To fool the other side has always been
fair in a game. Every fencer or boxer1 may feint. A Rugby football player "gives the dummy2" without any shame. In cricket a bowler3 is justly valued the more for masking his action.
In war your licence to lead the other fellow astray is yet more ample. For war, though it may be good sport to some men, is not a mere4 sport. In sport you are not "out to win" except on certain terms of courtesy and handsomeness. Who would take pride in a race won by a fluke? At Henley, a long time ago, there were five or six scullers in for the Diamonds. One of them, L——, was known to be far the best man in the race. In the first heat he was drawn5 against A——, of Oxford6, about the best of the others. L—— had one fault—a blind eye; and it often made him steer7 a bad course. Before the two had raced for fifty yards L—— blundered out of his course, crashed into A——, and capsized him. The rules of boat-racing are clear: L—— had done for himself. A——, who was now swimming, had only to look up to the umpire's launch and hold up a hand. A nod would have been the reply, and the heat would have been A——'s, and the final heat, in all likelihood, too. A—— looked well away from the umpire and kept his hands down, got back into his boat and said to his contrite8 opponent, "Start again here, sir?" A—— was decisively beaten, and never came so near to winning the Diamonds again.
Of course he was right, the race being sport. He had "loved the game beyond the prize"; he had, like Cyrano, emporté son panache9; he had seen that in sport the thing to strive for is prowess itself, and not its metallic10 symbol. But the prize of victory in war is no symbol; it is the thing itself, the real end and aim of all that you do and endure. If A—— had been sculling not for a piece of silversmith's work but for the righting of a wronged nation or for the reassertion of public right throughout Europe, not only would he have been morally free to take a lucky fluke when he got it: he would not have been morally free to reject it. In war you have to "play to win"—words of sinister12 import in sport. Pot-hunting, unhonoured in sport, is a duty in war, where the pot is, perhaps, the chance of a free life for your children.
Hence your immemorial right to fall on your enemy where he is weak, to start before he is ready, to push him out of the course, to jockey him on to the rails, to use against him all three of Bacon's recipes for deceiving. A good spy will lie to the last, and in war a prisoner may lie like a saint and hero. With unmistakable glee the Old Testament13 tells us of Gideon's excellent practical fib with the crockery and trumpets14. Even the Wooden Horse of the Greeks has long ceased to raise moral questions. The pious16 Aeneas, certainly, called it a foul17. But what did he do himself, when he got a good opening? Went, as the Irish say, beyond the beyonds and fought in an enemy uniform. Ruses18 of war and war lies are as ancient as war itself, and as respectable. The most innocent animals use them; they shammed20 dead in battle long before Falstaff.
The only new thing about deception21 in war is modern man's more perfect means for its practice. The thing has become, in his hand, a trumpet15 more efficacious than Gideon's own. When Sinon set out to palm off on the Trojans the false news of a Greek total withdrawal22, that first of Intelligence officers made a venture like that of early man, with his flint-headed arrow, accosting23 a lion. Sinon's pathetic little armament of yarns24, to be slung25 at his proper peril26, was frailer27 than David's five stones from the brook28. Modern man is far better off. To match the Lewis gun with which he now fires his solids, he has to his hand the newspaper Press, a weapon which fires as fast as the Lewis itself, and is almost as easy to load whenever he needs, in his wars, to let fly at the enemy's head the thing which is not.
He has this happiness, too: however often he fires, he can, in a sense, never miss. He knows that while he is trying to feed the enemy with whatever it may be bad for him to read the enemy will be trying just as hard to leave no word of it unread. As busily as your enemy's telescopes will be conning29 your lines in the field, his Intelligence will be scrutinising whatever is said in your Press, worrying out what it means and which of the things that it seems to let out are the traps and which are the real, the luminous30, priceless slips made in unwariness. What the Sphinx was to her clientèle, what the sky is to mountain-climbers and sailors, your Press is to him: an endless riddle31, to be interrogated32 and interpreted for dear life. His wits have to be at work on it always. Like a starved rat in a house where rat-poison is laid, he can afford neither to nibble33 a crumb34 that has got the virus on it, nor yet to leave uneaten any clean crumb that has fallen accidentally from a table. Do not thrilling possibilities open before you?
What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? What not put upon
His spongy officers?
—that is, if Duncan be really unguarded enough to "ravin down his proper bane," like a dutiful rat, and his officers spongy enough to sop35 up, according to plan, the medicated stuff that you give them.
