It is a strange mentality which objects to Britons in Great Britain learning of the fantastic claims which the German propaganda machine is continually emitting, and the questions asked on the subject in the House of Commons, indicate that the men who put them fail to understand that if any form of suppression similar to that employed in Germany were used in Britain the effects would be disastrous. The policy of the Ministry of Information of not preventing the publicity given to German official communiques is the only correct one. In the first case evei Briton knows fully their authorship, and remembers that Hamburg after all is the father of "humbug." To suppress German communiques in a country where the people are permitted to listen to enemy broadcasts,—again a thing which is severely punished in Germany, would be the height of absurdity. It ha shown that the freedom in this which the Briton enjoys is not only not productive of harm, but actually conducive of good. The telegram' which starts off with "A German official communique states," etc., is or-dirianly read with the knowledge that it is probably a pack of lies, as witness the various samples which have been exposed from time to time in these columns. That has to be the preliminary assumption. It is adopted not only by intelligent British readers but by neutrals as well, for they are impressed on the one hand by the countless numbers of German untruths, which have been exposed so often that it b comes almost monotonous, while on the other they have been given examples of the readiness of the British Government to tell Britons and the world at large the truth even when it amounts to the sad confession, which Mr. Churchill made on Tuesday in the House of Commons. The propagation of untruth which the Germans are so busy with, as they were during the last war, is by now of definite a ance to the Allies, for the masses are more impressed by the moderate statements of their own leaders when they compare them with the fantastic claims which the enemy are continually putting forth. Most of the British national papers have made a practice since the commencement of hostilities of devoting some space to the news emanating from Germany. It is a good practice, for if the British reader ever became convinced that he was only being informed. of one side of the case, present confidence in Britain's leaders would very speedily disappear.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.