syrinx
December 25th 07, 05:59 PM
impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could
not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military
efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other
result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had
to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or
religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one
was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient
nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for
efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was
necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly
accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history
books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the
kind that is practised today would have been impossible. War was a sure
safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was
probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could
not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military
efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other
result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had
to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or
religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one
was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient
nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for
efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was
necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly
accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history
books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the
kind that is practised today would have been impossible. War was a sure
safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was
probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could