[TsLogParser] to his hips in blood

[Griesinger S. <uno...@dp...>]

E staff of the _Saturday Evening Post_, and all of us Yankees creep up,
up, up. The business is never to be accomplished by headlong assault. It
must be done circumspectly, insidiously, a bit apologetically,
_pianissimo_; there must be no flaunting of unusual ideas, no bold
prancing of an unaccustomed personality. Above all, it must be done
without exciting fear, lest the portcullis fall and the whole enterprise
go to pot. Above all, the manner of a Jenkins must be got into it. That
manner, of course, is not incompatible with a certain superficial
boldness, nor even with an appearance of truculence. But what lies
beneath the boldness is not really an independent spirit, but merely a
talent for crying with the pack. When the American is most dashingly
assertive it is a sure sign that he feels the pack behind him, and hears
its comforting baying, and is well aware that his doctrine is approved.
He is not a joiner for nothing. He joins something, whether it be a
political party, a church, a fraternal order or one of the idiotic
movements that incessantly ravage the land, because joining gives him a
feeling of security, because it makes him a part of something larger and
safer than he is himself, because it gives him a chance to work off
steam without running any risk. The whole thinking of the country thus
runs down the channel of mob emotion; there is no actual conflict of
ideas, but only a succession of crazes. It is inconvenient to stand
aloof from these crazes, and it is dangerous to oppose them. In no other
country in the world is there so ferocious a short way with dissenters;
in none other is it socially so costly to heed the inner voice and to be
one's own man. Thus encircled by taboos, the American shows an
extraordinary timorousness in all his dealings with fundamentals, and
the fact that many of these taboos are self-imposed only adds to their
rigour. What every observant foreigner first notices, canvassing the
intellectual life of the