Public Persons by Walter Lippmann

Author:Walter Lippmann [Lippmann, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, History & Theory
ISBN: 9781351495646
Google: aTgrDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05T12:58:33+00:00

Walter Weyl

Walter Weyl was identified with The New Republic from the late winter of 1913 to the autumn of 1919. Though his personal connection with the paper was always intimate, my impression is that fully half the time he was away on some sort of an excursion to Europe, to the Orient, to Washington on war service, or to his home in Woodstock to write a book. He did not like the routine of an office; he tired quickly of writing articles of the same length week after week; he cared almost nothing for the work of editing, as distinct from writing. He came and went: when he was on the paper his head would be full of plans of the trips Bertha Weyl and he would make and the books they would write, and then when he was away on these trips his head would be equally full of plans for the reorganization and the rejuvenation of the paper. He would come back to his desk in an ecstasy of efficiency and surround himself with filing cabinets and notebooks and memoranda pads. And in about four months he would be telling us that he hoped no one else’s plans for a holiday would be spoiled if Bertha and he slipped off to Algeria for the winter.

The organization of The New Republic was deliberately based on the theory that none of its editors wished to do much editing, that none of them would remain at their desks forever, and that there would be a place on the board for men who were not wholly organizable. The scheme has defects, but it also has virtues, and not the least of these is that it was the only conceivable scheme under which an incorrigible free lance could dip in for a while to edit or to shape policy, and dip out again without upsetting everybody and everything.

The scheme enabled Walter Weyl to edit the paper as much as he cared to edit it. The arrangement suited him, suited his whimsical activity and his occasional practical fervor, and left him free to indulge his endless intellectual curiosity. It worked, above all I think because he was the most trusting of men where his affections were involved. He was not conscious of personal rights that he had to defend, nor touched by jealousy. I do not mean that he lacked his share of human vanity. He did not. But he was too much interested in a thousand things outside himself to cultivate that sense of not getting what was due to him which is the bane and destroyer of all free cooperation. He was not a good member of a team and knew it, because the work of the team interested him only in spurts. But he was a perfect colleague, nevertheless, because when he was interested he had no personal reservations. There are men who cannot play on a team, but insist on the letter of their theoretical rights nevertheless. There was nothing of that in Walter Weyl.

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