TRUTH AND PROPAGANDA

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 27 January 1923, Page 7

TRUTH AND PROPAGANDA

OCCUPATION SPELLS RUIN

CORRESPONDENT'S CANDID VIEW.

(tanSD (SBSS ASSOCIATION.—COPTIUOHT.) jfJUT&WAN - RBW ZBAIAND CABLI ASSOCIATION.') (Recewed-27th January, 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, 26th January. \ Th 3 past few days have been marked by the( most conflicting reports from the Ruhr, -varying widely according to whether they are from French or Ger- ' man sources. They differ also according to whether they are intended for the majority of the London .papers, which, support Mr. .Bonar Law's policy, or for Lord Rotbennere's group, which are so violently Francophile that they are daily accusing other dailies and •weeklies, headed by "The Times," of pro-German sympathies. : '

One special correspondent from London who . went to Essen ■ "in search of truth" says: "To be candid, there is no one dealing with that commodity in the Rhiheland just now. The French newa is handed out twice daily at General. Degoutte's headquarters. It is merely, propaganda, as also axe the German declarations that France will won, be frozen out. Personal investigation shows that the banks are open-, but doing no business, and the miners are in the pits, but hewing little coal. The whole ontpot of the coalfield is a mere tithe of the iioraoal production. The most outstanding fact is that the occupation is bringing creeping ruin to the entire region." Other writers point out that the contradictory strike reports aro due in some degree to the workers' decision not to have a simultaneous general strike, but an endless series of regional strikes, a new one beginning as its predecessor nominally ended or was reduced to "ca 'canny" working.