WHAT THE UNITED STATES NEEDS
Cobb, Frank I.
What The United States Needs Restoration of Free Play of Public Opinion. Otherwise the Achievement of the War May be the Prussianizing of Ourselves By FRANK I. COBB Frank I. Cobb is the chief...
...The barrier of propaganda must be broken down...
...American newspapers are not doing this in respect to this new economic situation, as many newspaper mei keenly realize, without quite knowing how to remedy it...
...De Tocqusville framed essentially^the same definition in still more striking form when he voiced his warning against the tyranny of the majority...
...Nevertheless, all the liberties that we hold today have come from resistance to government, and most of them were won by blood and iron...
...It is not the revolutionary doctrine which is shouted from the mar...
...Henry W. Taft, complained that the Department of Justice was shifting to the States the duty of prosecuting radicals, and asked: "But is not the protection of the American people against revolutionary propaganda pecuflarly within the function of the Federal Government...
...They were not prepared for the industrial upheavals that came...
...It is here that we squarely confront the question of the responsibility of newspapers in respect to the formation of an enlightened and fully responsible public opinion...
...That is why they established a government of checks and balances which could not function too freely...
...Otherwise the Achievement of the War May be the Prussianizing of Ourselves By FRANK I. COBB Frank I. Cobb is the chief editorial writer of the New York World...
...A war that has wrecked vast empires, overthrown dynasties and brought about sweeping revolutions is not likely to leave society just as it was before...
...This, ia a way, helps to account for the more or less chaotic state of public opinion in this country, and it is doubly unfortunate, because the American people have no passion for profound study of public questions until these questions reach the stage of a crisis...
...That was a great mistake...
...legislative committee's could seize his private papers and search them for evidence of Bolshevism, and United States Senators would be clamoring for his deportation on the ground that he had been tainted with the ribald doctrines of the French Revolution and should be sent back to live with the rest of the terrorists...
...If they are fit to govern, it is no function of government to protect them from any kind of propaganda...
...In so far as discontent appeals directly to violence, there is an abundance of law to meet it if public officials, municipal, State and Federal, will discharge the commonplace duties of their offices...
...A most energetic propaganda is - engaged in converting the Constitution of the United States into a cult, into a religion, and its champions are eager to burn all dissenters and heretics at the stake...
...Nobody ever succeeded in bettering the weather by putting the thermometer in jail, and nobody will ever remove the causes of unrest and discontent by trying to suppress their manifestations...
...That capacity for self-protection is the very essence of self-government...
...Yet large numbers of excellent people think that mankind should have picked up its work where it left off when it went into the trenches and go on as if nothing at all had happened...
...It reeks of sedition...
...for the restoration of the old faith of the Fathers which has never yet failed the nation in a crisis—the faith that they themselves sealed in their own blood...
...When government undertakes to regulate opinions the burden of proof must always rest upon it...
...But what of it...
...There is no surer way to give those doctrines a foothold than to proscribe them...
...Now there is no Imperial Majesty and no German Kaiser, and no Majestaets-Beleidigung and no Divine Right...
...This standard of judgment can be applied to all the unrest and discontent to which the country is now subjected...
...When the French soldiers began to return home after four years in the trenches, thousands of them declared that they would never again do any work...
...Quite true...
...If the guarantees of the Bill of Rights are to be overridden in the name of super-patriotism, the newspapers themselves will be the ultimate ive-tims of the new dispensation that is called upon to suppress freedom of speech and of the pres3, and "we shall have no public opinion at all except Wt which cringes under the lash of office holders...
...What I have said is not a plea for the new radicalism, for to me most of this new radicalism is the very negation of political and economic sanity...
...But government protecting the American people against revolutionary propaganda is a new manifestation of paternal authority...
...ket place that is whispered everywhere in the ear of discontent and that can claim in its favor the rest of martyrdom...
...the storms may enter...
...A Prussian Theory THIS theory that it is the duty of government to protect the people from propaganda is Prussianism...
...It set up no guillotines on American soil and beheaded no aristocrats...
...They are still skimming the surface, and it is only now and then that a reporter gets under the skin of these great events...
...The Bill of Rights is a born rebel...
...Day by day they like to get their news from headlines and to rely for their judgments on what somebody tells them...
...To this day the government they created operates with great difficulty under even favorable conditions, and whenever the President and Congress happen to belong to different parties government is deadlocked and must wait for another election...
...Instead of trying to get at the basic cause of it all, they adopted the primitive-medicine-man procedure of hunting out the devil upon whom the responsibility could be laid...
...EITHER the people are fit to govern or they are not...
...There we are on solid ground...
