Page:Britain's Deadly Peril.djvu/176

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170
BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL

learn from that deathless story? Are they so blind to all the plainest teachings of history that they fail to realise that the British people cannot be depressed and frightened into panic by bad news, though, such is our insular self-confidence, we can be only too easily lulled into optimism by good news? If the autocrats who spoon-feed the public with carefully selected titbits truly understood the mental characteristics of their own countrymen, they would surely realise that the best, indeed the only, way to arouse the British race throughout the world to a sense of the real magnitude of the task that lies before them is to tell them the simple truth. We want no more of the glossing over of unpleasant facts which seems to be one of the main objects of the press censorship. We want the real truth, not merely because we are, naturally, hungry for news, but because the real truth alone is capable of stimulating Englishmen and Welshmen, Scotchmen and Irishmen, the world over to take off their coats, turn up their sleeves, and seriously devote their energies to giving the German bully a sound and effective thrashing.