"INSPIRED" STORIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 37, 14 June 1915, Page 4

"INSPIRED" STORIES.

An American just returned from Germany states that the enemy has 7,000,000 men in the field, and has still 3,000,000 of the 1915 class in training. The Christchurcli Sun is probably quite right when it assumes*

that the statement is no doubt "inspired." The "inspiration" business is a large pai;t of the double-dealing insincerity of German method. The same writer says it has been noticeable that while Germany has permitted quite a number of Yankee journalists to have a look round the country, the visitors were rarely able to (see enough to draw safe conclusions of their own: they were supplied with "facts" and "figures" of purely German manufacture. The stories of

Germany, from the inside, written for "Collier's," the leading American weekly, by Senator Beveridge, who received special facilities for meeting the Important men in Germany, are splendid examples of the "inspired" information. Beveridge interviewed such leaders as Professor Larnack, Herr Balliu (the steamship magnate),

a prominent Socialist (not Lielmecht), Field-Marshal Hindenburg, von Tirpita, and others. The stories obtained from each arcs extraordinarily alike. The old familial- tune is sung: Eng- | land full of duplicity, rancour, ambition, and envy of Germany's commercial and colonial expansion, Germany's patience under great provocation ending in war being forced on her to ensure the safety of the German nation. The theme varies only in the most unimportant essentials. Beveridge chronicles the defence conscientiously. Most, of his questions are leading questions, the answers to which might have been framed in New York- or Sydney, for all the conviction they carry. "These American 'scoops' relating to Germany's moral and military strength should be accepted with a large grain of salt" is the very Avise conclusion arrived at in the light of what we now know. The "communique" from official German sources is : a fair example of how foreign to the German mind truth is.