These articles were written for great weekly newspapers upon both
sides of the Atlantic, and I note rather than complain that they
appeared after suffering a certain amount of mutilation. I expressed
my disapproval of such changes as were made, as vividly as possible,
but the remedies a writer has are uncertain and tedious and the
editorial interference went on to the end. The paragraphs were cut
to pieces; there was a brightly careless excision of phrases and
sentences apparently done at the eleventh hour to fit space and there
was a frequent insertion of uncongenial cross-heads and headings more
satisfactory to the editorial mind. The article in which I replied to
the repeated personal attacks of Lord Birkenhead and his son suffered
exceptionally in the London version. America with ampler columns was
more respectful to the general text, but made one magnificent cut
of the whole article about Sacco and Vanzetti, paid for it without
complaint and did not print a line of it.
I make this note in justice to myself rather than as an indictment of
these big newspapers. It is a considerable stimulus to address one’s
ideas to their Sunday morning audience, and it is amusing to try saying
what one has to say in as editor-proof a form as possible. It is like
shouting across an intervener at a crowd. I would be the last person in
the world to object to the criticism that there is a distinct flavour
of shouting and a disposition to reiterate in this book. Mercifully, I
have removed the emphatic cross-heads in restoring my original text.
Quips and quirks, fine phrases and fine qualifications, and, above all,
suggestions and hints, one flings into such work to please oneself,
praying God that the printer and sub-editor will at least in their
final crisis of adjustment cut out rather than distort. And when all
its defects have been discounted, this syndicated newspaper work still
gives a handsome opportunity for saying things broadly and plainly, and
obliges one, very wholesomely, to state one’s current state of mind
about this, that, and the other thing in simple lucid terms. One has
the sense of committing oneself to readers who may never have heard
of one before, and who may, for example, base a life’s antipathy on a
single rash assertion.
Inserted among these papers is a lecture given in Paris in 1927
called “Democracy Under Revision.” If I may so far assist the reader,
I would point out that this is much more closely written than the rest
of this book. It is natural to weigh one’s _p_s and _q_s when one
faces the ordeal of presently reading it all aloud to an exceptionally
intelligent audience. This lecture is something more than an essay upon
methods of government. It is an essay upon social structure. It carries
in it the statement of a general principle of artistic criticism and
has various sentences capable of considerable expansion. As nearly
everything else in the book is in a state of quite generous expansion
this lecture may be stepped over unawares. But I will be glad to find
what I have to say therein about the modern novel and the modern play,
for instance, not altogether disregarded. And anyhow, I would like to
underline the title to the extent of remarking that the revision of
democracy is not its repudiation.