III
It is the common habit of nations at war to ascribe to the other side all the cunning, as if the possession of a Ulysses were some sort of discredit36. Happily for us our chosen Ulysses in France, at the most critical time, was of the first order. But no soldier can go far ahead of his time; he has to work in it and with it. And so the rich new mine of Intelligence work through the Press was not worked by either side, in the Great War, for all it was worth. Only a few trial borings were made; experimental shafts37 were sunk into the seam, and good, promising38 stuff was brought to the top.
Here are a couple of samples. Some readers of popular science, as it is called, may have been shocked to see in a technical journal, rather late in the war, a recklessly full description of our "listening sets"—the apparatus39 by which an enemy telephone message is overheard in the field. "Why," they must have thought, "this is giving away one of our subtlest devices for finding out what the enemy is about. The journal ought to be prosecuted41." The article had really come from G.H.Q. It was the last thrust in a long duel42.
When the war opened the Germans had good apparatus for telephonic eavesdropping43. We had, as usual, nothing to speak of. The most distinctly traceable result was the annihilation of our first attack at Ovillers, near Albert, early in July 1916. At the instant fixed44 for the attack our front at the spot was smothered45 under a bombardment which left us with no men to make it. A few days after when we took Ovillers, we found the piece of paper on which the man with the German "listening set" had put down, word for word, our orders for the first assault. Then we got to work. We drew our own telephones back, and we perfected our own "listening sets" till the enemy drew back his, further and further, giving up more and more of ease and rapidity of communication in order to be safe. At last a point was reached at which he had backed right out of hearing. All hope of pushing him back further still, by proving in practice that we could still overhear, was now gone. All that was left to do was to add the effects of a final bluff46 to the previous effects of the real strength of our hand. And so there slipped into a rather out-of-the-way English journal the indiscretion by which the reach of our electric ears was, to say the least of it, not under-stated. Few people in England might notice the article. The enemy could be trusted to do so.
When the Flanders battle of July 31, 1917, was about to be fought, we employed the old ruse19 of the Chinese attack. We modernised the trick of medieval garrisons47 which would make a show of getting ready to break out at one gate when a real sally was to be made from another. The enemy was invited to think that a big attack was at hand. But against Lens, and not east of Ypres. Due circumstantial evidence was provided. There were audible signs that a great concentration of British guns were cautiously registering, west of Lens. A little scuffle on that part of the front elicited48 from our side an amazing bombardment—apparently loosed in a moment of panic. I fancy a British Staff Officer's body—to judge by his brassard and tabs—may have floated down the Scarpe into the German lines. Interpreted with German thoroughness, the maps and papers upon it might easily betray the fact that Lens was the objective. And then a really inexcusable indiscretion appeared—just for a moment, and then was hushed up—in the London Press. To an acute German eye it must have been obvious that this composition was just the inconsequent gassing of some typically stupid English General at home on leave; he was clearly throwing his weight about, as they say, without any real understanding of anything. The stuff was of no serious value, except for one parenthetic, accidental allusion50 to Lens as the mark. As far as I know, this ebullition of babble51 was printed in only one small edition of one London paper. Authority was then seen to be nervously52 trying, as Uncle Toby advised, "to wipe it up and say no more about it." Lest it should not be observed to have taken this wise precaution some fussy53 member of Parliament may have asked in the House of Commons how so outrageous54 a breach55 of soldierly reticence56 had occurred. And was there no control over the Press? It all answered. The Germans kept their guns in force at Lens, and their counter barrage57 east of Ypres was so much the lighter58, and our losses so much the less.
IV
If we did these things in the green leaf, what might we not do in the dry? Mobilize our whole Press, conscribe it for active service under a single control, a—let us be frank—a Father-General of Lies, the unshaming strategic and tactical lies of "the great wars" which "make ambition virtue59," and sometimes make mendacity a virtue too? Coach the whole multitudinous orchestra of the Press to carry out the vast conceptions of some consummate60 conductor, splendide mendax? From each instrument under his baton61 this artist would draw its utmost contributive aid to immense schemes of concerted delusiveness62, the harping63 of the sirens elaborated into Wagnerian prodigies64 of volume and complexity65.
As you gaze from the top of a tree or a tower behind your own front, in a modern war, all the landscape beyond it looks as if man had perished from the earth, leaving his works behind him. It all looks strangely vacant and dead, the roofs of farms and the spires66 of churches serving only to deepen your sense of this blank deletion of man, as the Roman arches enhance the vacuous67 stillness of the Campagna. Your Intelligence Corps68 has to convert this first impression, this empty page, into a picture, built up line by line, dot by dot, of the universe of activities that are going on out there. Its first and easiest task is to mark out correctly the place where every enemy unit is, each division, each battery, each railhead, aerodrome, field hospital and dump. Next it has to mark each movement of each of these, the shiftings of the various centres of gravity, the changes in the relative density69 and relative quality of troops and guns at various sectors70, the increase, at any sector71, of field hospitals, the surest harbingers of heavy attacks. The trains on all lines must be counted, their loads calculated. Next must be known in what sort of spirits the enemy is, in the field and also at home. Do the men believe in their officers? Do the men get confident letters from their civilian72 friends? Do they send cheerful ones back? Is desertion rare and much abhorred73? Or so common that men are no longer shot for it now? So you may go on enumerating74 until it strikes you that you are simply drifting into an inventory75 of all the details of the enemy's wartime life, in the field and at home. And then you understand.
