Clinton W. Gilbert

“ In peace we are shamefaced about direct killing; in war we brag of it. In peace we are shamefaced about manufacturing public opinion; in war it is our patriotic duty.
No, war has made us rather doubtful about Thérèse. After all Rousseau was a prejudiced witness. When you take to your bosom a lady who cannot learn to tell time by the clock, you have to make out a case for her—or for yourself. When like Jefferson and his successors you take to your bosom the public, you have to make out a case for it, for the deposit for substantial and genuine virtue that you rely upon. ”

“ And the amazing consideration is that in a nation which dislikes satire a satirist should be elected by the suffrage of his fellows.
Probably it is only in politics that we tolerate satire. In self-government we only half believe. We are divided in our own minds. We make laws furiously and laugh at the laws we make. We pretend that the little men of politics are great and then privately we indicate our real perception of the truth by telling how small they are. Politics is suspect and it stamps you as a person of penetration to show that you are aware what sham and dishonesty there is in them. ”

“ Creating an autocracy is an act of faith; democracy is work. And faith is so much easier than work. [Pg 65]
We did not think of it thus, as an exhibition of political inertia, as a reversion to an outworn type. On the contrary, we were immensely pleased with our innovation. As usual the United States had made an immense contribution to the art of government. We were repeating the race history of governments, as a child resumes in his life the race history of the human kind. We had got so far as to evolve that oldest of human institutions—autocracy, a mild, denatured autocracy. ”

“ When we banished selfish interests from the government a few years ago we banished all interests—and even all interest, too—leaving very little but hypocrisy and timidity. The representatives of a group will not have to be all things to all men as our party men are, but only one thing to one kind of men.
If we cannot get our present parties to stand for anything, if for the same reason we cannot form a new party to stand for anything, we can at least introduce principles into politics through the force of group support. Blocs will be positive, not merely negative as the parties have become. ”

“ And when this greatest common divisor of all the classes and all the interests, this neutral, colorless person to whom no one can find any objection, enters the White House does he represent Labor? So little that he will not have a labor man in his Cabinet. Does he represent Capital? By instinct, by party training, by preference, yes, but capital is so divided that it is hard to represent, and the President, like the candidate, "has to be so careful." Does he represent the farmers? ”

“ In a similar society faulty distribution, which is ordinarily a social waste, is unimportant. There is plenty for all. And it may even be a waste of time and effort, checking accomplishment, to seek better adjustments. The object of society is the rapid exploitation of the resources nature has made available. Everyone gains in the process. Justice is a detail, as much a detail as is the inferior timber left to rot.
We no longer have the unity of aim of a pioneer society, yet we have not readjusted our actual government in conformity with the altered social consciousness. ”

“ And after all why should not Agriculture, Manufacturing, Labor, Foreign, and Domestic Commerce form a union for the national defense, carefully reserving essential powers to themselves as States, just as the thirteen original colonies did? Why should we let this new political organism keep us awake nights?
Nationally we have a complex on the subject of disunion. Fortunate perhaps is the country which is subject to the pressure of a foreign enemy on its border, as France is, for example, to that of Germany. If you have a convenient foe to be afraid of you do not have to be afraid of yourselves. ”

“ The human mind refuses to conceive of so much power coming to ordinary ends. The justice illusion which men have found so indispensable a companion on their way through time requires the happy ending. As it is only right and fair that when the forces send us a crisis they should send us a man equal to it, so it is only right and fair that when they put so great a people as ourselves in the world they should prepare for it a splendid destiny. ”

“ Harding may equal Watson, but as an orator the Indianian has what the President never had; the unctuous quality in him which makes him embrace readily lets him pour out his soul freely. He has thunders in his voice, he tosses his head with its fuzzy hair magnificently, he has gusto. He has imagination. He is a big, lovable if not wholly admirable, boy playing at oratory, playing at statesmanship, playing above all at politics. Nothing is very real to him, not even money ”

“ To accept the doctrine of the rightness of public opinion you must believe that there resides in every man, even in the most unpromising man, of the mental level of Thérèse, "si bornée et, si l'on veut, si stupide," the capacity to be, like her, "d'un conseil excellent dans les occasions difficiles."
The doctrine of the rightness of public opinion, however, never required proof. It was a political necessity. The world at the time when modern democracies had their birth accepted government only because it rested upon divine right. The government of men by mere men has always been intolerable. ”

“ How easy to believe that you rule railroads by "divine right," or walk in "higher spheres," when the whole unexpressed consciousness of a hundred million people assigns you just such hieratic appurtenances and privileges. How doubt in the face of all this evidence? They identified themselves with Progress, and Progress was what ruled the world. If you have faith and if you are fortified with the faith of others, self-identification with one of the larger forces is not difficult. ”

