. After the Battle of
the Somme opened, the German newspapers used to print extracts from
the London papers in which British correspondents vividly described
how their own men were mown down by German machine-guns after they
had passed them, so well was the enemy entrenched. On that
occasion one of the manipulators of public opinion said to me, "The
British Government is mad to permit such descriptions to appear in
the Press. They will have only themselves to blame if their
soldiers soon refuse to fight!"

This is one of the many instances which I shall cite throughout
this book to show that because the German authorities know other
countries they do not necessarily know other subjects.

As weeks of war became months and months became years, the
censorship screws were twisted tighter than ever, with the result
that docile editors were often at their wits' end to provide even
filler.

On July 14, for example, with battles of colossal magnitude raging
east and west, the _Berliner Morgenpost_ found news so scarce that
it had to devote most of the front page to the review of a book
called "Paris and the French Front," by Nils Christiernssen, a
Swedish writer. I had read the book months before, as the
Propaganda Department of the Foreign Office had sent it to all
foreign correspondents.

It became noticeable, however, that as food portions diminished,
soothing-syrup doses for the public increased. Whenever a wave of
complaints over food shortage began to rise the Press would build a
dyke of accounts of the trials of meatless days in Russia, of
England's scarcity of things to eat, and of the dread in France of
another winter. The professors writing in the Press grew
particularly comforting. Thus on June 30 one of them comforted the
public in a lengthy and serious article in the evening edition, of
the _Vossische Zeitung_ with "the revelation that over-eating is a
cause of baldness."

The cheering news of enemy privations continued to such an extent
that many Americans were asked by the more credulous if there were
bread-tickets in Kew York and other American cities. In short,
Germany is being run on the principle that when you are down with
small-pox it is comforting to know that your neighbour has cholera.

The key-note of the German Press, however, has been to show that
the war was forced on peace-loving Germany. Of the Government's
success in its propaganda among its own people I saw evidence every
day.