“Frightfulness.”
Not every one in Germany is obsessed with a conviction of the efficacy of “frightfulness.” This is plain from the fact that the Frankfurter Zeitung published articles from its neutral correspondent in England which point out that each phase of frightfulness had precisely the opposite effect of that which was intended. The bombardments of coast towns, the use of asphyxiating gases, the sinking of the Lusitania all led, he remarks, to increased recruiting and intensified war feeling. Each act of frightfulness has of course been represented to the German public in a very different light from that in which it has been presented to us,[49] and it is therefore the more striking that so influential a newspaper should publish such an opinion. When the Lusitania was sunk, both the Berliner Tageblatt and the Vorwärts maintained an absolute silence, and these are the two most influential organs in Berlin.