“The people,” says Colonel Watterson, “_en masse_ constitute what we call the mob. Mobs have rarely been right—never, except when capably led. It was the mob of Jerusalem that did the unoffending Jesus of Nazareth to death. It was the mob in Paris that made the Reign of Terror. From that day to this, mobs have seldom been tempted, even had a chance to go wrong, that they have not gone wrong. ‘The people’ is a fetish. It was the people misled, who precipitated the South into the madness of secession and the ruin of a hopelessly unequal war of sections. It was the people, backing if not compelling, the Kaiser, who committed hari-kari for themselves and their empire in Germany. It is the people, leaderless, who are now making havoc in Russia. Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom in all lands and ages, the people, when turned loose, have raised every inch of hell to the square inch they were able to raise, often upon the slightest pretext, or no pretext at all.” OFFICIAL TIMIDITY AND ITS EFFECTS In some, perhaps most of the states, candidates for either House of Congress, knowing in advance that if, by investigation and by listening to arguments pro and con, they arrive at conclusions based on knowledge that differ from the impressions of their constituents based on prejudice, they will never be returned, make more or less formal announcement that, if elected, they will study no question but, when ready to vote, will inquire of those who have had neither opportunity nor desire to inform themselves, and vote as directed. We pay congressmen and senators of this type—just the same as statesmanlike representatives—seven thousand, five hundred dollars a year, and they vote as they are told to vote. If I am correctly informed, in some states men have been found who will vote as they are instructed for considerably less money even than that. While the bill was pending to declare war against Germany, I called upon a Congressman who, without question, is the ablest man from his state. He had written to lawyers, bankers, farmers and labor men in his district, asking how he should vote on that momentous question. He handed me a package of replies he had received. I returned them and asked: “Do you agree with the President that Germany is already making war upon the United States?” “Yes,” he replied, “she has waged war against us for more than two years.” “Do you think your constituents know better than you what should be done?” His up-to-date reply was: “My constituents know nothing whatever about it, but I want to be re-elected.” But not every congressman is that subservient. A certain well-known representative of a strongly German district in Ohio explained his support of the declaration of war in this language: