Some of the
Italians in Paris were therefore in need of a convincing explanation
of the American perversity. They found it in a rumor which started, no
one knows where, that an influential American diplomat was in the
snares of a Jugoslav mistress. She had been seen.... He had been
seen.... At Versailles just off the boulevard. ... The villa with the
large trees.
This is a rather common way of explaining away opposition. In their
more libelous form such charges rarely reach the printed page, and a
Roosevelt may have to wait years, or a Harding months, before he can
force an issue, and end a whispering campaign that has reached into
every circle of talk. Public men have to endure a fearful amount of
poisonous clubroom, dinner table, boudoir slander, repeated,
elaborated, chuckled over, and regarded as delicious. While this sort
of thing is, I believe, less prevalent in America than in Europe, yet
rare is the American official about whom somebody is not repeating a
scandal.
Out of the opposition we make villains and conspiracies. If prices go
up unmercifully the profiteers have conspired; if the newspapers
misrepresent the news, there is a capitalist plot; if the rich are too
rich, they have been stealing; if a closely fought election is lost,
the electorate was corrupted; if a statesman does something of which
you disapprove, he has been bought or influenced by some discreditable
person.
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