LIE AS A WEAPON

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 84, 5 October 1940, Page 6

LIE AS A WEAPON

ADOPTED BY THE NAZIS

RESULTS OF NEW TECHNIQUE

STIRRING UP HATE

One of the outstanding facts of the war in which we are engaged is the, . enormous output of falsehood on the side of the dictatorships. This goes beyond all earlier experience, writes E. C. Bentley in the London "DailyTelegraph." • In every age, no. doubt, the combat--ants in a war have tended to. accuse . each other of falsehood. Long after Rome had destroyed the power, of Carthage Horace was still referring to ■ "perfidus Annibal"; and if any of that ■: great general's observations • about Scipio Africanus had come down -to us . they would probably have included the--charge of lying. , :. - All the world knows by - this time, that the German and Italian Governments make official use of falsehood as ■ a weapon. All the world outside their own borders knows it, and it is a safe conjecture that a large proportion of their peoples know it also. For the situation has this unique feature about it: the principal author of all the hideous events of the past twelve- ■. month not only believes in falsehood as a method of statesmanship—and an { indispensable method—but has announced his belief in the clearest terms in a book of which some millions of copies are in circulation. THE BIGGER THE BETTER. He has even expressed his conviction that the bigger the lie the better; • on the curious ground that if a lie is big enough the liar will not be suspected of having had the impudence to - fabricate it. ~..-.. . This v is anew thing in history. Statesmen have told falsehoods often enough, in the past, no doubt, but there has - certainly been no instance until now of a ruler of- men who gave himself out as a liar beforehand. Napoleon comed —but not for publication—the phrase "to lie like a bulletin," but it was not his own bulletins. that he had in mind. He wished his own to be believed; and when he immensely understated his own losses after such, battles as Eylau or Borodino, he could not be met with the charge that hewas by his own admission a deliberate falsifier of facts. He once remarked—also not for publication—that one might very well lie sometimes, but that to make a practice of telling lies was "too much," Herein the Emperor showed his strongintelligence. Another great French statesman was similarly prudent, if we may accept - the judgment of Talleyrand. Cardinal. Richelieu, he said, sometimes lied and often deceived, whereas Metternich—- r whom Talleyrand did not admire—' always lied and never deceived. LIE WITH A PURPOSE. Machiavelli, in his treatise on the. art of government, did not recommend that the Renaissance despot for whom, he wrote should attack his enemies with the Hitlerian expedient of "a> . drumfire of lies and calumnies"; his counsel was merely that if. the Prance . found it expedient to break a pledge . given by him he should do so..without--* compunction.. - ./- v _;. :^i ,?r^ Adolf Hitler, it is understood,; .Ms*?, read- his Machiavelli; if so, he has bettered the instruction. He has certainly . i studied the words and deeds of Frederick the Great, the international bandit who- out of all rulers in- history is his chosen hero, but he will have found no passage or instance in which, that monarch declared lying and pledge-breaking to be a part of. his system. On the contrary, he will have found in Frederick's early work. "The Anti-Machiavel," a spirited denunciation of unscrupulousness in statesman- - ship. The falsehoods of statesmen have usually a quite definite political object. Bismarck's falsification of the Ems dispatch was intended to goad France into ' war, and it succeeded. Frederick's promise to respect the integrity of the Austrian dominions was intended to make the invasion of them, which ''] he was then preparing, a complete surprise; it succeeded. Each of the pre- ' war pledges broken by Hitler succeed-' . ed in its object of forestalling resistance to his next aggression. FOR REASONS OF HATRED. Most of the wartime lies, on the other hand, seem to have had rather . the "drum-fire" quality, being told more for the embitterment of hatred . than anything else—lor instance, the assertion that during the occupation of the Rhineland British officers were in. the habit of using their riding whipsupon German women as well as men. Pre-war, but in the true wartime spirit, was the account given in the Italian Press of King George's Coro- -. nation three years ago, an account which described it as marked by "a series of disasters," and said that the hospitals were "overflowing with wounded," and that there had been "many deaths." . Another falsehood from the busyBerlin mint was issued, it may be remembered, at the time when the British reconnaissance flights over Germany had begun to give their practical ; answer to Goering's pretence that Germany was immune from fear of bombing. It came in the form of a graphic broadcast description of a German squadron's flight over London. .The aircraft had flown at such a low altitude, said this narrative, Jthat they almost grazed the tops of the houses; there had been wild panic in the streets; the anti-aircraft organisation had been completely useless. Then there was one of the earliest of all, the statement that the sinking of > the liner Athenia had been ordered by Mr. Churchill. The accusation was, repeated with the addition that the German Government held "documentary proofs" that Mr. Churchill had given the order.