Note on 1984 Conceptions of history

70 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE V. NOTE ON "NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR" CONCEPTIONS OF HISTORY In that portion of his book, Nineteen EightyFour, dealing with the ideology of the totalitarian system into which the world is now slipping, Orwell describes the conceptions of history and the attitude toward the past which dominate that regime. It is obvious that these require the complete obliteration of accurate historical writing—the elimination of the very conception of any truthful history. To adopt even an historical attitude or perspective is seditious and not to be tolerated. This is the social system and intellectual pattern toward which our interventionist and global-crusading historians are rapidly, heedlessly, and recklessly driving us. Orwell thus sets forth the ideas that dominate the attitude toward history in "Nineteen EightyFour" society: . . . orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. . . . Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.

The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons, one of which is subsidiary and, so to speak, precautionary. The subsidiary reason is that the Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates present-day conditions partly because he has no standards of comparison. He must be cut off from the REVISIONISM AND THE HISTORICAL BLACKOUT "]l past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising. But by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party. It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and records of every kind must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the predictions of the Party were in all cases right. It is also that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted. For to change one's mind, or even one's policy, is a confession of weakness.

If, for example, Eurasia or Eastasia (whichever it may be) is the enemy today, then that country must always have been the enemy. And if the facts say otherwise, then the facts must be altered. Thus history is continuously rewritten. This dayto-day falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love. The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc [English Socialism, as fully developed in the "Nineteen EightyFour" regime]. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. It also follows that though the past is alterable, it never has been altered in any specific instance.

For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version is the past, and no different past can ever have existed. This holds good even when, as often happens, the same event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now. It will be seen that the control of the past depends above all 72 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE on the training of memory. To make sure that all records agree with the orthodoxy of the moment is merely a mechanical act. But it is also necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner. And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper with written records, then it is necessary to forget that one has done so. . . ,55 How these ideals and principles in dealing with the past were applied in the actual practices of the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen EightyFour is thus portrayed by Orwell: . . . This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs— to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one in which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of the Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing the original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made. . . ,56 REVISIONISM AND THE HISTORICAL BLACKOUT 73 Such are the "historical" ideals and practices of the "Nineteen EightyFour" regime for which our court historians are preparing us. In another portion of his book Orwell shows how well they worked out in obliterating all memory of the past. At the risk of his life, Winston Smith, the central character in the book, decided to interview an aged man in the effort to find out what the actual conditions of life had been before the "Revolution" which instituted the "Nineteen EightyFour" era. After prolonged questioning of the old gentleman it became apparent to Winston that this was futile. Years of subjection to totalitarian propaganda, regimentation, and thought control had obliterated all capacity to remember the general patterns of life in the earlier and happier days. All that could be recalled were trivial snatches of petty personal experiences.

The past, as a social and cultural reality had disappeared forever: Winston sat back against the window sill. It was no use going on. ... Within twenty years at the most, he reflected, the huge and simple question, "Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?" would have ceased once and for all to be answerable. But in effect it was unanswerable even now, since the few scattered survivors from the ancient world were incapable of comparing one age with another. They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister's face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago; but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.57 Many will contend that nothing like this could happen in the United States, but the fact is that the process is well under way.

Much of the material in the preceding pages of this chapter shows 74 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE how it is being promoted. We have noted that there is already a veritable army of paid official historians assigned to write current history as the administration wishes it to be written, to say nothing of the many historians who voluntarily falsify the historical record, especially that of the last quarter of a century. The destruction and hiding of vital documents has already begun.58 The Army and Navy put great pressure upon witnesses to have them change their former testimony when appearing before the congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson sent Colonel Henry C. Clausen on a 55,000-mile junket to induce officers to distort or recant the evidence they had given previously on the Pearl Harbor tragedy. The vital "East Wind, Rain" message and other incriminating documents were removed from official files and presumably destroyed. The secret and all-important Roosevelt-Churchill exchanges, transcribed by Tyler Kent, have been hidden away and possibly destroyed. Legislation has been passed which would make it illegal to divulge their contents, even if the full record could be found. Once basic integrity is abandoned, there are no lengths to which falsification cannot easily and quickly proceed as the occasion and political expediency may demand.

