The Maoriland Worker WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1918. BRIBED WITH GERMANY'S GOLD?
Maoriland Worker, Volume 9, Issue 847, 2 January 1918, Page 4
About this newspaper
The Maoriland Worker WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, 1918. BRIBED WITH GERMANY'S GOLD?
?--<* c »~e The arrest of M. Paul 8010 in France on September 29 and the evelations which have since followed should make people in Austraasia, as well as in England, ask some questions. Paul 8010 is a frenchman of Levantine extraction and was hi 1914 created a Pasha )y the Khedive. The charge against 8010 Pasha is that he acted as 3 β^auy's agent in bribing certain French newspapers. The outstanding feature ox the revelations is that the papers 8010 is said to have bribed with German gold are all jingo papers. "Here is jiroof," says "Forward" (Glasgow, October 15), "that the French jingo press lias been financed by the German Government for its own ulterior purposes—the idea being that the blood and murder stuff in the French Press could be quoted in Germany, and so keep the German people lined up in a war of 'defence. , " There is a significant silence on the part of the capitalist press all over the world about the real facts of the 8010 exposure. The "Manchester Guardian" of October 5, however, remarks that 8010 Pasha has not been shown to be connected with any Pacifist propaganda. "On the contrary, of the two papers that he is known to have subsidised one, the 'Journal,' has never ceased to demand war to the knife and more 'guns and munitions,' and the other, the 'Rappel,' to which M. 8010 gave £16,000, is THE ORGAN OF THE COMMITTEE FOR ANNEXING THE LEFT BANK OF THE RHINE. So, if M. Bolo's money really came from the German Government, it must be assumed that the Government wished to encourage the French annexationists in order to stiffen the backs of the German people—a hypothesis quite plausible. This is the view of the 'Intransigeant, , which says this evening that M. 8010 found in subsidising the 'Rappel' an excellent opportunity for aiding German propaganda, since this campaign., made in perfectly good faith by patriotic writers, who themselves, of course, received nothing, was intended by its instigator merely to foment in Germany the polemics of the Pan-Germanists. This admission on the part of the 'IntransigeasV which has itself taken part in the campaign in question, that the extravagant demands of French jingoes have played into the hands of the Pan-Germanists, is significant, if tardy.'' Our esteemed Scots contemporary, "Forward," directs attention to the fact that before the war Dr. Karl Liebknecht proved in the Reichstag that the Krupps firm was running French jingo papers, which demanded more munitions for France, and Krupps then went to the German Government with, cuttings from the Krupps-subsidised French papers, and scared the German Government into ordering further stocks of guns and shells! Following hard on the heels of the 8010 exposure comes the announcement of the indictment of M. Caillaux, ex-Premier of France, on a charge of treason; and the altogether unscrupulous capitalist press of this country has not hesitated to publish the lie that "M. Caillaux was interested in the Pacifist paper, 'Le Bonnet Rouge.' " The principal Italian Socialist paper, "Avanti" (which is in a position to know) couples "Le Bonnet Rouge" and the "Journal" together as militarist organs, and declares that the fact that both these jingo papers were supplied with German money proves that "the campaign of hatred against the Central Powers was utilised by German militarists as .an argument with which they sought to prove to the German .people the necessity of remaining firm and nationally united.'' The question now arises: How far has this policy of buying vg '■patriotic" newspapers and persons with German gold been extended? To what extent is it still operating? How far does its ramifications extend? The London "Daily Mail"—that literary atrocity controlled by Northcliffe (who only yesterday, so to speak, was threatening France that Britain would drag her in the blood and the mud and give her colonies to Germany!)—is asking: "Who is the British Bolo?" and is suggesting with characteristic dishonorableness that the Pacifists are being paid from Germany. But who does not remember that only a brief period prior to the war the "Daily Mail" itself was carrying on in England exactly the sort of propaganda that Krupps was bribing certain French papers to cany on in France ? And who would need to be reminded that the present jingo campaign of the "Daily Mail" bears striking resemblance to the furious jingoism of the "Journal" and the "Rappel," now proved to have been bribed with German gold to make propaganda against Germany? Is it not also possible that in ALL countries —even in New Zealan —certain papers which flaunt a virulently aggressive jingoism may be receiving German gold for the work they are doing? And those frenzied advocates of Prussian Conscription in Australasia and other countries, whose linguistic violence and administrative frightfulness has done so much to create internal discord and to bring certain communities to the very verge of revolution, is it not possible that they are in the pay of the very clever and abominably unscrupulous elements in control of the German military machine? One of the surprises the future may have in store for a certain island continent may prove to be a revelation concerning the driving power that generated the platform hysteria and the violent abusiveness and the torrent of invective and wild charges against the opponents of Prussianism, which have flowed from the foaming lips of a certain angry marionette .f the enemies of human freedom. [Who knows 8
