Opinions Without Facts

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 136, 30 January 1942, Page 4

Opinions Without Facts

TRANGE things happen in war; and must happen. Tails wag dogs. Blood comes out of stone. Misfits become the people society suddenly wants. The office boy gives orders to his employer. The banker is taught which foot is right and which left. The steward inspires the depressed survivors in the lifeboat. The fashion-plate works long hours to feed, clothe, and cleanse slum children. But these things are not stranger than the thought that it is no longer permissible in any British community to announce the facts, but is everywhere permissible to say what they mean. There are, of course, occasions-big and usually solemn-when the facts are told promptly and in full. We were told about Dunkirk as it happened. We knew at once when Wavell was surprised in Benghazi. There was no postponement or garbling of the news when the fleet was decapitated near Singapore. We know, and will always know, when disaster shouts as loud as that. But we do not know, and therefore cannot follow, the course of intervening events. Every newspaper in the Empire expresses opinions about them. Every armchair strategist tells us what they mean. We hear over the air, and at once forget who tells us, that this or that commander is a fool. We read, and in a week do not remember in what paper, that Japan has no air sense, no mechanical skill, or at least no modern machines. Then we suffer a disaster that we have never yet been able to inflict on the German fleet, and at once become authorities on naval tactics. We demand new Ministers, new service chiefs, miracles in -arms production, right-about turns in strategy. Since the first shot was fired there have been perhaps two or three regular British commentators who have seldom been made silly by later events. But the air has been as free to the others as to them, the newspapers have been as free, there has been as free a use of public platforms. No Minister of Information or Director of Publicity has attempted, or thought it right to attempt, to differentiate between informed and ignorant comment. He would be a bold man if he did. But unless we constantly remember that he does not, and constantly remind ourselves that most war comment is, and must be, the blind leading the blind, since only a handful in every country have the facts, we shall go on suffering shocks and depressing surprises.