...It is impossible of fulfillment, nevertheless, unless the newspapers set themselves squarely against this rising Prussianism which is seeking to make a fetish out of government and endow it with the power of damnation over all dissenting political and economic beliefs...
...Will Hays, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, made a speech recently in New York in which he proudly proclaimed that: "There is in this country a religious faith which believes in the divine origin of the Constitution of the United States...
...If the author of the Declaration of Independence were to utter such a sentiment today the Post Office Department could exclude him from the mail...
...ail his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement...
...Four hundred thousand steel workers had gone out because the leader of the strike had once been a syndicalist...
...It is just as well to remember that the preamble of the Constitution of the United States does not begin "We the Government of the United States," but "We the People of the United States...
...Radicalism pretends to be engaged in restoring human liberty to its primitive simplicity, and reaction, wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, is ready to have everybody else die for the Constitution as it thinks the Constitution ought to be interpreted...
...Thus the political philosophy of one generation becomes the political anathema of another...
...The failures of popular government have always been failures of public opinion—mostly of public opinion that was ill-informed, of public opinion that was denied the facts, of public opinion that was misguided by self-constituted masters...
...The war has left a new set of problems and the newspapers have not yet met them...
...One menaces with threats of the torch and the bomb and the other with threats of the rope and the rifle...
...Others were convinced that because war has resulted in revolution in certain countries there ought to be revolution everywhere—the more the better...
...There is no other such prolific breeder of revolution as reaction, and reaction is now engaged in capitalizing the militant patriotism that the war aroused...
...They regarded it rather as a necessary evil...
...That capacity for self-protection is the very essence of self-government...
...Or all the rest of that noble congregation of rebels who to their defiance of George III pledged their lives and their fortunes and their sacred honor...
...Or George Washington...
...Nor were they altogether certain, from the meagre data of a limited experience, as to the ability of the people to rule themselves...
...Newspapers are very human institutions, and when the fighting ceased they reacted in much the way the general public reacted...
...its pToof may shake...
...Without it popular institutions are inconceivable, and the moment that a republican form of government sets itself up as the nurse maid of the people, to train their immature minds to suit its own purposes and to guard them from all influences that it considers contaminating, we already have a revolution and a revolution backward, a revolution by usurpation...
...They were the first victims of the censorship and the daily prey of the propagandists...
...Some of these marauders represent radicalism and some reaction, but there is a striking similarity in their methods...
...1AM not afraid of Bolshevism in the open, where the American people can examine it and weigh it and consider it...
...Cobb before the Women's Club of New York, December 11, 1919...
...Now, I am not much disposed to agree with Jefferson's dictum on the moral duty of resistance to government unless it is abundantly qualified...
...When I first read Mr...
...Free government must forever be the resultant of all the forces that are brought to bear upon it, radical and reactionary, liberal and conservative, revolutionary and Bourbon, Socialistic and individualistic, and whenever any of thoses forces is compelled to resort to secrecy the equilibrium is destroyed and the way is open to disaster...
...Thanks to the men who were willing to challenge authority and die for liberty, we, their political heirs, have been armed with newer and better weapons...
...That requires, first, the re-establishment of the freedom of discussion, for without freedom of discussion there is no public opinion that deserves the name...
...They were willing to die for their country, but not willing to think for it, and under the influence of- propaganda they had lost the habit of independent thought...
...The American people cannot deal intelligently with any of these problems without knowing the facts, and they cannot know the facts until the newspapers brush aside the propagandists of contending factions and get back to first principles of news gathering...
...It is not the first time that wiid and lunatic remedies have been prescribed for public ills...
...Duty of the Newspapers \&T HEN strike followed strike, when indus-* " trial disturbances became nation-wide, when labor and capital instantly began a had to hand fight over a new division of the profits and the spoils, when the labor leaders discovered that there was a tight labor market and began to squeeze the employer just as the banks squeeze the borrower when there is a tight money market, a vast number of perfectly good and respectable people were much disturbed in their souls, and the newspapers reflected this disturbance...
...If they are fit to govern, it is no function of government to protect them from any kind of propaganda...
...The American people threshed the issue out and went on their way...
...The protection of the people against crime and violence and the destruction of property is an elementary function of government...
...With universal suffrage, that is a foundation which can never be shaken, and we can build on it in complete confidence...
...Or Patrick Henry...
...Under free institutions, whatever can be taken to the ballot box has the inalienable right to make its appeal to the ballot box...
...On the whole, they displayed a sense of responsibility that in itself is the highest decoration for distinguished service...
...Radicalism appeals to violence against reaction and reaction appeals to violence against radicalism...
...The history of this country for more than 140 years proves that the American people can be trusted, and in the long run they can be trusted a great deal further than the professional politicians that they generally select to represent them...
