The other campaign was one of falsehood, conducted by speeches and
through the press, and intended to mislead public opinion. It was
an effort to deceive both its own people and neutral nations by
mendacious misrepresentations of German aims, purposes, and conduct,
and by equally false descriptions of the aims, purposes, and conduct
of Germany's antagonists, and especially of the British Government
and the British people. It tried to represent the war as having been
forced upon Germany by Britain. Germany, it said, was merely defending
herself against an unprovoked attack. She desired to live at peace
with her neighbors, developing her own resources, cherishing no
aggressive designs. Her enormous army and navy had been created only to
protect her against the jealous and malicious enemies by whom she was
surrounded, and especially against Great Britain. Britain, it seems,
was envious of Germany. Being herself "a decadent nation"--this was the
prevailing German the commercial competition of Germany, and tried to
keep the latter out of all foreign markets. British policy--so they
said--under the direction of King Edward VII., had formed alliances
with France and Russia in order to hem in Germany, and after trying
to block Germany's outlets in Africa and Asia, contrived this war to
destroy by arms the rival whom she could not face up to in trade and
manufacturing industry.
While these accusations were brought against Britain, attempts were
made to excuse the invasion of Belgium by the false stories, dropped as
soon as they had served their temporary purpose, that French officers
had been sent into Belgium to help to organize the Belgian troops
against Germany and that French aviators had been flying over German
territory.
Grotesque as all these inventions were, they were repeated with such
audacity as to produce some effect in neutral countries. But their
chief and more lasting influence was on the German people. A large part
of the German press, inspired and controlled by the German Government,
had for some time past been holding up England as the persistent foe of
Germany. It now redoubled its falsehoods, representing Sir Edward Grey
as having plotted to bring about a war, and urged Russia to refuse a
peaceful solution; and it added equally groundless charges that England
had secretly planned with Belgium to attack Germany through Belgian
territory. These fables, repeated incessantly by German politicians,
as well as by the newspapers, found ready credence with the German
people, easily led by their press, always docile to the orders of their
Government, and now swept off their feet by a wave of patriotism and
by the belief that they were about to achieve a victory as rapid and
complete as that of 1870. It was this conviction of the malevolence and
the grasping ambition of England that created that ferocious hatred of
the English which has continued to display itself in the treatment of
English prisoners and in the exultation over such crimes as the sinking
of the Lusitania.