The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1958-09-19
BREIC-
About Men
Who Can't Lie

The world, | think, has never seen a good humor
more gargantuan than G. K. Chestertons. Some
where in his numberless writings, this very great
once remarked that George Bernard
Shaw could not tell a lie unless he thought 1t was
the truth. Then, with a roar of laughter that came
right through the printed page, G. K. c. added: i
find myself laboring under the same lntolerable
handicap
Chesterton and Shaw disagreed about almost
except that they cared for each other.
Two men more unlike can hardly be imagined; but
they were alike in this-their tongues were not
forked. They were not false, They were sincere, as
most men are, thank God. Of the vast majority of us
it can also be said that we cannot tell a lie unless we
think it is the truth.
THIS IS THE BASIs without which decent human
relations are impossible. This is the foundation on
which stands the house of mankind, in which we can
live together in reasonable ~brotherly harmony, how
ever much we may disagree about one or many facts,
one or many principles, one or many judgments.
Honesty is what makes the world 60 round, and pre-
vents it from SCATTERING into fragments.
Loose on earth today, however, there is a philo-
sophy which makes a dogma out of malicious lying.
Its disciples are taught to be honest only when
honesty suits their wicked purposes better than dis
honest. Thus even honesty is made dishonest; thus
even truth becomes a lie in the mouth of the COM
munist propaganda. Thus malice becomes a way of
life, and falsehood the very cast Of a mans mind.
is a man of huge humor and luminous sincerity. Like
Chesterton and Shaw, he is incapable of telling a lie
unless he thinks it is the truth. That is to say, he
cannot lie at all. lie is a man OF intellectual integrity.
And so he took legal action not long ago to prevent
the republishing, in an anthology, of several short
stories he wrote in the late 1905.
At the time he wrote those stories, Hemingway,
like countless other intellectuals of all stripes, had
been deceived by a conspiracy of lies. His stories
concerned the Spanish civil war" which was in fact
the first Soviet military aggression against what is
now fashionable to call the West, although in truth
the right name for it remains Christendom.
COMMUNIST MFlL TRATIoN, subversion, prop
aganda and agitation t~riggered the war in Spain in
1886, and kept it raging until nearly a million
Spaniards were dead. Hemingway, then a newspaper
correspondent, spent some time with the so-called
LoyalistS. He was gulled into seeing them as the de-
tenders of democracy, fighting against "fascism." He
expressed that belief in the stories he now does not
want republished. t * g
Hemingway, like Chesterton, like Shaw and
even as you and = cannot tell a lie unless he sup
poses 1t to be the truth. Unlike the communists, he is
honest. He now knows that in 1869 he. was the
victim of lies that poisoned public opinion through
out the English-Speaking world. He cannot tell a lie
when he knows it is a lie-and so he does not want
his Spanish war stories to be reprinted.
The legal position taken by H~emingway's lawyer
is that republication of the stories would do, tgreat
injury and irreparable damage" to Hemingway In a
court Of law, you've got to- show something of the
sort. But from what / know OF Ernest Hemingway,
my judgement is that his strongest objection to re-
publication rests upon the fact that he is a man of
integrity, who hates lies and does not want to do the
malicious work of liars. s