Every respectable nation has a Ministry of Something Important. The Republic of Grand Intentions had a Ministry of Agriculture, although its farmers regularly demonstrated outside it with empty sacks; a Ministry of Labour, where very few people had ever laboured; a Ministry of Health, which advised citizens to remain healthy while hospitals ran short of beds; and, naturally, a Ministry of Peace, housed in the largest government building in the capital and consulted mainly on ceremonial occasions. It also had a Department of Necessary Sacrifices, an institution so indispensable that nobody could remember when it had been established. Its official responsibility was to explain why sons had been sent to distant borders, daughters were working in factories producing military supplies, villages had been reduced to rubble, and bread had become a luxury. Above the entrance, in letters of gold, was the departmental motto: YOUR SUFFERING IS PROOF OF YOUR PATRIOTISM.
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