Page:Secrets of Crewe House.djvu/135

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OPERATIONS AGAINST GERMANY
93

was found possible to arrange for these news bulletins to be in the hands of the Germans within approximately forty-eight hours of their being written. Three times a week a consignment of not fewer than 100,000 leaflets of this character was rushed over to France for prompt dispatch to the Germans. This "speeding-up" became a factor of the highest importance when military events moved so rapidly in the closing months of the war.

In June and July the number of leaflets dropped over the German lines and behind them totalled 1,689,457 and 2,172,794 respectively. During August an average of over 100,000 a day was attained, the actual number of leaflets issued by the Enemy Propaganda Department in that month being 3,958,116, in September 3,715,000, and in October 5,360,000, while in the first ten days of November, before the Armistice put an end to such activities, 1,400,000 were sent out. The Germans were greatly disturbed. One of their writers described the flood of leaflets picturesquely as "English poison raining down from God's clear sky." Marshal von Hindenburg, in his autobiography, "Out of My Life" (Cassell & Co.), admits that this propaganda intensified the