Free Self Condemned by Wyndham Lewis

I am displeased with. I have no authority to teach the truth. We now arrive at something which involves a great deal of explanation of a technical order …”
    “Something entirely over my head. Bird brain could not hope to grapple.... I see.”
    René had sunk back in his chair, till his shoulders were level with his ears, watchfully checking the course being taken by Hester. Her reactions, however, had been very much what he had expected. From his lazy huddle in the Windsor chair, he straightened himself almost violently, banging his elbows upon the table with force, and clasping his hands at right angles with one another as though he had caught a fly.
    “There are three facts regarding which I am afraid there is no possible argument.You are now married to an unemployed man. That is number one. There are no jobs for this out-of-work in this country. That is number two. Number three is the said man will in about two months sail for Canada.You may add to these facts if you like, a fourth: another world war is about to break out — as they say.”
    “As to that last fact, René, I have something to say.”
    “Yes.”
    “It does not happen to be a fact , I think.”
    “No? Evidently I must be mistaken.”
    “I think you are. Most people do not think there will be a war. Stephen, for instance, was telling me the other day that Hitler’s aeroplanes are all made of ersatz — is that the right word?
    They often drop to pieces in mid-air.”
    “Indeed? How very interesting.”
    “It is, isn’t it. Stephen also told me that the uniforms of the German soldiers are ersatz, too. They have no raw materials, so practically everything is ersatz. Actually, the cloth of their tunics is a sort of paper. Stephen said a friend of his had seen them marching along the street and suddenly it came on to rain. They all got under cover in an archway. Had they not done so their uniforms would have dropped to pieces once the rain had soaked into them. You laugh, but I really think you ought to listen to what is said by eyewitnesses, René.”
    René, who had been laughing, rubbed his face, and came out of the rub purged of mirth.
    “Now listen, Hester, you old goose. When the Englishman hears all these stories, specimens of which you have been retailing, what does the simple fellow think? Well, the answer is pretty obvious. He says to himself: ‘Oh well, if it does come to a war, it’s going to be a walk-over for us. All their planes will drop to pieces, their uniforms will melt, their rifles will explode and kill them as soon as they pull the trigger, the ersatz shells will never leave the ersatz cannon, and the war will be over in no time. Old Hitler will be hanged, and Germany cut up and shared among the Allies.’ That is what the Englishman will say to himself, is it not: that is what he is intended to say to himself.You see, these stories are what is called propaganda. That means, they are reports invented to influence people, to guide opinion in a specific direction.”
    “I know what propaganda means.”
    “You know the word,” he corrected her, “but evidently you do not understand it very well. You do not know propaganda when you see it.”
    “Oh no?”
    “No, otherwise you would not repeat to me what Stephen has told you.Your trustfulness is limitless.”
    “But my dear René! Why should Stephen of all people be engaged in such propaganda?”
    René shrugged his shoulders.
    “Stephen is a parlour pink! It is just as simple as that.”
    Hester silently demurred with her mouth, conveying in dumb show that “yes she knew but …”
    “Hang it all, Stephen makes no secret of his Party-alignment, does he?”
    “Stephen of course is not a Tory, René! But you describe so many people as communists, darling!”
    “But so they are . Whether they are officially members of the Party is unimportant. We are passing through a period in which, in England, communist sympathy is fashionable among the young, the educated young.