October 17, 1928

MAN is not elected by his friends but by his opponent's Enemies." That is an axiom of American politics. And in any election campaign, the professionals on the campaign committees do not worry too much about winning favor for heir own candidate; they busy themselves mostly with plans for stirring

By HARVEY O'HIGGINS

up animosity gainst his rival. This is inevitable. It is inevitable beCause it succeeds. You might as well object to the use of dramatic loveinterest in a stage play as resent the ppeal to hate and prejudice in an eleccion. The amateur may plead that the campaign should be kept to the issues and the appeal be made to an intelligent electorate to decide each issue on its merits, and all the rest of it; but the practical politicians know that people do not vote with their intellects but with their emotions, and the emotion easiest to arouse in an American community is hatred. Certainly it is much more easy to arouse than any more affectionate or loyal and friendly feeling.

Why? And why is the present contest between Smith and Hoover so largely a campaign of prejudice, a whispering campaign, with appeals to religious enmities and moral animosities, and the use of anti-Irish incitements against Smith and anti-English ones against Hoover? And counting up the currents of hatred on both sides, which candidate will win?

I know that the proper way to make an election forecast is to consider how many farmers will vote for a candidate's measure of farm-relief, and how

many business men will support his tariff, and how many laboring men be won by his record on labor, and how many drys go this way and how many wets the other, and so forth. But this is to suppose that people vote more or less intelligently and in response to considerations of "enlightened selfinterest," as the socialists used to call it. And if the experienced politicians do not act on that belief, why should we? And if the whole socialist program has obviously gone to smash because of this Marxian delusion about "enlightened self-interest" being a ruling motive in man, why should we continue to court on it even in an election forecast?

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intelligence but by instinct." How do you suppose Max Eastman ever attained the age of without learning this first and most obvious truth about mankind? And if even the most Marxian socialists have learned to apply it to a war, why should we not apply it to the forecast of an election campaign?

Of course, when you say that men are governed by instinct

and not by intelligence, or vote by instinct and not intelligently, you are not expressing yourself with any attempt at scientific accuracy. What you mean is that men commonly act upon instinctive impulses, emotionally and automatically, and not upon reasoned conclusions, consciously arrived at after intelligent thought. And the so-called new psychology has a lot to say about that matter, because reasoned conclusions are an affair of conscious intellect, and instinctive impulses come from the subconscious mind; and the doctors discover that conscious intellect has almost no control over ordinary human conduct, whereas the subconscious mind has every control over it; so that in wars and elections, a matter of fact, people behave exactly as they do at any other time— only more so, as it were.

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To pursue the point a little further, one may say, without being too technical, that the instinctive impulses in the subconscious mind seem to divide themselves into two main currents-the impulses of the egotistic instincts and of those that appear altruistic. In the one stream are the instincts of fear, selfpreservation, self-love and so on. In the other are the instincts of affection,

the sex-instinct, the maternal instinct, the herd instinct, and so through the whole list which William McDougall first made popular in his famous "Introduction to Social Psychology." On that showing, one might expect "enlightened self-interest" to be an issue of the egotistic instincts, but the catch is in the word "enlightened." By enlightened self-interest, the socialist means intelligent self-interest-particularly economic self-interest-arriving at a reasoned conclusion that strikes a balance between possible loss and profit in an action and chooses the path that will lead to a margin of gain. Such a consideration of self-interest is not an instinctive operation but an intellectual one. The ego instincts are not that sort of animal at all. Instinctive egotism has no thought of self-interest in any such sense. It will operate with instinctive satisfaction even when the egotism is ruining the egotist. You will find an entertaining psychological study of the process in George Meredith's novel, "The Egoist."

