With short-distance standard-wave broadcasting to an enemy known to have millions of radio receivers, strategic radio becomes effective. The chance is provided for building up a consistent group of listeners, for influencing their morale and opinions, and for circulating rumors that will reach almost every single person in the enemy population. The temptation to perform tricks, to lapse back to peacetime standards of radio-as-entertainment or radio-as-advertising, is a constant one. The propagandist knows that he is being heard, and he fears that his audience will lose interest if he does not stimulate them with a brilliantly variegated series of programs.

Black radio comes into its own on standard wave. The British could put the mysterious anti-British, anti-Hitler broadcaster Gustav Siegfried Eins on the air, with his rousing obscenities, his coarse but believable gossip, his wild diatribes against the Allies and against the Nazi scum who got in the way of the glorious German army. He was so good that for a while even American propanal thought he might be a spokesman for the saucier members of the Wehrmacht general staff. The Germans could broadcast proletarian propaganda on the Lenin Old Guard station, foaming at the mouth whenever they mentioned the crazy vile Fascist swine Hitler, and then going into tantrums because the Communist party needed all the brave glorious leaders who had been murdered by the fat bureaucrat Stalin. Ed and Joe could talk out of Bremen and pretend to be scooting around the American mid-west, one jump ahead of the G-men with their trailer and concealed transmitter, telling the rest of the Americans the low-down about "that goof Roosevelt and his Jewish war," but Ed and Joe were not good enough to fool anybody. Black radio is great fun for the operators, but its use is often limited to a twisted kind of entertainment designed to affect the morale of dubious groups. It leaps to sudden importance only in times of critical panic when it can add the last catalyst to national confusion, precipitating chaos.

The beginning and end of standard-wave transmission is news. News (see page 135) uses standard appeals. It should be factual but selectively factual. Repetition of basic themes is much more important than the constant invention of new ones. The propaganda chief has nothing to do, day in and day out, but to think of his own programs. He becomes familiar with them and bored by them. He visualizes his Propaganda Man as a person who hears all transmissions and is understandably bored by them, overlooking the interruptions that listeners face, the long gaps between the programs they hear, the weather interference, the static, the police measures.

Even with peacetime facilities tremendous simplicity and repetition are needed to convey advertising on the radio. In wartime repetition is even more necessary. It serves the double function of driving the theme home to listeners who have heard it before, while broadening the circle of listeners with each transmission. A point of diminishing returns is soon reached but even diminished returns are often rewarding. The hardest-to-reach people are sometimes the ones it is most important to reach with a simple, basic, persuasive item. Repetition thus ensures depth of response in the core audience, while adding to the marginal audience with each additional application. What is deadly monotonous to the propagandist himself may, on the thousandth repetition, merely have become pleasantly familiar to the Propaganda Man on the other end. The author has talked to any number of clandestine listeners to our propaganda who have almost wept with rage as they told of listening to jokes, novelties, political speeches and other funny stuff when they hoped to get a clean-cut announcement of the latest military news.

Something was accomplished, however, by use of the Portuguese, Spanish, Swiss and Chinese press. Enemy officials and private persons were known to read these, and it was possible to do a great deal toward influencing editorial content.

Major mail-propaganda operations were conducted against us, however. The Nazis, as part of their prebelligerent planning and operations, sent enormous quantities of propaganda through the United States mail—sometimes postage-free under the frank of Congressmen. The Japanese, down to the time of Pearl Harbor, kept large public-relations staffs running at full speed in New York, Washington, and other American cities. They helped their American friends with money and by heavy purchase of copyright material friendly to Japan—thus making it unnecessary for any author to report himself as a Japanese paid agent, and they offered Japanese "cultural and educational" information to interested persons. It really was cultural and well done. By talking about Japanese poetry, religion and cherry blossoms, and omitting all war propaganda, the handsome little booklets kept alive the memory of a hospitable, quaint, charming Japan. Some of this material was mailed directly from Japan to the United States.

Since mail propaganda depends on the freedom of the mails, it is much more apt to be used by a dictatorship against us than by us against a dictatorship.