For what you want to know, in order to beat him, is no less than this—to see him steadily76 and see him whole. In the past we have talked of information "of military value" as distinct from other information. But all information about either side is of military value to the other. News of the outbreak or settlement of a strike in a Welsh coalfield was of military value to Ludendorff. News of the day's weather in Central Europe was of military value to Sir Douglas Haig. News of anything that expressed in any degree the temper of London or Berlin, of Munich or Manchester, helped to eke77 out that accurate vision of an enemy's body and mind which is the basis of success in combat. A black dot, of the size of a pin-head, may seem, when looked at alone, to give no secret away. But when the same dot is seen, no longer in isolation78, but as part of a pen-and-ink drawing, perhaps it may leap into vital prominence79, showing now as the pupil of the eye that completes a whole portrait, gives its expression to a face and identifies a sitter.
Throughout the Great War our own Press and that of the Germans were each pouring out, for the undesigned benefit of their enemy, substantially correct descriptions of everything in the war life of their respective nations, except a few formal military and naval80 secrets specially81 reserved by the censors83. Each nation fought, on the whole, with the other standing49 well out in the light, with no inscrutability about its countenance84. If we were ever again in such risk of our national life, would we not seriously try to make ourselves an enigma85? Or would we leave this, as we have left some other refinements86 of war, to the other side to introduce first?
V
Suppose us again at war with a Power less strong at sea than ourselves. If we should want its fleet to come out and fight in the open, why not evoke87, some fine morning, from every voice in our daily press, a sudden and seemingly irrepressible cry of grief and rage over the unconcealable news—the Censor82 might be defied by the way—that our Grand Fleet, while ranging the seas, had struck a whole school of drift mines and lost half its numbers? Strategic camouflage88, however, would go far beyond such special means to special ends as that. It would, as a regular thing, derange89 the whole landscape presented to enemy eyes by our Press. There was in the war a French aerodrome across which the French camouflage painters had simply painted a great white high-road: it ran across hangars, huts, turf, everything; and everything was amazingly obliterated91 by it. Across our real life, as seen under the noonday rays of publicity92 in ordinary times, the supreme93 controller might draw some such enormous lines of falsification.
Most of the fibs that we used in the war were mere nothings, and clumsy at that. When the enemy raided our trenches94 in the dead winter season, took fifty prisoners, and did as he liked for a while—so much as he liked that a court of inquiry95 was afterwards held and a colonel deprived of his command—we said in our official communiqué that a hostile raiding party had "entered our trenches" but was "speedily driven out, leaving a number of dead." When civilian moral at home was going through one of its occasional depressions, we gave out that it was higher than ever. We did not officially summon from the vasty deep the myth about Russian soldiers in England. But when it arose out of nothing we did make some use of it. These were, however, little more than bare admissions of the principle that truthfulness96 in war is not imperative97. Falsification was tried, but it was not "tried out." Like really long-range guns, the kindred of "Bertha," it came into use only enough to suggest what another world-war might be. Vidimus tantum. And then the war ended.
Under a perfected propaganda system the whole surface presented by a country's Press to the enemy's Intelligence would be a kind of painted canvas. The artist would not merely be reticent98 about the positions, say, of our great training camps. He would create, by indirect evidence, great dummy training camps. In the field we had plenty of dummy aerodromes, with hangars complete and a few dummy machines sprawling99 outside, to draw enemy bomb-fire. At home we would have dummy Salisbury Plains to which a guarded allusion would peep out here and there while the new unity100 of command over the Press would delete the minutest clue to the realities. Episodes like that of the famous Lansdowne letter would not be left for nature to bungle101. If at any time such an episode seemed likely to touch any diplomatic spring with good strategic effect, it would happen at that moment and no other. Otherwise it would not happen, so far as any trace of it in the Press could betray. By-elections, again, their course and result, may tell an enemy much of what your people are thinking. But, for military purposes, there is always some particular thing which you want him to believe them to be thinking. So you would not leave it to the capricious chances of an actual election to settle whether he should be led to believe this or not. You would see to it. Just as you camouflage your real guns and expose dummy guns, so you would obliterate90 from the Press all trace of your real elections and offer to view, at the times that best suited, dummy elections, ad hoc elections, complete in all their parts.
