THE RIGHT BOOKS

In a 1906 column for the Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton observed that

people have got into their heads an extraordinary idea that English public-school boys and English youth generally are taught to tell the truth. They are taught absolutely nothing of the kind. At no English public school is it even suggested, except by accident, that it is a man’s duty to tell the truth. What is suggested is something entirely different: that it is a man’s duty not to tell lies. . . . Can anyone on earth believe that if the seeing and telling of the whole truth were really one of the ideals of the English governing class, there could conceivably exist such a thing as the English party system? Why, [that] system is founded upon the principle that . . . half a truth is better than no politics.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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In a 1906 column for the Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton observed that

people have got into their heads an extraordinary idea that English public-school boys and English youth generally are taught to tell the truth. They are taught absolutely nothing of the kind. At no English public school is it even suggested, except by accident, that it is a man’s duty to tell the truth. What is suggested is something entirely different: that it is a man’s duty not to tell lies. . . . Can anyone on earth believe that if the seeing and telling of the whole truth were really one of the ideals of the English governing class, there could conceivably exist such a thing as the English party system? Why, [that] system is founded upon the principle that . . . half a truth is better than no politics.