‘Why,’ I said, ‘you can easily understand that the war strengthened the central government, giving it new duties and new powers, and fixing all men’s eyes upon it, and accustoming them to think its needs and acts of greater importance than the concerns of their own localities.’ ‘Yes,’ they said. ‘And if that very war is in support of the government’s claim to authority and is waged successfully, must not the prestige of that government be established, and that of the smaller governments diminished?’ ‘It must,’ they assented. ‘Now, do you think,’ I asked, ‘that an ordinary man will be able to understand or even to follow questions of policy, especially when he is far away from the place of government and is absorbed in the pursuit of his private gain?’ ‘Assuredly not.’ ‘And that in proportion as America has increased in size and wealth each citizen has less and less felt able to take part in the government, or even to weigh and judge of the opinions of the other citizens when there are so many of them. For most citizens know only a small part of their enormous country. And so most of them do not follow the questions of the public interest and act a part in political life, which has become in their country a trade like any other. And as all traders must keep the goodwill of the public, so especially must those who provide administration. But the need for goodwill is not a great check in any trade where competition is weak, and two concerns have a monopoly and can sell what article they like and call it administration. Furthermore, this war left strong feelings so that men stood firmly by their parties, and it kept floating in the air many fine names like “American” and “Republican,” and “Union,” in which the men of commerce who desired to run the government could dress themselves up. For it is difficult for such men themselves to invent names which arouse emotion, and yet they do not dare to call things by their true names and show themselves as they are. But the memories of the war made a grand cloak for their business purposes.’ ‘Yes,’ said Lysis, ‘I am beginning to see how their power was riveted on the necks of the Americans, when they had all those powerful words at their disposal.’ ‘At the very time,’ I said, ‘that they were making those railways of theirs and were determined to control the public treasury. And, moreover, does it not follow that power will belong to whoever can persuade the Americans that popular opinion is with him and that, the larger the number and the area, the greater the power of those who are rich and can pay for propaganda?’ ‘What exactly is propaganda?’ said Lysis.