🚀 go-pugleaf

does not  matter whether  the war  is
actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not
matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a
state  of  war should  exist. The  splitting of  the intelligence which the
Party  requires  of its  members, and  which is more  easily achieved in an
atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one
goes,  the more marked  it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that
war  hysteria and hatred  of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an
administrator,  it  is often necessary  for a member  of the Inner Party to
know  that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be
aware  that  the entire war  is spurious and is  either not happening or is
being  waged for  purposes quite  other than  the declared  ones: but  such
knowledge  is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile
no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the
war  is  real, and that  it is bound to  end victoriously, with Oceania the
undisputed master of the entire world.
     All  members of  the Inner Party believe in this coming conquest as an
article  of faith.  It is to be achieved either by gradually acquiring more
and  more territory  and so  building up  an overwhelming  preponderance of
power,  or by the discovery of some new and unanswerable weapon. The search
for new weapons continues unceasingly, and is one of the very few remaining
activities  in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any
outlet.  In Oceania  at the  present day,  Science, in  the old  sense, has
almost  ceased  to exist. In  N