6o

ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

discuss it; for the present, America must pre-tend she is going to demand the money andEurope must pretend she is going to pay it.Indeed, the position is much the same as that ofGerman Reparation in England in the middleof 1921. Doubtless my informants are rightabout this public opinion, the mysterious entitywhich is the same thing perhaps as Rousseau ’sGeneral Will. Yet, all the same, I do notattach, to what they tell me, too much import-ance. Public opinion held that Hans Ander-sen ’s Emperor wore a fine suit; and in theUnited States especially, public opinion changessometimes, as it were, en bloc.

If, indeed, public opinion were an unalter-able thing, it would be a waste of time to dis-cuss public affairs. And though it may be thechief business of newsmen and politicians toascertain its momentary features, a writer oughtto be concerned, rather, with what publicopinion should be. I record these platitudesbecause many Americans give their advice, asthough it were actually immoral to make sug-gestions which public opinion does not nowapprove. In America , I gather, an act of thiskind is considered so reckless that some im-proper motive is at once suspected, and criti-cism takes the form of an inquiry into theculprit’s personal character and antecedents.

Let us inquire, however, a little more deeplyinto the sentiments and emotions which under-lie the American attitude to the European debts.They want to be generous to Europe , both out