Oracles, Propaganda and Womanliness

Reflections upon Various Topics of the World's Misery

OLIVER WAKEFIELD

I HAVE observed with regret that during the last few weeks editorial writers on Russian politics are growing less oracular. It cannot be that the newspaper man really knows any less about Russia than he used to know before the Brest-Litovsk treaty, for he did not know anything at that time. But he has left off expressing his certainty.

For a whole year he had intuitions about the Russian revolution and for a whole year he published every one of them, and they all went so accurately, so mathematically wrong that it seems as if we ought to have guessed our way from them. For instance, on reading one day that order was at length restored in the army, one ought to have guessed that three days later the troops would be shooting their officers. Looking back on it now it seems ridiculous that we should not have learned to expect that soldiers always would shoot officers about three days after the newspapers said that order was restored. By rejecting each newspaper certainty as we read along, we could have kept well-posted; and, if, in addition, we had taken the exact converse of all that was said by the best-informed of editorial commentators we might even have set up as experts.

I do not mean that the exact opposite of the newspaper narrative day by day would be a perfectly accurate record of events. I merely mean that it would be a good deal more accurate than was the newspaper narrative itself. I believe you could learn quite a good deal about Russian politics, even now and despite the German complication, by simply getting some newspaper man to guess and then guessing away from him.

In the same way reports of observers on the spot, especially American observers, would be a real help if only they were properly made use of. A mission of leading American citizens, despatched at great expense to study the Russian situation on the spot, would not only report a situation that you could be almost positive was non-existent, but would predict a state of affairs that could with safety be left out of your calculations. Mr. Root, if he could be induced to go again, would be an ideal man for this purpose. An ordinary observer cast into the Russian turmoil might become merely confused and go wrong at haphazard, but Mr. Root can go wrong on the subject of Russia with such precision that the opposite of what he said would now inspire perfect confidence.

By the time these words have appeared Russia may have revolved and counter-revolved several times and since the newspapers have stopped interpreting I am all at sea. If they were unanimously of one opinion, I should at least know what not to think.. If all the correspondents, and commissioners, and first-hand observers, were, for example, perfectly certain that a strong and stable Russian government would be formed and that it would offer resistance to Germany, I should at once renounce all hope. I should look rather for a pantisocracy, loosely directed by a primitive Christian sect, who believed in wearing seamless clothes and in turning the other cheek to every German.

Propaganda

NOW that the abusive word pro-German is being flung about without the slightest conscientious scruple as to its application; now that when any two respectable educators disagree, each says the other is pro-German, as he would formerly have said, "The devil take him"; it can do no harm, here, if I publicly accuse of treason a group of people that I privately believe are morally irreproachable, though mentally a little mixed up.

Is it not evident that the men who wish to prevent young Americans from learning the German language have been bought up by German gold? It is, as the French learned after Sedan, a desirable thing to know as much as possible about the enemy. It is most unwise not to learn the language of your enemy, if only to guard against surprise. The more the knowledge of the enemy's tongue is spread among a loyal population the worse it is for the enemy. If a large proportion of loyal Americans understand German, German secrets will be harder to keep than they have been hitherto, German spies will be much safer.

Since the war broke out the most violent anti-German propaganda has consisted of translations from the German tongue. If nobody but a German had learned the German alphabet, what civilized white man would have suspected that the Kaiser had expressed that gentle sentiment: "For me humanity ceases at the Vosges"?

Light on Germany is sure to be in the long run a disastrous thing for her. On the contrary, an ostrich attitude on the part of all the rest of us is from her point of view highly desirable. It is well suited to her purposes that as many as possible of her enemies should be deaf and dumb.

Now, of course, it is a complex matter with room in it for quite considerable divergencies of view, and in ordinary times I should merely remark that the people who write about it in the daily press seem to have reached their conelusions by emotion rather than by thought. I would gladly concede them all the patriotism they claimed. I would admit that in this discussion many hearts were breaking nobly, though I might add in a friendly spirit not much of anything else seemed to be going on. But as an irascible, middle-aged possessor of my own opinion, writing in the fashion of the day, I say every one of them is without doubt a deep, crafty pro-German in the pay of German spies, working in the dark to give aid and comfort to the enemy. I demand their immediate arrest, trial, conviction, and execution. I advise that any man who differs from me on any point affecting a high or graded school curriculum be shadowed by the Secret Service. Then and then only, will discussion of educational questions more or less technical follow the line most beneficial to the community—that is to say, the line that I approve.

The only trouble I foresee in this manner of discussing educational problems is that the debaters will be likely to leave the problems unsettled and to succeed only in getting each other hanged. However, there will always be a plenty.

Anti-feminine Strategy

HE anti-feminist, who conceived that uniform for the woman street-car conductors in New York City, must have reasoned it out somewhat in this manner: Although under war conditions it is necessary that these women shall take the places of men, and although, judging from recent experience, they are likely to do the work just as well as men,—if not better,—it must never be forgotten that their divinely appointed tasks are in the home. Feminists will soon be saying that these women are after all not out of woman's sphere, but, by Heaven, I will see to it that they look as if they were. I will devise a costume in which every woman shall be misplaced. There shall be bulgings and flutterings wholly irrelevant to the form within. Thin women shall be positively harrowing and the short and fat shall assume a dumpiness beyond belief. People who look at a woman car conductor in the costume that I will plan for her shall carry away an impression of fearful maladjustments, of an utter thwarting of Nature's aims. A woman car conductor shall not look merely like a being who from unfortunate necessity has left that holy place, the home. She shall look like a bundle of things torn from the darkest part of it. Feminists shall see what happens to woman's charm, when, even through no fault of her own, she violates the eternal law of womanliness.

Clever Politicians

YOU need no theory of innate ability to account for the prominence of certain political figures whose names I need not mention. They come out on a community when it is in a bad way just as pimples may follow an indigestion. Yet you constantly run across people who while disapproving this type of success really admire the natural ability it seems to imply. They exaggerate that ability.

There is a kind of success that is mainly the measure of other people's indifference. There are as many accidents of success as there are accidents of birth, and yet the sort of American who prides himself on his stiffback in the one ease will become quite limp before some commonplace figure whom the times permit to be conspicuous. Seeing some absurd creature running for mayor, he really believes it moves by its own energy. "From cabman he fought his way up to the highest office in his State," some biographer will say. That is not the way to put it. One should rather say, "He dripped through a crack in the general intelligence straight down into the governorship."

It is an odd, inverted sort of wonder that makes so much of the sturdiness of the weed and the enterprise of the flea and the assiduity of the rat, and marvels not at all at the kind of sanitation that lets them flourish. For after all the rising man's cleverness in rising is not as a rule nearly so remarkable as Our own silliness in letting him ascend.

The above remarks are, I admit, platitudes. My excuse for them is that I was moved by an article in which an opponent of Mr. William Randolph Hearst felt obliged to admit that in point of sheer ability Mr. Hearst was every bit the equal of Alcibiades.