• (1) Communications from the legitimate authorities (whether government-in-exile,underground, or friendly quisling) of the civilians addressed.
• (2) Newspapers in air format, reduced in scale, but with a heavy proportion of the normal peacetime features of the audience's own press.
• (3) Novelty materials appealing to children, who are apt to be among the most industrious collectors of leaflets, disseminating them far and wide with less danger of reprisal from the occupying power or the police than adults might face. (Good adult leaflets are as interesting to children as are leaflets especially designed for them. The use of color printing, vivid illustrations, pictures of air battles, how-it-works diagrams of weapons, and so forth, may reach the teen-age audience best if it gives no indication of being aimed at them.)
• (4) Gifts—soap, salt, needles, matches, chocolate and similar articles dropped to civilian populations. (This demonstrates the wealth and benevolence of the giver. Countermeasures to enemy use of this type of propaganda consist of dropping a few duplicates of his gifts, containing poison-ivy soap, nauseating salt, infected-looking needles, explosive chocolate, etc. The Germans are reported to have followed this procedure against the American air gifts dropped to Italy and France. With the avoidance or the spoilage of gifts, the propaganda effect becomes so confused that both sides find it worth desisting for a while.)
• (5) Appeals to women. (Women, statistically, are around 50% of the population of any country. With the diversion of men to fighting operations the percentage of women in the home population rises and in wartime it may become 60% or 70%. They face social and economic problems much more immediately than do men because the responsibility for maintaining homes and children normally falls on them. Evidence of humane intentions, of reluctance to wage the most cruel forms of war, of attempts to help civilians escape unnecessary danger, can bring women into the participating enemy group for relaying propaganda.)

The pamphlet shown in figure 6 is an excellent example of the medium. Though it carries a complex message, it can be read by persons at the lowest educational level. It meets enemy propaganda over a whole range of themes. It is apt to be disseminated farther, whether initial distribution be by ground or by air.

Unlike the leaflet, the pamphlet is sometimes hard to conceal. For well policed areas, it must be supplied with a protective disguise if it is to be passed along. One ingenious pamphlet made up by Dennis McEvoy and Don Brown at OWI for dropping on the Japanese, started out with a warning: "Enemy! Warning! This is an Enemy Publication, issued by the United States Government. Finder is Commanded to take this to the Nearest Police Station Immediately! Enemy!" The pamphlet gave a general statement of Japan's bad war position, and was addressed to Japanese policemen and police officials. The cover urged the policemen not to keep the pamphlet, nor to destroy it, but to pass it on up through channels to their superiors as an instance of enemy propaganda. (We never found out what the Japanese police actually did when they got these.)

One Japanese black leaflet assumed the proportions of a book, and was made up in the familiar format of the pocket-sized twenty-five-cent volumes. With a New York dateline, a copyright notice, and even a printers' union label all neatly falsified, the book expressed opposition to Roosevelt's war. It was circulated by the Japanese as a captured enemy book, presumably, in order to convince their own people and their Asiatic associates that opposition to World War II existed within the United States itself.

Almost all belligerents issued malingerer's handbooks during the war. These started out with statements that the medical control system was inadequate, that each man had to look out for himself, and that feigned sickness was often the only alternative to real sickness. Disguised as entertainment booklets, "instructions" accompanying medicine, or even as official handbooks (of the enemy government) for this and that purpose, the leaflets gave detailed instructions on how to fake tuberculosis, heart trouble, and other diseases.

Bold black propaganda operations can often embarrass the enemy. The dropping of a few hundred tons of well counterfeited currency would tend to foul up any fiscal system. Peacetime counterfeiters operate with poor materials, secretly, and in small shops. When instructed, a government agency can do an astoundingly good job of counterfeiting. The United States is on the vulnerable side of this operation, because our money happens to be the most trusted and most widely hoarded in the world. Various governments are believed to have run off substantial numbers of United States twenty and fifty dollar bills. A less offensive operation consists of giving the enemy populace sets of ration cards, along with simple suggestions on how to finish the forging job so as to make it convincing. The Nazis were especially subject to this kind of attack, since German methodical bookkeeping required a large number of documents to be in the possession of each citizen. Falsification of any of these made the German officials go mad with confusion.

To a country suffering from too much policing, the transmission by black propaganda of facsimile personal-identity cards in large numbers would be welcomed by many common citizens and would keep the enemy police procedure at a high pitch of futile haste. The essence of this, as of all good black propaganda, is to confuse the enemy authorities while winning the thankfulness of the enemy people—preferably while building up the myth within the enemy country that large, well-organized groups of revolutionists are ready to end the war when their time comes.

