ther good show, and the populace is thus not only
eager to witness it but even willing to help it along. It is therefore
quite easy to set the mob upon, say, the Bolsheviki, despite the fact
that the Bolsheviki have the professed aim of doing the mob an
incomparable service. During the late high jinks of the Postoffice and
the Department of Justice, popular opinion was always on the side of the
raiding parties. It applauded every descent upon a Socialist or pacifist
meeting, not because it was very hotly in favour of war--in fact, it was
lukewarm about war, and resisted all efforts to heat it up until
overwhelming swarms of yokel-yankers were turned upon it--but because it
was in favour of a safe and stimulating form of rough-house, with the
police helping instead of hindering. It never stopped to inquire about
the merits of the matter. All it asked for was a melodramatic raid,
followed by a noisy trial of the accused in the newspapers, and the
daily publication of sensational (and usually bogus) evidence about the
discovery of compromising literature in his wife's stockings, including
records of his receipt of $100,000 from von Bernstorff, Carranza or some
other transient hobgoblin. The celebrated O'Leary trial was typical.
After months of blood-curdling charges in the press, it turned out when
the accused got before a court that the evidence against him, on which
it was sought to convict him of a capital offence, was so feeble that it
would have scarcely sufficed to convict him of an ordinary misdemeanor,
and that most of this feeble testimony was palpably perjured.
Nevertheless, public opinion was nearly unanimously against him from
first to last, and the jury which acquitted him was almost apologetic
about its inability to give the populace the crowning happiness of a
state hanging.

Under cover of the war, of course, the business of providing such shows
prospered extraordinarily, but it is very active even in time of peace.
The surest way to get on in politics in America is to play the leading
part in a prosecution which attracts public notice. The list of
statesmen who have risen in that fashion includes the names of many of
the highest dignity, _e.g._, Hughes, Folk, Whitman, Heney, Baker and
Palmer. Every district attorney in America prays nightly that God will
deliver into his hands some Thaw, or Becker, or O'Leary, that he may get
upon the front pages and so become a governor, a United States senator,
or a just