everyone, or nearly
everyone, secretly hated the Party and would break the rules if he thought
it safe to do so. But she refused to believe that widespread, organized
opposition existed or could exist. The tales about Goldstein and his
underground army, she said, were simply a lot of rubbish which the Party
had invented for its own purposes and which you had to pretend to believe
in. Times beyond number, at Party rallies and spontaneous demonstrations,
she had shouted at the top of her voice for the execution of people whose
names she had never heard and in whose supposed crimes she had not the
faintest belief. When public trials were happening she had taken her place
in the detachments from the Youth League who surrounded the courts from
morning to night, chanting at intervals 'Death to the traitors!' During the
Two Minutes Hate she always excelled all others in shouting insults at
Goldstein. Yet she had only the dimmest idea of who Goldstein was and what
doctrines he was supposed to represent. She had grown up since the
Revolution and was too young to remember the ideological battles of the
fifties and sixties. Such a thing as an independent political movement was
outside her imagination: and in any case the Party was invincible. It would
always exist, and it would always be the same. You could only rebel against
it by secret disobedience or, at most, by isolated acts of violence such as
killing somebody or blowing something up.
In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less
susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some connexion to
mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that
in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily
on London were probably