If white propaganda is to be compared to incendiary bombing, in that it ultimately affects the enemy armed services by disorganizing the homeland behind them, black propaganda may be compared to the tinfoil strips used in anti-radar. Black propaganda strikes directly at enemy security. It gives him too much to do, and thus increases the chances for agents down on the ground to succeed in their lonely, dangerous work.

Procurement can be either through direct governmental manufacture of the finished product, or by subcontracting to nongovernmental agencies. Propaganda films normally make a point of displaying the military prowess and civic virtue of the distributor.

Officially distributed films are, however, almost always overshadowed by pure entertainment films. The wartime official movie can penetrate no deeper than can the unofficial picture. Financial and commercial control, plus censorship, limits the periphery into which motion-picture showings can be extended. Often the private film will be shown when a public one would be suppressed. And in time of peace, the propaganda movie has ever sharper competition from its private competitors. Few propaganda movies have ever achieved the spectacular impact of some private films in portraying the American way of life. Tahitians, Kansu men, Hindus and Portuguese would probably agree unanimously in preferring the USA of Laurel and Hardy to the USA of strong-faced men building dams and teaching better chicken-raising.

Only rarely does the cinema penetrate enemy territory or reach clandestine audiences. Its direct contribution to critical-zone psychological warfare is therefore slight. Perhaps television may in course of time combine attention-holding with transmissibility.

CHAPTER 13
Operations Against Troops

In every instance of systematic American use of psychological warfare against enemy troops during World War II, affirmative results were discerned after the operation had been in effect for a short while. Figure 46 shows the consummation of the troop propaganda program; these Germans are surrendering and they carry the Allied leaflets with them. By the latter phases of the liberation of France, 90 per cent of the enemy prisoners reported that they had seen or possessed Allied leaflets and the most famous leaflet of them all, the celebrated Passierschein (see figure 4) came to be as familiar to the Germans as their own paper money.41 Since every enemy who surrenders is one less man to root out or destroy at a cost of life to one's own side, the sharp upswing of enemy surrenders was a decided military gain.

Two separate types of psychological reaction are to be sought in the enemy soldier's mind. The first consists of a general lowering of his morale or efficiency even when he is not in a position to perform any overt act, such as surrendering, which would hurt his side and help ours. This may be called MO, or morale operations. The second type of action is overt action (surrendering, deserting his post of duty, mutinying) which can be induced only if the appeal is expertly timed.

Operations against troops must be based on the objective military situation. Suffering and exertion increase realism; plain soldiers are not apt to be talked over by propaganda unless the propaganda is carefully cued to their actual situation. All propaganda should be based on fact; propaganda to troops must be based not merely on fact, but must show shrewd appreciative touches of understanding the troops' personal conditions. Propaganda is not much use to a nation undergoing abject defeat, for the troops on the victorious side will be buoyed up by the affirmation of victory from their own eyes.

Troop propaganda must therefore aim at eventual willing capture of the individual—not at surrender by his individual initiative. It must implant the notion that he may eventually be trapped, and that if that happens he should give up. The propaganda must not meet the soldier's loyalty in a head-on collision but must instead give the enemy soldier the opportunity of rationalizing himself out of the obligations of loyalty ("true loyalty requires survival and therefore surrender"). The steps, therefore, needed for good propaganda to actual combat troops include the following:

• first, the notion that the enemy soldier may have to surrender as his side loses or retreats ("other [named] units have surrendered, with so-and-so many men; you will have to, too");
• second, themes which make the enemy soldier believe that an all-out effort is wasted or misapplied;
• third, the idea that he or his unit may find themselves in a hopeless situation soon;
• fourth, identifying the next authentically bad situation with the "hopeless" situation;
• fifth, concrete instructions for the actual surrender.42

Figure 52: Basic Types: Troop Morale. Leaflets may be aimed at (1) morale, (2) news, (3) action. Morale leaflets neither communicate news nor call for specific action. Rather, they pave the way for action. Many of the previous illustrations have been of this type. This one is a troop morale leaflet used by the puppet Free India Army on their own men, who were discouraged by the self-evident lack of matériel and numbers. (Singapore, about 1944.)

