B.—Untruthfulness.
To describe frankly and completely the attitude of the Germans in Belgium during the present war, without speaking of their duplicity, would be an impossible task; so that the reader must not be surprised that on every page of our record we have pinned down at least one lie. We must not forget that modern Germany follows the examples of Bismarck, and that Bismarck himself proclaimed that he had caused the outbreak of the war of 1870 by a skilful falsification of a Government despatch. At the time of the centenary of the Iron Chancellor's birth—the 1st April, 1915—the German newspapers gave their lyric enthusiasm a loose rein; but none of the endless dithyrambics consecrated to the glorification of the Great Man contained a single word of blame for the forgery itself—abominable as it was—nor for the ostentatious impudence with which its author confessed it.
What honesty can we expect in a people which praises to the skies a forger because he was a forger, and a forger proud of his skill!