i THE STATE OF OPINION 5

ready in words and promises to concede to it every-thing, they regard open opposition as absurdly futile ;too little, because they believe that these words andpromises are so certainly destined to change in dueseason, that it is pedantic, tiresome, and inappropriateto analyse their literal meaning and exact conse-quences. They know all this nearly as well as thecritic, who wastes, in their view, his time and hisemotions in exciting himself too much over what, onhis own showing, cannot possibly happen. Neverthe-less, what is said before the world is, still, of deeperconsequence than the subterranean breathings andwell-informed whisperings, knowledge of which allowsinside opinion to feel superior to outside opinion,even at the moment of bowing to it.

But there is a further complication. In England(and perhaps elsewhere also) there are two out-side opinions, that which is expressed in the news-papers and that which the mass of ordinary menprivately suspect to be true. These two degrees ofthe outside opinion are much nearer to one anotherthan they are to the inside, and under some aspectsthey are identical; yet there is under the surface areal difference between the dogmatism and definite-ness of the press and the living, indefinite belief ofthe individual man. I fancy that even in 1919 theaverage Englishman never really believed in the in-demnity ; he took it always with a grain of salt,with a measure of intellectual doubt. But it seemed