Public Opinion | Page 7

reached here stating that the forces over which he is presumed to have
exclusive control were carrying on what amounted to naval warfare
without his knowledge. It was fully realized that the British Admiralty
might desire to issue orders to Rear Admiral Andrews to act on behalf
of Great Britain and her Allies, because the situation required sacrifice
on the part of some nation if D'Annunzio's followers were to be held in
check.
"It was further realized that under the new league of nations plan
foreigners would be in a position to direct American Naval forces in
emergencies with or without the consent of the American Navy
Department...." etc. (Italics mine).
The first Senator to comment is Mr. Knox of Pennsylvania. Indignantly
he demands investigation. In Mr. Brandegee of Connecticut, who spoke

next, indignation has already stimulated credulity. Where Mr. Knox
indignantly wishes to know if the report is true, Mr. Brandegee, a half a
minute later, would like to know what would have happened if marines
had been killed. Mr. Knox, interested in the question, forgets that he
asked for an inquiry, and replies. If American marines had been killed,
it would be war. The mood of the debate is still conditional. Debate
proceeds. Mr. McCormick of Illinois reminds the Senate that the
Wilson administration is prone to the waging of small unauthorized
wars. He repeats Theodore Roosevelt's quip about "waging peace."
More debate. Mr. Brandegee notes that the marines acted "under orders
of a Supreme Council sitting somewhere," but he cannot recall who
represents the United States on that body. The Supreme Council is
unknown to the Constitution of the United States. Therefore Mr. New
of Indiana submits a resolution calling for the facts.
So far the Senators still recognize vaguely that they are discussing a
rumor. Being lawyers they still remember some of the forms of
evidence. But as red-blooded men they already experience all the
indignation which is appropriate to the fact that American marines have
been ordered into war by a foreign government and without the consent
of Congress. Emotionally they want to believe it, because they are
Republicans fighting the League of Nations. This arouses the
Democratic leader, Mr. Hitchcock of Nebraska. He defends the
Supreme Council: it was acting under the war powers. Peace has not
yet been concluded because the Republicans are delaying it. Therefore
the action was necessary and legal. Both sides now assume that the
report is true, and the conclusions they draw are the conclusions of their
partisanship. Yet this extraordinary assumption is in a debate over a
resolution to investigate the truth of the assumption. It reveals how
difficult it is, even for trained lawyers, to suspend response until the
returns are in. The response is instantaneous. The fiction is taken for
truth because the fiction is badly needed.
A few days later an official report showed that the marines were not
landed by order of the British Government or of the Supreme Council.
They had not been fighting the Italians. They had been landed at the
request of the Italian Government to protect Italians, and the American
commander had been officially thanked by the Italian authorities. The
marines were not at war with Italy. They had acted according to an

established international practice which had nothing to do with the
League of Nations.
The scene of action was the Adriatic. The picture of that scene in the
Senators' heads at Washington was furnished, in this case probably
with intent to deceive, by a man who cared nothing about the Adriatic,
but much about defeating the League. To this picture the Senate
responded by a strengthening of its partisan differences over the
League.
5
Whether in this particular case the Senate was above or below its
normal standard, it is not necessary to decide. Nor whether the Senate
compares favorably with the House, or with other parliaments. At the
moment, I should like to think only about the world-wide spectacle of
men acting upon their environment, moved by stimuli from their
pseudo-environments. For when full allowance has been made for
deliberate fraud, political science has still to account for such facts as
two nations attacking one another, each convinced that it is acting in
self-defense, or two classes at war each certain that it speaks for the
common interest. They live, we are likely to say, in different worlds.
More accurately, they live in the same world, but they think and feel in
different ones.
It is to these special worlds, it is to these private or group, or class, or
provincial, or occupational, or national, or sectarian artifacts, that the
political adjustment of mankind in the Great Society takes place. Their
variety and complication are impossible to describe. Yet these fictions
determine a very great part of men's political