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To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (19)9/24/2002 5:40:50 AM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 186
 
Victory of the Loud Little Handful

[ Thanks to Scottman for this one ]

The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war.

Published on Friday, September 20, 2002 in the Philadelphia Inquirer

Victory of the Loud Little Handful

by Mark Twain

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.

Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger" (1910)