by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

A growing cynicism regarding the war comes out in a Oregon Statesman editorial:

THE FATHER OF LIES

We don’t hear much babbling of military “glory” any more. We’re learning what war really is; and the more of it we see, the more sordid and disreputable it appears.

Just take the matter of truth, for instance. Truthfulness is perhaps the most fundamental virtue of society, the cornerstone of civilization. And war, with all its pretended heroic virtues, stands unmasked as the inveterate enemy of truth.

The flying of false flags by belligerent vessels is but one detail in the general scheme of organized falsehood. All military strategy is based on deception – that is to say, on lies. For one example of a ship or an army or a single soldier going frankly and openly into battle to have it out with the enemy on equal terms, there are nine, or ninety-nine, efforts to achieve victory by subterfuge. “Stratagem” is a fine word, but in private life we call it “cheating.”

Sailors of all modern nations have abused flags, thereby lying about their nationality and denying their own allegiances. The British merchantmen have been doing what the emden and Karlsruhe did when they flew British and Japanese flags in their careers of destruction; what some of our own ships did in the Spanish war. And there is a practice in the armies that is even worse. German soldiers have boasted of dressing themselves in British uniforms taken from prisoners, in order to get into British trenches without fighting for them in the open. Doubtless the other side has done the same thing. It’s an old trick.

The spy system is on a par with the rest. Every army has its system of espionage, its men sent forth to act parts and betray those which whom they fraternize.

Lies – all lies! War is the father of lies.