A Preface to Politics | Page 4

record and a machine-made imitation of the
habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to
the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers' glory--to the
archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the
eighteenth century contrivance by which for a time it was served. To

reverence Washington they wear a powdered wig; they do honor to
Lincoln by cultivating awkward hands and ungainly feet.
It is fascinating to watch this kind of conservative in action. From
Senator Lodge, for example, we do not expect any new perception of
popular need. We know that probably his deepest sincerity is an
attempt to reproduce the atmosphere of the Senate a hundred years ago.
The manners of Mr. Lodge have that immobility which comes from too
much gazing at bad statues of dead statesmen.
Yet just because a man is in opposition to Senator Lodge there is no
guarantee that he has freed himself from the routineer's habit of mind.
A prejudice against some mannerism or a dislike of pretensions may
merely cloak some other kind of routine. Take the "good government"
attitude. No fresh insight is behind that. It does not promise anything; it
does not offer to contribute new values to human life. The machine
which exists is accepted in all its essentials: the "goo-goo" yearns for a
somewhat smoother rotation.
Often as not the very effort to make the existing machine run more
perfectly merely makes matters worse. For the tinkering reformer is
frequently one of the worst of the routineers. Even machines are not
altogether inflexible, and sometimes what the reformer regards as a sad
deviation from the original plans is a poor rickety attempt to adapt the
machine to changing conditions. Think what would have happened had
we actually remained stolidly faithful to every intention of the Fathers.
Think what would happen if every statute were enforced. By the sheer
force of circumstances we have twisted constitutions and laws to some
approximation of our needs. A changing country has managed to live in
spite of a static government machine. Perhaps Bernard Shaw was right
when he said that "the famous Constitution survives only because
whenever any corner of it gets into the way of the accumulating dollar
it is pettishly knocked off and thrown away. Every social development,
however beneficial and inevitable from the public point of view, is met,
not by an intelligent adaptation of the social structure to its novelties
but by a panic and a cry of Go Back."
I am tempted to go further and put into the same class all those radicals

who wish simply to substitute some other kind of machine for the one
we have. Though not all of them would accept the name, these
reformers are simply utopia-makers in action. Their perceptions are
more critical than the ordinary conservatives'. They do see that
humanity is badly squeezed in the existing mould. They have enough
imagination to conceive a different one. But they have an infinite faith
in moulds. This routine they don't believe in, but they believe in their
own: if you could put the country under a new "system," then human
affairs would run automatically for the welfare of all. Some
improvement there might be, but as almost all men are held in an iron
devotion to their own creations, the routine reformers are simply
working for another conservatism, and not for any continuing
liberation.
The type of statesman we must oppose to the routineer is one who
regards all social organization as an instrument. Systems, institutions
and mechanical contrivances have for him no virtue of their own: they
are valuable only when they serve the purposes of men. He uses them,
of course, but with a constant sense that men have made them, that new
ones can be devised, that only an effort of the will can keep machinery
in its place. He has no faith whatever in automatic governments. While
the routineers see machinery and precedents revolving with mankind as
puppets, he puts the deliberate, conscious, willing individual at the
center of his philosophy. This reversal is pregnant with a new outlook
for statecraft. I hope to show that it alone can keep step with life; it
alone is humanly relevant; and it alone achieves valuable results.
Call this man a political creator or a political inventor. The essential
quality of him is that he makes that part of existence which has
experience the master of it. He serves the ideals of human feelings, not
the tendencies of mechanical things.
The difference between a phonograph and the human voice is that the
phonograph must sing the song which is stamped upon it. Now there
are days--I suspect the vast majority of them in most of our lives--when
we grind out the thing