Lancings FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1916. THE HUN AND HIS COMMUNIQUES. Amusing, If Mendacious.

Free Lance, Volume XVI, Issue 847, 29 September 1916, Page 6

Lancings

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1916. THE HUN AND HIS COMMUNIQUES. Amusing, If Mendacious.

Here shall the Press the People's right maintain, Unawed by principle and unbribed by gain ; Here patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law. .

ANY doubt that may have, evei- existed as to Ananias and Sapphira >> having "left issue," as legal phraseology would put it, must be dispelled, when we read the Hun's bulletins —communiques.is the latter-day term— •concerning : his encounters with the Allies' armies. -If: they ,are hopelessly out-numbered and defeated, at one point the Germans, solace the hyphenated Americans, the I.W.W. members, .and. , other sympathisers with the -cause of 3£ultur by calmly; declaring they "completely repelled the enemy's.advance." Even when, his 'defeat is a matter of; absolute notoriety, as unquestionable, fact, friend Fritz will gently dally with the truth by a . "communique" which announces that .-'our * defence . has been ' partly transferred.' J &• • . ° .■•'■.■' & This latter trick of evading the truthful, if unpleasant epithet, defeat, reminds us of the old story of the Oxford student who, having been mercilessly "ploughed," almost turned failure into success by telegraphing to his ingenuous parents: "Exam, result just published. Examiners delighted; they demand, an encore." Never, in his wildest efforts at deceiving the French public'when his armies had suffered defeat, did Napoleon, past-master in the art of "faking" a bulletin, equal the Kaiser and his fel-low-artists ■of the German Military •Staff in misrepresentation and mendacity. But just as Ananias and Sapphira came to a bad end*, so will the AtchrAssassin and his accomplices. Ger'inany will some, day, sooner or later, find'them out, and there will be ructions at Potsdam and Berlin.