posts, were hardly necessary.
Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with
Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now
completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books,
pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs -- all had to be rectified at
lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that
the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to
the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in
existence anywhere. The work was overwhelming, all the more so because the
processes that it involved could not be called by their true names.
Everyone in the Records Department worked eighteen hours in the twenty-
four, with two three-hour snatches of sleep. Mattresses were brought up
from the cellars and pitched all over the corridors: meals consisted of
sandwiches and Victory Coffee wheeled round on trolleys by attendants from
the canteen. Each time that Winston broke off for one of his spells of
sleep he tried to leave his desk clear of work, and each time that he
crawled back sticky-eyed and aching, it was to find that another shower of
paper cylinders had covered the desk like a snowdrift, halfburying the
speakwrite and overflowing on to the floor, so that the first job was
always to stack them into a neat enough pile to give him room to work. What
was worst o