ignorant
fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic
triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality
appropriate to a state of war. It 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
activitie