If workingmen are restless, they are the victims of agitators;
if they are restless over wide areas, there is a conspiracy on foot.
If you do not produce enough aeroplanes, it is the work of spies; if
there is trouble in Ireland, it is German or Bolshevik "gold." And if
you go stark, staring mad looking for plots, you see all strikes, the
Plumb plan, Irish rebellion, Mohammedan unrest, the restoration of
King Constantine, the League of Nations, Mexican disorder, the
movement to reduce armaments, Sunday movies, short skirts, evasion of
the liquor laws, Negro self-assertion, as sub-plots under some
grandiose plot engineered either by Moscow, Rome, the Free Masons, the
Japanese, or the Elders of Zion.
CHAPTER X
THE DETECTION OF STEREOTYPES
1
Skilled diplomatists, compelled to talk out loud to the warring
peoples, learned how to use a large repertory of stereotypes. They
were dealing with a precarious alliance of powers, each of which was
maintaining its war unity only by the most careful leadership. The
ordinary soldier and his wife, heroic and selfless beyond anything in
the chronicles of courage, were still not heroic enough to face death
gladly for all the ideas which were said by the foreign offices of
foreign powers to be essential to the future of civilization. There
were ports, and mines, rocky mountain passes, and villages that few
soldiers would willingly have crossed No Man's Land to obtain for
their allies.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143