Letters to the Editor
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Some things don't ever change. Empire is Empire.
We hear much in these days about the dangers of innocence, much that is false and a little that is true. But the argument is almost exclusively applied to sexual innocence. There is a great deal that ought to be said about the dangers of political innocence. That most necessary and most noble virtue of patriotism is very often brought to despair and destruction, quite needlessly and prematurely, by the folly of educating the comfortable classes in a false optimism about the record and security of the Empire. Young people like Barbara Traill have often never heard a word about the other side of the story, as it would be told by Irishmen or Indians or even French Canadians, and it is the fault of their parents and their papers if they often pass abruptly from a stupid Britishism to an equally stupid Bolshevism. The hour of Barbara Traill was come, though she probably did not know it.
"If England keeps her promises," said the man with the beard, frowning, "there is still a chance that things may be quiet."
And Barbara had answered, like a schoolboy:
"England always keeps her promises."
"The Waba have not noticed it," he answered with an air of triumph.
The omniscient are often ignorant. They are often especially ignorant of ignorance. The stranger imagined that he was uttering a very crushing repartee, as perhaps he was, to anybody who knew what he meant. But Barbara had never heard of the Waba. The newspapers had seen to that.
G.K. Chesterton, Four Faultless Felons. 1930. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300781h.html