Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.

“It may be a delusion on their part; but they have it; and we have to act on the assumption that they have it.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “The Germans are under the monstrous delusion that God is with them; that they are fighting for their hearths and altars. It is none of our business to cure that delusion. We must accept it in estimating their minds.”
  2. “I think it will be clear that in order to read the man’s mind, you must put away from you anything like emotion. You are there to kill him efficiently, and you should practice the detachment of the surgeon, who does not wring his hands and wail when he sees the patient on the operating table.”
  3. “Now, as explained above, biology counsels adaptation to circumstance. We shall save ourselves knocks if we do what the other man tells us without any grumbling. We may go so far perhaps as to say ‘brute’ or ‘pig’ when he is not within an ear shot, but even that is a little dangerous, tending rather to the calamity of thinking for ourselves.”
  4. “Even so, if I had been born in a cannibal island, I should have been constantly agitating for a regular supply of missionaries, and cursed my local Hoover if the distribution was insufficient or the price prohibitive.”
  5. “How is it that the sentimental stay-at-home, domestic German becomes Giant Blunderbore? It is not a miracle. It is not an outbreak of collective sadism. It is simply the feeling that he is cornered. All Germans feel this.”