We have imagined a case in which it would be our interest to raise false confidence in the enemy, perhaps to draw a hurried attack on our shores at a time of our own choosing. Then, if the whole of our Press is held in our hand like a fiddle102, ready to take and give out any tune103, what should prevent us from letting fall, in sudden distress104, a hundred doleful, forced admissions that the strain has proved too great, the smash has come, the head of the State is in hiding from his troops, the Premier105 in flight, naval officers hanging from modern equivalents to the yard-arm, Ministers and Commanders-in-Chief shaking their fists in one another's faces? Or take the opposite case, that you mean to attack in force, in the field. Here you would add to the preliminary bombardment of your guns such a bombardment of assertion and insinuation, not disprovable before "zero" hour, as has never yet been essayed; plausible106 proofs from neutral quarters that the enemy's troops are being betrayed by their politicians behind, that typhus has broken out among the men's homes, that their children are dying like flies, and some of the mothers, insane with famine and grief, are eating the dead in hope of nursing the living. Oh, you could say a great deal.
And you could deliver your messages, too. The enemy's command might try to keep the contents of your Press from reaching his troops. But, thanks to the aeroplane, you can circularize the enemy's troops almost as easily as traders can canvass107 custom at home. You can flood his front line with leaflets, speeches, promises, rumours108, and caricatures. You can megaphone to it. Only in recent years has human ingenuity110 thought of converting the older and tamer form of political strife111 into the pandemonic "stunt112" of a "whirlwind election." Shall war not have her whirlwind canvasses113 no less renowned114 than those of peace? Some rather shame-faced passages of love there have been between us and the Rumour109 of Shakespeare, the person "painted full of tongues," who "stuffs the ears of men with false reports," to the advantage of her wooers. Why not espouse115 the good lady right out? Make an honest woman of her?
VI
Perhaps you would shrink back. Perhaps at any rate you do so now, when for the moment this great implement116 is not being offered to you, to take or leave, at an instant crisis of your country's fate. You feel that even in such a case you would stand loftily aloof117 in your cold purity? You would disclaim118 as a low, unknightly business the uttering of such base coinage as cooked news, whatever your proud chastity may cost anyone else? Or arrive, perhaps, at the same result by a different route, and make out to yourself that really it pays, in the end, to be decent; that clean chivalry119 is a good investment at bottom, and that a nation of Galahads and Bayards is sure to come out on top, on the canny120 reckoning that the body housing a pure heart has got the strength of ten? That is one possible course. And the other is to accept, with all that it implies, the doctrine121 that there is one morality for peace and another morality for war; that just as in war you may with the clearest conscience stab a man in the back, or kick him in the bowels122, in spite of all the sportsmanship you learnt at school, so you may stainlessly carry deception to lengths which in peace would get you blackballed at a club and cut by your friends.
It may be too much to hope that, whichever of these two paths we may choose, we shall tread it with a will. We have failed so much in the way of what Germany used to call "halfness," the fault of Macbeth, the wish to hunt with the hounds while we run with the hare, that it would be strange if we did not still try to play Bayard and Ulysses as one man and succeed in combining the shortcomings of an inefficient123 serpent with those of a sophisticated dove. If we really went the whole serpent the first day of any new war would see a wide, opaque124 veil of false news drawn over the whole face of our country. Authority playing on all the keys, white and black, of the Press as upon one piano, would give the listening enemy the queerest of Ariel's tunes125 to follow. All that we did, all that we thought, would be bafflingly falsified. The whole landscape of life in this island, as it reflects itself in the waters of the Press, would come out suddenly altered as far past recognition as that physical landscape amid which it is passed has been changed by a million years of sunshine, rain, and frost. The whole sky would be darkened with flights of strategic and tactical lies so dense126 that the enemy would fight in a veritable "fog of war" darker than London's own November brews127, and the world would feel that not only the Angel of Death was abroad, but the Angel of Delusion128 too, and would almost hear the beating of two pairs of wings.
VII
Well—and then? Any weapon you use in a war leaves some bill to be settled in peace, and the Propaganda arm has its cost like another. To say so is not to say, without more ado, that it should not be used. Its cost should be duly cast up, like our other accounts; that is all. We all agree—with a certain demur129 from the Quakers—that one morality has to be practised in peace and another in war; that the same bodily act may be wrong in the one and right in the other. So, to be perfect, you need to have two gears to your morals, and drive on the one gear in war and on the other in peace. While you are on the peace gear you must not even shoot a bird sitting. At the last stroke of some August midnight you clap on the war gear and thenceforth you may shoot a man sitting or sleeping or any way you can get him, provided you and he be soldiers on opposite sides.
