There may well have been an even more inaccurate military prediction than that made by the American Civil War general, John B. Sedgwick, but his reported last words ("They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist . . . ") are surely the wittiest.
It's a pity he didn't get the joke himself, although at least he has the posthumous distinction of holding the record for the quickest rebuttal of a professional opinion. In the face of stiff competition, too, including a brave effort from one of his contemporaries, General Custer, who celebrated the sight of an Indian camp at Little Big Horn with the words: "Hurrah, boys, we've got them. We'll finish them up and then go home."
It's not only the generals who get it wrong, of course. Here's a journalist, "specialising in the interpretation of international affairs", writing in the New York Sun in June 1914: "It is difficult to discuss the tragedy at Sarajevo yesterday without laying oneself open to the reproach of heartlessness. For while it is only natural to be stricken with horror at the brutal and shocking assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, it is impossible to deny that his disappearance from the scene is calculated to diminish the tenseness of the [European situation] and to make for peace."
The press is strongly represented in I Wish I Hadn't Said That, a revised edition of The Experts Speak, first published in 1984 and now out in paperback. Unfortunately, the age-old dilemma for journalists is that too many qualifications make for dull copy, a situation which gives rise to predictions like the one in a 1995 Wall Street Journal editorial, also quoted here: "Bill Clinton will lose to any Republican nominee who doesn't drool on stage." But the big consolation for reporters is that it's weather forecasters who make the mistakes people really remember, as the BBC's Michael Fish knows well. In October 1987 he told viewers: "A woman rang and said she heard a hurricane is on the way. Well . . . there isn't." The following morning, Britain was hit by the biggest storm in three centuries, causing what one press agency called "the worst devastation since the Nazi bombing blitz".
Most of the great thinkers and inventors experienced ridicule from the experts, but some inspired worse reactions than others. Take John Logie Baird, who in 1925 turned up at the offices of the Daily Express touting his invention of television. His visit inspired panic in the editor, who ordered an underling: "For God's sake go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless. Watch him . . . he may have a razor."
The book uses sleight of hand by including, as cases of experts getting it wrong, many entries which were mere lies, or propaganda: from Henry Kissinger denying all knowledge of US involvement in the coup in Chile, to the Daily Worker explaining in 1956 that the invading Soviet Army was "assisting the Hungarian people to retain their independence from imperialism". And many other entries, especially in the world of the arts, are opinions which the authors might still hold. Who's to say Tchaikovsky, were he alive today, would not be just as irritated by "that scoundrel" Brahms, as when writing his diary in 1886: "What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that his self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as genius."
I Wish I Hadn't Said That is published by HarperCollins at £5.99 in UK
