Matilda told such Dreadful Lies, It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes; Her Aunt, who from her Earliest Youth, Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth, … - Hilaire Belloc

This is what seems to me the grave, perhaps the gravest, evil of our time. For history is always somewhat false, and by its falsehood always somewhat warps judgment; but history written on the basis of deliberate falsehood and of repeated and prolonged suppression would be another matter altogether. It would not be history at all.
Now history is the memory of the race; and a man without memory is no longer a man.

The poet Hilaire Belloc included the following poem about the dodo in his Bad Child's Book of Beasts from 1896:

The Dodo used to walk around,
And take the sun and air.
The sun yet warms his native ground –
The Dodo is not there!

The voice which used to squawk and squeak
Is now for ever dumb –
Yet may you see his bones and beak
All in the Mu-se-um.[147]

Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold,
Exceedingly bold indeed;
And the masses of doubt that are floating about
Would smother a mortal creed.
But we that sit in a sturdy youth,
And still can drink strong ale,
Oh—let us put it away to infallible truth,
That always shall prevail. [semi-chorus:]
And thank the Lord
For the temporal sword,
And howling heretics too;
And all good things
Our Christendom brings,
But especially barley brew!