Figure 53: Paired Morale Leaflets. The Christmas card showing the Nativity was dropped by General MacArthur's psychological warfare people on the Filipinos. The Christmas cards with bells were prepared by the Japanese for the U.S. Army. The former were designed to cheer on the Filipinos; the latter, to depress the Americans with the defeatist messages inside the cards.

Morale operations on the white side included such items as the following:

• Sending mournful poetry leaflets to Japanese units which were known to be demoralized for lack of home furlough (China Theater);
• Dropping beautiful colored pictures of luscious Japanese victuals on starving troops (North Burma);
• Showing the Japanese Sad Sack in a cartoon, fighting everywhere while his officers get all the liquor, all the food, all the girls, and all the glory, while the common soldier ends up cremated (Southwest Pacific);
• Demonstrating that the Nazi pets on the German High Command have disrupted the splendid German military tradition and have thrown out the really competent professional generals (Soviet-German front);
• Pinning the nickname, Der Sterber (roughly, "Old Let's-go-get-killed!"), on a German general who had boasted of his willingness to expend personnel (Anglo-American and Soviet radio);
• Telling the German troops they were dying for a cause already lost (Italy);
• Reporting back to the Germans the statements made by prisoners, to the effect they were damned glad that they were out of the fighting (France);
• Telling the Japanese on Attu and Kiska that just as surely as the kiri leaf, symbol of death, would fall in the autumn, they too would fall (North Pacific);
• Telling the Japanese homeland and troops that the Japanese Emperor had loved peace but that the militarists had dragged the Sacred Empire into war ("Peaceful is Morning in the Shrine Garden" leaflet; designed for Aleutians, used over Japan);
• Telling the Chinese in China that the Americans would soon cut the Japanese conquered empire in two with Asiatic landings, and then dropping the leaflet, written in simple Chinese which could be figured out by Japanese, on the Japanese troops (China);
• Congratulating imaginary agents in ostensible code over the voice radio for the excellent work they have allegedly done in the enemy home country (all theaters).

Figure 54: Troop Morale Leaflet, Grey. This German leaflet from the Italian front attempts to remind American troops of the bonus troubles of 1932—a year in which most of the American soldiers were still in school. Only to older men could the appeal carry much weight. The drawing and typography are distinctively German. In terms of source, this leaflet is grey.

Figure 55: Chinese Communist Civilian Morale Leaflet. This leaflet attempts to raise peasant morale while calling in general terms for economic action. It shows a peasant family welcoming home the father, who has been made a Hero of Labor. (Given the author by Political Department, Border Area Government, at Yenan in September 1944.)

Figure 56: General Morale: Matched Themes. The American leaflet and Japanese one both show the same map with the same event—cutting of the enemy lifeline. In each case, the event is alleged to be news. However, the purpose of the leaflet is to depress the morale of all enemies who see it and to raise the morale of all friends.

Figure 57: The Unlucky Japanese Sad Sack. This morale pamphlet was used on the Japanese in South and Southwest Pacific. While it never produced any startling results on them, it did no harm. The pictures are done by a qualified Japanese artist. The pamphlet tells the story of the Japanese common soldier whose officers get everything and give him nothing except a cremation box and memorial tablet.

The category "morale leaflets" covers all leaflets which neither call for immediate action, nor are designed primarily to convey news as such.

Morale operations, to be effective, must be aimed at the actual, specific morale with which they are concerned. Well fed troops cannot be frightened by the remote prospect of starvation. Well officered troops cannot be induced to mutiny. Troops with good mail service cannot be made homesick. However, weak points in the enemy organization can and do provide targets for morale operations. The defeat situation imposes tremendous strain on both the individual soldier and on officers in positions of responsibility. At such times, disunity rises to the surface, rumors spread more readily, and propaganda operations against morale can have devastating effect. (Allied psychological warfare against Germans in 1944-45 was aimed both at general officers and at the mass of the German troops—operations against the officers being founded on the common-sense premise that if large-scale German surrenders were sought, they could best be obtained by influencing those Germans who had the authority to surrender.)

Figure 58: Civilian Personal Mail. A common stunt in black or grey morale propaganda is the printing of facsimile personal letters. The letter shown at left is given in the original German form, along with its English twin which was—as usual—prepared for administrative clearance, records, and information. (Europe, Allied, 1944-45.)