There is already a marked trend toward the rewriting of textbooks in the field of history, particularly with respect to the alteration of their treatment of the causes of the first World War and the entrance of the United States therein. Since few of the textbooks have told the truth about the events leading to the second World War and Pearl Harbor, there has been no need to alter this material. NOTE: AN ENGLISH VIEW OF THE HISTORICAL BLACKOUT The editor sent copies of his brochures on The Struggle Against the Historical Blackout, The Court Historians versus Revisionism, and Rauch on Roosevelt to one of the most distinguished of English publicists, authors, and military historians, who wrote me the following letter relative to the historical blackout in general and in England in particular. Being aware of the retaliation which REVISIONISM AND THE HISTORICAL BLACKOUT 75 might be meted out to him in the American scholarly and book world, I am withholding his name, but it is one that is internationally known and respected: Thank you for your very kind letter and the pamphlets, which I have read with enthusiastic interest. I love your phrases: 'The Court Historians" and "the Blackout Boys."

How delightfully descriptive! But what a revelation these last seven years have been of the strength and power of both these classes of people and their myriad supporters in the Press and among the people. To you and me, who lived in the mentally-free world of pre-1914, the determined rush of the historical Gadarenes into the sea of falsehood and distortion has been an astounding phenomenon. Which of us would have believed, in that first decade of the century, that the values which then seemed so firmly established in the historical profession could disappear so easily and rapidly, leaving only a tiny company of unheeded and derided protestors to lament their loss? And I must admit that the protestors in the U.S.A. are more numerous and courageous than they are in this blessed land of freedom which used to make such a fuss about its Magna Carta, the execution of Charles I, and other socalled landmarks in dealing with tyranny.

Here we are, a nation of 50,000,000. Our official historian has just published his first book on the Norwegian campaign which shows, with official authority, that we were planning exactly the same aggression against Norway as the Germans, for which later the wretched Admiral Raeder was given a life sentence. But not one voice has been raised in England to say that, now that it is known that we were just as bad as he was, he might be let out. And I know that, if I wrote to the Times, it would not go in. I will not deny that there are a few Beards, Chamberlins, Tansills and Barnes' over here. But they do not find publishers here as they do with you, for which I give yours full marks. In this blessed sceptical isle and y6 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE ancient land of the free, Revisionism is gagged. You must keep yours going at all costs or the darkness descends. My correspondent's impressions need correction in one respect: apparently he imagines that American publishers are more hospitable toward revisionist books than the English. He does not realize that, aside from Dr. Beard's books, all the revisionist volumes thus far published in the United States have been brought out by two small publishers. No large commercial publisher has brought out a revisionist volume since Pearl Harbor.

FOOTNOTES-CHAPTER i 1. New edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941. 2. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1949. See especially pp. 86-93. 3. August, 1927. 4. Chicago: National Historical Society, 1928, pp. 142 ff. 5. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1937. 6. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928. 7. See below, pp. 54 ff. 8. Annual Report, 1946, pp. 188-89. 9. Saturday Evening Post, October 4, 1947, P* 172* 10. The best account of the American Smearbund and its activities is contained in John T. Flynn's brochure, The Smear Terror, privately printed, New York, 1948. 11. See below, pp. 62 ff. One of the most conspicuous examples of the entry of historians and other social scientists into the "Ministry of Truth" is afforded by the program and work of the Rand Corporation. See Fortune, March, 1951, pp. 99-102, 144. See also, American Historical Review, April, 1953, pp. 761-62.

12. Saturday Evening Post, Joe. cit. 13. New York: DevinAdair Company, 1947. 14. C. A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1946); President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948). 15. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1950. 16. New York: DevinAdair Company, 1948. 17. Morison has recently been promoted to the rank of admiral, thus arriving at the official stature of the famous Alfred T. Mahan.

