But provided I reach Boston and he succeeds, the airline
and the straight path will serve as ready made charts. Only when
somebody tries to follow them, and does not arrive, do we have to
answer objections. If we insist on our charts, and he insists on
rejecting them, we soon tend to regard him as a dangerous fool, and he
to regard us as liars and hypocrites. Thus we gradually paint
portraits of each other. For the opponent presents himself as the man
who says, evil be thou my good. He is an annoyance who does not fit
into the scheme of things. Nevertheless he interferes. And since that
scheme is based in our minds on incontrovertible fact fortified by
irresistible logic, some place has to be found for him in the scheme.
Rarely in politics or industrial disputes is a place made for him by
the simple admission that he has looked upon the same reality and seen
another aspect of it. That would shake the whole scheme.
Thus to the Italians in Paris Fiume was Italian It was not merely a
city that it would be desirable to include within the Italian kingdom.
It was Italian. They fixed their whole mind upon the Italian majority
within the legal boundaries of the city itself. The American
delegates, having seen more Italians in New York than there are in
Fiume, without regarding New York as Italian, fixed their eyes on
Fiume as a central European port of entry. They saw vividly the
Jugoslavs in the suburbs and the non-Italian hinterland.
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