And to our Allies the Germans told the same tale.
“You see,” they said, “your parcels are all right, but the English hide corkscrews in their bully beef. We must take precautions....”
And so another link was added to the immense chain of queues.
At this time, too, letters and books began to arrive, and over these officialdom wound all the intricacies that it could muster. Letters had to be fumigated first, each page had to be carefully censored, and stamped with a large messy blue circle usually deposited over the least legible portion of the correspondence. And every novel had to be read from beginning to end.
Numerous were the regulations. Any reference to Germany was taboo, the mere mention of the word Hun or Boche was the signal for confiscation. Of my first consignment of books, two were suppressed. One of them being rather a prolix novel to the tune of khaki kisses, was not much loss; but the other, Ford Madox Hueffer’s volume of poems, I made valiant efforts to save. One evening I caught the censor unprepared, and pointed out to him that the author was a man of complete literary integrity, and that nothing he could write could be looked upon as dangerous.
“Ah, but,” the censor expostulated, “it is all full of Huns and Boche.”
“Ah, well,” I said, “can’t you tear those pages out?”
“But then there would be no pages left,” and against this assertion argument was impossible. “And you see,” he went on, “we are not Huns.”
“No?” I said.
“No, the Huns were beaten at Chalons in A.D. 453. You have no right to call us Huns. That is your Northcliffe Press your hate campaign; we are men the same as you.”