Apropos of the general untrustworthiness of German reports, it may have been noticed that the messages attributed to German Headquarters have lately begun to contradict French and Russian of-tical reports, Two such contrdictions appeared yesterday, one of the capture of guns and prisoners by Russians south-east of Cracow; the other, of the destruction of three German batteries in France. Now these official French reports are not only given out to the world. They are also daily distributed among the troops in the trenches. Consequently, if they were untrue, they would instantly be detected as such by the troops themselves, among whom the thought that the Government was publishing false reports would have the worst possible effect. Similarly, the Russians fight not only for themselves but for their Allies; and for the Russian generals to give out false reports of successes would risk marring the whole plan of action on both fronts. Berlin's disclaimers can, therefore, be regarded philosophically. If they mean anything more than the usual daily ex-excise of the inventive faculty—which is probably getting rather jaded by now—they mean that the than the Allies say.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.