The politician and the auctioneer might be described like the lunatic, the lover and the poet, as “of imagination all compact.” One sees more mares’ nests than would fill a book; the other pure gold in pinchbeck wares; and both are out for gudgeons.
Watterson draws a vivid comparison between politicians and auctioneers, highlighting their shared traits of deception.
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We should say to Europe: “Shinny on your own side of the water and we will shinny on our side.” It may be that Napoleon’s opinion will come true that ultimately Europe will be “all Cossack or all republican.” Part of it has come true…
In short he was an opportunist void of conviction and indifferent to consistency.
Socialism, disappointed of its Utopia, may then repeat the familiar lesson and reproduce the man-on-horseback, or the world may drop into another abyss, and, after the ensuing “dark ages,” like those that swallowed Babylon and Tyre, Greece…
But he can hardly be called a sentimentalist, as Greeley was, and there is nothing but sentiment—gush and gammon—in the proposed League of Nations.
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