" "The whole truth?" "No, _selected truths_."
What we have to guard against in this matter of rumours is the natural
tendency to believe what we want to believe. Take that case of the reported
victory in Poland in November 1914. There is strong reason to believe that
a large part of Hindenburg's army narrowly escaped being encircled, that
had Rennenkampf come up to time the trick would have been done. But it
wasn't done. Yet nearly every correspondent in Petrograd sent the most
confident news of an overwhelming victory. The _Morning Post_ correspondent
spoke of it as something "terrible but sublime. There has been nothing like
it since Napoleon left the bones of half a million men behind him in
Russia." Even Lord Kitchener, in the House of Lords, said that Russia had
accomplished the greatest achievement of the war. And so, just afterwards,
with the equally empty rumour of Hindenburg's "victory," which sent Berlin
into such a frenzy of rejoicing. It believed without evidence because it
wanted to believe.
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