The number of human problems on which
reason is prepared to dictate is small.
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There is, however, a noble counterfeit in that charity which comes
from self-knowledge and an unarguable belief that no one of our
gregarious species is alone in his longing for a friendlier world. So
many of the grimaces men make at each other go with a flutter of their
pulse, that they are not all of them important. And where so much is
uncertain, where so many actions have to be carried out on guesses,
the demand upon the reserves of mere decency is enormous, and it is
necessary to live as if good will would work. We cannot prove in every
instance that it will, nor why hatred, intolerance, suspicion,
bigotry, secrecy, fear, and lying are the seven deadly sins against
public opinion. We can only insist that they have no place in the
appeal to reason, that in the longer run they are a poison; and taking
our stand upon a view of the world which outlasts our own
predicaments, and our own lives, we can cherish a hearty prejudice
against them.
We can do this all the better if we do not allow frightfulness and
fanaticism to impress us so deeply that we throw up our hands
peevishly, and lose interest in the longer run of time because we have
lost faith in the future of man. There is no ground for this despair,
because all the _ifs_ on which, as James said, our destiny hangs,
are as pregnant as they ever were. What we have seen of brutality, we
have seen, and because it was strange, it was not conclusive. It was
only Berlin, Moscow, Versailles in 1914 to 1919, not Armageddon, as we
rhetorically said. The more realistically men have faced out the
brutality and the hysteria, the more they have earned the right to say
that it is not foolish for men to believe, because another great war
took place, that intelligence, courage and effort cannot ever contrive
a good life for all men.
Great as was the horror, it was not universal. There were corrupt, and
there were incorruptible. There was muddle and there were miracles.
There was huge lying. There were men with the will to uncover it. It
is no judgment, but only a mood, when men deny that what some men have
been, more men, and ultimately enough men, might be. You can despair
of what has never been. You can despair of ever having three heads,
though Mr. Shaw has declined to despair even of that. But you cannot
despair of the possibilities that could exist by virtue of any human