The Unhappy Time

After 20 years of syndicated punditing, Columnist Walter Lippmann last week let readers in on a handy trick of his trade. "No one can have been writing for newspapers for a long time," he wrote, "without being fully aware of how much safer it is to prophesy disaster than to venture to express a hope. It is safe to be gloomy. If one prophesies disaster and it happens, one has been a true prophet. And if it does not happen, one is readily forgiven and may even suggest that but for the warning the disaster would have happened."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.