If it is a public
game, why play it in private? If it is a public game, then why not come
out into the open and play it in public? You have got to cure diseased
politics as we nowadays cure tuberculosis, by making all the people who
suffer from it live out of doors; not only spend their days out of doors
and walk around, but sleep out of doors; always remain in the open, where
they will be accessible to fresh, nourishing, and revivifying influences.

I, for one, have the conviction that government ought to be all outside
and no inside. I, for my part, believe that there ought to be no place
where anything can be done that everybody does not know about. It would be
very inconvenient for some gentlemen, probably, if government were all
outside, but we have consulted their susceptibilities too long already. It
is barely possible that some of these gentlemen are unjustly suspected; in
that case they owe it to themselves to come out and operate in the light.
The very fact that so much in politics is done in the dark, behind closed
doors, promotes suspicion. Everybody knows that corruption thrives in
secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair
presumption that secrecy means impropriety. So, our honest politicians and
our honorable corporation heads owe it to their reputations to bring their
activities out into the open.

At any rate, whether they like it or not, these affairs are going to be
dragged into the open. We are more anxious about their reputations than
they are themselves. We are too solicitous for their morals,--if they are
not,--to permit them longer to continue subject to the temptations of
secrecy. You know there is temptation in loneliness and secrecy. Haven't
you experienced it? I have. We are never so proper in our conduct as when
everybody can look and see exactly what we are doing. If you are off in
some distant part of the world and suppose that nobody who lives within a
mile of your home is anywhere around, there are times when you adjourn
your ordinary standards. You say to yourself: "Well, I'll have a fling
this time; nobody will know anything about it." If you were on the desert
of Sahara, you would feel that you might permit yourself,--well, say, some
slight latitude in conduct; but if you saw one of your immediate neighbors
coming the other way on a camel,--you would behave yourself until he got
out of sight. The most dangerous thing in the world is to get off where
nobody know