The Heart of Every Bureaucrat

Thomas Fleming, author of the highly recommended Illusion of Victory, can turn a phrase as deftly as, well, Lew Rockwell. Writing of the War Data Investigation Bureau, a secret White House task force charged with countering Pope Benedict XV’s 1917 peace proposal, Fleming observes: “Although they hoped to operate in secret, the [Bureau’s] existence soon seeped through the pro-war intelligentsia’s grapevine and they were bombarded with letters from historians, political scientists, and assorted thinkers of every imaginable stripe, all eager to serve. Within a year their staff ballooned to 126, proving, if nothing else, they were a genuine government agency, with the hunger for expansion that infests the heart of every bureaucrat.”

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3:02 pm on August 14, 2003