WHO ARE THE HUNS?

Ruses of War and Official Lies. 201
Kaiser and Crown Prince, of revolution and starvation in
Munich and Berlin, of the entry of the Russian troops in these
cities, of the German Uhlans, who, "driven by hunger, kill,
roast and eat Belgian children," are not to be conceived as
jokes (see an instructive list of fairy-tales culled from the American
press, in the "Munchener Neueste Nachrichten," of the
2nd of November, morning edition, also the "Miinchener-
Augsburger Abendzeitung" of the 9th of November, 1914) 1
but as melancholy examples of the self-defilement of nations
which seek to make good their want of efficiency and their lack
of success in war by a systematic campaign of lies. Such foul
activities are doomed to be overtaken by evil and disaster. 2
Among the permissible ruses of war there is no doubt
that there exists none which permits the driving of the civil
population in front of troops in order to prevent the enemy
1 Even the "New York Herald," one of the most degraded and scurrilous
of the Teutophobe organs of New York, mocks the lying reports of the American
and enemy press concerning the acts of the German Crown Prince. This sheet
writes as follows:
"Crown Prince Frederick William has become the will-o'-the-wisp of
the great war. He has been murdered several times and also been killed in
battle; he has died in two different hospitals, he has been wounded about
once a week, his funeral procession has gone through the streets of Berlin
at least twice, while the public stood with bared heads; he has been banished,
he has been locked up in some distant royal castle, he has become a victim of
insanity, he has suffered from fever, he has been publicly boxed upon the
ears by the Kaiser, he has been given the chief command of the allied German
armies in Poland, he has been deprived of his honors and rank and dismissed
in disgrace. Many other things have happened to him since the ist of August
A brief chronological study of his career during the last eight months, composed
of the despatches that have reached us from the European news bureaux,
proves what a terrible worry he has become to the newspapers of the world."
The heading which the "New York Herald" gives to this horrible mess
of falsehoods, is very fitting:
"The Crown Prince is dead, in disgrace, wounded, insane, leads an army
in Poland and at the same time robs a chateau in France."
2 See other details in the subsequent chapters. The maddest things,
such as those published in the "Journal du Pas de Calais," I shall reserve
for another place, The reading matter in the French and English papers which
I have been receiving via Switzerland during the last few months has aroused
in me not only a feeling of the profoundest disgust, but also of a sincere pity
for these nations, so shamefully betrayed and so degraded in all the finer
aspects of civilization. The condition of mind revealed is simply appalling.