If you don’t see what you want, pay for it, is Germany’s motto to-day.
A veritable rain of German gold has fallen in all the neutral countries
during the war. Italy, Roumania, Greece, Spain, Holland, Switzerland,
and Scandinavia have had the tares of German secret funds sown amongst
the wheat of genuine public opinion. It was Bismarck’s belief that by
gold all newspapers and most men are to be bought.
To-day it is hard to make any German bureaucrat believe that it is not
possible to make neutrals think black is white if only enough money be
spent. The fact that German black is very very black does not deter the
industrious secret fund distributors. Newspapers are bought, agitators
are subsidised, a false public opinion is artificially created--and the
principal end is always to help those who made the war in Germany and
those who keep it going to calm the masses in repeating what neutral
papers and neutral led captains say.
A nation which has to depend upon such means of drugging itself into
acquiescence has little to hope for. In Italy, in Roumania, the
scattering of German gold has availed nothing--but while there remains
a neutral State there will German secret funds be scattered. And with
it all, the bellowing, blustering German propagandist, thumping any
neutral table and endeavouring to make people believe that all men are
as he is, knows well that he only gets a hearing, even from the lowest
elements of any nation, because behind him is his colleague with the
money-bag--Raemaekers has expressed in the money-bag holder all the
true inwardness of the German system of propaganda.