REVISIONISM AND THE HISTORICAL BLACKOUT 77 18. See below, pp. 387 ff. and pp. 475 ff. 19. For Mr. Regnery's account of the reception and treatment of these books, see his "A Letter to the Editor of the Publishers' Weekly," February 19, 1951. 20 See the brochure by Dr. John H. Sachs, Hatchet Men (New Oxford, Pa., privately printed, 1947); and Oswald Garrison Villard, "Book-Burning —U.S. Style," The Progressive, April 28, 1947. 21. See Towner Phelan, "Modern School for Scandal," The Freeman, September 24, 1951, pp. 813-17. 22. Journal of Modern History, XIX (March, 1947), 55—59. 23. April, 1947, p. 532. 24. June 12, 1948. 25. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. For a corrective, see Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940-1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953). 26. June, 1948, pp. 127-32. 27. June 12, 1948. 28. On this point, see his letter in the New York Times, January 10, 1949.

29. April 11, 1948. 30. October, 1949. 31. January, 1949, pp. 382-86. 32. December, 1948, pp. 532-34. 33. New York Times Book Review, October 15, 1950, p. 34. 34. October 15, 1950, p. 12. 35. November 27, 1950. 36. November 18, 1950. 37. Professor Leopold's paper on "The Problem of American Intervention, 1917: An Historical Retrospect," was published in World Politics, April, 1950, pp. 405-25. Professor Adler's paper on "The War Guilt Question and American Disillusionment, 1918-1928," was published in the Journal of Modern History, March, 1951, pp. 1-28. For my reply to Adler, see the Journal of Modern History, September, 1951. 38. October, 1949. 39. The following material is essentially that prepared for delivery before the American Historical Association in Chicago on December 29, 1950. Between the invitation to prepare the paper and the printing of the program, the writer was switched, without his knowledge, to the role of discussing papers read by others. Hence, the original address could not be given. Certain minor changes have been made better to adapt the material for inclusion in this book.

40. James Kerney, The Political Education of Woodrow Wilson (New York: The Century Company, 1926), p. 476. 41. See my extended discussion, The Court Historians versus Revisionism, privately printed, 1952. 42. See Richard Brickner, Is Germany Incurable? (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1943). 43. The Thousand-Year Conspiracy; Secret Germany Behind the Mask (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943).

y8 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE 44. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943. See my review of Vansittart in The Progressive, September 17, 1945. 45. Boston: Hough ton Mifflin Company, 1941. 46. A. D. Winspear and Tom Silverberg, Who Was Socrates? (New York: Cordon Company, Inc., 1939). 47. Hadley Cantril, Hazel Gaudet, and Herta Hertzog, The Invasion horn Mars; a Study in the Psychology of Panic; with the Complete Script of the Orson Welles Broadcast (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940). 48. See Orwell, op. cit., passim. 49. The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), p. 13. 50. "Peace Costs Too Much," Christian Century, October 10, 1934, p. 1279. 51. F. J. P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (Appleton, Wis.: C. C. Nelson Publishing Company, 1953). 52. This action was forecast in a letter from President Truman to Admiral Morison on December 22, 1950, read by the Admiral before he delivered his presidential address before the American Historical Association in Chicago on December 29. See American Historical Review, April, 1951, pp. 711-12. For a summary of the work of American historians under the aegis of our "Ministry of Truth," see W. G. Leland, "The Historians and the Public in the United States/' in Revista de Historia de America, June, 1952, pp. 64 ff.

53. In Time, March 26, 1951, p. 19, it is pointed out that President Truman is very sensitive about his future "niche in history." If he is able to appoint the historians who will write the official history of his times and smear those who seek to tell the truth, he should fare very well. Indeed, Mr. Truman may not need paid official historians to prepare his apotheosis. Henry Steele Commager has already rushed to his aid in this respect and has predicted that history will vindicate the soundness of Mr. Truman's major policies, especially those connected with globaloney, the cold war, and our preparation for a "Nineteen EightyFour" social order. Even this, however, has not satisfied Mr. Truman's urge for the affectionate caresses of Clio. He "jumped the gun" in the spring of 1952 by coauthoring his own history of himself and his public deeds, Mr. President (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young).

54. Interestingly enough, Commager is a renegade revisionist. One should consult his veritable "rave" review of Charles C. Tansill's America Goes to War in the Yale Review, June, 1938, pp. 855-57. 55. George Orwell, Nineteen EightyFour (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1949), pp. 213-15. Quoted by courteous consent of Brandt & Brandt, New York City, trustees for the estate of George Orwell in the United States. 56. Ibid., pp. 40-41. 57. Ibid., pp. 92-93. 58. See below, Chap. 7, passim.