Moulting already?
ENGLAND CAUGHT OUT.
As Detected Through German Spectacles.
The malignant and perfidious English have again to eat their own words. Indeed, they have eaten them. It will be remembered that on every occasion of one of our glorious Zeppelin raids our official report of the damage done, notwithstanding the meticulous accuracy which those who draw up the reports impose upon themselves, has been angrily contradicted by the English Press, always under some heading attributing habitual mendacity and wilful and continuous dishonesty to the German headquarters.
Germans do not lie. There is no need. Their deeds are so terrific and sweeping as it is that the slightest embroidery or exaggeration would produce an effect to stagger humanity. Hence when our reports said on one occasion that our Zeppelins had irretrievably damaged the fortified town of Margate, and on another occasion that our Zeppelins had practically destroyed the formidable garrison of Ramsgate, and on a third occasion that our Zeppelins had almost eliminated that English Kronstadt, Yarmouth, and on a fourth occasion that the menacing citadel of Cromer had been reduced to ruins, and on a fifth occasion that the hitherto impregnable fortress of Lowestoft had become pregnable owing to the wonderful science of the revered Count Zeppelin—when our reports said these things they recorded facts, although the reptile English Press instantly hissed out denials and attacks.
But justice will prevail, even in England, although one may have to wait long for it. And now, some while after these magnificently successful raids, the admission is made that our official reports, so suspect and derided, were right all the time. In one of the leading English papers we find the following words in an article entitled, "Prospects for the Summer Holidays." For it seems that, in spite of the famine and other hardships which the immortal German army and supreme German navy are inflicting upon England, some of these trivial islanders are proposing to go to the seaside as usual this year—either out of a paltry bravado or by arrangement with the Government to create an illusion of prosperity and composure. But, whereas normally the watering-places of the whole country are open to them for their obscene and brutish frolics, this year they are not expected to patronise the East coast—that is to say the English shores of the German Ocean. And why? The reason is not without its flattery to us; and it also carries with it the damning admission of the absolute exactitude, the minute veracity of the German official reports of the Zeppelin raids which previously the English papers had conspired to impugn. We give the precise words:—
"There is, we fear, every reason to anticipate a barren season for the East Coast resorts, usually so popular. From Margate and Ramsgate, right up through Lowestoft, Yarmouth, Cromer and Cleethorpes to Scarborough and Whitby, they have, it cannot be denied, been badly hit by the Zeppelin raids."
The italics are ours. Note them well, for they are the measure of English turpitude. When, after our shattering and comprehensive raids had occurred, one by one, always with such devastating fury and precision, our reports announced that these very towns had been "badly hit" (mark the phrase!), the English Press once more accused us of perversion and dissimulation. How right we were is now proved. In fact it seems that we understated the case, for we gather that a very large number of East Coast towns have been badly hit by our irresistible machines of retribution—far more than we knew.
If we wait long enough we shall doubtless find somewhere in an English paper the verification of other of our claims, which at the time were treated with contempt—such, for example, as the glorious destruction of Liverpool and Manchester by bombs from the sky. All that we need is a little patience.