I looked at all the neat little park paths, with all those artistic curves of truth on them the editors have laid out for me and for all of us. Then I looked at the world and asked myself, "Who are the men in this world, if any, who are able to walk on the Grass, who cut across the little park paths when they like?"
And as fate would have it (it was during the Roosevelt administration), the first two men I came on who seemed to be stamping about in the newspapers quite a little as they liked were the Prime Minister of England and the President of the United States.
Just how much governing can a President do?
How many columns a day is he good for, how many acres of attention every morning in the papers of the country—all these white fields of attention, these acres of other people's thoughts, can he cover?
How many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks?
How many square miles of the people's thoughts can he spread out at breakfast tables, lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before their faces?
I have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints of his thoughts, of his will, of his desires!
I have seen that the President is the Editor of that vast, anonymous, silent newspaper, written all the night, written all the day, and softly published across a country—the newspaper of people's thoughts.
I have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down, ground into headlines, into editorials, into news. Mountains and hills are laid bare to say what he thinks. Thousands of presses throb softly and the white reels of wood pulp fly into speech. Thousands of miles of paper wet with the thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night.
The President is saying Look! in the night!