Don
Martin diary entry for Friday, July 12, 1918:
Stayed in today to write mail stuff. Wrote 3,000 word story on the Marines; a 700 word story on German propaganda and about 1,000 calling America’s attention to the fact that she has a big job on her hands in licking Germany
Stayed in today to write mail stuff. Wrote 3,000 word story on the Marines; a 700 word story on German propaganda and about 1,000 calling America’s attention to the fact that she has a big job on her hands in licking Germany
The two July 12 dispatches
on German propaganda and the job remaining to be done, mailed to New York, were
published in the New York Herald on Sunday, August 4, 1918 under a banner
headline: “WITH DON MARTIN AT THE AMERICAN ARMY’S FRONT IN FRANCE.”
'HUN SUFFERING' IS PROPAGANDA
FOR THE
ENTENTE
Don Martin Says United States Must Not
Be Deceived
by Gloomy Reports
By DON MARTIN
Special Correspondent of the Herald with the American
Armies in France
[Special to the Herald]
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES IN FRANCE,
July 12
German propaganda is one of the most formidable weapons the Germans are
using against the Allies. The ramifications of this insidious method of
conducting a war are gradually being disclosed. The German is now conducting
after-war propaganda.
It is known that the German government is
worried about the reception its commercial emissaries will receive when they
start out to do business after the war is over. Prisoners frankly say the
people in Germany are beginning to realize that with the entire world hostile
and embittered toward them their path will be a thorny one. In articles I have
already written it has been stated that many of the German prisoners say they
do not approve of the war; that they are fighting because they believe their
country is in danger, and that the soldiers only fight because there is nothing
else to do.
So many of these plaintive stories have been
told by prisoners that careful investigation was made. It now appears that the
Germans are told what they should say if they are taken prisoners; that they
must picture the German people as home loving, honorable and forgiving; must
say that they are fighting a war of defense, started by Great Britain and
maintained by her in the face of honest peace efforts by Germany.
For several weeks the Germans have been sending propaganda over the French
lines. Its purpose has been to open up an old hatred of England by the French.
The Germans publish a newspaper which they call the Ardennes Gazette. It is
printed in French and apparently is issued about once a week. Balloons are sent
up, each bearing about 100 copies of this paper, and come down over the French
lines. I have seen several of the papers. One issue contained a hundred alleged
libelous statements made by English members of Parliament about France. It
contained also a record of Great Britain’s war achievements. The statements were
palpably false and were designed to embitter the French soldier toward his
British Ally.
Lies About United States
Another issue contained a lengthy article, alleged to have been written by
an American, saying that United States is not in sympathy with the country’s
war policy and that the true situation is concealed because the pacifist press
is not permitted to circulate newspapers outside the country.
It is now known that the stories published two and three years ago about
the terrible hardships being endured by the Germans were largely inspired by
Germany herself. They were designed to accomplish two things, viz: to show to
the world that the German people are Spartans, willing to endure anything; to
arouse sympathy for the German people in the United States.
From all that can be learned now Germany has never been on the verge of
starvation and is having no serious food shortage now. Although, according to
the startling stories skilfully sent out of Germany, the people all over the
Empire, two years and a half ago, were forced to give up all their copper and
brass and jewelry to provide material for German shells, there is no dearth of
material now for German shells. Although the people of Germany were said to be
wearing paper shoes and paper boots, the Germans captured by the Allies have on
the very best of clothes and without exception, wear first class leather boots.
Germans who appear to tell the truth say that at home the people have
curtailed on food but that conditions were never such as to threaten famine and
that the stories of impoverished health and epidemics, which are taking off
thousands of infants, are mostly inventions, intended to make the world look
with pity on the German people.
German propaganda is a subtle and a dangerous
thing, and the sooner the people in United States realize it the better it will
be for all. Germany appealing for the sympathy of the world to-day is much like
the bully who cries because he has a sliver in his toe.
There is no doubt that
there is more or less dissension among the different elements of the German
army, but in the opinion of men who have made a study of German propaganda, the
Germans are magnifying this and giving publicity to it in order to encourage
the allies in the belief that Germany is weakening and that the allies need not
exert themselves to their utmost to whip her. In other words the master propagandists
in Germany believe that it is distinctly to their advantage to have the allies
think that Germany is tottering; that her army is lacking in morale and that
the allies can trash the German army without using their maximum resources
GERMANY STILL IS FORMIDABLE FOE, DON
MARTIN SAYS
Herald Correspondent Warns That Stories
of Teuton Collapse Are Propaganda
By DON MARTIN
Special Correspondent of the Herald with the American
Armies in France
[Special to the Herald]
WITH THE AMERICAN ARMIES IN FRANCE,
July 12
It
is encouraging to Americans familiar with war conditions here to learn from
Americans newly arrived that the folk back home at last are awakened to the
seriousness of the task they have before them. For serious it is.
