THE AGE OF THE LIE
Chamberlin, William Henry
The Age Of The Lie By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN "Moreover, there is this harm too, and one of vast extent, and touching men generally, that by insincerity and lying faith and truth are lost, which...
...How often is the indisputable historical truth that the Soviet Government concluded treaties of non-aggression with its 5 western neighbors, on its own initiative, and broke every one of these treaties, told to a large audience...
...O was recalled to my recollection when a foreign correspondent who had just been in Germany mentioned a certain Gesandter A, an official in the Nazi E»reign Office, as the most accomplished, consummate, and blankety blanked liar he had ever encountered: I eagerly put forward a similar claim for 0. After a spirited argument, backed up by numerous illustrations of the prowess of our respective favorites, we each, I think, retained our original conviction, but recognized that the other's candidate was a strong runner-up...
...The Age of the Lie poses some very fundamental questions for our democracy...
...As for Yugoslavia, one may quote from an article, generally not unfavorable to "Marshal" Tito and his regime, by John Chabot Smith in The Saturday Evening Post: "Political commissars keep close watch on everything done by both military and civilian officials...
...A "fascist," in this same Alice-in-Wonderland terminology, very often turns out to be a consistent libertarian who attaches a high value to individual freedom...
...For the great masses of the people . . . will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie sometimes in little things, but would still certainly be too much ashamed of too great lies...
...There is a tendency, in this Age of the Lie, to turn from historical and factual argument to mob-minded emotionalism...
...But let's have the courage to look facts in the face...
...As Prof...
...Bigs of Yalta, evidently convinced that Crime (a) does pay (acknowledgments to William Hesseltine), substitute their arbitrary will for the only solution of vexed Polish-Soviet and Polish-German boundary disputes that would square with the plain wording of the Charter, namely, free, honest, unintim'idated plebiscites in the areas affected...
...When even heads of state in solemn official documents tend to follow the methods of Mr...
...Menace Becomes Urgent O is dead, but his spirit goes marching on...
...The 3 Mr...
...The acid test of a "liberal," in some circles, is unconditional approval of one particular brand of cruel and arbitrary totalitarian dictatorship...
...Of course it would be an illusion to imagine that men and women in any age lived up consistently to the legendary standards of George Washington and the cherry-tree...
...Products Of A System The most perfect human embodiment of the Age of the Lie I have ever known was a certain Mr...
...For instance, the National League of Women Voters is circulating a little pamphlet entitled, "The Story of Dumbarton Oaks...
...O and Gesandter A, not the principles of Cardinal Newman, it is not surprising that the menace of the Age of the Lie becomes very real and very urgent...
...Challenge To Vigilance Now every one of these statements is a lie, or, if one prefers British parliamentary usage, a terminological inexactitude...
...Now I do not think this was merely an accidental confrontation with two pathological liars, such as one might meet in any country...
...The Age Of The Lie By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN "Moreover, there is this harm too, and one of vast extent, and touching men generally, that by insincerity and lying faith and truth are lost, which are the firmest bonds of human society, and when they are lost supreme confusion follows in life, so that men seem in nothing to differ from devils...
...While a large number of his colleagues were being "liquidated," he went from one high post to another...
...Mob-Minded Emotionalism Equally flagrant is the contradiction between the attractive words of the Crimea Declaration about "democracy," "free and unfettered elections," etc., and the hard realities of life in 2 countries which were specifically discussed in the declaration, Poland and Yugoslavia...
...A country with a long tradition of democracy and personal liberty does not succumb easily to a regime of crude physical terror...
...It wouldn't have got under his skin to the slightest degree because his mind had lost any capacity it might have originally possessed to distinguish between truth and falsehood...
...CARDINAL NEWMAN was a civilized voice of the 19th Century, Hitler a barbarous voice of the 20th...
...But there can be little doubt, I think, that our own era deserves the doubtful distinction of being called the "Age of the Lie...
...Let's fight for the right of every man to say what he thinks without being subjected to irrelevant and malicious smear campaigns...
...Terms like "Russophobe," "Russia-hater," "anti-Russian" are hurled at those who prefer tc discuss Stalin's policies and intentions in terms of demonstrable fact, not of blind mystical faith...
...There is nothing that would exclude any power, enemy or allied, from the scope of this assurance...
...We are faeed with almost incredible confusion in the use of terms...
...When I first read Cardinal Newman's superb denunciation of lying, which comes at the end of his Apo-lfi>yia, I thought of sending a copy of the book, with the passages about falsehood heavily underscored, to my old acquaintance, Mr...
...His recent death was the result of accident, not of the action of his own government...
...How he would have rubbed his hands over that masterpiece of double-talk, the declaration issued after the Crimea Conference...
...Cardinal Newman, Apologia pro vita sua...
