The test of whether the Ins are handling affairs effectively is the presence or absence of disturbing problems. The need of reform is recognizable, as I pointed out in the chapter before this one, by the test of assent and the test of conformity. But it is my opinion that for the most part the general public cannot back each reformer on each issue. It must choose between the Ins and Outs on the basis of a cumulative judgment as to whether problems are being solved or aggravated. The particular reformers must look for their support normally to the ruling insiders. If, however, there is to be any refinement of public opinion it must come from the breaking up of these wholesale judgments into somewhat more retail judgments on the major spectacular issues of the day. Not all of the issues which interest the public are within the scope of politics and reachable through the party system. It seems worth while, therefore, to see whether any canons of judgment can be formulated which could guide the bystanders in particular controversies. The problem is to locate by clear and coarse objective tests the actor in a controversy who is most worthy of public support. 2 When the rule is plain, its validity unchallenged, the breach clear and the aggressor plainly located, the question does not arise. The public supports the agents of the law, though when the law is working well the support of the public is like the gold reserve of a good bank: it is known to be there and need not be drawn upon. But in many fields of controversy the rule is not plain, or its validity is challenged; each party calls the other aggressor, each claims to be acting for the highest ideals of mankind. In disputes between nations, between sectional interests, between classes, between town and country, between churches, the rules of adjustment are lacking and the argument about them is lost in a fog of propaganda. Yet it is controversies of this kind, the hardest controversies to disentangle, that the public is called in to judge. Where the facts are most obscure, where precedents are lacking, where novelty and confusion pervade everything, the public in all its unfitness is compelled to make its most important decisions. The hardest problems are those which institutions cannot handle. They are the public’s problems.