631 
 
Hollinger Corp. 
 pH8.5 
 
BRITISH CENSORSHIP 
 AND ENEMY PUBLICATIONS 
 
 BY 
 THEODORE WESLEY KOCH 
 
 Chief, Order Division, Library of Congress 
 
 Reprinted from the Library journal, September, 1917. 
 
31 651 
 
 BRITISH CENSORSHIP AND ENEMY PUBLICATIONS 
 
 By Theodore Wesley Koch, Chief, Order Division, Library of Congress 
 
 In the early part of 191 7, while examin- 
 ing books detained in England, an excep- 
 tional opportunity was afforded me to study 
 the workings of the British Censorship as 
 it affected enemy publications. I came to 
 feel that there were certain facts about 
 the censorship that should be known by 
 American librarians. I therefore sent to 
 the Librarian of Congress a special report 
 on the subject, prefaced with some his- 
 torical facts which may not be known to 
 American librarians and research workers. 
 If Americans had gained earlier knowledge 
 of what the British censors had to contend 
 with and of the service these officials have 
 rendered the Cause, they would doubtless 
 have accepted with better grace the neces- 
 sary interference with their mail. 
 
 With Dr. Putnam's consent this report 
 is now made public. The officials of the 
 Censorship kindly verified the statements 
 here made. 
 
 OBJECT of the censorship 
 Two important memoranda were issued 
 in May. 191 5, as Parliamentary Papers — 
 one on the Censorship, the other on the 
 Press Bureau. Together they provide the 
 official justification of the Censorship as it 
 affects both the individual and the press. 
 In the memorandum on the Censorship, 
 this new branch of the government is 
 described as one of several institutions de- 
 signed with a threefold object: To prevent 
 information of military value from reach- 
 ing the enemy; to acquire similar informa- 
 tion for the British government; and to 
 check the dissemination of information use- 
 ful to the enemy or prejudicial to the 
 Allies. When the transmission of corre- 
 spondence and the publication of news are 
 consistent with the attainment of these ob- 
 jects there is little or no interference. 
 Every endeavor is made to safeguard the 
 legitimate interests, private and commercial, 
 of British subjects and neutrals. 
 
 In the course of the present war it has 
 become apparent that in the Censorship 
 there lies ready to hand a weapon, the 
 full value of which was perhaps not antici- 
 
 pated prior to the war. It can be used to 
 restrict commercial and financial transac- 
 tions intended for the benefit of enemy 
 governments or persons residing in enemy 
 countries. 
 
 The memorandum discusses the Censor- 
 ship as it affects (1) private and com- 
 mercial communications; and (2) the press. 
 It states that the censorship of private and 
 commercial communications is under the 
 direction of a general officer who is re- 
 sponsible to the Army Council. The Cen- 
 sorship is organized in two sections: (1) 
 the Cable Censorship under the control of 
 the Chief Cable Censor, who is a senior 
 officer of the general staff at the War Of- 
 fice, and (2) the Postal Censorship, con- 
 trolled by the Chief Postal Censor. In 
 addition to some 120 cables and wireless 
 stations in various parts of the Empire, 
 the chief cable censor controls in the Unit- 
 ed Kingdom messages sent over the cables 
 of the private cable companies. Every 24 
 hours from 30,000 to 50,000 telegrams pass 
 thru the hands of the censors in the United 
 Kingdom. Exclusive of those in the of- 
 ficial Press Bureau, about 180 censors are 
 employed in the United Kingdom in the 
 censorship of cables; elsewhere in the Em- 
 pire about 400. In the United Kingdom, 
 with few exceptions, they are retired navy 
 and military officers. 
 
 The memorandum further states that the 
 objects of the Postal Censorship are similar 
 to those of the Cable Censorship. All mails 
 that have to be censored are necessarily 
 subject to some delay, but harmless letters, 
 whether private or commercial, are not de- 
 tained, even when coming from an enemy 
 country or addressed to an enemy person. 
 No letter, however, addressed to an enemy 
 country can be transmitted unless its en- 
 velope is left open and is enclosed in a 
 cover addressed to a neutral country. Let- 
 ters in which any kind of code or secret 
 writing is used are liable to be detained 
 even if the message appears to be harm- 
 less and totally unconnected with the war. 
 In the private branch more than a ton of 
 mail matter is censored every week, ex- 
 
elusive of parcels. Commercial corre- 
 spondence with certain foreign countries is 
 dealt with in the trade branch and amounts 
 to nearly four tons every week. 
 
