Page:The Myth of a Guilty Nation.djvu/45

 peace, one could suggest nothing better than that he should go through the literature of the war, pick out these statements, put them in parallel columns, and see how they look. If the war originated in the unwarranted conspiracy of a robber nation, if the aims of the Allies were to defeat that conspiracy and render it impotent and to chastise and tie the hands of the robber nation—and that is the theory of the treaty of Versailles—can anyone in his right mind suppose that the Allied politicians and propagandists would ever give out, or need to give out, these ludicrously contradictory and inconsistent explanations and statements? When one has a simple, straight story to tell, and a most effective story, why complicate it and undermine it and throw all sorts of doubts upon it, by venturing upon all sorts of public utterances that will not square with it in any conceivable way? Politicians, of all men, never lie for the fun of it; their available margin of truth is always so narrow that they keep within it when they can. Mr. Lloyd George, for example, is one of the cleverest of politicians. We have already considered his two statements; first, that of 4 August, 1917:

What are we fighting for? To defeat the most dangerous conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of

[39]