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LL emotional appeals, whether in wars or elections, are appeals to instinctive impulses. There is no such thing as an emotion arising in the conscious intellect. All emotions are instinctive emotions, welling up from the subconscious mind; and in their origin they are "purposeful to instinct," as the doctors say. In wartime, of course, the great appeal is to the emotion of patriotism and the impulses of the herd instinct, to fear and hatred of the enemy, and to the egotism that sees itself aggrandized in the glory of its country. In election campaigns a similar appeal is made by waving the flag, by stirring up party loyalty, by arousing fear and hatred of the opposing party, and by identifying the ego of the party-man with the success of the party's candidate and the glory of the party's victory. That also is inevitable. The man who objects to it might as well object to the descent of the water at Niagara Falls.

But, in the present campaign between Hoover and Smith, these herd loyalties have been cut across by other emotions. The question of prohibition divides both. parties. So does the question of religion. And the problem of farm relief. And the politicians on both sides are seeking emotional appeals that will take advantage of such cross-currents, neutralize them in their own party and inflame them in the ranks of their op

ponents. Hence the hate, the venomous whisper, the call to religious intolerance, the appeal to prejudice, to factional animosity, to any emotion that may hook a vote out of the conflicting currents that have already so muddied up the pure waters of party faith.

In spite of our admixture of foreign blood, the American people are still predominantly Puritan in their traditions and their ways of thought. The Puritan sets his soul against a powerful instinct in man, the sex instinct. To him, sex is sin. His religion also requires him to frown on his ego instinct, to be meek, to be humble, charitable, forgiving He never quite makes that grade, but he performs miracles with his taboo on sex. He marks sex as an animal appetite that is hateful in the eyes of God. And it makes him hateful to himself. He sees himself as a miserable sinner, self-convicted by the animal impulses that keep rising in him, distempered with an inner war between the Flesh and the Spirit, and abhorrent to himself because the Spirit can never defeat the Flesh. The more religious, the more Puritanical he is, the more this poisonous self-hatred inwardly

accumulates.

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ow the doctors have discovered a curious thing about him. Except in the meekest and most pious saints, self-hatred cannot express itself in its own form. The natural egotism of the animal will not let it. It gets itself vented only as a righteous hatred of others-particularly of those who seem to personify the impulses for which the Puritan subconsciously hates himself. Hence the witch-hunts of the early American Puritans and the crusades of their modern descendants. Hence also their religious intolerance; for the Puritan, by a peculiar logic of the subconscious, finding himself hateful to his God, gets an easement of his self-hate by projecting it upon all arguable enemies of his God. The original Puritans came to America in search of religious liberty, but when they found it for themselves they denied it to all other sects. They persecuted zealously. They have persecuted ever since. Any appeal to religious bigotry, to righteous moral animosity, is irresistible to them. It gives them the relief of an instinctive satisfaction, It makes them truly happy.

of the negro; it quickly expanded to in clude the anti-foreigners and the hu dred-per-cent Americans in general. 1 communities where there are no negroe no Jews, no Catholics, and no foreigner in sufficient numbers to authorize a mas movement, the Klan has functioned i the quarrel between unorganized an union labor. Its inspiration is simpl the floating hatred in any communit that is animated by subconscious sel hate.

One of the Puritan divines who ha been most conspicuous in his leadershi of this multitudinous emotion has bee reminded by his political opponem that he should be preaching "Love th neighbor as thyself." But when a ma subconsciously hates himself, the tex can only encourage him to love h neighbor as little. To love his neigh bor, he must first love himself. H must have tolerance, forgiveness, char ity for himself if he is to have it fo others. And to the Puritan, toleranc of himself and self-forgiveness are sort of moral turpitude.

