The Waikato Times With which is incorporated The Waikato Argus. MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 1917. WAR BY LIES

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13381, 8 January 1917, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is incorporated The Waikato Argus. MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 1917. WAR BY LIES

~ m " 'God fights on the side of the biggest liars,' is the German paraphrase of the celebrated Napoleonic maxim," says Mr Frederick Wile at the opening of an artiele on Germany's newspaper lies. Her recent and obvious mendacities in extenuation of the deportation of Belgian citizens to Germany, in order to extract war-work from them and so release German workmen for transference to the fighting fronts, suggest that interest will attach to quoting some of the many like instances cited by Mr Wile. For decades prior to the war, of course, Germany was acting one long lie in her military and naval preparations which were fervently represented as designed merely for defence. She also lied flagrantly and persistently in all her protestations of friendly feeling towards Britain, whose indifference to patent indications made the path of Prussian deceit and intrigue so easy. "The Spinning of the Great Lie," by which Germany succeeded in bringing about the war, writes Mr Wile, "was commenced on July 25th, 1914, when the people of Germany and Austria were told by their Governments that Serbia had rejected the brutal ultimatum delivered to her two days before. As all the world now knows, Serbia, in fact, accepted every single demand formulated by her would-be subjugators, excepting only the one which sought to snuff out all vestige of independence still left to her." Then came the trick—the issue in Berlin of a semi-official announcement that Germany had ordered mobilisation; its official contradiction as soon as it was assured that the Bussian Embassy's repetition of the announcement had gone over the wires to Petrograd; and the long delay in transmission of a telegram advising the contradiction, by which Russian mobilisation was brought about and made the pretext for Germany's well-prepared attack on France through Belgium. From that day to this not only the German press, but German officials also, have swept the world with a flood of lies ever Increasing in both volume and turbidity. Mr Wile quotes verbatim the first war bulletin issued &y the German War Office

on August 2, 1914, narrating imaginary incursions by Russia upon German soil, and concluding with the declaration that "According to the above Russia has attacked German Imperial territory and began the war." The legend of "the Cossack at our gate" was sedulously circulated through the press, and "every man, woman and child believed" —and still believes—"that the innocent Herman lamb, about to ]>•' eaten by the

ravenous Russian wolf, hod no recourse but to fight for its very life." Peaceloving Germany had been cruelly assailed, ami the "war of defence." had perforce to be reluctantly undertaken. Mr Wile then takes us through a series of lies, official, semi-official, and journalistic, such as never has been, and surely never can be, laid at the door of a civilised nation, the newspapers merely acting as distributing agents of inspired "news" and comments. Britain was, of course, at once branded as having betrayed her avowals of friendship for Germany, and nothing was told the people as to the efforts made to induce us to play false to Belgium, whom we were pledged to protect, and distorted quotations from the London press were quoted in support of the misrepresentations. The sup- j pression of the truth was a notable feature in the process of deluding the German nation, and we are told that to this day it has had no official admission of the defeat of its armies on the Marne. The man in the street in Germany still implicitly believes that the retreat from the Marne was a brilliant and voluntary "strategic movement," and as for the soldiers, they were told that the promised reward of debauchery in Paris had to be postponed on account of the outbreak of a plague of cholera there. Whenever any success has attended German submarine or aerial raids, or rather, whenever such a raid was attempted, and sometimes even without an attempt, Berlin and all the rest of Germany have been regaled with lurid descriptions of the damage done and of the terror and panic created in British hearts. The atrocities in Belgium,'at which all the rest of the world lias shuddered in despair for civilisation, are firmly believed in Germany to have been merely "legitimately warlike operations;" and when, by any chance, word of the more heinous crimes filtered through they were at once ascribed to the necessity for exercising reprisals upon a bloodthirsty foe The sinking of the Lusitania is deemed to have been fully justified "because she carried munitions of war," and the pictorials carefully sktched into their illustrations quite an array of quick-firing guns on the forecastle. The Zeppelin raids have, perhaps, been the most fruitful source of German delusions, although, of course, the submarines run Ihem close. Tales of the British metropolis having been laid in ruins have been circulated- so often that one has to wonder what kind of genius for reconstruction the Germans must imagine the British possess. Woolwich has been annihilated more than once, and devastation has so frequently been spread through the. heart of industrial England, and especially the great munition centres, that the Lie Bureau must surely be hard put to it to explain the statements that, in order to extenuate the reverses on the Somme, have now to be made with regard to Britain's overwhelming artillery bombardments. In connection with the British naval blockade, the official liars have had to steer most devious courses. They wanted at once to create the impression that it was wholly ineffective, and at the same time to elicit sympathy for mothers and babies starving through Britain's wholly illegitimate action. Similarly, "the freedom of the seas" has been a continual slogan to incite the indignation and enmity of neutrals against Britain, but has lost most of its force from Germany's own submarine campaign against the shipping of those same neutrals. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Britain's overseas subjects have flocked to the Imperial standard and fought valiantly under it, the Dominions have been persistently represented as wholly indifferent to the fate of the Motherland, and ready for revolt. What use has been made of Australia's anti-con-scription vote may be well imagined. Should there be any timid mortals who may be inclined to accept the emanations from Germany as to the fearful consequences which will follow upon the Allies' rejection of the peace terms, the above should be reassuring. Having hoodwinked their own people they now seek to bluff those abroad by glowing dissertations upon their great might and ample resources. The fact cannot be ignored, however, that 6he has asked for peace, and anyone who knows Germany and the Germans will not need any prompting as to the significance of that.