The
opinion of some of the Americans who have come to France on various civil
missions has been that the defeat of Germany is assured and that America has
only to send a million men and to keep pouring in supplies. It is well for the
people in the United States to recognize that the strength of the German army
is yet very great; that it is fully as strong as the Allied army, and that it
is yet capable of making a gigantic offensive.
Unless
there is a rupture between Germany and Austria or an uprising among the German
people the German army will be able, even in the face of complete failure of its
1918 offensive, to continue the war for a long time to come. There is no
indication of trouble with the civil population which is supporting the war
policy wholeheartedly because it believes victory is in sight. What the
attitude of the civil population will be when defeat threatens no one can
predict. Many of the Germans who are taken prisoners intimate that the people
at home will not submit much longer to the privations they now suffer, but
little actual dependence can be placed on what German prisoners say. All of
them except the most illiterate are part of the German propaganda system.
Actual Conditions in Germany
It
is a fair assumption from letters found on German prisoners and German dead and
from statements made generally by the prisoners, that Germany is having
sufficient to eat; that the stories of her hardships and sufferings have been
grossly exaggerated by German propagandists for the purpose of causing
sympathy; and that the people of Germany are ready to give everything they have
to continue the war as long as victory seemed assured.
It
is easy to recall the time when Americans said:--
“Oh,
well, if we will declare war we will never send soldiers to Europe. The moral
effect of our entrance into the war will be sufficient—that and the supplies
and ammunition we can send.”
There
is no secret now in the fact that America has a very large army in France. They
are good soldiers. Experience has shown that after they have been through an attack
and a siege in the trenches they are as good soldiers as any in Europe. A
French general said to me recently that they are the best soldiers in Europe.
But
the men we now have will not be enough. The stream must be kept pouring in. The
pleasant illusion which many cherished that all the United States would have to
do would be to look across and bark once or twice and then dictate terms of
peace is, or certainly should be forgotten. For illusion it certainly was. I
talked to a man from California yesterday. He cam here to enlarge the work of
the Knights of Columbus. His name is Scott and her is from Los Angeles.
Big Bite, but U. S. Will Chew It
“Uncle
Sam has bitten off a pretty big hunk,” he said. “It’s a little bigger than most
of the people at home thought it was and I’m going to tell them so when I get
back. I thought this thing would be over pretty soon, but Germany is a long way
from licked yet. However, while we have bitten off a bigger chunk than we
thought, we’ll chew it. Don’t worry about that. Germany knows it, too.”
All
of which is very true. America will ‘chew it’ and Germany knows it, but unless
internal troubles arise to trouble her, Germany will “carry on” for a long time
yet. Americans in the army have been in the conflict long enough now to realize
that a military machine of fifty years growth is very formidable. There is
little about modern war that Germany does not know. There is nothing about fiendishness which she
does not know and will not resort to. In conceding that her strength is great
on the field of battle it is more a recognition of her barbarous perfection
than a tribute to her genius as a nation.
She will be defeated. She knows she will be defeated.
But she has the power and the men to leave deep scars on the Allies. She is
worried about America’s rapid mobilization of a real army, and knows that, with
America landing men in France at the rate of thousands every day, her,
Germany’s hope of winning is growing steadily dimmer.
From
information of the most reliable character it has been learned that Germany now
has in readiness for the renewed offensive about forty-five assault divisions.
This is roughly 700,000 men. In the German army at present a division consists of
about 15,000 men. These forty-five divisions have nothing to do with the
holding of the line. They are a separate unit. They can be used at any point.
In fact, they can be used at one point for a week and shifted to another point
which the Germans think is vulnerable. The success of the Allies in checking
the new assault depends partly upon the ability of the intelligence department
to learn where the blow will be struck. Forty-five divisions of first class
troops could, if concentrated on a front of fifteen or twenty or even fifty
kilometres, advance in the face of the most heroic and skilful resistance. So,
it need not cause uneasiness or alarm when this is read the Germans have pushed
ahead into the British line. I do not say that this will take place, but the
feeling is that the first drive will be in Champagne and the next in Flanders
against the British.
Those
who are familiar with the methods of General Foch; those who recall how, when
the crisis comes, the British always stand like a stone wall against every
assault, finally with dash and tenacity, achieving victory in the very shadow
of defeat; those who bear in mind the brilliant qualities of resistance
possessed by the French; those who have seen the Americans swiftly developing
into splendid soldiers and taking their place at various vital points in the
line; and, on top of it all, who know the preparations which the Allies have
made to trip and slaughter an advancing foe, will not be alarmed even if the
Germans in the next few weeks make a considerable of an advance. They will not
reach their goal.
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