...Here is not a word about "freely expressed wishes" of the 20 million people, more or less, who will be affected by Soviet annexations of Polish territory and by Polish projected annexations of German territory...
...There was no relaxation after Yalta of the reign of terror that has prevailed in Soviet-occupied Poland...
...He definitely had what it takes to get on in the service of the totalitarian state...
...I foresaw an eminent and successful career for him, and this anticipation was borne out...
...For it is also an age of totalitarian government...
...The Curzon line was never designed to be a final frontier, the border agreed on at the end of the Soviet-Polish war of 1920 was less favorable than the line which the Polish Army held when the war began, and the Polish Government in London has included full representation of leftwing political parties...
...One started out with the very correct assumption that in the size of the lie there is always contained a certain factor of credibility...
...But public opinion in such a country can be unduly swayed by methods of more or less consciously planned and co-ordinated falsification...
...They recognize that Poland must receive substantial accessions of territory in the North and West...
...And if the first weapon of the totalitarian state is Organized Terror the second, equally potent instrument of rule is surely the Organized Lie...
...And was it not ironical and comical when Argentina must declare war in order to be officially recognized as a "peace-loving nation" ? The very fountainhead of the democratic process, the provision to the people of unbiased and accurate information, is often seriously tampered with...
...But these falsehoods have been repeated so often that many Americans have come to believe them...
...Article 2 of that long-suffering document reads: "They desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned...
...Let's not call slavery freedom, wrong right, greedy annexations an expression of the Atlantic Charter, a precarious great power alliance a true system of peace and world order...
...Organizations which are supposed to be non-partisan and informative sometimes substitute a propaganda thesis for accurate information...
...O, a mem-be of the Soviet diplomatic service with whom I frequently came in contact when he was chief censor...
...And moral infection can spread, just like physical infection...
...Not a word about the ability of every great power to block even consideration of a dispute in which it is not directly concerned ! Surely the members of the National League of Women Voters have a right to more frank and realistic information from their national organization...
...There will inevitably be many painful disillusion-ments after the war...
...It calls for hard persistent work, for corrective letter writing, for representations to Congressmen and Government agencies, for protests whenever a forum, a trade-union, a church takes an unsound position, on the basis of false propaganda...
...O. But I gave up the idea...
...Not a word about the unlimited veto on punitive action which every great power enjoys...
...The death penalty for "unwise remarks" is scarcely a hopeful prelude to the triumph of democracy and the Four Freedoms in Yugoslavia...
...Check up and think how often you have heard some supposedly authoritative commentator on the radio or in a syndicated newspaper column tell you that the Curzon line was an impartial final adjudication of Poland's eastern boundary, that Poland took the territory east of that line in an unjustified war of aggression, that the present Polish Government in London is identical with the prewar authoritarian "colonels' government...
...Both O and A, I suspect, had come to the not illogical conclusion that persistent prevarication was the road to success, perhaps to survival, under the totalitarian systems for which they were working—and proceeded to live up to this honest conviction...
...By this declaration we reaffirm our faith in the principles of the Atlantic Charter, our pledge in the declaration by the United Nations...
...In discussing the proposed Security Council, the pamphlet says, without reservation or qualification: "If a nation refuses to settle a dispute peacefully, th< Security Council may take whatever means seem neces^ jsary to prevent war...
...Other organizations, supposedly devoted to impartial consideration of foreign affairs, sometimes tend to weight their discussions of delicate subjects in such fashion as to prevent too forthright presentation of critical views...
...He was the kind of person who, if he had ham and eggs for breakfast, would assure you that he had just eaten waffles...
...How many articles dealing with the dramatic and tragic story of Poland have been published in American magazines of national circulation...
...George Hartmann recently remarked: "This is an age of liberals and democrats who support tyranny and despotism, of churches which reject the Sermon on the Mount, of intellectuals who believe political bedtime stories prepared for sub-morons, of socialists engaged in killing fellow-socialists living under another flag, and of pacifists who are all in favor of peace the day after tomorrow, but who join enthusiastically with militarists in denouncing peace now...
...But in the very document that contains this pledge there is a palpable double-barrelled violation of the Charter...
...Their spy system is apparently well organized, for people who are seen in the wrong company, or who make unwise remarks in public, are promptly punished, often by arrest or death...
...It is a challenge to the alertness, vigilance, and moral courage of every American citizen who does not want to see his moral and political judgment chloroformed and atrophied...
...But in the Crimea Declaration one reads: "The 3 heads of government consider that the eastern frontier of Poland should follow the Curzon line with digressions from it in some regions of 5 to 8 kilometers in favor of Poland...
...Here is a double-barrelled pledge of intention to abide by the principles of the Charter...
...Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf...
...O and Gesandter A...
...Let's not sink to the level of Mr...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 23
