Politics & Power Quote by H.G. Wells

Wells smuggles a provocation into the language of a parlor game: in politics, the winning move is radical transparency. The slyness is in the phrase "strangely enough". He knows the reader’s default assumption is the opposite - that politics is bluffing, misdirection, backroom leverage. By conceding that assumption, he earns the right to flip it. The line works because it treats openness not as virtue-signaling but as strategy, a way of controlling the board by refusing the usual currency of insinuation.

The card-table metaphor also reframes power. If everyone is playing poker, the best player is the best liar. If you force the game into something closer to open-handed rummy, you change what competence even looks like. Laying cards face up shifts attention from personalities and whispered motives to choices that can be argued about in public. It’s a challenge to the cultivated mystique of statesmen: legitimacy becomes a product of visibility, not pedigree.

Context matters: Wells wrote as a futurist and democratic evangelist in an era when mass politics, propaganda, and modern war were rewriting the relationship between citizens and the state. After the mechanized carnage and information management of the early 20th century, secrecy isn’t merely a tactic; it’s an engine of catastrophe. His implicit bet is that openness disciplines both the politician and the public: it reduces the room for conspiratorial myth-making while making leaders accountable to the consequences of their own stated aims.

There’s irony, too. Wells knows transparency can be performative. Even face-up cards can be arranged. The line dares you to notice the difference.