 LORD ROBERT CECIl/s STATEMENT 
 
 There is a good deal of confusion in the 
 public mind between the press censorship, 
 the cable censorship and the censorship of 
 the mails. Even the latter is complicated, 
 because different considerations apply to 
 mails originating in or destined for, the 
 United Kingdom; mails between European 
 countries and the United States intended to 
 pass through the United Kingdom; mails 
 carried on neutral ships which voluntarily 
 call at British ports; and letters carried on 
 neutral ships which would not enter British 
 jurisdiction without some form of compul- 
 sion. The distinction is emphasized in a 
 letter addressed by Lord Robert Cecil, 
 Minister of Blockade, to an American firm, 
 and given to the press. The letter follows : 
 Foreign Office, 
 June 23rd, 1916 
 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 I am directed by Lord Robert Cecil to 
 thank you for your letter of May 27th, in 
 which you take issue with a statement made 
 by him to a correspondent of the New York 
 Times. This statement was that great care 
 is taken to forward mails between neutral 
 countries taken from neutral ships for ex- 
 amination by the British censors as quickly 
 as possible. You say that, during the last 
 six or eight months, your correspondence 
 with Holland has suffered great delay. 
 
 Lord Robert Cecil's statement was intended 
 as an assurance that the postal censorship 
 had been perfecting its organization, and that, 
 from the time at which he spoke, Americans 
 could be confident that their letters would 
 suffer only slight delay owing to detention 
 by the censors. He did not intend to ex- 
 clude the possibility that delays had occurred 
 in earlier days, when the British authorities 
 first began to examine mails carried on neu- 
 tral ships. But even if such delays did ac- 
 tually occur, it is by no means certain, and, 
 in fact, it is in many cases unlikely, that those 
 delays were due to the British censorship. 
 Mails only began to be taken from neutral 
 ships for censorship last December, and it is 
 therefore quite clear that delays experienced 
 by you from six to eight months ago can- 
 not have been due to the censorship of these 
 mails. As there has been a great deal of 
 misunderstanding on this subject, I am to ex- 
 plain the following points : 
 
 The American mails censored in the United 
 Kingdom must he divided into two classes, 
 
 each of which is dealt with by a special or- 
 ganization : 
 
 (1) Terminal mails, i. e., mails originating 
 in, or destined for, the United Kingdom. 
 The censorship of these mails is one of 
 the universally recognized rights of sov- 
 ereignty, and it has been exercised 
 since the beginning of the war, without 
 any protest being made against it by 
 neutral Governments. 
 
 (2) Mails neither originating in, nor des- 
 tined for, the United Kingdom. These 
 must be further subdivided into three 
 groups : 
 
 (a) Transit mails, i. e., mails between 
 European countries and the United 
 States intended by the office of despatch 
 to pass through the United Kingdom — 
 for example, mails sent from Rotter- 
 dam to this country for re-transmission 
 from Liverpool to the United States. 
 Such mails are forwarded by the Brit- 
 ish Post-Office, and enjoy the facilities 
 afforded by it to British mails, and tke 
 right of censorship over them while in 
 transit through British territory in 
 time of war is generally admitted. This 
 right, however, was not exerted at the 
 beginning of this war, and censorship 
 of these transit mails only came into 
 force in April, 1915. 
 
 (b) Mails carried by neutral ships which 
 normally call at a British port or enter 
 British jurisdiction without any form 
 of compulsion. 
 
 (c) Mails carried by neutral ships which 
 would not enter British jurisdiction 
 without some form of compulsion. 
 
 The first ship from the United States to 
 Holland from which the mails were removed 
 was the Noorderdijk. These mails were landed 
 at Ramsgate on the 18th December, 1915, ar- 
 rangements not having then been completed 
 to remove them at Falmouth. The first ship 
 from Holland to the United States from which 
 the mails were removed was the Noordam, 
 which entered the Downs on the 5th Decem- 
 ber. It is to classes (b) and (c) exclusively 
 that the present discussions between this Gov- 
 ernment and other neutral Governments refer, 
 while class (c) alone is covered by the Hague 
 Convention. 
 
