Read Online Writings from the New Yorker 1925-1976 by E. B. White - Free Book Online Page A

ranges far beyond the genteel old party he walks with and he is usually in a better position to discover a skunk. The dog often influences the course the man takes, on his long walk; for sometimes a dog runs into something in nature so arresting that not even a man can quite ignore it, and the man deviates—a clear victim of the liberal intent in his dumb companion. When the two of them get home and flop down, it is the liberal—the wide-ranging dog—who is covered with bur-docks and with information of a special sort on out-of-the-way places. Often ineffective in direct political action, he is the opposite of the professional revolutionary, for, unlike the latter, he never feels he knows where the truth lies, but is full of rich memories of places he has glimpsed it in. He is, on the whole, more optimistic than the revolutionary, or even than the Republican in a good year.
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    The Tribune may be right that there is no liberal “view.” But the question is whether there is still a liberal spirit. In these melancholy days of Hooper and Gallup, when it is the vogue to belittle the thought in the individual and to glorify the thought in the crowd, one can only wonder. We think the spirit is there all right but it is taking a beating from all sides. Where does a liberal look these days? Mr. Truman has just suggested a forty-dollar bonus for all good taxpayers, Mr. Wallace has started calling people “ordinary” and man “common,” and the Herald Tribune has liberalism on the mat, squeezing it in the kidneys. Your true liberal is on a spot, but it isn’t the first time. Two dollars says it isn’t going to be the last time. We’d make it five dollars except for all this talk of bankruptcy.
    VOTER SANITY
    7/31/48
    ONE OF OUR OVERSEAS READERS has dropped us a line to inform us about the qualifications for voting in England. He got into a discussion with somebody in London about the matter, and they called the reference library of the House of Commons and received the following pronouncement: “In Great Britain any adult twenty-one years of age or over may register and vote except peers and lunatics. The latter, if they have a moment of lucidity, may register and vote.” Our reader passed this on to us in the hope that it might sustain us through the difficult weeks ahead. The American political scene has seldom put such a strain on the sanity of the electorate, and we have an idea that when we step up to the polls next November we will feel like one of those British voters—daft as a coot, but praying, as we draw the curtain behind us, for a moment of lucidity.
    A VOICE HEARD IN THE LAND
    9/11/48
    WE HAVE A CORDIAL INVITATION from the Businessmen for Wallace * to attend a dinner on the twenty-first, convert $100, and although we ordinarily try to get to political rallies, we are hesitating on this one. The invitation shows a picture of Mr. Wallace in the act of delivering a speech, and there seems to be shining around him (and coming from above) a wonderful radiance. It is probably a Consolidated Edison radiance, but there is nothing in the photograph to indicate that. This radiance looks like the real thing. Halfway down the shaft of light is a caption that says, “And a voice was heard in the land.” The question that naturally arises, of course, is whether this land wants a voice. A distinguishing political feature of America is that it has never had a voice; it has had a lot of hoopdedoo but no voice, and that’s the way we like it. Frankie Sinatra can handle the country’s voice requirements, and the political candidates can handle the hoopdedoo, and we’ll take ours without radiance, please.
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    Mr. Wallace has had a great deal to say about the infirmities and the unfairness of the American press, and we have taken most of his remarks lying down. He keeps saying that you can’t learn the truth from the papers. We agree. You can’t learn