Scott gives, in Woodstock, an engaging picture of the man who has “attained the pitch of believing himself above ordinances.” The independent trooper, Tomkins, finds his own favourite vices fitting delightfully into an exalted theory of moral freedom. In former days, he avows, he had been only “the most wild, malignant rakehell in Oxfordshire.” Now he is a saint, and can say to the girl whom he wants to debauch:
Stand up, foolish maiden, and listen; and know, in one word, that sin, for which the spirit of man is punished with the vengeance of heaven, lieth not in the corporal act, but in the thought of the sinner. Believe, lovely Phoebe, that to the pure all acts are pure, and that sin is in our thought, not in our actions, even as the radiance of the day is dark to a blind man but seen and enjoyed by him whose eyes receive it. To him who is but a novice in the things of the spirit much is enjoined, much is prohibited; and he is fed with milk fit for babes—for him are ordinances, prohibitions, and commands. But the saint is above all these ordinances and restraints. To him, as to the chosen child of the house, is given the passkey to open all locks which withhold him from the enjoyment of his heart’s desire. Into such pleasant paths will I guide thee, lovely Phoebe, as shall unite in joy, in innocent freedom, pleasures which, to the unprivileged, are sinful and prohibited.
So when a journalist with no strong original predisposition to swear to his own hurt shall have gained high public distinction by his fertility in falsehoods for consumption by an enemy in the field, the fishes that tipple in the deep may well “know no such liberty” as this expert in fiction will allow himself when restored to his own more intoxicating element.
The general addition of prestige to the controversial device of giving false impressions and raising false issues would naturally be immense. To argue any case merely on its merits and on the facts would seem to the admirers of the new way a kind of virtuous imbecility. In what great industrial dispute or political campaign, in what struggle between great financial interests, would both sides, or either, forego the use of munitions so formidable? Such conflicts might almost wholly cease to be competitions in serious argument at all; they might become merely trials of skill in fantastic false pretences, and of expertness in the morbid psychology of credulity.
So men argued, surmised and predicted, talking and talking away in the endless hours that war gives for talking things out. When first they began to ask each other why so many lies were about, the common hypothesis, based on prior experience, was that they must be meant to save some “dud,” up above, from losing his job. Then they came to admit there was something more in it than that. Lies had a good enough use for fooling the Germans. A beastly expedient, no doubt; acquiescence in lying does not come quite so easily to a workman of good character as it does to men of a class in which more numerous formal fibs are kept in use as social conveniences. Still, the men were not cranks enough to object. “They love not poison that do poison need.” The men had hated, and still continued to hate, the use of poison gas, too. It was a scrub’s trick, like vitriol-throwing. But who could have done without it, when once the Germans began? And now who could object to the use of this printed gas either? Could they, in this new warfare of propaganda, expect their country to go into action armed in a white robe of candour, and nothing besides, like a maskless man going forth to war against a host assisted by phosgene and all her foul sisters?
It was a clear enough case: decency had to go under. But it was hard luck not to be able to know where you were. Where were they? If all the news they could check was mixed with lies, what about all the rest, which they were unable to check? Was it likely to be any truer? Why, we might be losing the war all the time, everywhere! Who could believe now what was said about our catching the submarines? Or about India’s being all right? And how far would you have to go to get outside the lie belt? Could our case for going to war with the Germans be partly lies too? Beastly idea!
How would it be, again, when we came to play these major tricks which the men were already discussing as likely to come into use? Suppose it became part of our game to publish, for some good strategical reason, news of a naval or military disaster to ourselves, the same not having happened? To take in the enemy this lie would have to take in our own people too; the ruse would be given away if the Government tried to tip so much as a wink to the British reader of the
