Page:Secrets of Crewe House.djvu/177

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TRIBUTES FROM THE ENEMY
127

omissions of the enemy. To prove constantly the contrary to them is a rather thankless task, but of which one should never tire."

It was, indeed, a thankless task to try to keep the truth from the whole German nation. "Warn your brothers, your sons, your husbands, not to believe the enemy's leaflets," was one of "Ten Commandments for German Women," published by the Kölnische Volkszeitung on October 20, but it was then too late to maintain the lie-system by which the German resistance had been stimulated for so long.

Writing in July, 1919, Herr Arnold Rechberg said in the Tägliche Rundschau: "It cannot be doubted that Lord Northcliffe very substantially contributed to England's victory in the world war. His conduct of English propaganda during the war will some day find its place in history as a performance hardly to be surpassed. The Northcliffe propaganda during the war correctly estimated…the character and intellectual peculiarities of the Germans."

Praise from an enemy, when there is no underlying motive, can usually be accepted as sincere. Most of the foregoing quotations were primarily warnings and exhortations to their own people issued during the war,