"The first casualty when war comes is truth."
— Hiram Johnson

January 1, 1970

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Members of the United States SenateRepublican Party (United States) politiciansUnited States presidential candidates, 1920Governors of CaliforniaUnited States presidential candidates, 1924
Original Language: English

Sources

Widely attributed to Johnson, but without any confirmed citations of original source: "The first casualty when war comes is truth," remarked Hiram Johnson, "and whenever an individual nation seeks to coerce by force of arms another, it always acts, and insists that it acts in self-defense" (Locomotive Engineers Journal, February 1929, p. 109). Arthur Ponsonby earlier said: "When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty", but the first recorded use seems to be by Philip Snowden in his introdu