GERMAN PERFIDY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 53, 6 June 1916, Page 4

GERMAN PERFIDY.

Everybody (loos not remember that Germany actually had tho hardihood to state that in the opening of the present war I*'ranee was the attacking Power hy dropping hoinhs on Nurnhcrg before Germany declared war The Christchurch Press says it was an obvious enough lie lor which no evidence was ever offered. Hut it has evidently been believed in Germany ; otherwise there would he no point in the solemnity with which a German writer in a German paper furnishes the proof that the story really was a lie.

It is natural, the same writer goes on 1 to say, that this should recall. 19,. Jm j Matin the famous Ems telegram wtneh precipitated the war between Frame and Germany in 1870. France was: opposing the candidature of Prince Fee. pold of Hohcn/.ollern for the Spanish throne and after the withdrawal b\ the Prince, Count Benedetti was sent by rlie French Government to Ems to asl( the King of Prussia to affirm that he would oppose any revival of the idea. The King refused to give any. undertaking, and finally refused to seej Benedetti any more. An account of these proceedings, doctored by Bismarck, so incensed the French ment and people that war became inet i-' to hie. The inner history of this ailaiiv as given by Busch 111 his mcmoiis, suggests' that there need have "been no war. Bismarck gave Busch this account of the way in which he “faked” the Ems telegram “1 ‘invited Moltke and RoOn to dine with me that evening, and to talk over the situa-J t’ion, which seemed to me to be growing more and more unsatisiactoij ’Whilst we were dining, another long telegram was brought in. As 1 read it to them—it must have been about two hundred words—they were both actu- ( ally terrified, and Moltke s whole v being ’suddenly changed. He seemed to bel quite old and infirm. It looked as if| our Most Gracious might knuckle under after all. I asked him (Moltke) if. ( as things stood, we might hope to be victorious. On his replying in Gwaffirmative, I said: ‘Wait a minute; and, seating myself at a small table. 1 boiled down those two hundred words to about twenty, but without otherwise altering or adding anything. Itj was Abeken’s telegram, yet something different—shorter, more determined, less dubious. I then handed it over to them and asked ; ‘Well, bow does that do now ?’• ‘Yes,’ they said) ‘it will do in that form.’ And Moltke immediately became quite young and fresh again 1 He had got his war, his trade. Aud ( the thing really succeeded. The I‘reuefi were fearfully angry at the- condensed.; telegram as it appeared ill the neus papers, and a couple of days later they declared war against'*us. '