Now, in a well-made car, in the prime of its life, there is nothing to keep you from passing straight and conclusively131 from one gear to another. The change once made, the new gear continues in force and does not wobble back fitfully and incalculably into the old. But in matters of conduct you cannot, somehow, drive long on one gear without letting the other become noticeably rusty132, stiff, and disinclined to act. It was found in the Great War that after a long period of peace and general saturation133 with peace morals it took some time to release the average English youth from his indurated distaste for stabbing men in the bowels. Conversely it has been found of late, in Ireland and elsewhere, that, after some years of effort to get our youths off the no-homicide gear, they cannot all be got quickly back to it either, some of them still being prone134 to kill, as the French say, paisiblement, with a lightness of heart that embarrasses statesmen.
We must, to be on the conservative side, assume that the same phenomenon would attend a post-war effort to bring back to the truth gear of peace a Press that we had driven for some years on the war gear of untruthfulness. Indeed, we are not wholly left to assumption and speculation135. During the war the art of Propaganda was little more than born. The various inspired articles-with-a-purpose, military or political, hardly went beyond the vagitus, the earliest cry of the new-born method, as yet
An infant crying in the night,
And with no language but a cry.
Yet for more than three years since the Armistice136 our rulers have continued to issue to the Press, at our cost as Blue Books and White Papers, long passages of argument and suggestion almost fantastically different from the dry and dignified137 official publications of the pre-war days. English people used to feel a sovereign contempt for the "semi-official" journalism138 of Germany and Russia. But the war has left us with a Press at any rate intermittently139 inspired. What would be left by a war in which Propaganda had come of age and the State had used the Press, as camouflaging140 material, for all it was worth?
It used at one time to be a great joke—and a source of gain sometimes—among little boys to take it as a benign141 moral law that so long as you said a thing "over the left," it did not matter whether it was true or not. If, to gain your private ends, or to make a fool of somebody else, you wanted to utter a fib, all that you had to do was to append to it these three incantatory words, under your breath, or indeed without any sound or move of your lips at all, but just to yourself in the session of sweet silent thought. Then you were blameless. You had cut yourself free, under the rules, from the vulgar morality. War confers on those who wage it much the same self-dispensing power. They can absolve142 themselves of a good many sins. Persuade yourself that you are at war with somebody else and you find your moral liberty expanding almost faster than you can use it. An Irishman in a fury with England says to himself "State of war—that's what it is," and then finds he can go out and shoot a passing policeman from behind a hedge without the discomfort143 of feeling base. The policeman's comrades say to themselves "State of war—that's what it has come to," and go out and burn some other Irishman's shop without a sense of doing anything wrong, either. They all do it "over the left." They have stolen the key of the magical garden wherein you may do things that are elsewhere most wicked and yet enjoy the mental peace of the soldier which passeth all understanding.
To kill and to burn may be sore temptations at times, but not so besetting144 to most men as the temptation to lie is to public speakers and writers. Another frequent temptation of theirs is to live in a world of stale figures of speech, of flags nailed to the mast, of standing to one's guns, of deaths in last ditches, of quarter neither asked nor given. It is their hobby to figure their own secure, squabblesome lives in images taken from war. And their little excesses, their breaches145 of manners, and even, sometimes, of actual law, are excused, as a rule, in terms of virile146 disdain147 for anything less drastic and stern than the morals of the real warfare148 which they know so little. We have to think in what state we might leave these weak brethren after a long war in which we had practised them hard in lying for the public good and also in telling themselves it was all right because of the existence of a state of war. State of war! Why, that is what every excitable politician or journalist declares to exist all the time. To the wild party man the party which he hates is always "more deadly than any foreign enemy." All of us could mention a few politicians, at least, to whom the Great War was merely a passing incident or momentary149 interruption of the more burningly authentic150 wars of Irish Orange and Green, or of English Labour and Capital.
VIII
Under the new dispensation we should have to appoint on the declaration of war, if we had not done it already, a large Staff Department of Press Camouflage. Everything is done best by those who have practised it longest. The best inventors and disseminators of what was untrue in our hour of need would be those who had made its manufacture and sale their trade in our hours of ease. The most disreputable of successful journalists and "publicity experts" would naturally man the upper grades of the war staff. The reputable journalists would labour under them, trying their best to conform, as you say in drill, to the movements of the front rank. For in this new warfare the journalist untruthful from previous habit and training would have just that advantage over the journalist of character which the Regular soldier had over the New Army officer or man in the old. He would be, as Mr. Kipling sings,
A man that's too good to be lost you,
A man that is 'andled and made,
A man that will pay what 'e cost you
In learnin' the others their trade.
