I
BIG IN LITTLE
A nation, in order to be a safe nation for itself, or safe for other nations in this world, must have a technique for getting and for getting a world to want it to get—its own way.
I am interested in a technique for a nation's getting its way and deserving to get its way because I want to get mine, and because being human and having quite a good deal of human nature taken out of the same stuff—out of the same mixed hot and cold ingredients as other people's, I have quite naturally come to think that what works for me, if I cut down to the quick and am honest with myself, in getting what I want, will probably, with proper shadings, of course, work for anybody.
I have thought I would see if I could not work out in this book, a technique which could be used modestly by one man, tried out in miniature as it were—a technique for getting and deserving to get one's own way.
I pick out one man, to try out the principle on, because it is safer and fairer to try out a principle other people are supposed to be asked to risk, on one man first.
Because I happen to know him better than I know anybody else, and because my experience is, he will stand more from me than anybody else, I have picked out myself.
When the technique has been tried out on one man the people who know him will believe it and try it. Then we will try it on one hundred men one after the other. Then as I have been working it out in this book, try it on the body-politic, the soul and body of a nation, try it on a hundred million people.
Then with a technique for having a body and for not being fooled by ourselves and having some substance in what we say and what we do, we would have the spectacle of a hundred million people making themselves felt in political conventions, making themselves felt in The White House and even being noticed perhaps in time at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue by the great I AM, or I CAN'T, or I WON'T tucked under the come of all of us—called The United States Senate.