The sentiment has been expressed in various ways, from Aeschylus to Winston Churchill, and I am referring to the very pointed sentiment that the first casualty of war is the truth. That said, I really like the way Samuel Johnson expressed it.
‘Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.’
Samuel Johnson, The Idler
So as we proceed, I encourage you to keep that bit of wisdom in mind. I would also encourage you to recall that the self-evident truth of all such adages is known to be true on a very different footing than the way that you might know whether or not a couple hundred Russian tanks have been destroyed.
Source:
Blog and Mablog
