Beginnings of War Mythology 



family vault!" This attitude changed rapidly with Wrath, 

 the bombardment of the unfortified watering places not f far 

 of Scarborough and the Hartlepools and the laying 

 of mines in the fairways of commerce. But the Eng- 

 lish cannot be frightened, and exasperation merely 

 intensified determination. The Kaiser's own refer- 

 ence to Attila in 1900 : now fixed the current epithet 

 of "Huns," an appellation many German officers 

 were doing their worst to justify. 



About the middle of August three Americans 

 arrived from Berlin with a batch of German papers 

 got with difficulty past the Customs Office. 'The 

 simple honesty'" of these sheets, filled with official 

 telegrams and "free from partisanship," seemed to 

 them to contrast most favorably with the tone of the 

 London press. Looking at the uppermost of the pile, 

 a Frankfurter Zeitung, the most steady-headed, anti- 

 militarist journal on the Continent, as I have said, I 

 noticed on the front page a translation of an address 

 reputed to have been just delivered by John Burns 

 in the Royal Albert Hall, warning England against 

 the terrors imminent in a Mohammedan uprising. 

 This interested me, for I knew that neither Burns A bold 

 nor any one else (preachers on Sunday excepted) had lie 

 made a public speech since the beginning of the war. 

 I therefore mentioned the matter to Burns (who was 

 more surprised than indignant), and also to Alfred 

 Spender of The Westminster Gazette, who made of it a 

 special feature. Later, I understand, the Zeitung 

 admitted it had been imposed upon. 



All sorts of rumors, however, flew about London, The RUS- 

 the most amazing perhaps being the Russian myth. sianm v th 

 According to this story a great body of soldiers from 



1 See Chapter xxvi, pages 29-31. 



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