How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe the lies when they see them in print.

Karl Kraus (1874–1936), the Viennese satirist and editor of *Die Fackel* (“The Torch”), spent much of his career attacking the press, political rhetoric, and the moral evasions that enabled modern mass politics. The remark is typically cited in connection with his World War I–era polemics, when Kraus argued that newspapers and official communiqués helped manufacture consent for war by circulating distortions that were then treated as “facts.” In this climate of propaganda and censorship, Kraus portrayed diplomats and journalists as mutually reinforcing: officials seed narratives, the press prints them, and the printed word returns with the authority of public truth—even to those who originated the deception.

The epigram condenses Kraus’s critique of the feedback loop between power and media. “Diplomats lie to journalists” suggests deliberate manipulation of information by state actors; “and believe the lies when they see them in print” adds a darker irony: once a claim is published, it acquires institutional legitimacy, so even its authors can come to accept it as reality. Kraus implies that war is not only fought with weapons but prepared through language—through the conversion of rumor, spin, and self-serving falsehood into public record. The line indicts both professions: diplomacy for cynicism, journalism for credulity and complicity.