In the present election campaign, al the Puritan American's self-hate

being projected upon the Democrati candidate. And inevitably so. Smit is a Catholic. He is also wet, and i the Puritan mind sex and alcohol ar associated in sin. It is this association that makes prohibition a moral issue And that is probably the subconsciou reason, too, why the Puritan divine in evitably believes and argues that Smit is the friend of prostitution, gambling and all allied social evils. These ar

regarded by the Puritan as especiall the sins of the big town. His hatre of his own animal impulse toward thos sins gives him a peculiar animus agains the city. Smith was born in the metropolis. His campaign song "The Sidewalks of New York." T hear that song will move the out-of-tow Puritan to a happy release of accumu lated venom, which he will discharge against Smith.

and the tolerance of our animal instincts. We cannot have both the anxious drive and the milk of human kindness that is secreted by the contented psyche. Or, if we can, the doctors have not yet found the way to arrange it. Anyway, it need not concern us here. For the moment we are attempting only to forecast the subconscious issues in a presidential election.

You might suppose that all the Puritan projections of self-hate on Smith would be balanced by the votes of the Jews, Catholics, the foreigners and the wets who are included in the Puritan animosity. It does not seem to work out that way. Other subconscious influences interfere.

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the typical American community, the Jew, the Irish-Catholic and the foreigner are very much in the minority. They are not received on terms of social equality by the governing majority. They are mildly ostracized and looked down upon. They respond with that mixed emotion of resentment and admiration for the ruling caste which any submerged minority is bound to feel. Or, as the doctors say, they develop "an inferiority." You will find an excellent study of this psychology, as far as concerns the Jew, in Ludwig Lewisohn's recent novel "The Island Within." In New York, in Chicago, in Boston, where the Jews and Catholics and foreigners have settled in such numbers that they have a herd of their own to support them against intolerance, their sense of inferiority is passing; and they have "maximated" their egos, as the doctors put it, by obtaining political and financial power and ruling the ruling caste; so that, in these larger cities, it is possible for them to vote for a presidential candidate from their own ranks. But outside of the big towns, you will find what the doctors call "a rationalization" of inferiority in Smith's natural supporters, showing as a reluctance to foresee him in the White House.

people. He might not "do them proud." If he were one of the wealthy social leaders of the Catholic circle, it might be different. He is especially

patronizing the bootlegger thereafter. Why is that?

HE doctors answer that in the subconscious mind of the average American, the government is Dad. A man's instinctive attitude to authority is formed in his childhood by his relations with his father. That attitude, set before intelligence fully develops, does not become much more intelligent

criticized for his lapses into poor but THE popular English. And, at the same time, you will notice that Hoover's managers are stressing his humble origin, his obscure birth, and the poverty of his childhood, and putting out as a campaign document the photograph of the tumble-down shack in which he was born.

When you come to the question of prohibition, you strike another subconscious determinant that is most interesting. "America acts wet but votes dry," as the politicians say. Or as Will Rogers observed, "You could repeal prohibition, if you could count the breaths instead of the ballots." Why do you suppose this is so? Why, for instance, before national prohibition was enacted, did heavy drinkers in the Western states go to the polls and vote dry? I asked several of them why they had done it, as long ago as 1915, and they invariably answered that when they got into the polling booths they found themselves unable to vote wet. It did not prevent, them, however, from

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in later years. By voting dry, the drinker gets the paternal protection of the government, which is put in the place of the stern father forbidding the son to drink; and the son proceeds then to drink with a new gusto, because he is outwitting and disobeying his father mischievously, and because the drink has the added sweetness of stolen fruit. Instead of having to control himself in freedom, he has now shifted his responsibility to the paternal shoulders of the government. He has the childish satisfaction of being protected by the father and of evading the protection. When it comes to voting, he still votes dry, because he feels subconsciously that he needs to be protected from his appetite for alcohol. Having voted, he goes out with a good conscience, to get

MR. AND MRS. HERBERT HOOVER ARRIVING IN NEWARK FOR THE EASTERN SPEAKING TOUR

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He repudiated also the agreement made by De la Huerta regarding payments on the national debt.