“ Young men who would be great read this journalism diligently looking for the secret of success. Reading it they resolve not to keep their minds upon five o'clock when the closing whistle blows but to become rich by industry and thrift like its great exemplars; who profit by it not only in having their own praises sung but in getting more work out of their servants.
So much virtue rests upon the business-man illusion that no one would lay an impious finger on it. ”

“ It is worth while recalling these cheerful illusions to estimate what has happened to the idea of Progress in seven swiftly changing years. We did not give up readily the illusion that the world had been vastly and permanently changed for the better. As it was proved that there could be a war and a long one and as the evidence multiplied that this war was the most devastating in all history, we merely changed our idea of Progress, which became in our minds a force that sometimes produced evil in order that good might result. ”

“ Always there were new discoveries of science. Always there were new inventions. Forces which a little while ago were beyond control, whose existence even was unsuspected, were harnessed to everyday uses. He saw progress in statistics. Things which were reckoned in millions began to be reckoned in hundreds of millions, began to be reckoned in billions. We loved to read the long figures where, in the pleasing extension of ciphers, wealth grew, debts grew—even debts were a source of pride before they called for income taxes to meet the annual payments upon them. ”

“ Elect the business man to office, so it is felt, and you will have an important synthesis, an old and tried one, one that worked, business and politics. You will do more. You will import into public life all that wonderful efficiency which we read about in the American Magazine, that will to power, that habit of getting things done, that instant capacity for decision which we romantically associate with commercial life. All this is in the minds of those who urge this method of achieving unity.
We have no greater national illusion than the business man illusion. ”

“ But what happens when there ceases to be a single aim, when the fruits of the earth are no longer sufficient to go around generously so that no one need question his share, when a conflict of interests arises, when classes begin to emerge, when in short we have the situation which exists in America today?
Let us examine for a moment the Executive as a source of unity in the government of such a divergent society. To make him executive minorities must agree upon him. ”

“ We owe the business-man illusion to the pioneers. In a few years they subjected a continent to our uses. They accumulated for themselves wealth such as the world had never seen. The nation does not think of them as the luckiest of a generation facing such virgin resources as existed on no other continent, at a moment when means of transportation such as the world had never seen before, and machinery for manufacture without parallel were in their hands. ”

“ Not only has material progress failed to produce peace as its by-product, but moral progress has failed to produce peace as its deliberate product.
And Progress is in reality moving forward to wars more deadly and more ruinous than the last. Weapons were developed toward the end of the Great War capable of vastly worse havoc than any used during its course. And only a beginning has been made. If we may come to use the power that holds atoms together in the driving of engines, we may also use it in war to blast whole cities from the face of the earth. ”

“ We refer habitually to the "invisible government," to "government by business," to "party government," to "government by public opinion." We have little but inertia, except as outside pressure is applied to it.
The little men at Washington live in all this confusion of an excessively plural government. They are pushed hither and yon by all these forces, organized and unorganized, mental and physical, real and imaginary, that inhibit and impel self-government. They lean heavily upon parties only to find parties bending beneath their weight. They yield to blocs and lobbies. ”

“ Business no longer imposes itself up on the imagination through its extraordinary personalities. In vain do we seek to recover the past. In vain does the popular magazine fiction strive to furnish what life no longer does—the pioneer ideal, the hero who overcomes fire and flood and the machination of enemies and moves irresistibly forward to success, who believes in himself, whose motto is that the will is not to be gainsaid, whose life is one long Smile Week.
Vast propaganda exists to hold us true to the old faith ”

“ We laugh at the divine right of kings, but we could not accept self-government without bestowing on it an element of divinity. We have the divine right of Public Opinion. We can hardly print these words without the reverence of capital letters. The founders of modern democracy knew there could be no government without a miraculous quality. Formerly one mere man by virtue of ruling became something divine. ”

“ Three meals a day concern us more than do post-offices and federal buildings, of however white marble or however noble façades. What we have to eat and to wear, what we may put in the bank, what real freedom we enjoy, our position in the eyes of men, our happiness and unhappiness, depend on our relations to the national workshop, not on our relations to the national government. ”

“ In the Senate men, important men, come to you for favors; it is so much better than going to them to write policies. From the Senatorship you condescend; there really is a world to which a Senator can condescend. Washington is a social melting pot. No one asks whether you are one of the Blanks. You are Senator Blank and that is enough. And if you are so fortunate, by your very averageness, to attach yourself to the average man whose fortune makes him President, and you become one of the Harding Senators, one of the intimates, you are lifted up: like Bottom, you are translated. ”