...What I am pleading for is the restoration of the traditions of the Republic, for the restoration of the proved safeguards of human liberty, for the --restoration of the free play of public opinion, without which democracy is stifled and cannot exist...
...He is a son of the Middle West and breathes the distinctly American spirit...
...They printed all the news that government would permit them to print...
...In a speech delivered in Carnegie Hall last week a very eminent New York lawyer, Mr...
...It sometimes seems that after the armistice was sighed, millions of Americans must have taken a vow that they would never again do any thinking for themselves...
...They will protect themselves...
...Is it not possible that they still retain a scanty remnant of their ancient common sense ? Is it not possible that they i/iirM even listen to a sympathetic exposition J^Tthe maniacal principles of Bolshevism without being seized with an irrepressible desire to destroy everything they have created and give themselves over to famine and disease and anarchy in order to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat...
...Two thousand years of history bear witness to its folly...
...They will protect themselves...
...If history teaches any lesson whatever, its lesson is that the most dangerous and futile of all methods of combating erroneous political and economic beliefs is for government to set itself up as a judge and executioner...
...AFTER the Thirty Years' War, bands of marauding soldiers wandered around- Europe terrorizing the inhabitants of every town and village to which they could gain access, and something of that sort is going on now in the United States...
...THE men who drafted the Constitution certainly did not consider it a piece of divine inspiration...
...For the most part they had settled down to the com...
...It will » often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all...
...Both profess to be champions of human freedom...
...It raised up .po American breed of Marats and Robes-pierres...
...They were not prepared for the waves of discontent and unrest that spread over the country...
...It is just as well to remember that the preamble of the Constitution of the United States does not begin "We the Government of the United States," but "We the Paople of the United States...
...It was that "among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot,to the bullet...
...Or Benjamin Franklin, with his grim joke about hanging together or hanging separately...
...The readers of this Magazine are invited to read this article with scrutiny...
...Significantly enough, no sooner was this new tyranny established than Lenin and Trotsky proceeded in their turn to "protect the people from revolutionary propaganda" by suppressing all but the Bolshevist newspapers...
...THE first duty of a newspaper to public opinion is to furnish the raw materials for it and the tools for its formation...
...It was the gospel of His Imperial Majesty, the German Kaiser...
...the wind may blow through it...
...Protecting people from revolutionary pTopagar-da was one of his most sacred functions...
...But what the fathers did clearly understand was human liberty, at least in so far as the white man was concerned, and there they took nothing for granted...
...That will always remain the best test of truth, and we cannot afford to tamper with it, however strong the immediate provocation may be, nor can we afford to suppress that competition...
...It is not the first time that foreign revolutionary theories have invaded the United States...
...And so it went...
...He was formerly connected with the Detroit Evening News, and Detroit Free Press, and since 1904 has been with the New York World...
...they are antagonistic to the principles of the Republic, and we cannot afford to have the American people adopt them...
...It is a brave and bold statement of conditions toward which the jingo press has turned a deaf ear.—Managing Editor's Note...
...How is there to be any public opinion at all if government is to be the final arbiter of political theories and economic doctrines...
...They knew how it was made...
...Then I saw that he bad probably hit upon a serious and lamentable truth...
...Writing from Paris to Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson said that: "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it always to be kept alive...
...It is not the first time that property rights have been attacked in their very citadel...
...The competent, independent investigating reporter must come back to his own...
...I am not afraid that the American people are going to rise up en masse and join the I. W. W. to destroy the institution of their own private property, unless government prevents them by force...
...But, it will be said, the doctrines that government is called upon to suppress are of foreign origin...
...American newspapers are not doing this in respect to this new economic situation, as many newspaper men keenly realize, without quite knowing how to remedy it...
...In every clause it shakes its fists in the face of constituted authority and thunders "Thou shalt not," and because its ultimatum "Thou shalt not" it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people unless they themselves destroy their safeguard...
...Of the work of the American newspapers in the war the most chronic fault finder cannot justly complain...
...There is revolution in reaction as well as in radicalism, and Toryism speaking a jargon of law and order may often be a graver menace to liberty than radicalism bellowing the empty phrases of the soap-box demagogue...
...This is vital...
...I am not afraid of Bolshevism in the open, where the American people can examine it and weigh it and consider it...
...The policy of repression that has been generally adopted by governors, mayors and polic* officials—in some cases by federal authority— to meet this propaganda of radicalism is fatal...
...to the events of the last year, it is a very different story and a less satisfactory one...
...They were quite as eager for repression...
...God forbid that our supreme achievement in this war should be the Prussianizing of ourselves...
...Either the people are fit to govern or they are not...