 Most of the annoyance caused in the United 
 States by the action of His Majesty's Gov- 
 ernment seems to arise from a confusion be- 
 tween the above kinds of censorship. It is 
 to the last two kinds only that Lord Robert 
 Cecil's interview referred, and the British 
 authorities are making every effort to perfect 
 their organization so that the necessity of ex- 
 amining this class of mail may not involve 
 long delays. But during the time that the 
 censorship of these particular mails has been 
 in force, many other factors have occurred 
 
causing delay, quite independently of the ac- 
 tion of the British Government. Sailings from 
 Holland have been very irregular, owing to 
 the mine fields sown by the Germans outside 
 Rotterdam, and have, at times, been held up 
 altogether, as, for instance, after the sink- 
 ing of the Tubantia. As you are aware, the 
 Dutch mail boats now proceed round the 
 north of Scotland and go south, calling both 
 at Kirkwall and at Falmouth before crossing 
 the Atlantic, and this in itself cause's con- 
 siderable delay. 
 
 So far as the censorship is concerned, the 
 delay in the case of mails from Holland to 
 the United States will not be greater than 
 between four and five days from the date 
 when the mails are unloaded at Kirkwall to 
 the date when they are handed by the cen- 
 sors to the Post-Office to be sent on. The 
 delay caused to mails from the United States 
 to Holland will not be longer than six days 
 in all. The Post-Office will always forward 
 the mail by the next boat to its destination, 
 and whether delay occurs in this operation 
 will solely depend upon the regularity of sail- 
 ings. It will be seen that letters contained 
 in the outward mails will sometimes, and those 
 in the inward mails generally, reach their 
 destination as early as, or earlier than, if left 
 on board the Dutch ship. 
 
 When the urgent need of examining first- 
 class mails, in order to intercept those postal 
 packets which are admittedly liable to be treated 
 as contraband, was first realized, it would 
 have been possible at once to have brought 
 the organization of the censorship to the level 
 of efficiency it has since reached by collect- 
 ing hurriedly a large enough number of ex- 
 aminers; but it was thought that infinitely 
 more harm would be done to neutral cor- 
 respondence by allowing their letters to be 
 handled by persons engaged hastily, whose 
 character and reliability had not been 
 thoroughly tested, than by subjecting the let- 
 ters at first to some slight delay. The neces- 
 sary staff has now been carefully selected, 
 and this delay eliminated. 
 
 In conclusion, Lord Robert Cecil would be 
 much obliged if you would furnish him with 
 more exact particulars of the letters which 
 you complain of being delayed, giving, where 
 possible, the date of the letter, the mail boat by 
 which it was despatched, and, if registered, 
 the registration number of the packet, in order 
 that enquiry may be made into each case. 
 
 As there is so much misunderstanding on 
 these points, and in the hope that the above 
 explanation may do something to make the 
 position clear, Lord Robert Cecil proposes to 
 publish the text of this letter for general 
 information. 
 
 DISCUSSION IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 Lord Grey of Fallodon stated in the 
 House of Lords, January 6, 1916, that 
 goods otherwise liable to seizure on board 
 
 neutral vessels do not, under international 
 law, acquire immunity by the mere fact of 
 being sent thru the post. The Allied gov- 
 ernments are accordingly applying the same 
 treatment to all such goods, however con- 
 veyed. The Allied governments do not at 
 present interfere with postal correspond- 
 ence found on neutral vessels on the high 
 seas, but they exercise their undoubted 
 rights to examine and censor such corre- 
 spondence when ships carrying them enter 
 their territory. 
 
 In the House of Commons, January 27, 
 1916, Mr. King asked the Secretary of State 
 for Foreign Affairs whether he could make 
 a statement concerning correspondence 
 with the Dutch government about the in- 
 tercepting of postal matter in transit on 
 the sea; and whether any offer to submit 
 the question to arbitration had been made. 
 In answer to Mr. King's question, Lord 
 Robert Cecil stated that the correspondence 
 with the Scandinavian government would 
 shortly be laid before Parliament. On 
 February 21, 1916, Lord Robert Cecil stat- 
 ed that the publication of the correspond- 
 ence with the Dutch government on the 
 question of the interception of postal mat- 
 ter and other correspondence on the same 
 subject was under consideration; but as 
 the moment for publishing correspondence 
 which was still in progress depended partly 
 on arrangements with the other govern- 
 ments concerned, he could say nothing 
 definite regarding the suggestion that the 
 question should be submitted to arbitration. 
 Consultations with the Allies were pro- 
 ceeding on the whole subject and he pre- 
 ferred to make no statement at that time. 
 
