Animal farm / Скотный двор. Уровень 2

So the Battle of the Cowshed… I believe the time will come when we shall find that Snowball’s part in it was much exaggerated. Discipline, comrades, iron discipline! That is the watchword for today. One false step, and our enemies will be here. Surely, comrades, you do not want to see Jones again!”

Once again this argument was unanswerable. Certainly the animals did not want Jones back. Boxer thought and said:

“If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right.”

And from then on he adopted the maxim, “Napoleon is always right,” in addition to his private motto of “I will work harder.

”

By this time the spring ploughing began. The shed where Snowball drew his plans of the windmill was shut up. Every Sunday morning at ten o’clock the animals assembled in the big barn to receive their orders for the week. The skull of old Major was disinterred from the orchard and set up on a stump at the foot of the flagstaff, beside the gun. The animals must go past the skull in a reverent manner and only after that enter the barn.

Nowadays they did not sit all together. Napoleon, with Squealer and another pig named Minimus, who had a remarkable gift – he composed songs and poems – sat on the front of the platform. Nine young dogs formed a semicircle round them. The other pigs sat behind. The rest of the animals sat in the main body of the barn and faced them. Napoleon read out the orders for the week in a gruff style, and after 'Beasts of England’, all the animals dispersed.

On the third Sunday after Snowball’s expulsion, the animals were surprised. Napoleon had something to announce. The windmill will be built! He changed his mind and did not explain it. This extra task means very hard work, it will be necessary to reduce their rations. A special committee of pigs will work on it. The building of the windmill, with various other improvements, will take two years.

That evening Squealer explained privately to the other animals that Napoleon was never in reality opposed to the windmill.

On the contrary, it was he who advocated it in the beginning. Snowball actually stole the plan of the windmill from Napoleon’s papers. The windmill was, in fact, Napoleon’s own creation. Why, then, asked somebody, did he speak so strongly against it? Here Squealer looked very sly. That, he said, was Comrade Napoleon’s cunning. It was a manoeuvre to get rid of Snowball, who was a dangerous criminal.