It was impossible not to believe in her good intentions.
Old Benjamin, the donkey, seemed unchanged since the Rebellion. He did his work slowly as in Jones’s time. He never shirked and never volunteered for extra work either. He expressed no opinion about the Rebellion and its results. When the others asked him whether he was happy or not, he said only “Donkeys live a long time. None of you saw dead donkey, right?”
On Sundays there was no work. Breakfast was an hour later than usual. After breakfast there was a ceremony. First came the hoisting of the flag. Snowball found in the harness-room an old green tablecloth of Mrs. Jones’s. He painted on it a hoof and a horn in white. This was the flag in the farmhouse garden. The flag was green, Snowball explained, to represent the green fields of England. And the hoof and horn signified the future Republic of the Animals. This Republic will arise when the human race is finally disappeared.
After that all the animals trooped into the big barn for a general assembly. It was called the Meeting. Here they planned the work of the next week and put forward some resolutions. It was always the pigs who put forward the resolutions. The other animals understood how to vote, but they never thought of their own resolutions.
Snowball and Napoleon were the most active in the debates. But these clever pigs were never in agreement. Whatever suggestion either of them made, the other was against it. Even when the animals resolved to set aside the small paddock behind the orchard as a home of rest for the old animals, there was a stormy debate over the correct retiring age[15] for each class of animal. The Meeting always ended with the song 'Beasts of England’.
The harness-room was a headquarters for the pigs. Here, in the evenings, they studied necessary arts from books which they brought out of the farmhouse. Snowball also organized the other animals into Animal Committees. He was indefatigable at this. He formed the Egg Production Committee for the hens, the Clean Tails League for the cows, the Wild Comrades’ Re-education Committee (the object of this was to tame the rats and rabbits), the Whiter Wool Movement for the sheep, and various others. Besides that there were classes in reading and writing.
But these projects were a failure. The attempt to tame the wild creatures, for instance, broke down almost immediately. If someone treated the wild animals with generosity, they simply took advantage of it. The cat joined the Re-education Committee and was very active in it for some days. One day she sat on a roof and talked to some sparrows. She told them that all animals were now comrades and invited sparrows to come and perch on her paw. But the sparrows kept their distance.
The reading and writing classes, however, were a great success. By the autumn almost every animal on the farm was literate.
As for the pigs, they read and wrote perfectly. The dogs learned to read fairly well, but were not interested in this art. They read the Seven Commandments only. Muriel, the goat, read better than the dogs, and sometimes read to the others in the evenings from scraps of newspaper which she found on the rubbish heap.
Benjamin read as well as a pig, but never exercised his faculty. He said, this was useless. Clover learned the alphabet, but to put words together was a problem. Boxer knew the first four letters of the alphabet only. He wrote A, B, C, D, in the dust with his great hoof, and then stared at the letters. Sometimes he shook his forelock, and tried to remember what came next. He never succeeded. On several occasions, indeed, he learned E, F, G, H, but he suddenly forgot A, B, C, and D. Finally he decided to be content with the first four letters. He wrote them once or twice every day to refresh his memory.
Mollie learned six letters which spelt her own name. She made these letters from some twigs, and then decorated them with flowers and walked round them.
The other animals on the farm knew the letter A only. And this was enough. The stupider animals, such as the sheep, hens, and ducks, were unable to learn the Seven Commandments by heart. Snowball offered to reduce the Seven Commandments to a single maxim: “Four legs good, two legs bad.” This, he said, contained the essential principle of Animalism. The birds at first objected, since they also had two legs, but Snowball said,
“A bird’s wing, comrades, is an organ of propulsion and not of manipulation. Therefore it is a leg. The mark of man is the HAND, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.”
The birds did not understand Snowball’s long words, but they accepted his explanation. All the humbler animals began to learn the new maxim by heart. Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad, was inscribed on the end wall of the barn, above the Seven Commandments and in bigger letters. The animals liked this maxim very much. Often as they lay in the field they started to bleat “Four legs good, two legs bad! Four legs good, two legs bad!” for hours.
Napoleon was not interested in Snowball’s committees. He said that the education of the young was more important. Jessie and Bluebell gave birth to nine sturdy puppies. Napoleon took them away from their mothers. He will be responsible for their education. He took them up into a loft. It was possible to enter the loft by a ladder from the harness-room only. He kept them there in seclusion and the rest of the farm soon forgot their existence.
What about the milk? It was mixed every day into the pigs’ mash. The early apples ripened, and the grass of the orchard was littered with windfalls. The animals wanted to share the apples equally. One day, however, they heard an order,
“You must collect all the windfalls and bring them to the harness-room for the pigs!”
At this some of the other animals murmured, but it was no use. All the pigs were in full agreement on this point, even Snowball and Napoleon. Squealer made the necessary explanations to the others.
“Comrades!” he cried. “You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are full of selfishness? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. The object is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (Science proved that, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary for a pig. We pigs are brainworkers[16]. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we watch over your welfare. We drink that milk and eat those apples for your sake only. Do you know what will happen if we pigs die? Jones will come back! Yes, Jones will come back! Surely, comrades,” cried Squealer and skipped from side to side and whisked his tail, “surely there is nobody who wants to see Jones here!”
He was absolutely right. Nobody wanted to see Jones again. So the animals had nothing to say. The pigs’ health was obviously very important. So they animals agreed without further argument to reserve the milk and the windfall apples (and also the main crop of apples) for the pigs alone.
Chapter IV
Soon the news of the Animal Farm spread across half the county. Every day Snowball and Napoleon sent out pigeons and instructed them to mingle with the animals on neighbouring farms, to tell them the story of the Rebellion, and to teach them the tune of 'Beasts of England’.
Most of this time Mr. Jones spent in the taproom of the Red Lion at Willingdon. He complained to anyone who listened of the monstrous injustice he suffered. Some stupid animals turned him out of his property. The other farmers listened to him, but they did give him much help. It was lucky that the owners of the two farms which adjoined Animal Farm did not like each other. One of them, which was called Foxwood, was a large old-fashioned farm, with all its pastures and its hedges in a disgraceful condition. Its owner, Mr. Pilkington, was an easy-going[17] gentleman farmer who liked to fish or hunt more.
The other farm, which was called Pinchfield, was smaller. Its owner was a Mr. Frederick, a tough, shrewd man. He was perpetually involved in lawsuits. These two disliked each other much. It was difficult for them to come to any agreement.
Nevertheless, the rebellion on Animal Farm frightened them. They wanted to prevent their own animals from learning too much about it. At first they laughed to scorn the idea of animal managers on the farm for themselves. The Manor Farm (they called it the Manor Farm; they hated the name “Animal Farm”) will rapidly starve to death, of course. But the time passed and the animals did not evidently starve to death. So Frederick and Pilkington began to talk