The German navy claims to have sunk another cruiser, At first a destroyer was claimed, but later the Reich authorities changed their minds and decided that after all it must have been a cruiser which was sunk, That this has been denied by the British Admiralty will of course have no effect upon the German people, who certainly will not be apprised of that fact, The promptness with which the sinking of the Rawalpindi was announced by the Admiralty is ample proof of the British Government's claim that it is telling nothing but the truth, and that without any unreasonable delay. If a cruiser had indeed been destroyed there would be nothing to gain by keeping that information back from the British indefinitely, There might on the other hand be some psychological advantage to be gained by announcing such a loss immediately, if indeed it had occurred, as serving to dissipate the impression which might be gained from months of comparative inertia that the war is really in progress. The fact of the matter is that Germany has to do the same thing, but more urgently, and it is necessary to fool the completely misinformed German people with stories of success as a means of checking the discontent which must continue to mount as ultimate victory is consistently denied them, This accounts for the purely fictitious claims that some twelve or thirteen important units of the British Fleet have been accounted for, the Reich authorities apparently having been converted to the doctrine of a unrest at bay. So also
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.