ELEVEN MILLION WORDS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19785, 8 March 1927, Page 3

ELEVEN MILLION WORDS

GERMAN PROPAGANDA BOOK I’IRTY-THBEE VOLUMES. What has been described as the “most itigantic whitewash book in the world” is now complete, save for its index. This is the immense collection of 15,889 documents from its Foreign Office archives which the Qerman Government has been publishing during the past five years under the title, “Die Grosse Politik dcr Europaischen Kabinette, 1871-14.” The object is said to be a propagandist one—to clear German diplomacy from the charge of having provoked the great war and thus to prepare the way for a drastic revision of the peace terms. The documents are printed in volumes of a small quarto format, of which there are 39, including the new consignment of six volumes just received from Berlin. But, as several of them are in two parts, the real number of volumes is 53. The total number of pages is 22,024, and, on an average, 500 words of German go to each page, so that the book contains over 11,000,000 words. It is ponderous in every sense, weighing 1101 b. avoirdupois, or nearly a hundredweight. The cost of the book must have been very heavy. By way of comparison it may be stated that the British Foreign Office papers, which are now in course of publication for the period from 1898 to 1914, are only to fill 11 volumes.