 On July 19, 1916, it was stated in Parlia- 
 ment that matter published in certain papers 
 like th<? Times, the Daily Mail, the Morning 
 Post, the Labour Leader and the Tribunal 
 had been used by the enemy for propa- 
 gandist purposes; that extracts from the 
 Daily Mail were being translated into Euro- 
 pean and Asiatic languages, and that they 
 were doing great damage to the cause of 
 Great Britain. Attention, however, was 
 called to the fact that none of these papers 
 had ever said a word except for the prose- 
 cution of the war with the utmost vigor. 
 
 The question of the opening of letters 
 addressed to members was discussed in 
 
4 
 
 Parliament, December 18, 1916. Mr. Mac- 
 pherson, the Liberal member for Ross and 
 Cromarty, replying to a question put by 
 Mr. Touche, said that all mails coming from 
 France were liable to be submitted to the 
 military censor. No discrimination is made 
 between different members of the House. 
 "It is a mistake to suppose," said Mr. Mac- 
 pherson, '"that the opening of a letter by 
 the Censor constitutes any reflection either 
 on the writer or the recipient. The object 
 of the Censorship is to prevent the enemy 
 from making use of indiscretions, to which 
 experience shows the best intentioned per- 
 sons are liable." 
 
 Just before the last Christmas holidays 
 the War Office issued a reminder to the 
 public that pictorial illustrations and photo- 
 graphs of all kinds, whether on post-cards, 
 Christmas, New Year or birthday cards ad- 
 dressed to neutral or enemy countries, or en- 
 closed in letters so addressed, and whether 
 the illustration itself did or did not 
 represent an object of interest to the enemy, 
 would in the future be stopped by the mili- 
 tary censor, except : ( 1 ) Family photo- 
 graphs addressed to British subjects in- 
 terned in neutral and enemy countries ; 
 (2) illustrations in publications posted by 
 firms holding a permit; and (3) illustra- 
 tions and photographs enclosed in letters or 
 other postal packets by firms who have 
 occasion in the ordinary course of their 
 trade to despatch such articles to their 
 agents or customers in neutral countries. 
 
 THE CHECKING OF ENEMY COMMERCE 
 
 One of the principal functions of the 
 Censorship is to act as a deterrent to all 
 the undertakings of the enemy. That it 
 has succeeded in its purpose is evidenced by 
 the following extracts from intercepted let- 
 ters published in the Times, December 12, 
 1916: 
 
 As you see the English are making so many 
 disagreeables and seizing the post that our 
 business is quite ruined. People do not dare 
 to send money any mo-e because they do not 
 receive receipts from home. 
 
 As I see from your telegram sent a few days 
 ago our lists have not arrived for three 
 weeks now. ... I think that if you sent 
 the receipts in fifteen private envelopes I 
 should perhaps receive them. 
 
 It is incredible how you have helped the 
 
 English Censor to establish the names of our 
 agents and also the fact that G. and G. looked 
 after our letters . . . you appear to have 
 received no post from us since the begin- 
 ning of March. Worse still is the fact that 
 because of the Censorship you have not got 
 our invoices or bills of lading. From this 
 miserable condition in which the English sea- 
 robbery has placed us there is no way out. 
 
 In conjunction with this we should like 
 to say that according to our experience it 
 seems now to be utterly impossible to ship 
 any goods to foreign countries. Since the 
 middle of April we received one single letter 
 from one of our friends in the States in which 
 he advises us that he instructed a banker 
 in Berlin to remit us a certain amount. This 
 remittance, however, we do not receive up to 
 the present. 
 
 Whatever the English want they get, for 
 the whole postal communication with Ger- 
 many is completely upset, and we never know 
 whether one can draw money or send money 
 to the other side. It is very unpleasant for 
 me also that I send 25,000 marks to Z., and 
 if this remittance has not arrived then all 
 the interest will be lost and many months 
 will go by before I get over all the difficul- 
 ties. . . At this moment I have a con- 
 signment lying at L., but I have received no 
 invoices and no bills of lading. Everything 
 has again been stolen. These are the diffi- 
 culties we have to fight against. I hope it 
 will not be long before peace is signed. 
 