After the war was over he would return to his trade with an immense accession of credit. He would have been decorated and publicly praised and thanked. Having a readier pen than the mere combatant soldiers, he would probably write a book to explain that the country had really been saved by himself, though the fighting men were, no doubt, gallant151 fellows. He would, in all likelihood, have completed the disengagement of his mind from the idea that public opinion is a thing to be dealt with by argument and persuasion152, appeals to reason and conscience. He would feel surer than ever that men's and women's minds are most strongly moved not by the leading articles of a paper but by its news, by what they may be led to accept as "the facts." So the practice of colouring news, of ordering reporters to take care that they see only such facts as tell in one way, would leap forward. For it would have the potent153 support of a new moral complacency. When a man feels that his tampering154 with truth has saved civilization, why should he deny himself, in his private business, the benefit of such moral reflections as this feeling may suggest?
Scott gives, in Woodstock, an engaging picture of the man who has "attained155 the pitch of believing himself above ordinances156." The independent trooper, Tomkins, finds his own favourite vices40 fitting delightfully157 into an exalted158 theory of moral freedom. In former days, he avows159, he had been only "the most wild, malignant160 rakehell in Oxfordshire." Now he is a saint, and can say to the girl whom he wants to debauch161:
Stand up, foolish maiden162, and listen; and know, in one word, that sin, for which the spirit of man is punished with the vengeance163 of heaven, lieth not in the corporal act, but in the thought of the sinner. Believe, lovely Phoebe, that to the pure all acts are pure, and that sin is in our thought, not in our actions, even as the radiance of the day is dark to a blind man but seen and enjoyed by him whose eyes receive it. To him who is but a novice164 in the things of the spirit much is enjoined165, much is prohibited; and he is fed with milk fit for babes—for him are ordinances, prohibitions166, and commands. But the saint is above all these ordinances and restraints. To him, as to the chosen child of the house, is given the pass-key to open all locks which withhold167 him from the enjoyment168 of his heart's desire. Into such pleasant paths will I guide thee, lovely Phoebe, as shall unite in joy, in innocent freedom, pleasures which, to the unprivileged, are sinful and prohibited.
So when a journalist with no strong original predisposition to swear to his own hurt shall have gained high public distinction by his fertility in falsehoods for consumption by an enemy in the field, the fishes that tipple169 in the deep may well "know no such liberty" as this expert in fiction will allow himself when restored to his own more intoxicating170 element.
The general addition of prestige to the controversial device of giving false impressions and raising false issues would naturally be immense. To argue any case merely on its merits and on the facts would seem to the admirers of the new way a kind of virtuous171 imbecility. In what great industrial dispute or political campaign, in what struggle between great financial interests, would both sides, or either, forego the use of munitions172 so formidable? Such conflicts might almost wholly cease to be competitions in serious argument at all; they might become merely trials of skill in fantastic false pretences173, and of expertness in the morbid174 psychology175 of credulity.
So men argued, surmised176 and predicted, talking and talking away in the endless hours that war gives for talking things out. When first they began to ask each other why so many lies were about, the common hypothesis, based on prior experience, was that they must be meant to save some "dud," up above, from losing his job. Then they came to admit there was something more in it than that. Lies had a good enough use for fooling the Germans. A beastly expedient177, no doubt; acquiescence178 in lying does not come quite so easily to a workman of good character as it does to men of a class in which more numerous formal fibs are kept in use as social conveniences. Still, the men were not cranks enough to object. "They love not poison that do poison need." The men had hated, and still continued to hate, the use of poison gas, too. It was a scrub's trick, like vitriol-throwing. But who could have done without it, when once the Germans began? And now who could object to the use of this printed gas either? Could they, in this new warfare of propaganda, expect their country to go into action armed in a white robe of candour, and nothing besides, like a maskless man going forth130 to war against a host assisted by phosgene and all her foul sisters?
It was a clear enough case: decency179 had to go under. But it was hard luck not to be able to know where you were. Where were they? If all the news they could check was mixed with lies, what about all the rest, which they were unable to check? Was it likely to be any truer? Why, we might be losing the war all the time, everywhere! Who could believe now what was said about our catching180 the submarines? Or about India's being all right? And how far would you have to go to get outside the lie belt? Could our case for going to war with the Germans be partly lies too? Beastly idea!
