From his story "The Mysterious Stranger"
Mark Twain, 01-Jan-1910
"The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war.
The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object... at first. The great, big,
dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there
should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and
dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it."
Then the handful will shout
louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war
with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it
will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar
audiences will thin out and lose popularity.
Before long, you will see this
curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled
by hordes of furious men...
Next the statesmen will invent cheap
lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be
glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and
refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince
himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys
after this process of grotesque self-deception."
How appropriate to the current international
situation!! -- J.S.
