In peace
times the people only know what goes on through the press, which is
bought and told what to say by those whose interest it is to hoodwink
the public, while the truth is kept under lock and key. In war time it
is even better, for then it is the people themselves who are locked
up. Allowing that they have ever known what they wanted, it is no
longer possible for them to speak above their breath. Obey. _Perinde
ac cadaver_.... Ten millions of corpses.... The living are hardly
better off, depressed as they are by four years of sham patriotism,
circus-parades, tom-toms, threats, braggings, hatreds, informers,
trials for treason, and summary executions. The demagogues have called
in all the reserves of obscurantism to extinguish the last gleams
of good sense that lingered in the people, and to reduce them to
imbecility.
"It is not enough to debase them; they must be so stupefied that they
wish to be debased. The formidable autocracies of Egypt, Persia, and
Syria, made playthings of the lives of millions of men; and the secret
of their power lay in the supernatural light of their pseudo-divinity.
From the extreme limit of the ages of credulity, every absolute
monarchy has been a theocracy. In our democracies, however, it
is impossible to believe in the divinity of humbugs, shaky and
discredited, like some of our moth-eaten Ministers; we are too close
to them, we know their dirty tricks, so they have invented the idea of
concealing God behind their drop-curtain; God means the Republic,
the Country, Justice, Civilisation; the names are painted up on
the outside.
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