of the two. People enlisted and fought, worked, paid taxes, sacrificed to a common end, and yet no one can begin to say exactly what moved each person to do each thing that he did. It is no use, then, Mr. Harvey telling a soldier who thought this was a war to end war that the soldier did not think any such thing. The soldier who thought that thought that . And Mr. Harvey, who thought something else, thought something else .
In the same speech Mr. Harvey formulated with equal clarity what the voters of 1920 had in their minds. That is a rash thing to do, and, if you simply assume that all who voted your ticket voted as you did, then it is a disingenuous thing to do. The count shows that sixteen millions voted Republican, and nine millions Democratic. They voted, says Mr. Harvey, for and against the League of Nations, and in support of this claim, he can point to Mr. Wilson's request for a referendum, and to the undeniable fact that the Democratic party and Mr. Cox insisted that the League was the issue. But then, saying that the League was the issue did not make the League the issue, and by counting the votes on election day you do not know the real division of opinion about the League. There were, for example, nine million Democrats. Are you entitled to believe that all of them are staunch supporters of the League? Certainly you are not. For your knowledge of American politics tells you that many of the millions voted, as they always do, to maintain the existing social system in the South, and that whatever their views on the League, they did not vote to express their views. Those who wanted the League were no doubt pleased that the Democratic party wanted it too. Those who disliked the League may have held their noses as they voted. But both groups of Southerners voted the same ticket.
Were the Republicans more unanimous? Anybody can pick Republican voters enough out of his circle of friends to cover the whole gamut of opinion from the irreconcilability of Senators Johnson and Knox to the advocacy of Secretary Hoover and Chief Justice Taft. No one can say