Figure 59: Basic Types: Newspapers. Newspapers were prepared by almost every belligerent for almost every other. The examples shown above are Luftpost (SHAEF for Germans) and Rakkasan News (USAFPA for Japanese). Each newspaper copies the form of enemy civilian newspapers. The gross circulation of these airborne papers reached in some cases up into the millions.

A curious point developed. German morale in the higher grades was worse than in the lower. In the very last year of the war, despite the terrible air raids on their homeland behind them, the German troops on the Western front underwent only slight morale deterioration—in comparison with what they should have undergone had their morale borne a direct relationship to the strategic position of Germany as a whole. On the other hand, the morale among general officers and staff officers became wretched. The putsch of the generals the previous summer was merely a foretaste of the demoralization of the German higher command.

This unusual situation arose from the fact that the National Socialist propaganda machinery was still working on the masses of the troops. The political officers still made speeches. The troops were given pep talks, information about the war (hopelessly distorted information, but information none the less), and promises of privileges and comforts which—while they rarely materialized—were cheering. Simultaneously, German army discipline in the Prussian tradition, never known to be wishy-washy or weak, was sharply stiffened. Furthermore, the plain soldiers carried over to the months of defeat those propaganda attitudes which they had been taught in the prewar and war years by Hitler's incessant domestic propaganda.

Figure 60: Basic Types: Spot News Leaflets. Spot news often makes better propaganda if handled while still fresh than if carried in newspapers or morale leaflets later on. The examples above were used against the Germans. News is given on one side of the leaflet, and is dropped while the news is still news; the other side has a propaganda appeal reading, in effect, "You must choose for yourself. Die for the Party or live for yourself!"

In contrast with common troops, the officers had the professional skill to understand the advantages possessed by the Allied armies. The officers knew enough about global and continental strategy, about the immediate strategy of the Western front, about economic factors and so on, to see that the situation was genuinely bad. Furthermore, the officer class had been less indoctrinated in the first place—many of them having personally despised the Nazis while welcoming Naziism as a means of getting the "cattle," the common people, into line behind the Wehrmacht—and those of them concerned with propaganda naturally became critical of all propaganda, including their own government's, and communicated their criticisms to their brother officers.

Figure 61: Basic Types: Civilian Action. Desired civilian action can often be obtained by the use of clear instructions transmitted in leaflet form. This leaflet calls on the people of Alsace, Lorraine and Luxembourg to stay away from German communication lines, not to work for the Germans, and to make careful notes of atrocities which the Germans may commit.

German defenses against Allied psychological warfare worked. The German troops fought on when they had no business fighting, when their own generals thought it was time to quit and held out only because the S.S. and Gestapo promised ready death to any high officer who even whispered the word, "Defeat!"

This German defensive success was based on two factors:

• (1) The good condition of the German troops in terms of food, supply, communications, and weapons;
• (2) The coordination of all morale services for the purpose of defensive psychological warfare.

A common Landser, tough and ready in a whole division full of well fed, well armed men, could not be expected to undergo despair because freight-car loadings hundreds of miles away had dropped to zero. He might see that the Luftwaffe was less in evidence; he might grumble about mail, or about having to use horse transport, but as long as he could see that his own unit was getting on all right, it was hard to persuade him that defeat was around the corner. In World War I, the German troops at the time of surrender were much better off than most of them thought they were; in World War II, they thought they were better off than they actually were. The Germans may not have been in perfect shape, but they were incomparably better off than the starving scarecrows with whom Generalissimo Chiang was trying to hold back the Japanese in West Hunan or the Americans who had fought despair, fever and Japanese—all three at once—on Bataan.

Along with their relatively good immediate condition, which masked and hid from them the strategic deterioration of the Reich to their rear, the German troops had the services of morale officers who were actually defensive psychological warfare operators.

In some units (more on the Eastern front than the Western) the Germans had PK units—Propagandakompanie, or propaganda companies. These were organizationally very interesting. They combined the functions of a combat propaganda company—printing, radio work, interrogation of prisoners, etc.—with the job of morale builders. Their services were available not only for use against the enemy, but for aid to the German troops themselves. Since they were currently informed of Allied propaganda lines, they were able to distribute counteracting propaganda at short notice and were even capable, on occasion, of forestalling Allied propaganda themes in advance.

