The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-War

by D. Thomas Curtin

CHAPTER VII

THE IDEA FACTORY

A group of diplomats and newspaper correspondents were gathered at lunch in a German city early in the war, when one of the latter, an American, asked how a certain proposition which was being discussed would suit public opinion. "Will public opinion favour such a move?" he questioned.

"Public opinion! Public opinion!" a member of the German Foreign Office repeated in a tone which showed that he was honestly perplexed. "Why, we create it!"

He spoke the truth. They certainly do.

The State-controlled professor, parson and moving-picture producer appeal to limited audiences in halls and churches, but the newspaper is ubiquitous, particularly in a country where illiteracy is practically unknown, and where regulations bidding and forbidding are constantly appearing in the newspapers—the reading of which is thus absolutely necessary if one would avoid friction with the authorities.

In a free Press, like that of the United States or Great Britain, the truth on any question of public interest is reasonably certain to come to light sooner or later. Competition is keen, and if one paper does not dig up and publish the facts, a rival is likely to do so. The German Press was gaining a limited degree of freedom before the war, but that has been wiped away. As in other belligerent countries news of a military nature must quite properly pass the censor. But in Germany, unlike Great Britain, for example, all other topics must be written in a manner to please the Government, or trouble ensues for the writer and his paper. To a certain extent the Press is a little unmuzzled during the sittings of the Reichstag—not much, but somewhat, for the reports of the Reichstag proceedings are strictly censored. The famous speech of Deputy Bauer in May, 1916, was a striking example, for not a word of his speech, the truth of which was not questioned, was allowed to appear in a single German newspaper. The suppression of most of Herr Hoffmann's speech in the Prussian Diet in January, 1917, is another important case in point. This is in striking contrast to the British Parliament, which is supreme, and over whose reports the Press Bureau has no control. The German Press Bureau, on the other hand, revises and even suppresses the publication of speeches. When necessary, it specially transmits speeches by telegram and wireless to foreign countries if it thinks those speeches will help German propaganda.

The Berlin and provincial editors are summoned from time to time to meetings, when they are addressed by members of the Government as to what it is wise for them to say and not to say. These meetings constitute a hint that if the editors are indiscreet, if they, for example, publish matter "calculated to promote disunity," they may be subject to the increasingly severe penalties now administered. If a newspaper shows a tendency to kick over the traces, a Government emissary waits upon the editor, calls his attention to any offending article or paragraph, and suggests a correction. If a newspaper still offends, it is liable to a suspension for a day or even a week, or it may be suppressed altogether.

But in peace, as well as in war, editors all over Germany were instructed as to the topic on which to lay accent for a limited period, and just how to treat that topic. For example, during the three months preceding the war, Russia was bitterly attacked in the German Press. From August 1 to August 4, 1914, the German people had it crammed down their throats that she was the sole cause of the war. On August 4 the Government marshalled the editors and professors and ordered them to throw all the responsibility on Britain, and the hate was switched from one to the other with the speed and ease of a stage electrician throwing the lever from red to blue.

How do the editors like being mere clerks for the Government? The limited numbers of editors of independent thought, such as the "relentless" Count Reventlow, Maximilian Harden, and Theodor Wolff, detest such a role, and struggle against it. After sincere and thorough investigation, however, I am convinced the average German editor or reporter, like the average professor, prefers to have his news handed to him to digging it up for himself.

In this connection the remark made to me by the editor of a little paper in East Prussia is interesting. After the Russians had fallen back he told me of two boys in a neighbouring village whose hands had been cut off. He said that he was going to run the story, and suggested that I also use it. I proposed that we make a little trip of investigation, as we could do so in a couple of hours.

He looked surprised. "Why, we have the story already," he declared.

"But I am not going to write it unless I can prove it," I replied.

A moment later I heard him sigh with despair as he half whispered to a cavalry captain: "Yes, yes, alas, over there the Press is in the hands of the people!"