...Whatever denies the final authority of the ballot box is a challenge to the Republic, and that alone is a challenge...
...The first duty of a newspaper to public opinion is to furnish the raw materials for it and the tools for its formation...
...The war has left a new set of problems and the newspapers have not yet met them...
...Four hundred thousand miners quit in defiance of Federal law because two factions in the union were battling for control...
...All this is fundamental...
...That will always remain a great menace, and public opinion is never to be safeguarded by trying to prevent it by law from coming into contact with political heresy...
...The Constitution of the United States is one of the great achievements of all history, but criticism of it is not blasphemy, and a man is not necessarily damned who thinks that in the light of 130 years' experience a better framework of government might be constructed...
...A war that has shaken the very foundations of human society is bound to produce some extraordinary mental reactions...
...La Fol-lette's prints the address delivered by Mr...
...The inherent sovereignty of the citizen over government was pictured by Pitt in words that for a century and a half have been part of the political heritage of the English-speaking peoples: "The poorest man in his cottage may bid defiance to all the force of the Crown...
...Powers Prohibited are Charter IT is not the powers that they conferred upon the government, but the powers that they prohibited to the government which make the Constitution a charter of liberty...
...Bands of propagandists are wandering around terrorizing public opinion and trying to frighten it into submission to theories of government, strange to American institutions...
...Hay's words I was staggered by this new incarnation of Hohenzollernism...
...It may be frail...
...They almost bankrupted themselves to obtain it...
...They are still skimming the surface, and it is only now and then that ar reporter gets under the skin of these great events...
...Nor had they any superstitious reverence far government as an institution...
...they are advocated in large part by an alien population...
...They never hesitated in rendering any service of which they were capable, and they never counted the cost...
...Cobb was born in Shawnee County, Kans...
...The history of this country for more than 140 years proves that the American people can be trusted, and in the lo^ng run they can be trusted a great deal further than the professional politicians that they generally select to represent them...
...Free Play of Opinion WHAT the United States needs more than anything else today is the restoration of the free play of public opinion...
...Autocratic Russia saw the doctrine in its fullest flower, and it was eventually followed by the most horrible, by the most ghastly, by the most degrading revolution known to human history...
...An Apt Comparison A. MERICAN conservatives were once quite as terrified by the spread in this country of the extreme theories of the French Revolution as they are now terrified by the spread of Bolshevism...
...They are not driving to the heart of things...
...yet the French Revolution never shattered a single American institution...
...I wonder what old Sam Adams would say to that...
...If government is to be erected into a god, who of us can be sure of salvation ? Security of the Minority LORD Acton made the security of the minority the basis of freedom and that will always be the basis, however offensive the minority's views may be and however mischievous the principles that it advocates may appear...
...All the shipping in New York was tied up because I. W. W. agistors had taken possession of 80,000 longshoremen...
...Grand Juries could indict him for sedition and criminal syndicalism...
...Without it popular institutions are inconceivable, and the moment that a republican form of government sets itself up as the nurse maid of the peop'e, to train their immature minds to suit its own purposes and to guard them from all influences that it considers contaminating, we already have a revolution and a revolution backward, a revolution by usurpation...
...When we come to the newspapers in relation...
...View of Lincoln •TPO Abraham Lincoln the issue of the Civil * War was very simple...
...fortable assumption that with Germany beaten, with the Kaiser exiled, with the war won, everything was going to be for the best in the best possible of worlds, and that is not the way it turned out at all...
...Or Thomas Jefferson...
...The gravest duty that confronts the American press today is to bring these vast questions that have come out of the war into the forum of public discussion...
...Nothing in this complicated world is ever quite so simple as that...
...In so far as it appeals to public opinion and the ordinary processes of representative government, we need not be disturbed for the safely of the Republic unless we lack faith'in popular institutions and believe that at heart the American people are destitute of sense and sanity and incapable of self-rule...
...It is denying freedom of speech, dpnylns' ^rpednm of assembly—denying the most sacred guarantee of the Constitution that it proiesses to guard and defend...
...This is not "the first time there has been nation-wide unrest and discontent...
...I am not afraid that the American people are going to rise up en masse and join the I. W. W. to destroy the institution of their own private property, unless government prevents them by force...
...We are in danger of forgetting this under the terrorism of mass thought, but we can forget it only at our imminent peril...
...They were not prepared for the social ferment that followed the war...
...The notion was general that, with hostilities ended, prewar conditions would naturally be restored, and the newspapers followed the common notion...
...Justice Holmes of the United States Supreme Court recently said in a dissenting opinion In a sedition onj^ that "the best test of truth is the power ojjtthe thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market...
Vol. 12 • January 1920 • No. 1
