Our children must be taught that this is a wicked way to do. They must devote some of their time to following public affairs. They must understand also that, while low salaries must usually be paid to public officials, in order that offices may not be too eagerly sought, yet that patriots must be willing, when they can possibly afford it, to accept these low salaries, if their country is to be well and honestly served. In this war, we have seen many noble men resign large incomes in order to serve the nation. We must learn to do that in peace as well as in war.
And we must all understand too, that these officials do not really represent the governing power of our country, which is undoubtedly that intangible thing called Public Opinion. It is as subtly invisible as electricity or gravity, but in this nation as powerful.
In China, in India, and in most of the other oriental countries; in Russia also, as the recent upheavals there have proved, there is nothing which can properly be called organized Public Opinion. In France and in Great Britain, there is much. In our country, it is everything. It dominates our whole social and political system. Our press is sometimes said to create it. Oftener the press says that it follows Public Opinion,—while a considerable section of our population declare that the press and Public Opinion are the same thing.
In any case, the child should be made to understand that in a truly and nobly democratic form of government, no czar, no kaiser, no caste nor clique controls, but the people themselves, who, as Lincoln said, can be fooled by their leaders part of the time, but whose sober second thought usually sets them ultimately on the right side. The child should be made to feel that since he is one unit in this controlling mass, he should form his opinions with care.
One of the most frequent accusations against us among foreigners, is that we are wholly and ineradicably sordid. As outsiders often put it,
"All that Americans care for is the dollar."
Most of us, when we hear this, share the sentiment of a bright High School girl, who took part in a debate in 1913 on the comparative excellence of foreign and domestic manners.
"I have just come back from a summer in Europe," she said, "and I found there, on the whole, much worse manners than we have here. For instance, in nearly every country where we went, we had relatives and friends, and they were constantly saying, and very rudely, I thought, 'Oh, yes, we understand your America. All you care for over there is the dollar.' But I don't care for the dollar and my father and my mother, and my uncles and my aunts, and our friends,—hardly anybody I know, in fact,—none of them care for the dollar,—not half so much as they do over there,—and I told them so!"
Her passionate plea brought forth equally passionate applause from her young hearers,—for it was true. Human nature is inherently selfish and grasping. We have only to read the book of Proverbs to see that it was so in ancient times and it will probably always retain something of that meanness; but Americans are the most generous people in the world, and, as a whole, are the freest from miserliness and avarice. Look over the marriage notices of a century or more ago in any English periodical, and you will probably find mentioned there the amount of the bride's dowry. We all know how invariably it has to be ascertained nowadays before a foreign nobleman takes an American bride. Among ourselves, there is almost nothing of this sort.
One reason, perhaps the principal one, for this universal accusation, is not far to seek. All foreign nations have their leisure classes. The great nobles and gentry often do not even manage their own estates. Some "factor" or "agent" does it for them. As for working for money, the very idea would shock them unspeakably. A woman who works for money is especially scorned over there. It is seldom that such a woman has any social standing whatever.