Notes on Democracy/Chapter 4
4.
Politics Under Democracy
Fear remains the chiefest of them. The demagogues, i. e., the professors of mob psychology, who flourish in democratic states are well aware of the fact, and make it the cornerstone of their exact and puissant science. Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting “Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum!” It has been so in the United States since the earliest days. The whole history of the country has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats, the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Bank, the Catholics, Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum demon, John Bull, the hell hounds of plutocracy, the trusts, General Weyler, Pancho Villa, German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism. The list might be lengthened indefinitely; a complete chronicle of the Republic could be written in terms of it, and without omitting a single important episode. It was long ago observed that the plain people, under democracy, never vote for anything, but always against something. The fact explains, in large measure, the tendency of democratic states to pass over statesmen of genuine imagination and sound ability in favour of colourless mediocrities. The former are shining marks, and so it is easy for demagogues to bring them down; the latter are preferred because it is impossible to fear them. The demagogue himself, when he grows ambitious and tries to posture as a statesman, usually comes ignominiously to grief, as the cases of Bryan, Roosevelt and Wilson dramatically demonstrate. If Bryan had comfined himself, in 1896, to the chase of the bugaboo of plutocracy, it is very probable that he would have been elected. But he committed the incredible folly of throwing most of his energies into advocating a so-called constructive program, and it was thus easy for his opponents to alarm the mob against him. That program had the capital defect of being highly technical, and hence almost wholly unintelligible to all save a small minority; so it took on a sinister look, and caused a shiver to go down the democratic spine. It was his cross-of-gold speech that nominated him; it was his cow State political economy that ruined him. Bryan was a highly unintelligent man, a true son of the mob, and thus never learned anything by experience. In his last days he discovered a new issue in the evolutionary hypothesis. It was beyond the comprehension of the mob, and hence well adapted to arousing its fears. But he allowed his foes to take the offensive out of his hands, and in the last scene of all he himself was the pursued, and the tide of the battle was running so heavily against him that even the hinds at Dayton, Tenn., were laughing at him.
Government under democracy is thus government by orgy, almost by orgasm. Its processes are most beautifully displayed at times when they stand most naked—for example, in war days. The history of the American share in the World War is simply a record of conflicting fears, more than once amounting to frenzies. The mob, at the start of the uproar, showed a classical reaction: it was eager only to keep out of danger. The most popular song, in the United States, in 1915, was "I Didn’t Raise My Boy to be a Soldier." In 1916, on his fraudulent promise to preserve that boy from harm, Wilson was reëlected. There then followed some difficult manœuvres—but perhaps not so difficult, after all, to skilful demagogues. The problem was to substitute a new and worse fear for the one that prevailed—a new fear so powerful that it would reconcile the mob to the thought of entering the war. The business was undertaken resolutely on the morning after election day. Thereafter, for three months, every official agency lent a hand. No ship went down to a submarine’s torpedo anywhere on the seven seas that the State Department did not report that American citizens—nay, American infants in their mothers’ arms—were aboard. Diplomatic note followed diplomatic note, each new one surpassing all its predecessors in moral indignation. The Department of Justice ascribed all fires, floods and industrial accidents to German agents. The newspapers were filled with dreadful surmises, many of them officially inspired, about the probable effects upon the United States of the prospective German victory. It was obvious to everyone, even to the mob, that a victorious Germany would unquestionably demand an accounting for the United States' gross violations of neutrality. Thus a choice of fears was set up. The first was a fear of a Germany heavily beset, but making alarming progress against her foes. The second was a fear of a Germany delivered from them, and thirsting for revenge on a false and venal friend. The second fear soon engulfed the first. By the time February came the mob was reconciled to entering the war—reconciled, but surely not eager.
There remained the problem of converting reluctant acquiescence into enthusiasm. It was solved, as always, by manufacturing new fears. The history of the process remains to be written by competent hands: it will be a contribution to the literature of mob psychology of the highest importance. But the main outlines are familiar enough. The whole power of the government was concentrated upon throwing the plain people into a panic. All sense was heaved overboard, and there ensued a chase of bugaboos on a truly epic scale. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the world before, for no democratic state as populous as the United States had ever gone to war before. I pass over the details, and pause only to recall the fact that the American people, by the end of 1917, were in such terror that they lived in what was substantially a state of siege, though the foe was 3000 miles away and obviously unable to do them any damage. It was only the draft, I believe, that gave them sufficient courage to attempt actual hostilities. That ingenious device, by relieving the overwhelming majority of them of any obligation to take up arms, made them bold. Before it was adopted they were heavily in favour of contributing only munitions and money to the cause of democracy, with perhaps a few divisions of Regulars added for the moral effect. But once it became apparent that a given individual, John Doe, would not have to serve, he, John Doe, developed an altruistic eagerness for a frontal attack in force. For every Richard Roe in the conscript camps there were a dozen John Does thus safely at home, with wages high and the show growing enjoyable. So an heroic mood came upon the people, and their fear was concealed by a truculent front. But not from students of mob psychology.