February 3, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER 
ENEMY PROPAGANDA IN THE 
UNITED STATES. 
OPINION in this country and elsewhere among 
the Alhes has been somewhat exercised upon 
the ([uestion whether the cause of European 
civihsalion in this great struggle were being 
properly represented to the greatest of the 
neutral countries. 
The enemy (or rather the Prussians, who are the 
directing force of all the enemy's remaining power) had 
])repared for their abominable aggression, as we know, 
in every way that suggested itself to their mechanical 
and limited minds. 
There was the very elaborate spy system — almost 
comically enormous in scale, not very efhcient, and 
characteristically missing the most important point of 
all, which was the probable action of the governing classes 
in this country in case of a sudden war of aggression waged 
by Prussia uj^on the Continent. Their spies seem to 
have mixed with and tapped the opinion of every one in 
England who didn't count. 
There was the accumulation of material for war, 
more successful, and yet so rigidly conceived that when 
it was put to the test it broke down at the Marne against 
forces little more than half those of the invasion. 
There was the honeycombing of Russian administra- 
tion -which was to have baulked the Russian mobihsation, 
and later to have procured a separate peace. 
There was not, indeed, any adequate preparation for 
striking at the English Mercantile Marine on a large scale, 
because that would have meant the entertainment by 
Prussia of alternative plans ; and alternative plans involve 
rapidity of judgment and elasticity of mind : Two things 
incompatible with mere mechanical organisation. 
There was, on the other hand, the highly successful 
and long prepared raid upon the London markets which, 
at the beginning of the war, was a very real asset to the 
enemy. 
A Minutely Organised Plan. 
At the end of the list comes the expensive, mmutely 
organised and very widely cast plan for the influencing of 
American opinion. We know how America has been 
deluged with pamphlets and magazine and newspaper 
articles, her special correspondents from America have 
been welcomed and methodically fed with just the state- 
ments Prussia desired to be believed, and we know 
how the most distinguished subjects of Prussia (to the 
work of one of whom we will turn in a moment) has been 
put to the task of aiding in this moral campaign. 
All that has impressed, perhaps a little too much, 
certain sections of opinion upon this side of the Atlantic. 
But if we look closely at the affair we shall find that it 
suffers from the same sort of faults as are to be discovered 
in every other branch of the general aggressive effort 
which Prussia had planned for so many years. It is not 
finished work. It is extensive but clumsy. It carries 
the stamp which the spy system in England also carried 
of a vast amount of energy wasted and not properly 
fitted to its aim. 
Among the minor examples of this one may note the 
apparent incapacity of the Germans to see that you will 
moie easily persuade a man in his own tongue, orjn your 
own, than in a mixture of both. 
It may be unreasonable, but we arc all prejudiced 
against the person who argues with us in a foreign accent. 
It would liave been perfectly possible for the Ciermans to 
get hold of any number of "people who could write idio- 
matic English, or better still, English characterised by the 
modern American idioms. These could have been em- 
ployed to write the pamphlets, they could have trans- 
lated some good German prose into equally good English 
prose of the American model. Instead of that you have 
continually appearing in the Propagandist literature 
sent out by the enemy the most ridiculous slips in Englisli 
idiom whiclt almost makes one feel as tliougii one were 
li>tcning to a German barber talking to one after a few 
vears residence in ICnglantl. We all remember, for in- 
slanc'-, how a certain (iNfunl Dmi wlio liad the misfortune 
to be inclined towards the enemy became the " so-learned 
Professor Conybeare " ; occasionally one got the verb at 
the end of the sentence, and peryjetually the characteristic' 
use of German academic phrases which no Englishman or 
American could conceivably write. Indeed, you will 
hardly find one of these innumerable documents wliich is 
not on the face of it a bad piece of English marred by 
direct Teutonisms. 
It was an error in the same field to print so mucli 
of the matter in German type. Nothing affects the nfind 
more comically, except perhaps a foreign accent, than the 
sight of one's language printed in a foreign type. Nothing 
would have been easier than for the Germans to have 
printed their appeals to America in that country itself, or 
at any rate with type of the American sort. They were 
preparing this sort of thing for years, and it was really 
inexcusable to overlook so simple a precaution. 
The Intellectual Atmosphere. 
But these and dozens of other similar little points, 
though exceedingly significant, are negligible compared 
with the general intellectual " atmosphere " of the thing. 
Enghsh readers are already familiar with the mass of self- 
contradiction and, not infrequent nonsense, which has 
increasingly marred this German work in the United 
States. Only the other day one of their correspondent'^, 
describing in a very lengthy article the delights of life 
in Belgium under Prussian rule, gave a touching picture 
of the Picture Galleries in Brussels. These were alway-s 
open, as in time of peace, and the visitor noted " German 
private soldiers looking at the picture-, not with the 
vacant stare of men of similar social rank in other coun- 
tries, but with intelligence and appreciation ; some even 
slopping to make sketches of the more important masters ! " 
Another informed his compatriots in the United 
States that German losses were about one-third those of 
the Allies in proportion to their numbers. Nearly all 
were concerned in the summer to expound the very simple 
strategy of suddenly taking away the German armies from 
Poland and using them somewhere else. 
But the touchstone of the whole . business still is, 
and will continue to be, the astonishing performances 
of General Bernhardi. 
One has a right to use that word " astonishing " 
because it is really out of all ordinary experience to see a 
man highly distinguished in one walk of life turned, by 
the chunsiness of his superiors, on to work which he has 
never studied and for which he is completely unfitted. 
There is something almost indecent in having to 
criticise the antics in one field of a man dignified and 
respected in another. Bernhardi's studies of Modern 
War have not perhaps carried the same weight as those of 
Foch. The Fr.nch book is probably the better. But 
at any rate he was one of the very few men whom all 
other men in his own profession listened to with high 
respect and read knowing that they should rise from their 
reading informed. When he takes to journahsing he is 
SORTES SHAKESPEARIAN^, 
By SIR SIDNEY LEE. 
THE CLOSING OF MUSEUMS. 
Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue. 
But moody and dull melancholy. 
Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair ? 
COMEDY OV ERRORS, v. i., 78-80. 
