SEMI-OFFICIAL

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16363, 7 November 1918, Page 4

SEMI-OFFICIAL

(By Lieut. H. 11. "Wakefield.)

The ''Cologne Gazette" has recontly published n bitter and vicious attack ou Gorman semi-official voracity. It declares that everything published as semi-official has been shamelessly and I'utilely false. At last alter four years a German journal has iiit on that characteristic of their system ot' government vincn has betrayed them nioro than any other. Tho German semi-official system is peculiarly its own. It consists of spreading dchberato and tendencious lu«, and giving them an official tinge, but not quite official authority. It is a system typical of tiioir pedantic false cunning. Inevitably th© German people for a long timo believed implicitly in information so disseminated, and all their expert writers adopted it as their text. .For a long time tho Germans believed that tho label somi-official stamped all such information as reliable; now thoy know it was merely used as a covering: for the crudest lies. That is tho explanation of the "Dont in our homo front." They aro passing through a phase of intense and dreadful enlightenment. The Allies have been seini-officially annihilated twenty times over. Thoy have Komi-offieially had all their tanks itestroyed. Semi-official ly all their available tonnage is at the bottom of

tho sea, together with a largo proportion of their battle-floet, Scmi-officially we have been starving for eighteen months. (Wo are now "short of marmalade.") Foch's reserves wore semiofficially used lip by June. Semi-offi-cially not a single American soldier would cross tho Atlautic, partly because

of tho "U" boats, partly because of the bitter anti-war feeling in tho U.S.A. Semi-officially even if they came they would bo an unarmed rabble. And so on and so on and so on, through the dreary list of silly lies. Now, the Germans know they were lies. 'They seo their armies in lull retreat, having lost 150,000 prisoners in six weeks. Thoy see a vastly increased and rejuvenised Allied army helped by I many American divisions in hot and invincible pursuit. They seo from this that the "U" boat has utterly They soo themselves without a friend in tho world, steadily breaking up through being submitted to an intolerable They aro being bombed, and they are not bombing back. No wonder their spirit is failing them, m> wonder that poor old mountebank Hindenburghasto put his name to four columns of hysterical twaddle. Surely if Germans read Allied leaflets with such demoralising avidity it must bo bccause

thoy wish, to know tho truth, which they cannot obtain in their own Government-ridden journals. Why do the Allies take no notice of German leaflets ? They drop plenty. That is the deadly unanswerable question. It is significant that every quotation which Hindcnburg uses from these leaflets is absolutely true. German prisoners aro well treated. America's intervention has proved decisive. We are building more ships than we sink, and so on. The German soldier has to read his enemy's leaflets to learn the truth and lie knows it. A few days before the German defeat and retreat from tho Switch Line, von Ardenno declared that th© German retreat was over. Another writer declared that the Germans would mako a decisive stand on the Vis-Queant line. By the time the paper appeared in England we were- four railed past that line. I In tho Bapaume fighting all tho German papers stated that we had suffered a heavy defeat with tho most dreadful |lo98«9. Wo published our losses, andconfounded them by so doing. Wo have just caught them out boautifully over the figures of "U" boat sinkings. They had been denied, of course. Now all these errors were made because the writers were relying on semi-official information. One always knew that this moral debacle would come one day You '.'cannot- fool all th 9 people all the time.", Hindenburg believed that vou could; but then he is hardly as wise a man as Lincoln.