14 
LAND & WATER 
January 4, 19 17 
lier \vro\ight iron. Out of 127 blast hirnaccs workinj,' in 
I'l^i. '>5 liave been and still are in the power of the enemy. 
Herr Sclirodter, chairman of the Verein Deutschcr 
Kisenhilttcnleuk, could well boast that " the economic 
])ower of France was seriously damaged, and e\en 
partially annihilated." Still, there was some surprise 
in store for the o\'erweening Boche. As early as .-Xpril 
i()i5, the Minister of War could state in Parliament that 
'' the French output of munitions of every kind has been 
increased to 600 per cent, of what was believed to be 
suflicient at the outbreak of war, and it will soon be 900 
per cent." And now the proportion has increased to an 
enormous figure. State-factories and private establish- 
ments have worked at a tremendous pace since the 
beginning, and in their* report for 1915, the Council of 
Directors of the Comity des Forges de France write : — 
The day comes when, inquiring how it came about that 
certain provinces, and these among the richest and the 
most industrially important, fell into the hands ol the 
enemy, history is able to give, for the enliglitennu'ut of 
our sons, an account of everybody's responsibility, and it 
will say how it then became' possible to make up for the 
profound disturbance of the defence of the country through 
the plight of French industry. No more conclusive page 
has yet been written to the credit of private enteqirise. 
Once more we see not only liow the l'"rench nation always 
upsets the doleful predictions of the pessimists, but what 
astonishing reserves of ingenuity, adaptation and industry 
our race is i)ossessed of when iio impediment arises, and 
when her resource and patriotism are called upon for 
the safeguard of the country. 
A Letter to an American Friend 
MY DEAR FRIEND :-I received a few days 
ago your letter telling me that there was 
some danger of a false step being taken. It 
has just been taken. I sat down to answer 
you. I intended my answer to be private. But I am 
not sure now that I ought not to print it publicly. 
I think you understand (for you know England well) 
that the effect of your President's proposed intervention 
has affected people here very differently according to 
their different degiees in the knowledge of foreign countries, 
and especially according to their knowledge of the way the 
war has been presented to neutrals by the (Germans. 
The greater part of our people were frankly astounded. 
They could not conceive what the President meant by 
intervening at all— especially by intervening at this 
stage when the defeat of the enemy is no longer in doubt. 
They did not see what purpose the Note,served nor what 
conceivable motive it could have had. They knew that 
the President was not attached to the enemy's cause in 
any fashion whatever : no more than to our own ; and yet 
everyone in Europe— at any rate everyone with access 
to e\'en the most general information upon the war— 
could see that such intervention at this moment was 
wholly favourable to the defeated enemy and wholly 
imfa\-ourable to the victorious Allies. And this for the 
simple reason that the Allies have, until quite lately, been 
chmbmg up the hill. They have only quite recently 
reached the simimit, matched and surpassed the enormous 
initial superiority with which their enemy began his 
aggression. 
I say, then, that the mass of people were simplv and 
frankly astounded. The President's Note did not" seem 
" to make sense." It was like a letter of condolence 
received upon news of a wedding or a letter of congratu- 
lation upon news of a death. It had no relation to facts. 
Phrases describing " both parties " as having the good of 
the smaller countries at heart, read to an Englishman exact- 
ly as though Napoleon had written to Pitt saying his chief 
care was for the continued wealth of the City of London ; 
or as though George III. had written to Washington, 
after the winter of Valley Forge, wishing him all success. 
'I his, I say, is the way the Note struck the great mass 
of our opinion. 
But there is a smaller body with special opportunities 
for information which was less astonished. It regularly 
reads the American press. It was well acquainted with 
the United States in the past, and in constant corres- 
pondence with friends in that country during the present 
war. It could judge, therefore, not orily why the President 
saw things as he did, but why so many of yoiir most capable 
fellow citizens see the war in a distorting mirror. Men 
of the very best judgment can only act upon the evidence 
before them, and we know (for I count myself among that 
number) the strange nature of the evidence which has 
alone been presented to you. 
The chief fault, lies, of course, %vith the absence of a 
capable propaganda in the English tongue. It is a great 
pity, but it is not to be wondered at, for we have done 
nofching of the kind before. We not only had no ma- 
chinery for starting such a thing, but it was also un- 
congenial to our temperament. It was particularly 
congenial to the Prussian temperament because it was 
something which required little initia five, great patience, 
and mechanical preparation. At the same time pro- 
paganda work of this sort is the more effective if it is 
unscrupulous and, like s^n'ing, w^orks best where the agent 
is devoid of generosity and honour. The result is that your 
people have had a \'iew of the war, whifch is not indeed 
' the Prussian view, but is certainly what the Prussian 
authorities wanted them to have. 
This idea which the Prussian authorities wanted you 
to entertain was compounded of two falsehoods : one on 
the moral nature of the war, one on its actual progress. 
On the moral side you were to receive the impression 
that Germany was fighting for her life against aggressors. 
On the progress of the war you were to be told that the 
aggressors had been beaten off and that your informant 
had triumphed. 
As to the first of tliese falsehoods, its impression, in the 
absence of contradiction, was a comparatively easy task. 
There has never been a case where an onlooker to a furious 
struggle has not accepted the plea of one party if the other 
was not told him. Not one man in ten thousand will 
read the evidence contained in official' publications. 
Prussia has merely got to say that the Russian Empire 
mobilised against the German "Empire and Austria in the 
midst of a profound peace and threatened them both 
with invasion ; that France hesitated and then from 
desire for revenge foolishly allowed her Alliance with 
Russia to bring her into the conspiracy ; that Great 
Britain wantonly, out of jealousy and fear for the 
future, though not formally allied to France or Russia, 
came in. That story uncontrachcted would be accepted 
as any uncontradicted story is accepted. 
It is a lie of a perfectly crude typa. 
Prussia had prepared for this war during three years ; 
had raised a special levy of money for it ; had suddenly 
added enormously to her own army and that of her 
vassals; had specially overhauled allher military machin- 
ery ; had made special arrangements with Austria ; had 
drawn up a military plan not against Russia— (Russia 
was only to be held at first)— but against France. The 
moment chosen for t}ie war was that after the harvest 
had been gathered in 1914, The only thing the Prussian 
authorities can possibly say in their own favour is 
that they felt themselves suspected and feared that 
later they might be attacked, and therefore chose the 
moment of their greatest strength for aggression. As a 
fact they did not even say so moral a thing as that until 
they saw that defeat was ine\4table. In the first day.^ 
of the war — as for years before the war — tliey talked 
(juite simply and quite brutally of conquest, for they knew 
themselves to be enormously superior in men and material. 
What they did not know was that they were inferior in 
l)rains. 
However, we can leave all that. In the matter^ of 
motives you have heard only the (ierman story, or 
you have only heard the later German story, and there 
IS no wonder that you believed it. 
When I come to the second part of their propaganda 
I feel a certain difficulty, because I am afrs.id you may 
be annoyed by the truth. 
I say that it was important for the effect the Germans 
desired to be produced that your people should be kept 
ignorant of the military situation, and I can imagine 
your telling me with soms indienntion that 3'ou are just 