Many newspaper readers run more or less carelessly through articles, and many more simply read the headlines and headings. The Official Press Bureau, for which no detail is too minute, realises this perfectly, with the result that German newspaper headings are constructed, less with a view to sensationalism, as in some British and American papers, or with a view to condense accurately the chief news feature of the day, as to impress the reader—or the hearer, since the headlines are cried shrilly in Berlin and other cities—with the idea that Germany is always making progress towards ultimate victory. The daily reports of the General Staff have been excellent, with a few notable exceptions such as the Battle of the Marne and the Battle of the Somme. During reverses, however, they have shown a tendency to pack unpalatable truths in plenty of "shock absorber," with the result that the public mind, as I know from my personal investigations, is completely befogged as to the significance of military operations which did not go in a manner satisfactory to the German leaders. In all this the headline never failed to cheer. When the Russians were smashing the Austrians in the East, while the British and French were making important gains and inflicting much more important losses on the Somme, the old reliable headline—TERRIBLE RUSSIAN LOSSES—was used until it was worn threadbare.

What would you think, you who live in London or Hew York, if you woke up some morning to find every newspaper in the city with the same headlines? And would you not be surprised to learn that nearly every newspaper throughout your country had the same headlines that day? You would conclude that there was wonderful central control somewhere, would you not?

Yet that is what happens in Germany repeatedly. It is of special significance on "total days." Those are the days when the Government, in the absence of fresh victories, adds the totals of prisoners taken for a given period, and as only the totals appear in the headlines the casual reader feels nearer a victorious peace. On the morning of March 13, 1916, most of the papers had "total" headlines for Verdun.

Not so the Tageblatt. Theodor Wolff, its editor, has had so much journalistic experience, outside of Germany, and is, moreover, a man of such marked ability, that he is striving to be something more than a sycophantic clerk of the Government. He is not a grumbler, not a dissatisfied extremist, not unpatriotic, but possesses a breadth of outlook patriotic in the highest sense. On the morning after the Liebknecht riots in the Potsdamer Platz, his paper did not appear. The reason given by the Commandant of the Mark of Brandenburg was that he had threatened the Burgfriede by charging certain interests in Germany with attempting to make the war a profitable institution. But there are those who say that the police were very watchful in the newspaper offices that night, and that the Tageblatt did not appear because of its attempt to print some of the happenings in the Potsdamer Platz.

It has been the custom of Herr Wolff to write a front-page article every Monday morning signed T. W. On the last Monday morning in July, 1916, in a brilliantly written article, the first part of which patted the Government on the back for some things, he delicately expressed a desire for reform in diplomatic methods which would render war-making less easy. Then he added that if some statesman, such as Prince Bulow, had been called as adviser in July, 1914, a way to avert the war might have been found.

This so angered the Government, which has successfully convinced its great human sheep-fold that Germany is the innocent victim of attack, that the Tageblatt was suppressed for nearly a week, and, like the ex-Socialist paper Vorwaerts, was permitted to reappear only after it promised "to be good." Theodor Wolff was personally silenced for several months. This was his greatest but not his only offence. All over Germany the people have been officially taught to regard this great war time as die grosse Zeit. Wolff, however, sarcastically set the expression in inverted commas—thereby committing a sacrilege against the State.

Throughout Germany monuments have been reared and nails driven into emblems marked DIE GROSSE ZEIT. I have often wondered just what thoughts these monuments will arouse in the German's mind if his country is finally beaten and all his bloodshed and food deprivation will have been in vain.

The Press has, of course, been the chief instrument, reinforced by the schoolmaster, professor and parson, in spreading the doctrine of scientific hatred. It is not generally known that Deputy Cohn, speaking in the Reichstag on April 8, 1916, sharply criticised the method of interning British civilians at Ruhleben. He went on to say that, "reports of the persecutions of Germans in England were magnified and to some extent invented by the German Press in order to stir up war feeling against England."

I saw a brilliant example of the German Press Bureau's attention to details in the late autumn of 1914. I was on a point of vantage half way up the Schlossberg behind Freiburg during the first aerial attack by the French in that region. In broad daylight a solitary airman flew directly over the town and went on until he was directly over the extensive barracks just outside. Freiburg is a compact city of 85,000 inhabitants, and it would have been easy to have caused damage, and probably loss of life to the civilian population. It was clear to me in my front-row position and to the natives, with many of whom I afterwards discussed the matter, that the Frenchman was careful to avoid damaging the town, and circled directly over the barracks on which he dropped all his bombs. The Freiburg papers said little about the raid, but to my surprise when I reached Frankfurt and Cologne a week later, newspaper notices were still stuck about the cities calling upon Germans to witness again the dastardly methods of the enemy who attack the inhabitants of peaceful towns outside of the zone of operations.

