be efficient it was
necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly
accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history
books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the
kind that is practised today would have been impossible. War was a sure
safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was
probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or
lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.
But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be
dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military
necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be
denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called
scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are
essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not
important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed.
Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. Since each of
the three super-states is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate
universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely
practised. Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday
life -- the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid
swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like.
Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain,
there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with
the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in
interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and
which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or
the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from
starving