PROPAGANDA IN GERMANY

Levin Daily Chronicle, 23 November 1918, Page 1

PROPAGANDA IN GERMANY

• — HINDENBTTRG'S ALARM. STRIKING MANIFESTO. THE HAGUE, Sept. 6. The whole German press gives the greatest prominence to a manifesto by Marshal von Hindenburg to the Ger-. man Army and nation against enemy propaganda. The manifesto ends:— ■ '' German Army, German Homeland, defend yourself." : The German reverses have caused the German people, who formerly placed a superstitious faith in Marshal von Hindenburg'a invincibility, to doubt whether he is really still alive. .Hence the repeated telegrams from him assuring the nation that he is quite well, which arc now followed by this exhortation. The text of Marshal von Hindenburg 's manifesto is•■'as 'follows:— We are engaged in a hard with our enemies. If numerical superi- y ority alone : guaranteed victory, Germany would long since have lain shattered on the ground. The enemy knows, however, that Germany and her allies cannot be conquered by arms alone. The enemy knows that the spirit which dwells within our troops and our people makes us uriconquerablo.' Therefore, together with the struggle against German arms, he has undertaken a struggle against the German spirit; he seeks to poison our spirit and believes that Germany arms will also become blunted if the German spirit is eaten away. "We should not take this plan of the ■ enemy lightly. The enemy conducts his campaign against our spirit by various means. He bombards our front, not only with a drumfire of artillery, but also with a drumfire of printed paper. Besides bombs which kill the body,, his airmen thrown down | leaflets which are intended to kill the soul. -

Of these enemy leaflets our field-grey men delivered up:— In May 84,000 In June 120,000 In July 300,000 A gigantic increase! Ten thousand aoisoned arrows daily in July; 10,000 limes daily the attempt to deprive the ndividual and the whole body of belief .n the justice of our cause, and of the itrength and confidence for ultimate victory! We can reckon in addition :hat a great part of the enemy leaflets irill not have been found by us. | POISONING THE HOME SPJfIT. But the enemy is not merely swsfied n attacking the spirit of our front, he vishes above all else to poison the spirit of our home. He knows what sources of strength for the front rest n the home. True, his aeroplanes and jalloons do not carry these leaflets far nto our homeland; they lie far from it n the lines in which the enemy vainly itruggles for victory by arms. But the meiny hopes that many a fleld-grey loldier will send home the leaflet which ias innocently fluttered down from the lir. At home it will pass from hand to tand and be discussed at the beer-table, n families, in the sewing-room, in fac;ories, and in the street. TTnsuspectngly many thousands consume the loison. For thousands the burden the yar in any case imposes upon them is ncreased, and the will and hope for a rietorious issue of the war is taken :rom them. All these again then write ;heir doubts to the front, and "Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau rub their lands. GEBMAN PACTS AND FANCIES. What is the real situation* Wc lave enforced peace in the East and ire strong enough to do it in the West, lotwithstanding the Americans; but wc must be strong and united; that is the enemy is fighting against with lis leaflets and rumours. He wishes to leprive us of faith and confidence, will, md force. Why is the enemy continually seeking new allies in the struggle against ust Why does he try to press nusionStill neutral into the struggle against us? Because in strength we aro his equals. ' Why does he incite black and other eoloured men against German soldiers? Because his will is to destroy us. Again the enemy says another thing: "You Germane, your form of government is wrong. Fight against the Hohenzollerns, against capitalism; heip us, the Entente, to givo you a bett.r form, of State." The enemy knows perfectly what strength resides in our State and Empire; but that is precisely why he combats it. 'Me enemy also seeks to tenr open old wounds in the German bod." politic. With his leaflets and by rumours he nttmnpts to sow division ar.il distrust among the Federal States. At Lake Constance we confiscated many thousands of leaflets conveyed to Bavaria and intended to excite anger against the North Germans. They wish to d-3 Jtrey the German Empire, which for leaturies was the dream of 'Ger mans, and which our fathers won for us, and to condemn Germany to the impotence of the Tnlrty Yejirs' War. The eti'. uy ulao wWU's to shake our loyalty to our allies. He does not know the German way and the word of n German man. Jle himself sacrifices "his allies; he who is England's ally die's of it. The enemy attacks the spirit of the home in another way besides. The silliest rumours designed to break our inner pov i..~ of resistance ?.re put into We fin i Hem =imutt:iiK ously in Switzerland, in and in Denmark; thence they spread like a wave over the whole of Germany. Or they emerge simultaneously, agreeing in silly details in the remotest regions of our country, in Silesia, in East Prussia ,m the Bhineland, and wend their way thenee over the remainder of the home territory. This poison works on the ; man on leave and flows in letters to the front. Again the enemy rubs his hands.

The enemy is ingenious. He knows tow to mix the little powder, for everyone: 1 He decoys the fighters at the front. One leaflet runs:— "German soldiers!—lt is a shameful lie that the French ill-treat German prisoners. We are not brutes; only come over to us without fear; here you will find a moat considerate reception, good food, and peaceful refuge." Ask brave men who have succeeded • with unspeakable difficulty in escaping form enemy captivity about this. Plundered to the utmost in wire eomponds, roofless, goaded by hunger and thiTst into treasonable utterances, forced by blows and threats of death to betray their comrades, spat upon, pelted with • filth by the French populace while being driven to hard labour, that is what the .paradise that the enemy conjures Up really looks like. - of original letters written by prisoners are also thrown down, in which these men describe how well it go eB with them. God be

praised, thero are still also decent and "humane commandants of prisoners' camps in England and Trance, but these are the and the letters the enemy throws down are only of three or four different kinds. But he sends these multiplied by many thousands of copies.- The enemy intimidates the faint-hearted by saying: " Your struggle is hopeless; America will settle you; your submarines are no good; we are building more ships thin they sink; after the war we shall debar you from getting raw materials; then Germany's industry must starve. You will never see your colonies again." ■ That is the tone of tho leaflets; now enticement, now threat. TBAITOKS TO THE FATHERLAND. And finally the enomy sends not tho least dangerous of his poisoned arrows dipped in printers' ink when he throwß down the utterances of German men and German newspapers. The utterances of German newspapers are torn from their context. . Regarding the utterances 'of Germans which • are reproduced remember that at every time there have been conscious and unconscious traitorsf to the Fatherland. Most of them reside abroad in neutral countries, in order not to be obliged to share our struggle and our privations or to be condemned by our judges as guilty of high treason. Nor have chanmpions of extreme party tcndcncies any right to claim to speak for the generality of the German people.

It is our strength, but also our weakness, that even in war we allow unrestricted utterance to every opinion. We still tolerate the reproduction in our newspapers of enemy army Teports and the speeches of enemy statesmen, which are weapons of attack directed against the spirit of- the German Army and people. This is a sign of strength, because it proves a consciousness of might. But it is a weakness because it allows tho enemy's poison to And an entrance among us. Therefore, German Army, German Homeland, if one of these thrown-out pieecs of poison in the form of leaflet or rumour comeß before your eyes or cars, remember that it originates with the enemy. Bemember nothing comes from the enemy which is not harmful to Germany. Every one must be mindful of this, whatever his position or party. ; If you eet any one whose name and origin indeed are German, but who by nature stands in the enemy's camp, keep him at a distance, despise him .put him publicly in the pillory in order that every other true German may despise him.

Defend yourself, German Army, German Homeland!