The French very properly and effectively practised reprisals later, but the Germans believe that the shoe is on the other foot. And so it is in, everything connected with the war. The Germans tell you that they use poisonous gas because the French used it; in fact, only their good luck in capturing some of the French gas generators enabled them to learn the method. Britain, not Germany, violates the laws of the sea. It was the Belgians who were cruel to German troops, especially the Belgian women and the Belgian children.

When the Verdun offensive came to a standstill a spirit of restlessness developed which was reflected in the Reichstag, where a few Social Democrats attacked the Government because they believed that Germany could now make peace if she wished, and that further bloodshed would be for a war of conquest, advocated by the annexationists.

During the succession of German military victories, especially in the first part of the war, there was plenty of "front copy" both as news and filler. Some of the accounts were excellent. The reader seldom got the idea, however, that German soldiers were being killed and wounded, and after a time most of the battle descriptions contained much of soft nocturnal breezes whispering in the moonlight, but precious few real live details of fighting.

Regarding this point, a German of exceptional information of the world outside his own country expressed to me his utter amazement at the accounts appearing in the British Press of the hard life in the trenches. "I don't see how they hope to get men to enlist when they write such discouraging stuff," he said. 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. The people go even one step farther than the Government, for the Government sought merely to show that it was forced to declare war upon Russia and France. Most of the German people are labouring under the delusion that Russia and France actually declared war on Germany. This misconception, no doubt, is partly due to the accounts in the German papers during the first days of August, 1914, describing how the Russians and French crossed the frontier to attack Germany before any declaration of war.

A German girl who was in England at the outbreak of war, and who subsequently returned to her own country, asked her obstinate, hard-headed Saxon uncle, a wealthy manufacturer, if Germany did not declare war on Russia and France. She insisted that Germany did, for she had become convinced not only in England but in Holland. Her uncle, in a rage, dismissed the matter with: Du bist falsch unterrichtet. (You are falsely informed.)

An American in Berlin had a clause in his apartment lease that his obligations were abruptly and automatically terminated should Germany be in a state of war. Yet when he wished to pack up and go his German landlord took the case to court on, the ground that Germany had not declared war.

The hypnotic effect of the German newspapers on the German is not apprehended either in Great Britain or in the United States. Those papers, all directed from the Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse, can manipulate the thoughts of these docile people, and turn their attention to any particular part of the war with the same celerity as the operator of a searchlight can direct his beam at any part of the sky he chooses. For the moment the whole German nation looks at that beam and at nothing else.

* * * * *

In the late afternoon of an autumnal day I stopped at a little wayside inn near Hildesheim. The place had an empty look, and the woman who came in at the sound of my footsteps bore unmistakable lines of trouble and anxiety.

No meat that day, no cheese either, except for the household. She could, not even give me bread without a bread-ticket—nothing but diluted beer.

Before the war business had been good. Then came one misfortune after another. Her husband was a prisoner in Russia, and her eldest son had died with von Kluck's Army almost in sight of the Eiffel Tower.

"You must find it hard to get along," I said.

"I do," she sighed. "But, then, when fodder got scarce we killed all the pigs, so bother with them is over now."

"You are not downhearted about the war?" I asked.

"I know that Germany cannot be defeated," she replied. "But we do so long for peace."

"You do not think your Government responsible at all for the war?"
I ventured.

"I don't, and the rest of us do not," was her unhesitating reply. "We all know that our Kaiser wanted only peace. Everybody knows that England caused all this misery." Then she looked squarely and honestly into my eyes and said in a tone I shall never forget: "Do you think that if our Government were responsible for the war that we should be willing to bear all these terrible sacrifices?"

I thought of that banquet table more than two years before, and the remark about creating public opinion. I realised that the road is long which winds from it to the little wayside inn near Hildesheim, but that it is a road on which live both the diplomat and the lonely, war-weary woman. They live on different ends, that is all.