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times of war.

Such practical difficulties are further compounded by the strong motive on the part of public officials to conceal the truth. The State, in order to sustain the revenue and support which it derives from the population, must give the appearance of success. Although most people will pay taxes to finance a war because of the threat of jail, many of them will resent doing so. It therefore becomes incumbent upon the State to mould public opinion in such a way as to ensure that the public does not rebel against it. Murray Rothbard explains how this is done:

"In most historical epochs, the State has... kept a tight control over religion, usually cementing a comfortable, mutually-supportive alliance with an Established Church: with the State granting the priests power and wealth, and the Church in turn teaching the subject population their divinely proclaimed duty to obey Caesar. But now that religion has lost much of its persuasive power in society, the State is often willing to let religion alone, and to concentrate on similar if looser alliances with more secular intellectuals. In either case, the State relies on control of the levers of propaganda to persuade its subjects to obey or even exalt their rulers."

Since government possesses practically unlimited resources to propagate its statist ideology, it is the single most potent source of information within any society. Not just that, but because the State controls all the levers of lawful coercion in society, it can suppress free speech and private property rights at will. In other words, not only is the State the most potent source of information, it can also suppress dissent to ensure that it is the only source of information. This has particular relevance in conflicts that occurred before the advent of the Internet, when it was not possible for the common person to easily access alternative news sources.

When prosecuting a war, the State finds it necessary to conceal its true economic costs so that citizens do not revolt. For if the general population realised how much the war was costing taxpayers, they may decide the war is not worth supporting after all. As Robert Higgs observes:

"The willingness of citizens to tolerate the costs, which must be borne if the policies are to be carried out, declines as the costs rise...Even the (initially) most popular war loses support as casualties mount, tax burdens rise, and military appetites consume more of the resources needed to produce

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