For even when the
editor is scrupulously fair to "the other side," fairness is not
enough. There may be several other sides, unmentioned by any of the
organized, financed and active partisans.
The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his
Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a
compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature
and an insult to his sense of evidence. As his civic education takes
account of the complexity of his environment, he will concern himself
about the equity and the sanity of procedure, and even this he will in
most cases expect his elected representative to watch for him. He will
refuse himself to accept the burden of these decisions, and will turn
down his thumbs in most cases on those who, in their hurry to win,
rush from the conference table with the first dope for the reporters.
Only by insisting that problems shall not come up to him until they
have passed through a procedure, can the busy citizen of a modern
state hope to deal with them in a form that is intelligible. For
issues, as they are stated by a partisan, almost always consist of an
intricate series of facts, as he has observed them, surrounded by a
large fatty mass of stereotyped phrases charged with his emotion.
According to the fashion of the day, he will emerge from the
conference room insisting that what he wants is some soulfilling idea
like Justice, Welfare, Americanism, Socialism.
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