THE PROBLEM WITH IDIOMS

This is from a newspaper's obituary of Arthur Godman, a textbook writer who was taken prisoner by the Japanese army in WW2:

'Later, while he was working on the railway, Godman recalled how, after the discovery of illicit radio sets, a Japanese officer had summoned the officers in his camp to give them a dressing-down: "You British think we Japanese bloody fools," the man shrieked. "You think we do not know what you do. You think we do not know you are hiding radios. You think we know f*** nothing, but really we know f*** all." "We dared not laugh," Godman wrote, "as that would have been extremely foolish - and dangerous." '

(For this to work, you have to close your eyes and imagine the scene.)