Mr. Harvey, speaking at a British
dinner table, had assured the world without the least sign of
hesitancy what were the motives of Americans in 1917. [Footnote: _New
York Times_, May 20, 1921.] As he described them, they were not the
motives which President Wilson had insisted upon when _he_
enunciated the American mind. Now, of course, neither Mr. Harvey nor
Mr. Wilson, nor the critics and friends of either, nor any one else,
can know quantitatively and qualitatively what went on in thirty or
forty million adult minds. But what everybody knows is that a war was
fought and won by a multitude of efforts, stimulated, no one knows in
what proportion, by the motives of Wilson and the motives of Harvey
and all kinds of hybrids of the two. People enlisted and fought,
worked, paid taxes, sacrificed to a common end, and yet no one can
begin to say exactly what moved each person to do each thing that he
did. It is no use, then, Mr. Harvey telling a soldier who thought this
was a war to end war that the soldier did not think any such thing.
The soldier who thought that _thought that_. And Mr. Harvey, who
thought something else, thought _something else_.
In the same speech Mr. Harvey formulated with equal clarity what the
voters of 1920 had in their minds. That is a rash thing to do, and, if
you simply assume that all who voted your ticket voted as you did,
then it is a disingenuous thing to do.
Pages:
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206