The Mexican Congress quickly passed by-laws or regulatory statutes interpreting Article 27 of the Constitution, which nationalized the soil and its resources; and as a first step to confiscation, the oil companies were ordered to exchange their land titles for fiftyyear concessions. The companies refused. Their permits for drilling were then canceled, and they were notified that their properties would revert to the nation unless they obeyed the new statutory law.

Charles Beecher Warren, who, as a recognition for having negotiated the agreement with Obregon in 1923, had been Ambassador to Mexico for some time, was replaced by James R. Sheffield. This new Ambassador, who had no compromises or prejudices, was in a position to study the situation on impartial grounds. Ten months were enough for him to unmask the tortuous policy of Calles and his confederates. A sharp exchange of official correspondence resulted in a deadlock, and the Ambassador reported to the State Department.

As a consequence, on June 12, 1925, Secretary Kellogg issued his celebrated statement declaring: "The government of Mexico is now on trial before the world. We have the greatest interest in the stability, prosperity and independence of Mexico. We have been patient and realize, of course, that it takes time to bring about a stable government, but we cannot countenance violation of her obligations and failure to protect American citizens."

In the same statement Secretary Kellogg referred to the probability of a revolutionary change of government,

were the United States to withdraw its support of the Mexican administration -admitting officially for the first time that the Mexican radicals are in power largely because of the assistance of the United States.

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ALLES answered the statement of the American Secretary with another statement challenging the right of the United States to interfere in Mexican domestic matters. But the Mexican radicals were in a panic; many of them sold their properties, gathered as much as they could, and prepared to leave the country on short notice.

The whole machinery of propaganda was set at work. Those Americans employed in an "advisory capacity" came to the United States to enlist the support of Senators, industrialists, peace societies and editors, to "avert war." The drive was quickly felt. Even that section of the American press which had attempted to print the truth about Mexico, trimmed sail. A soft-pedal policy was soon in evidence every

where.

Having thus hushed the storm, Calles entangled the question of Americans' property rights in a net of legal technicalities. Tedious proceedings in Mexican courts served to avert a day of reckoning.

In fact, of all the promises made by Obregon in 1923 in exchange for recognition, Calles fulfilled none excepting to keep alive, though ineffective, the two commissions to settle international claims. The Commission sitting at Mexico City has held but one session, in 1926, which dealt with claims arising from the murder of seventeen defenseless United States citizens at Santa, Isabel, Chihuahua, in 1916. Liability was denied on the technical ground that

the murderers were bandits, not revolutionaries. The Brazilian arbiter by this decision established a precedent which will wipe out almost every foreign claim against the Mexican Government. The Commission sitting at Washington has achieved next to nothing. Of more than 1,400 claims filed, less than one per cent have been acted upon.

But even if the claims had been adjudicated promptly and fairly, where is the money to make payment? The truth is that Calles fed the diplomats of the United States with his finger.

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was the state of affairs when President Adolfo Diaz of Nicaragua represented to President Coolidge that the sovereignty and independence of his country were menaced by Mexico and that the Nicaraguan Government would not be able to fulfill its obligations to protect the lives and property of foreigners without assistance from the United States.

The reason for this appeal was that Juan Sacasa, the leader of a liberal rebellion, had enlisted the aid of Calles in starting a revolution. Calles gave to Sacasa money, arms, munitions, officers, and means of transport to Puerto Cabeza, on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, where a revolutionary government with Sacasa as President was set up and quickly recognized by Calles.

With the material and moral support of Calles the Sacasa revolution was able to make a drive toward the Nicaraguan capital and to throw into turmoil a great part of the country.

President Coolidge, in response to this appeal, placed an embargo on shipment of materials of war from the United States to Nicaragua, and asked Mexico to do likewise. Calles refused.

The British Ambassador notified Washington that British lives and property were threatened in Corinto, Leon, Managua, and Matagalpa, and that the British Government had decided to send a man-of-war to the west coast of Nicaragua for moral effect and as a refuge for British subjects. Other governments appealed to Secretary