Untitled

Free Lance, Volume XVIII, Issue 949, 19 September 1918, Page 4

The credulity t>f the Germans —privates and officers' alike—is amazing. It is dead :easy to feed them up with barefaced lies. Take that cable item published in the- daily, press last week stating that the appearance of Uncle Sam's negro soldiers on the war-front, near Verdun, had filled the German troops there with consternation. Why ? .Because they had been told that the black soldiers madei it their business to ■cut off. the ears of all the ■ prisoners they took.

Take" that other yarn the Germans were told about the New Zealandexs. It was that the soldiers of Maoriland are cannibals, and cook and eat all their prisoners, first marking out all the juicy ones for the pot by presenting them with a cigarette. It was some tune before the New Zealand Tommies tumbled to the reason why Fritz on ■being offered a cigarette sagged suddenly at the knees and his face became livid with terror. All camouflage on the/ part of Fritz's leaders to get him to fight to the bitter end. A British major just back from three years in Germany gives further, proof of how the Germans.,; both rank 4hd file, are bull-dozed;.by their own rulers. "For instance," said the Major, "there has been much talk about how England would treat Germans after "the war. They asked me over and over again if they would be "permitted to come to London. When I replied that every German would, be put in a cage and dropped into the Thames they took it dead;" seriously:. • "There is ho .doubt-that Germans as are pretty low in their minds. The idea of beating' the rest of the world in the war survives' only among the •. military leaders, and these are . willing to take long chances, because the prize would';be peculiarly theirs if won. "We had one experience," continued the Major, "that impressed us were . interned for a while in ' .a big Rhine castle and found it German officers. When opportunity for inquiry offered, we found that they. were from the front and,had been sent back and imprisoned for • 'minor offences. Wei -got well enoughacquainted': in;•'time' ; to be told by the -officers themselves that they had committed 'offences - for thei express pur-

pose of escaping service in the trenches —'the grave,' as they coiled it."

This Major, who travelled with his eyes wide open, passed through merlin a few days; before he was exchanged. and found it like cemetery, mere was not a single motor car except military, and he did not see' one ruob'er tire, fiorses were "crowbaits.' 1 A man driving one like theirs in London. would be arrested for cruelty to animals. Nobody showed the least fighting spirit. All seemed wistful for peace and fearful) lest the world never again would take them back as friends.