How would it be, again, when we came to play these major tricks which the men were already discussing as likely to come into use? Suppose it became part of our game to publish, for some good strategical reason, news of a naval or military disaster to ourselves, the same not having happened? To take in the enemy this lie would have to take in our own people too; the ruse would be given away if the Government tried to tip so much as a wink181 to the British reader of the British Press. So men's friends at home would have the agonies of false alarms added to their normal war-time miseries182, and wives might be widowed twice and mothers of one son made childless more than once before the truth finally overshadowed their lives.
And then, your war won, there would be that new lie-infested and infected world of peace. In one of his great passages Thucydides tells us what happened to Greece after some years of war and of the necessary war morality. He says that, as far as veracity183, public and private, goes, the peace gear was found to have got wholly out of working order and could not be brought back into use. "The meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by men as they thought proper." The pre-war hobby of being straight and not telling people lies went clean out of fashion. Anyone who could bring off a good stroke of deceit, to the injury of some one whom he disliked, "congratulated himself on having taken the safer course, over-reached his enemy, and gained the prize of superior talent." A man who did not care to use so sound a means to his ends was thought to be a goody-goody ass11. War worked in that way on the soul of Greece, in days when war was still confined, in the main, to the relatively184 cleanly practice of hitting your enemy over the head, wherever you could find him. The philosophers in our dugouts preserved moderation when they expected as ugly a sequel for war in our age, when the chivalrous185 school seems to have pretty well worked itself out and the most promising lines of advance are poison gas and canards186. But the survivors187 among them are not detached philosophers only. They act in the new world that they foresaw, and the man whose word you could trust like your own eyes and ears, eight years ago, has come back with the thought in his mind that so many comrades of his have expressed: "They tell me we've pulled through at last all right because our propergander dished out better lies than what the Germans did. So I say to myself 'If tellin' lies is all that bloody188 good in war, what bloody good is tellin' truth in peace?'"
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1
boxer
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| n.制箱者，拳击手 | |
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2
dummy
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| n.假的东西；(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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bowler
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| n.打保龄球的人，（板球的）投（球）手 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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8
contrite
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| adj.悔悟了的，后悔的，痛悔的 | |
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panache
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| n.羽饰；假威风，炫耀 | |
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metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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14
trumpets
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| 喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花 | |
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trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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16
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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17
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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18
ruses
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| n.诡计，计策( ruse的名词复数 ) | |
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19
ruse
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| n.诡计，计策；诡计 | |
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shammed
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| 假装，冒充( sham的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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withdrawal
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| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
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accosting
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| v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的现在分词 )；跟…搭讪；（乞丐等）上前向…乞讨；（妓女等）勾搭 | |
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yarns
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| n.纱( yarn的名词复数 )；纱线；奇闻漫谈；旅行轶事 | |
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slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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frailer
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| 脆弱的( frail的比较级 )； 易损的； 易碎的 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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conning
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| v.诈骗，哄骗( con的现在分词 )；指挥操舵( conn的现在分词 ) | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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32
interrogated
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| v.询问( interrogate的过去式和过去分词 )；审问；（在计算机或其他机器上）查询 | |
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nibble
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| n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵 | |
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crumb
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| n.饼屑，面包屑，小量 | |
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sop
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| n.湿透的东西，懦夫；v.浸，泡，浸湿 | |
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discredit
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| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
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shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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40
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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41
prosecuted
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| a.被起诉的 | |
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42
duel
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| n./v.决斗；(双方的)斗争 | |
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43
eavesdropping
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| n. 偷听 | |
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44
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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46
bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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47
garrisons
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| 守备部队，卫戍部队( garrison的名词复数 ) | |
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48
elicited
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| 引出，探出( elicit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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50
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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51
babble
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| v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语 | |
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52
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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53
fussy
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| adj.为琐事担忧的，过分装饰的，爱挑剔的 | |
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54
outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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55
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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56
reticence
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| n.沉默，含蓄 | |
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57
barrage
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| n.火力网，弹幕 | |
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58
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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59
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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60
consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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61
baton
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| n.乐队用指挥杖 | |
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62
delusiveness
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| 狡诈 | |
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63
harping
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| n.反复述说 | |
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64
prodigies
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| n.奇才，天才（尤指神童）( prodigy的名词复数 ) | |
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65
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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66
spires
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| n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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67
vacuous
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| adj.空的，漫散的，无聊的，愚蠢的 | |
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68
corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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69
density
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| n.密集，密度，浓度 | |
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70
sectors
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| n.部门( sector的名词复数 )；领域；防御地区；扇形 | |
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71
sector
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| n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形 | |
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72
civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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73
abhorred
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| v.憎恶( abhor的过去式和过去分词 )；（厌恶地）回避；拒绝；淘汰 | |
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74
enumerating
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| v.列举，枚举，数( enumerate的现在分词 ) | |
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75
inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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76
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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77
eke
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| v.勉强度日，节约使用 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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79
prominence
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| n.突出；显著；杰出；重要 | |
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80
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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81
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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82
censor
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| n./vt.审查，审查员；删改 | |
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83
censors
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| 删剪（书籍、电影等中被认为犯忌、违反道德或政治上危险的内容）( censor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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84
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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85
enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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86
refinements
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| n.（生活）风雅；精炼( refinement的名词复数 )；改良品；细微的改良；优雅或高贵的动作 | |
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87
evoke
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| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
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88
camouflage
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| n./v.掩饰，伪装 | |
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89
derange
