From: mabjo@pacbell.net   
      
   FussyKatie wrote:   
      
   > I don't believe that wartime cancels freedom of speech.   
   >   
   > Katie   
      
   Neither did Orwell. He wrote this in his "As I Please" column of June 9,   
   1944 -- three days after D-Day -- speaking in *Tribune* to a readership   
   reflecting his own left-liberal political views:   
      
   "A phrase much used in political circles in this country is 'playing into   
   the hands of.' It is a sort of charm or incantation to silence uncomfortable   
   truths. When you are told that by saying this, that or the other you are   
   'playing into the hands of' some sinister enemy, you know that it is your   
   duty to shut up immediately.   
      
   For example, if you say anything damaging about British imperialism, you are   
   playing into the hands of Dr. Goebbels. If you criticise Stalin you are   
   playing into the hands of the *Tablet* and the *Daily Telegraph*. If you   
   criticise Chiang-Kai-Shek you are playing into the hands of Wang Ching Wei   
   -- and so on, indefinitely.   
      
   Objectively this charge is often true. It is always difficult to attack one   
   party to a dispute without temporarily helping the other. Some of Gandhi's   
   remarks have been very useful to the Japanese. The extreme Tories will seize   
   on anything anti-Russian, and don't necessarily mind if it comes from   
   Trotskyist instead of right-wing sources. The American imperialists,   
   advancing to the attack behind a smoke-screen of novelists, are always on   
   the look-out for any disreputable detail about the British Empire. And if   
   you write anything truthful about the London slums, you are liable to hear   
   it repeated on the Nazi radio a week later. But what, then, are you expected   
   to do? Pretend there are no slums?   
      
   Everyone who has ever had anything to do with publicity or propaganda can   
   think of occasions when he was urged to tell lies about some vitally   
   important matter, because to tell the truth would give ammunition to the   
   enemy. During the Spanish civil war, for instance, the dissensions on the   
   Government side were never properly thrashed out in the left-wing Press,   
   although they involved fundamental points of principle. To discuss the   
   struggle between the Communists and the Anarchists, you were told, would   
   simply give the *Daily Mail* the chance to say that the Reds were all   
   murdering one another. The *Daily mail* may have missed a few horror stories   
   because people held their tongues, but some all-important lessons were not   
   learned and we are suffering from the fact to this day."   
      
   ---   
      
   His point, like many of the points in his fiction, is portable.   
      
   You probably know know this old Soviet-era dissident joke about intellectual   
   freedom:   
      
   ----American says, "I come from a free country: where I live I can criticize   
   the president of the United States any time I want to."   
      
   ----Russian says, "So what? I can criticize the president of the United   
   States any time I want to, too."   
      
   Now Americans can easily criticize the defeated villains of WWII and the   
   Cold War, but all kinds of shouting starts up if we criticize our own side   
   in any of the present conflicts. That, it seems, is "playing into the hands   
   of."   
      
   Let's remember that part of what the D-Day assault defended was the freedom   
   that is essential to democracy, including the freedom to tell the leaders of   
   one's own side things that they do not want to hear. As Paul Sebastianelli   
   used to say here, "use it while supplies last."   
      
   /M   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)