When one reads about Public Opinion in the press (and one reads a good
deal about it one way and another), it is a little difficult to
realize, particularly if the printer has used capital letters, that
this much-advertised Public Opinion is simply You and Me and the
Others. Now, since it is impossible for any man to get at the opinions
of all of us, it is necessary that he should content himself with a
sample half-dozen or so. But from where does he get his sample?
Possibly from his own club, limited perhaps to men of his own
political opinions; almost certainly from his own class. Public
Opinion in this case is simply what he thinks. Even if he takes the
opinion of strangers--the waiter who serves him at lunch, the
tobacconist, the policeman at the corner--the opinion may be one
specially prepared for his personal consumption, one inspired by tact,
boredom, or even a sense of humour. If, for instance, the process were
to be reversed, and my tobacconist were to ask me what I thought of
the strike, I should grunt and go out of his shop; but he would be
wrong to attribute "a dour grimness" to the nation in consequence.
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