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| v.使精神错乱 | |
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90
obliterate
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| v.擦去，涂抹，去掉...痕迹，消失，除去 | |
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obliterated
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| v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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92
publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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93
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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94
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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95
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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96
truthfulness
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| n. 符合实际 | |
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97
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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98
reticent
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| adj.沉默寡言的；言不如意的 | |
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sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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100
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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101
bungle
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| v.搞糟；n.拙劣的工作 | |
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102
fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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103
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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104
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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105
premier
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| adj.首要的；n.总理，首相 | |
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106
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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107
canvass
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| v.招徕顾客，兜售；游说；详细检查，讨论 | |
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108
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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109
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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110
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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111
strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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112
stunt
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| n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长 | |
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113
canvasses
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| n.检票员，游说者，推销员( canvass的名词复数 )v.（在政治方面）游说( canvass的第三人称单数 )；调查（如选举前选民的）意见；为讨论而提出（意见等）；详细检查 | |
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114
renowned
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| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
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115
espouse
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| v.支持，赞成，嫁娶 | |
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116
implement
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| n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行 | |
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117
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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118
disclaim
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| v.放弃权利，拒绝承认 | |
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119
chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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120
canny
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| adj.谨慎的，节俭的 | |
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121
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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122
bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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123
inefficient
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| adj.效率低的，无效的 | |
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124
opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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125
tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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126
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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127
brews
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| n.（尤指某地酿造的）啤酒( brew的名词复数 )；酿造物的种类；（茶）一次的冲泡量；（不同思想、环境、事件的）交融v.调制( brew的第三人称单数 )；酝酿；沏（茶）；煮（咖啡） | |
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128
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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129
demur
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| v．表示异议，反对 | |
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130
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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131
conclusively
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| adv.令人信服地，确凿地 | |
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132
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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133
saturation
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| n.饱和(状态)；浸透 | |
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134
prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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135
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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136
armistice
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| n.休战，停战协定 | |
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137
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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138
journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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139
intermittently
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| adv.间歇地；断断续续 | |
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140
camouflaging
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| v.隐蔽( camouflage的现在分词 )；掩盖；伪装，掩饰 | |
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benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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142
absolve
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| v.赦免，解除（责任等） | |
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143
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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144
besetting
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| adj.不断攻击的v.困扰( beset的现在分词 )；不断围攻；镶；嵌 | |
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145
breaches
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| 破坏( breach的名词复数 )； 破裂； 缺口； 违背 | |
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146
virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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147
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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148
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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149
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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151
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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152
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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153
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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154
tampering
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| v.窜改( tamper的现在分词 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄 | |
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155
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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156
ordinances
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| n.条例，法令( ordinance的名词复数 ) | |
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157
delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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158
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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159
avows
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| v.公开声明，承认( avow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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160
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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161
debauch
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| v.使堕落，放纵 | |
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162
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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163
vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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164
novice
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| adj.新手的，生手的 | |
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165
enjoined
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| v.命令( enjoin的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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166
prohibitions
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| 禁令，禁律( prohibition的名词复数 )； 禁酒； 禁例 | |
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167
withhold
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| v.拒绝，不给；使停止，阻挡 | |
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168
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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169
tipple
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| n.常喝的酒；v.不断喝，饮烈酒 | |
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170
intoxicating
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| a. 醉人的,使人兴奋的 | |
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171
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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172
munitions
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| n.军火，弹药；v.供应…军需品 | |
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173
pretences
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| n.假装( pretence的名词复数 )；作假；自命；自称 | |
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174
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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175
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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176
surmised
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| v.臆测，推断( surmise的过去式和过去分词 )；揣测；猜想 | |
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177
expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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178
acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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179
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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180
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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181
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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182
miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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183
veracity
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| n.诚实 | |
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184
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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185
chivalrous
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| adj.武士精神的；对女人彬彬有礼的 | |
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186
canards
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| n.谣传，谎言( canard的名词复数 ) | |
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187
survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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188
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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