Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/34

8 accident of war, and that a great deal of what the German or Austrian public believes on apparently unimpeachable evidence is sure to be untrue. No man with any spark of justice in his nature wall deliberately wish to think worse of his enemies than they deserve. So long as he is not on his guard, his instinct will play tricks with his judgment. We all perceive quite easily that this happens in enemy nations; what I wish to point out is that it happens in all the belligerent nations. Those who remark pityingly that the enemy are deluded with lies ought to remember our common human nature, and to realise that their own nation is equally deluded with exactly similar "lies"—though "lies" is hardly the word, since there is very little deliberate deception involved.

There is, however, another class of false beliefs, in which deliberate deception has played a greater part. These are false beliefs on political matters of fact. I will give two illustrations, one on each side.

In Germany, the belief seems to be almost universal that England violated the neutrality of Belgium before Germany did so. This belief is based partly on the assertion that the English sent troops to Belgium before the declaration of war, partly on the military conversations in Brussels in 1906 and 1912. As to the first of these allegations, not only has it been denied by our Government, which Germans could hardly be expected to regard as evidence; not only is its falsehood evident from the Belgian Grey Book, which Germans might regard as a piece of skillful manipulation; not only are those among us who have many acquaintances in the Army, and who must have heard privately if any troops were sent