The German Propagandist
If you don’t see what you want, pay for it, is Germany’s motto to-day. A veritable rain of German gold has fallen in all the neutral countries during the war. Italy, Roumania, Greece, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, and Scandinavia have had the tares of German secret funds sown amongst the wheat of genuine public opinion. It was Bismarck’s belief that by gold all newspapers and most men are to be bought.
To-day it is hard to make any German bureaucrat believe that it is not possible to make neutrals think black is white if only enough money be spent. The fact that German black is very very black does not deter the industrious secret fund distributors. Newspapers are bought, agitators are subsidised, a false public opinion is artificially created—and the principal end is always to help those who made the war in Germany and those who keep it going to calm the masses in repeating what neutral papers and neutral led captains say.
A nation which has to depend upon such means of drugging itself into acquiescence has little to hope for. In Italy, in Roumania, the scattering of German gold has availed nothing—but while there remains a neutral State there will German secret funds be scattered. And with it all, the bellowing, blustering German propagandist, thumping any neutral table and endeavouring to make people believe that all men are as he is, knows well that he only gets a hearing, even from the lowest elements of any nation, because behind him is his colleague with the money-bag—Raemaekers has expressed in the money-bag holder all the true inwardness of the German system of propaganda.
ALFRED STEAD
THE GERMAN PROPAGANDIST
“I assure you, my friends, that anyone who does not love us, whatever his nationality, has assuredly been bought over by the enemy.”
Jackals in the Political Field
“When the tiger,” says the naturalist, “has killed some large animal, such as a buffalo which he cannot consume at one time, the jackals collect round the carcase at a respectful distance and wait patiently until the tiger moves off. Then they rush from all directions, carousing upon the slaughtered buffalo, each anxious to eat as much as it can contain in the shortest time.”