Free Time Will Run Back by Henry Hazlitt Page B

understand. What I have given you is the present official history of that dead world. It is the history that the Protectors of Wonworld have voted to teach. When they wiped out all the old books, they had to decide what history to put in its place. What I have told you is the agreed-upon history.”
    “But did things actually happen that way? Was it actually so?”
    “I will explain all that when we get to neo-Marxian logic. The only question to be raised about a statement is not, Is it so? but What good will it do?”
    “You mean you don’t actually know whether the history you have just recited is true or not?”
    “What do you mean by ‘true’? Truth, as you will see by the Marxanto dictionary, is just an instrument; it is simply whatever belief works satisfactorily. Truth is whatever is good for Communism. But that opens up the whole subject of neo-Marxian logic, and we can’t go into that today. Be here tomorrow at ten.”

Chapter 8
    STALENIN took up a pad of paper and signed his name on it. He shoved it toward Peter.
    “Imitate that.”
    Peter did his best.
    “Try again.”
    Peter tried.
    “That’s a little better.”
    Stalenin took a clean sheet and signed his name half a dozen times. “Take this. Don’t let anyone know you have it. But keep perfecting my signature.”
    “But what’s the purpose of—”
    Stalenin pointed significantly to his heart, and then rather vaguely to his brain. “We may have less time than I thought.” He looked appraisingly at Peter’s new but ill-fitting Deputy uniform.
    “That’s more becoming.... Here is the address of my personal tailor.” He handed Peter a card. “He will measure you for Protectors’ uniforms, but you are not to wear them until the time is right. And now”—his tone was unexpectedly soft—“is there anything else you want?”
    Peter got up his courage: “Would it be possible, father, for me to have a piano?”
    “In this emergency you can’t afford to waste your time drumming—”
    “But only for an hour a day, in the evening? Even your organized recreation platoons recognize—”
    “I’ll think about it.”
    At the government book store Peter found that he needed special ration coupons to get the history volumes Bolshekov had recommended. It would take at least a week to get these, he learned. It suddenly occurred to him that he might borrow the books at Edith’s little branch library.
    He had not dared to see her since the kiss and the slap. But his new Deputy uniform, it struck him, gave him an excuse to patch things up....
    Her glance was hostile.
    “I don’t know how to apologize for kissing you—” he began.
    “Oh, it isn’t that. But when you knew you were being followed by the secret police, and you led them to our house—”
    “But I found I was being followed, not because I was under suspicion, but because they were thinking of promoting me. Notice?” He looked down proudly at his new Deputy uniform.
    He was surprised himself to hear how plausible his explanation sounded. And, he thought, it’s even close to the truth.
    He not only got his history books, but before he left had persuaded her to let him call the following evening.
    He spent the night in his hotel room assiduously practicing forgeries of his father’s signature.

Chapter 9
    BOLSHEKOV motioned Peter to a chair.
    “There is something,” he began, “that I perhaps failed to explain yesterday. You asked how I happened to know so much about the history of the Ancients and the Dark Ages when all the records had been destroyed. I told you that what I knew was the agreed-upon history of those times, the history we had decided to teach. But I should have made it clear that a few specialists among the Protectors are permitted to know more about the past than the rest of Wonworld. If you think about the matter a moment it will be easy to understand why this is so. The old fallacies, the old errors, the old vicious and dangerous doctrines held before and