The Open Door at Home

Bibliographic Data

ID9820120
AuthorsHerbert Feis (corresponding author), Charles A Beard
Year1935
Volume13
Issue4
Pages600
Publication date1935-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueForeign Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0015-7120 • E-ISSN: 2327-7793
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/20020219
OpenAlexW2542080830
LanguageEN
Citations received11

there are any such things as green blotters they must be very dull and insignificant objects. But when the historian sends forth his book to exert influence in the lower contemporary world, and it arrives, for reading and for rest, upon one of these green blotters ? of the standard size and color supplied to all Govern ment desks ? the proportions are reversed. Even opened wide it covers only a quarter of the green oblong; and the fresh and smooth surface of its hill-born generalizations are in striking con trast with the blotter's worn and detail-scarred face. What would become of the fresh and smooth surface if it should stay in the world of blotters? This is the thought that comes naturally to anyone living in that world. I shall heed the prompting and restrictions of time and cir cumstance, choose the reflections which arise most naturally out of the last working day, and limit myself to one (and not the most effective) element of Professor Beard's analysis. I shall deal with its economic element and even more narrowly with the peacetime aspects of that, though I recognize that to do so ignores a vital part of his presentation. A white moon peers over the White House lawn. The lights are still burning in the Executive Offices, and the ornamented and lighted dome of the Capitol can be seen at the other end of town. In the morning Congress will meet again and over the doorsteps of those seats of authority will hurry Government officials, re porters, state governors, businessmen, bankers, farm leaders, foreign diplomats and officers of the D.A.R. The reality resulting from the application of any conceptual policy, I remind myself, will be shaped by the views, the impulses, and the compromises of interest of that throng. Professor Beard discovers, in a sense, that our country's his tory has been formed by the self-seeking activities and the private ambitions of its inhabitants, and he analyzes with stimulating vigor the arguments by which the main types of private interest

Business · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics

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