“Am I to understand that you regard any lie as justifiable if it serves its purpose?”
“Certainly not,” said Meldon; “you are missing the whole point. I was afraid you would when you prevented me from explaining the theory of truth to you. I never justify lies under any circumstances whatever. The thing I’m trying to help you grasp is this: A statement isn’t a lie if it proves itself in actual practice to be useful—it’s true. There, now, you’ve let that second cigar go out. You’d better light that one again. I hate to see a man wasting cigar after cigar, especially when they’re good ones.”
Mr. Willoughby fumbled with the matches and made more than one attempt to relight the cigar.
“The reason,” Meldon went on, “why I think you’re almost certain to be a pragmatist is that you’re a politician. You’re constantly having to make speeches, of course; and in every speech you must, more or less, say something about Ireland. When you are Chief Secretary the other fellow, the man in opposition who wants to be Chief Secretary but isn’t, gets up and says you are telling a pack of lies. That’s not the way he expresses himself, but it’s exactly what he means. When his turn comes round to be Chief Secretary, and you are in opposition, you very naturally say that he’s telling lies. Now, that’s a very crude way of talking. You are, both of you, as patriotic and loyal men, doing your best to say what is really useful. If the things you say turn out in the end to be useful, why, then, if you happen to be a pragmatist, they aren’t lies.”
Mr. Willoughby stuck doggedly to his point. Just so his countrymen, though beaten by all the rules of war, have from time to time clung to positions which they ought to have evacuated.
“A lie,” he said, “is a lie. I don’t see that you’ve made your case at all.”
“I know I haven’t, but that’s because you insist on stopping me. If you’ll allow me to go back to the man who went round the tree with the monkey on it——”
“Don’t do that, I can’t bear it.”
“Very well. I won’t. I suppose we may consider the matter closed now, and go on to talk of something else.”