HOAX ON BERLIN

Evening Star, Issue 16663, 20 February 1918, Page 8

HOAX ON BERLIN

A LONDON JOKE TAKEN SERIOUSLY IN PRUSSIA. Three great literary "spoofs" of the past century are recorded—the "Moon Hoax" of 1836; the Carlyle discovery of German places and people with such names as "'Weissnichtwo," " Entepfuhl," "Blumine," and " Teuf elsdroeckh " ; and the letter in 'The Times' from "that great German military expert," General Von Donner und Blitzen. Since those days of literary jesting there has happened nothing better than the fall of the Berlin Press into a trap set by a writer in the 'Daily Chronicle.' The 'Chronicle' printed, in the vein of the "Dialogues of the Dead," an "Intercepted Enemy Letter," as if from the Kaiser's friend, Herr Ballin, Germany's shipping king, to Dr Rathenau, the great German industrial magnate. Kultured Berlin took it seriously, and our Amsterdam correspondent tells us the sequel. The humorless representative of the Wolff Bureau at Haniburg carried a copy of the paper to Herr Ballin. As the latter gentleman also was, apparently, unable to see the point of the thing, a ponderous denal that such a letter was -written has been issued. "It is editorially emphasised," says this amusing dementi, "that the letter was stolen, for, by admitting this, the 'Daily Chronicle' endeavours to assure for itself the benefit of extenuating circumstances for . its impertinent forgery. ... It is not a mere question of theft, but of impudent falsification. No exchange of letters, going beyond brief business communications, has taken place between Berln and Rathenau for a long time. Things must be very cheerless in England (says the Berlin denial) when such methods must be adopted to sustain the narcotic conditions into which, falsely led, the English people has been brought by unscrupulous leaders."