Can you beat the story from Norway of the German soldiers receiving mass training in the bagpipes? If it isn't true, it ought to be. One can so clearly see them at it, squeezing the sporrans and fingering the skeandhus, with the perspiration running down their foreheads. And then they are surprised because we say they have no sense of humour.
Two curious stories reach me, both at first hand. In the one, an Englishman who has been ranching in Argentina for the past eight years arrived in London to join up. He says that since he landed he has had nothing but surprises. The first was when the ship came alongside at Liverpool in the usual way. Where he comes from in the Argentine it is believed that every British port has been wrecked by the Jerries and that passengers have to be landed by launches from two or three miles out. The next surprise was the journey to London in a luxurious express. He had been led to suppose that our railways were almost as badly hurt as the ports. In London he was amazed at the comforts of his hotel, the profusion of foods, the display in the shops, the crowds of apparently care-free people in the streets, and in the City, the undisturbed continuance of business, The mental picture he had brought was of'panic-stricken people cowering in shelters, living on iron rations and with all their business at a standstill. My acquaintance certainly comes from a rather remote part of Argentina. But his statement shows what German propaganda is doing in South America, and what our Ministry of Information is not doing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.