The Daily News. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1916. WAR LIES OF THE HUNS.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 December 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1916. WAR LIES OF THE HUNS.

The recent tactics of the German authorities in despatching wireless messages broadcast over the world, giving garbled and misleading versions of alleged events occurring on the various fronts, always to Germany's advantage, has drawn attention in a marked manner to the way in which Germany has been making war by newspaper lies, using the press to deceive the world and to throw German invincibility into the strongest possible limelight. It is quite a mistake to consider that this campaign of newspaper lie 9 is a product of the war, for it was initiated forty-six. years ago by the Iron Chancellor (Bismarck) when he "doctored" the famous Ems telegram to William I. that resulted in the Franco J Prussian war. Since then the policy of deception, dissimulation, treachery and lie-making has been exploited to its uttermost capacity and has become the coping stone of German Kultur. "God fights on the side of the biggest liars" is the German paraphrase of the celebrated Napoleonic maxim. Conceived and born in fraud and falsehood, Germany's war has been .vaged since the hour of its beginning in a spirit of mendacity and malicious deceit without a parallel in history. Ananias has supplanted Clauscwitz, the famous Prussian strategist, as the demi-god of the German General 'Staff; Munehhausen, most accomplished of tarradiddlers, has displaced Moltke, "Organiser of Victory," as the idol before which incense has been most religiously burnt. The literature of the Great War will fill whole libraries in future generations, but it will be hopelessly incomplete without a volume, thick in more ways than one, entitled, "War Lies of the Huns." Bismarck's pinchbeck successors in the Wilhelmstrasse resorted to the same sort of trick two years ago to justify and popularise the war upon which their hearts were set, and for which their arrangements had i lcng been ccrnj.:;**-- The spinnim? of

t!i<> Great ].i,. l, r -T, en .Tulv 2.1. when Va:v.:x::y :::ul A:i4ri i m■,■:■(■ notilicl by jcricd ihr brutal ui'',!:'. ium delivered to ]■;•:• two day, l sl -f. :c. ,\.s nil the w,-.i!.l now KWiws, S ,■:■■•.;:,, l'i l\. ( t, ;■- n-ptc.! e'.ery • iavle <lc: .:'.:;.! formulated by In;:- w»i:!d-bi. sr.b.j-.:;. •:;.:••-. except the one which .-ought iu y.yy,\ out ail vestige of independence still left to her. The next step was to pers-.uulc the German people (hat the po.-.-ibility oi" war had become an inevitable certainty, so the trump car:l of the iiicbiiisawas played, while the (-(ruin:", were advancing lite thieves in a night towards the Belgian frontier. An ultimatum was sent to St. Petersburg and simultaneously France was called upon to

state her attitude iu case of a HussoGevmiin conflict. According to the German stall' hostilities between Germany, Russia and France commenced on August -2, and from that date began the Hood of lies with which the Germans have incessantly drenched the world. The dermaii public were led to 'believe that the ravenous Russian bear was preparing to eat the German lamb, and Franco was depicted as following Russia's example and violating German territory "without declaration of war, by dropping bombs over Bavarian towns and military railways." There was nothing for it but to defend the Fatherland from the aggressors east and west. The iron censorship of the press made the newspapers accomplices in the lying crusade. It war. stated that French army surgeons had poisoned the wells in Alsace-Lorraine and that Prussian cities were, infested by spies—a prcte:ct for wholesale arrests .and executions. Then came Britain's turn to be wilfully misrepresented so as to delude the Germans into the belief that only- one sentiment prevailed in England, namely, to maintain friendly relations and abstain from a purely Continental quarrel, so that when war with England resulted a day or two later there was e.n outburst of national ferocity against "perfidious Albion." Thus were the jeed-s of hatred sown to grow iuto lusty strength. German lies have taken two shapes—commission and omission—the one being intended to glorify German achievements, and the other to keep the people in ignorance of the truth. To this day the German people believe that the disastrous retreat on the Manic was a brilliant and voluntary strategic manoeuvre. .Thousands of German soldiers believe that the Germans arc in Paris and that Dover and London would have been occupied if they were not too plague ridden for German armies oi invasion. Aitci the first two months of German political and military lies, the German naval liars cleared for action. It commenced with a description of the sorcalled panic in London over the sinking of the Abouhir, Cre;sy and .Hogue, and was followed by an unceasing How of submarine lici and bluster. Every insignificant trader sunk by a u pirate evoked a fresh outburst from U liars to tho effect that German submarines would sooner or later "choke the life out of England" by making it impossible for her to provision herself It may be remembered that the appropri-ately-named Professor Flamm, of Charlottenburg, writing persuasively in the Vossische Zeitung about the 'neck-tie of iron which one hundred and fifty 'U boats would presently throw around the miscreant neck of John Bull and gradually strangle him to death." The German pillage of and atrocities in Belgium, the sacking of Louvain, the sinking of the Lusitar.ia, were all the subject of plausible but lying excuses, and when Germany had shot her bolt, finding her progress everywhere blocked, the press was instructed to harp incessantly on the lie that Germany's enemies were exhausted and were hankering for peace. Lying about the British dominions' attitude towards the war has been a giant speciality in Germany. Some of the most fanciful and artistic lying in the German press has been called forth by the numerous and futile Zeppelin, raid? on England. The raids over the London district in September, 1915, evoked circumstantial tales, of "the metropolis in rum?," Woolwich annihilated, the London docks, wharves and warehouses pounded into atoms, city banks, buildings and streets wrecked, etc. "Successive raids over provincial towns spread devastation through the heart of industrial England, especially the great munition centres of the Midlands," etc., whilst coast towns by the dozsn have bean demolished by German newspaper-bombs times without number. With the tuni of tho fortunes of war in the Allies' favor, the output of the German lie factory has increased at a pace comparable only to the accelerated rate ai which the British munition supply has grown. The great Russian advance into the Bukovina and Galicia, with its gigantic spoils of prisoaera and guns, has been barefacedly lied into insignificance (in order tc allay popular alarm in Germany and Austria. The results of the great Anglo-French offensive on the Somrae in July were minimised and distorted into something almost approaching Gernan victory. Although the Allied advance in Mcardy continued uninterruptedly from the day of its inception, it was brazenly described in the German press as having ''everywhere and completely broken down iu the face of our impenetrable defence." The German war clique knows that the. gams is up. It knows that Germany's enemies, far from being "exhausted" or "wartired," are only now getting into the stride with which Germany herself began the war. It knows that the armies and the Seats of the Kaiser have now to battle, net for. victory, which, ha 3 Wmv. w«..«.«i}-](» i.Boiw- 4 'Muperabla

odds, lint to avoid defeat. Bui. the war jciioiic k::i;v.-s thai l:> km.;) all tin-e jlii:!:-t ::■.-;:;! ilie l;-.:ov.-!cd7o of the peoj pie i-i c:' paramount iu>c-o>-iiiy if tile I„" ;::);::■;:<■;.•,' in:-. ?1 a.- ;»ira t iuu to sinio,- ;■!.■ t.:i to Vw hititr c::d i; to be realised. To keep on telling !:e.i to the (Joi'iiiaii natk::i i., tiurefore, vitally i;:ul ur:;eiitly h'jticsvavy "for military reasons."