Page:Britain's Deadly Peril.djvu/170

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164
BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL

whether the stories told of German barbarities were, after all, true! Pictures were shown of a group of British prisoners laughing and smoking, though in the hands of their captors; of the kind German soldiery distributing soup, bread, etc., to the populace in a Belgian village; of soldiers helping the Belgian peasantry re-arrange their homes; of a German soldier giving some centimes to a little Belgian child; of great crowds in Berlin singing German national songs in chorus; of the marvellous organisation of the German army; of thousands upon thousands of troops being reviewed by the Kaiser, who himself approaches you with a salute and a kindly smile. It was a film that must, when shown in any neutral country—as it is being shown to-day all over the world—create a good impression regarding Germany, while people will naturally ask themselves why has not England made a similar attempt, in order to counteract such an insidious and clever illusion in the public mind.

Such a mischievous propaganda as that being pursued by Germany in all neutral countries we cannot to-day afford to overlook. Our enemy's intention is first to prepare public opinion, and then to produce dissatisfaction among the Allies by sowing discord. And yet from the eyes of the British nation the scales have not yet fallen! In our apathy in this direction I foresee great risk.

With these facts in view it certainly behoves us to stir ourselves into activity by endeavouring, ere it becomes too late, to combat Germany's growing prestige among other nations in the world, a prestige which is being kept up by a marvellous campaign of barefaced chicanery and fraud.

The dangerous delusion is prevalent in Great Britain that we are past the crisis, that everything