Defensive psychological warfare in the Wehrmacht and, so far as it is known from Russian articles and fiction, in the Red Army as well, depended on unit-by-unit indoctrination with contempt of the enemy, mistrust of his news facilities, fear of his political aims, and hatred for the whole enemy mentality. Propaganda officers, countersubversive operatives, public relations men, and information-education officers were either in the same office or were in fact the same men. Combination of functions made possible the use of flexible counteracting propaganda.

Most of this counteracting propaganda was not counterpropaganda, technically speaking. It was not designed against Allied propaganda, but for German morale. Morale-building was not left to occasional recreational facilities, newspapers for troops, USO entertainment and the like, but was compelled through the use of internal espionage, affirmative presentation of the German case, and unified informational operations. This German tactical defensive psychological warfare was neither a total success nor a total failure; insofar as it helped the Wehrmacht hold out, it aided the last-ditch Nazi war effort.

Figure 62: Basic Types: Labor Recruitment. On occasion, civilian labor becomes a highly critical factor even in an area of active operations. Leaflets can urge labor to strike against the enemy; they can also induce labor to come over and get to work. This leaflet was dropped on the Burmese, Shans, and Kachins, showing all the good things of life, promising high wages and bonuses and adding that, anyhow, it was patriotic. Come work for the Allies!

The American army did not employ defensive psychological warfare in World War II. Troop indoctrination was extremely spotty. American morale remained good, not because it was made good by professionals who knew their job, but because Providence and the American people had brought up a generation of young men who started out well and—since the situation never approached hopelessness—kept on going with their spirits high.

For the future, the American and British armies face the problem of devising arrangements whereby within the limits of a free society soldiers can be affirmatively indoctrinated in the course of operations. USO, Red Cross, public relations, information and education at home, morale staffs in the theaters, Armed Forces Radio Service, OWI, the American press and the overseas military papers—these went their separate and uncorrelated ways without doing any harm, last time. If the next war starts, as it may, with an initial interchange of terrifying strategic bombardments, the morale situation may be inherently less healthy. Wise planning would provide, perhaps, a single chain of command for public relations, military propaganda and morale services—extending this all the way down to the platoon, if necessary—to make sure that the "national line" on any given topic is explained, presented, repeated, and (if necessary) enforced.

Such defensive psychological warfare might work against sensational enemy black operations, against attempted political division, and against fabrication of the news—provided it was carried out in an expert fashion. It could not change morale deterioration resulting from practical deterioration within the troop unit itself, except to decelerate the rate of decline. It would not make up for poor leadership. Nothing makes up for poor leadership.

Defensive psychological warfare at higher levels remains a self-contradiction. As pointed out above (page 159), good psychological warfare is never directed merely against other psychological warfare. It is directed at the mind of the target audience, at creating attitudes of belief or doubt which lead to the desired action. Getting and keeping attention is one of its major missions, and psychological warfare which starts by fixing attention on the enemy presentation is doomed from the start. One of the most conspicuous examples of this was President Roosevelt's sensational message of 15 April 1939, addressed personally to the German Chancellor, Hitler, asking that Hitler promise not to invade 31 countries which Roosevelt listed by name. Defensive in tone, the message gave Hitler the chance to answer over the German world-wide radio while his Reichstag laughed its derision and applause. President Roosevelt's message was decent, sane, humane; it was inspiring to the people who already agreed with him; but it created no attitude in the Germans to whom it was addressed. A sharp, bullying, implicitly threatening speech from President Roosevelt might have penetrated the German mentality of the time, even Hitler's; reasonable reproach did not work. It was not aimed at creating any specific emotional reaction in the German mind.

Finally, it must be mentioned that defensive psychological warfare must include countersubversion and counterespionage. The Cheka—Soviet secret police in its first form—once boasted that "capitalist trouble-makers and saboteurs" could not long function in Russia because the countersubversive police were over a hundred million strong. What they meant was that they had trained and bullied the population into reporting anyone and everyone who seemed out of line. An attitude of popular cooperation with countersubversive agencies can be achieved only when those agencies are efficient, respected, and properly presented to the public. Psychological warfare can defend its homeland against enemy operations in kind only if it creates an awareness of propaganda and makes the public critical of attitudes or opinions adverse to national policy. Inexpert official tactics, or the general denunciation of dissent, makes the citizen believe, with Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, that "... the law is a ass, a idiot."