"MADE IN GERMANY"

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 61, 9 September 1914, Page 6

"MADE IN GERMANY"

A common belief among Britors is that the Germans are a solid, stolid race, philosophical but unimaginative. The typical cartoon depicts "Michael, as a comfortable rotund figure, with a huge pipe. The truth is that there are many types in Germany, as in all European countries, and "slim" persons are among the Kaiser's subjects. The 'list of men who are directing Germany's war policy includes some whoso special function is fiction ; they specialise in narratives for the foreign press. Before the war began — indeed, two years ago — an English reviewer wrote that Germany would work with the pen as well as the sword in time of war. "While Uhlans and others would bo shedding blood at the front, diplomatists and others would be spilling ink. As far back^a-s 1912 it was stated that Germany's war plans included a scheme of "stuffing" the outside press. This prediction has been remarkably fulfilled. There m no harder-working division of the Gorman forces than the "fakers" who are making "news" for foreign consumption. Germany's ordinary export trade has been blocked by Britain's Navy, but its place has been taken by an extraordinary export of exaggerations and concoctions. Of course, the German public is having a full share at the feast of fiction. It is told that the Dominions are agog and alert for an opportunity to shake off the "British yoke," and it has the exclusive reading of a speech attributed to Mr. John Burns, at the Albert Hall, "prophesying the disruption of the Empire." Surely some of this stuff must be too strong even for credulous peasantry. There is evidence that the press of Mr. Hearst, in the United States, a press which is not famed for "philosophic doubt" when it obtains sensational matter, has begun to be sceptical about Count Bcrnstorff's tales. Tho experience of the German Ambassador is another example of the perils of excessive ambition. He had some success as long as he kept his imagination within bounds. He had certain circumstantial evidence to help his version of the German advance in France, and his communiques were "starred" below blade clouds of headings in various American papers. The Count was thus tempted past tho point of prudence; he had surprised America, and he yearned to stagger tho States. By taking a little thought, he added many cubits to the stature of his tall stories, but the stretching wus apparent. Tim prepo«' tsrqufiflfisg of his hftd a ■£!*■

"tancy which proclaimed the "faking" to the wide world. Count Bernstorff's earlier industry was brought to nought by his miscalculation of American gullibleness.