The Falsehood Stakes
The Russians are the most unpredictable of liars, because It is often impossible to trace any connection at all between the lies they tell and the truth these lies are intended to conceal. With the Chinese you at least know that such a connection exists, however tortuous and abstruse it may be; but among the Russians, despite the sudden and disarming bursts of frankness With which they unburden their minds, you often have the feeling that you are doing one crossword puzzle with the clues belonging to another. The Germans, like the Japanese, lie readily and methodically but with only a clumsy cunning. The English. though capable of producing accomplished liars. forsake the truth with a bad conscience and a resultant lack of conviction; they have a dangerous but characteristic weak- ness for retaining, as a sort of talisman, little scraps of truth In a fabric of falsehood. Only the Irish lie in what may be called a lyrical way, soaring up from the truth like larks into the clear, pure air of fantasy.
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