This experience, I suppose, is not uncommon. The man who believes as easily
to-day as he did six months ago is a man on whom lessons are thrown away.
We have lived in a world of gigantic whispers, and most of them have been
false whispers. Even the magic word "Official" leaves one cold. It is not
what I am "officially" told that interests me: it is what I am "officially"
not told that I want to know in order to arrive at the truth.

You remember that famous answer of the plaintiff in an action against a
London paper years ago. "What did you tell him?" "I told him to tell the
truth." "The whole truth?" "No, _selected truths_."

What we have to guard against in this matter of rumours is the natural
tendency to believe what we want to believe. Take that case of the reported
victory in Poland in November 1914. There is strong reason to believe that
a large part of Hindenburg's army narrowly escaped being encircled, that
had Rennenkampf come up to time the trick would have been done. But it
wasn't done. Yet nearly every correspondent in Petrograd sent the most
confident news of an overwhelming victory. The _Morning Post_ correspondent
spoke of it as something "terrible but sublime. There has been nothing like
it since Napoleon left the bones of half a million men behind him in
Russia." Even Lord Kitchener, in the House of Lords, said that Russia had
accomplished the greatest achievement of the war. And so, just afterwards,
with the equally empty rumour of Hindenburg's "victory," which sent Berlin
into such a frenzy of rejoicing. It believed without evidence because it
wanted to believe.

And another fruitful source of rumour is fear. The famous concrete
emplacement at Maubeuge will serve as an instance. We had the most
elaborate details of how the property was acquired by German agents, how in