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As To Rumors
by
No one can set down any hard and fast rules for reading the rumors. The process is partly instinctive and partly the result of trained observation. It is as complicated as the calculation by which a woman tells time by her watch which she knows to be wrong–she adds seventeen minutes, subtracts three, divides by two and then looks at the church steeple. It is as exhilarating as trying to deduce what there is going to be for supper by the pervasive fragrance of onions in the front hall. And sometimes a very small event, like a very small onion, can cast its rumors a long way. Destiny is unlike the hen in that she cackles before she lays the egg.
The first rule to observe about rumors is that they are often exactly opposite in tendency to the coming fact. For instance, the rumors of secrecy at the Peace Conference were the one thing necessary to guarantee complete publicity. Just before any important event occurs it seems to discharge both positive and negative currents, just as a magnet is polarized by an electric coil. Some people by mental habit catch the negative vibrations, others the positive. Every one can remember the military critics last March who were so certain that there would be no German offensive. Their very certainty was to many others a proof that the offensive was likely. They were full of the negative vibrations.
An interesting case of positive vibrations was the repeated rumor of the Kaiser’s abdication. The fact that those rumors were premature was insignificant compared with the fact that they were current at all. The fact that there were such rumors showed that it was only a matter of time.
It is entertaining, if disconcerting, to watch a rumor on its travels. A classic example of this during the recent war is exhibited by the following clippings which were collected, I believe, by Norman Hapgood:
From the Koelnische-Zeitung:
“When the fall of Antwerp became known the church bells were rung.” (Meaning in Germany.)
From the Paris Matin:
“According to the Koelnische-Zeitung, the clergy of Antwerp were compelled to ring the church bells when the fortress was taken.”
From the London Times:
“According to what the Matin has heard from Cologne, the Belgian priests, who refused to ring the church bells when Antwerp was taken, have been driven away from their places.”
From the Corriere Della Sera, of Milan:
“According to what the Times has heard from Cologne, via Paris, the unfortunate Belgian priests, who refused to ring the church bells when Antwerp was taken, have been sentenced to hard labor.”
From the Matin again:
“According to information received by the Corriere Della Sera, from Cologne, via London, it is confirmed that the barbaric conquerors of Antwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian priests for their heroic refusal to ring the church bells by hanging them as living clappers to the bells with their heads down.”
Be hospitable to rumors, for however grotesque they are, they always have some reason for existence. The Sixth Sense is the sense of news, the sense that something is going to happen. And just as every orchestra utters queer and discordant sounds while it is tuning up its instruments, so does the great orchestra of Human Events (in other words, The News) offer shrill and perhaps misleading notes before the conductor waves his baton and leads off the concerted crash of Truth. Keep your senses alert to examine the odd scraps of hearsay that you will often see in the news, for it is in just those eavesdroppings at the heart of humanity that the press often fulfills its highest function.