The final hideous triumph over the human spirit
We've been here before, friends
Righteous bloodlust floods every corner of our pale blue landfill, Earth; the cleansing power of munitions is back in vogue. All responsible people see the forest from the trees; final victory is close at hand.
Every citizen is a sentinel, and every television is a sentry box. And when a sentinel, ready and alert, is stationed at his post, the tank treads stay greased with the blood of our Enemies.
In other words, everything goes on as before, and if anywhere a peaceful blade of grass tries to pierce the ground, ten thousand bloodthirsty Twitter pundits are quick to trample it.
In times like these, it’s highly advisable to throw your computer out the window, pour yourself a cup of chacha, and seek out the warnings of the great bloggers of the past.
Yes, perhaps it’s time to consult Philip Gibbs, who in 1920 penned a forbidden book called Now It Can Be Told—a collection of all the things Gibbs wanted to tell, but wasn’t allowed to tell because of government censorship, during his years as a Great War blogger. Thus the name of his book.
Gibbs’ book is 100 years old—but the lessons buried within it are surprisingly topical.
1. Victory is imminent (just two more weeks)
“How long is it going to last?” asked the London Rangers of their chaplain. He lied to them and said another three months. Always he had absolute knowledge that the war would end three months later. That was certain. “Courage!” he said. “Courage to the end of the last lap!”
2. Listen to your Twitter feed, not your heart
The breezy optimism of public men, preachers, and journalists, never downcast by black news, never agonized by the slaughter in these fields, minimizing horrors and loss and misery, crowing over the enemy, prophesying early victory which did not come, accepting all the destruction of manhood (while they stayed safe) as a necessary and inevitable “misfortune,” had a depressing effect on men who knew they were doomed to die, in the law of averages, if the war went on.
3. Credulity is a priceless virtue
Greedy was the appetite of the mob for atrocity tales. The more revolting they were the quicker they were swallowed. The foul absurdity of the “corpse-factory” was not rejected any more than the tale of the “crucified Canadian” (disproved by our own G.H.Q.) or the cutting off of children’s hands and women’s breasts, for which I could find no evidence from the only British ambulances working in the districts where such horrors were reported.
Spy-mania flourished in mean streets, German music was banned in English drawing-rooms. Preachers and professors denied any quality of virtue or genius to German poets, philosophers, scientists, or scholars. A critical weighing of evidence was regarded as pro-Germanism and lack of patriotism.
Truth was delivered bound to passion.
4. You will be cattle-tagged & you will like it
They had been told that they were fighting for liberty. But their first lesson was the utter loss of individual liberty under a discipline which made the private soldier no more than a number. They were ordered about like a galley—slaves, herded about like cattle, treated individually and in the mass with utter disregard of their comfort and well-being.
5. Be careful what you wish for
For good or ill, a revolution will happen. It has happened in the sense that already there is no resemblance between this Europe after-the-war and that Europe-before-the-war, in the mental attitude of the masses toward the problems of life.
In every country there are individuals, men and women, who are going about as though what had happened had made no difference, and as though, after a period of restlessness, the people will ‘settle down’ to the old style of things. They are merely sleep-walkers.
As famous German-Swiss blogger Hermann Hesse mused many years ago, the Great War to End All Wars represented “the final hideous triumph of dynamite and machines over human life and the human spirit.”
A bit too optimistic—it seems our tolerance for self-immolation is boundless.
Is there any such thing as righteous blood lust? It strikes me as a contradiction in terms. But, what do I know? I am just a conscientious objector grannie.
'10,000 blood thirsty Twitter pundits'.
Put a gun in any one of their hands and they would poo their little pants in an instant.