Public Opinion

whole succession of acts, thoughts,

arbarous' than anything ever alleged to have occurred in Belgium during the war was issued here to-day b

ousand miles away. It prepares a statement, probably much too long for publication, from which a correspondent culls an item of print three

rency, are turned over and over again, to evoke one set of images to-day, another to-morrow. There is no certainty whatever that the same word will call out exactly the same idea in the reader's mind as it did in the reporter's. Theoretically, if each fact and each relation had a name that

ge, badly understood and badly transmitted," said M. Briand to the Chamber of Deputies, [Footnote: Special Cable to The New York Times, May 25, 1921, by Edwin L, James. ] "seemed to give the Pan-Germanists the idea that the time had come to start something." A British Prime Minister, speaking in English to the whole attentive world, speaks his own meaning in his own words to all kinds of people who will see their meaning in those words. No

English Exch

s been shown by our press and public opinion in the lively and at times intemperate language of the French press

g which it has lost to-day. A similar thing can be observed with the English word 'awful.' Some nations constitutionally tend to understate, others to overstate. What the British Tommy called an unhealthy place could on

s 46 francs, and yet one knows that that does not increase its value at home. Englishmen reading the French press should endeavour to work out a mental operation similar to that of the banker who puts back

not fail to realize that there is as much value behind Engli

an hour a day to spare for the subject. To them the words so acquired are the cue for a whole train of ideas on which ultimately a vote of untold consequences may be based. Necessarily the ideas which we allow the words we r

aps an idyllic peasantry à la Jean Jacques, assailed by the prospect of smoky industrialism, and fighting for the Rights of Man. What does the word "Japan" evoke? Is it a vague horde of slant-eyed yellow men, surrounded by Yellow Perils, picture

ostile to t

gainst the

is on the op

an unfriend

igner a

ies to do harm to t

from a for

ainst a coun

e sovereignty, independence, national honor, rights, defense, aggression, imperial