 In consequence of the condition of the pos- 
 tal service with your side, business is on a 
 dead standstill. 
 
 From the above we can see how German 
 commercial enterprise in foreign countries 
 has been checked by cutting off both 
 correspondence and remittances. Altho 
 approximately half a million business let- 
 ters passing between America and Europe 
 were examined in the month of January, 
 19 1 7, less than ten were found to belong 
 to enemy firms. The attempt to use wire- 
 less telegraphy in place of the mails has 
 met with obstacles. In addition to the high 
 cost of sending messages by wireless there 
 are other limitations to this kind of service 
 as indicated in the following intercepted 
 letters from enemy firms : 
 
 Your claim (says one writer) in regard to 
 the transmission of your subscription may be 
 attributed to the fact that you are ignorant 
 of the circumstances that the cable connec- 
 tion with the Monarchy has been completely 
 interrupted, and that therefore apart from 
 wireless telegraphy, the only way to trans- 
 fer orders was by letters. As regards com- 
 munications by means of wireless telegraphy, 
 
we would, respectfully inform you that it is 
 up to the present very unsatisfactory as a 
 result of atmospheric disturbances. Long 
 delays are unavoidable, and unfortunately 
 messages are often distorted. Whenever pos- 
 sible we are transferring our orders by let- 
 ter. 
 
 We have made (writes another) a number 
 of attempts to get in touch with our bankers 
 in Germany by wireless, but up to the pres- 
 ent without success. 
 
 As soon as I found (says a third) that all 
 my letters, so to speak, fell in the water, and 
 did not reach their destination, I gave up 
 writing any more. Similarly I did not receive 
 a single letter from your side. Communica- 
 tion by wireless was also doubtful in the 
 highest degree, and one often had no idea 
 as to whether the message was destroyed 
 by the Censor or whether it ever reached 
 its destination or not. Taking it all round 
 the present conditions are nothing less than 
 infernal for a merchant who has been ac- 
 customed to a gradual and steady develop- 
 ment of his business relations, and we can 
 only hope that everything will some day turn 
 out for the best. 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF THE CENSORSHIP 
 
 Possibly no phase of activity which 
 sprang into being as a result of the war 
 has been more misunderstood and at the 
 same time more essential to the public good 
 than the British War Office Censorship. 
 From the first its workers have been im- 
 mensely impressed with the responsibility 
 of handling the correspondence of half the 
 world. Respect for the rights of these cor- 
 respondents has always been the first con- 
 sideration and it is not too much to say 
 that the majority of the readers employed 
 by the Censorship bring to their task a 
 purely academic attitude. It is a type of 
 work especially uncongenial to the English 
 character — foreign to its habits and tradi- 
 tions, tho an inevitable necessity in time 
 of war. Its exhausting nature is almost 
 beyond description. Some readers pass 
 upon as many as 400 letters a day. The 
 examination of books and other publica- 
 tions is of necessity a slower process. 
 
 Starting in London as a group of 30 
 workers, chiefly volunteers, the Censorship 
 began its delicate and difficult task (in 
 September, 1914) in a small basement room 
 of the postoffice building. To-day the Lon- 
 don branch alone occupies six floors of a 
 large building — Strand House, in Carey 
 street. Of its 3000 employees about 1700 
 
 are women, the remainder being men over 
 military age, neutrals and wounded officers. 
 Many of these employes are skilled lin- 
 guists. In the Department of Uncommon 
 Languages 157 languages are dealt with, 
 including Gaelic, Welsh, Erse and five or 
 six types of Yiddish. It is a matter of sur- 
 prise and interest to know that so many 
 persons are in the habit of corresponding 
 by such unusual means. 
 
 The aim of the Censor is not, as many 
 persons seem to believe, to see how many 
 letters and publications may properly be 
 detained, but to endeavor — as rapidly as 
 possible — to send on everything that is 
 found to contain no information of value 
 to the enemy and nothing that could injure ! 
 the cause of the Allies. 
 
 In the Philadelphia Saturday Evening 
 Post of April 28 and May 5, 1917, Major 
 Eric Fisher Wood published two excellent 
 articles on the British Censorship. To this 
 painstaking study we may refer anyone 
 who wishes information on the organization 
 of the Censorship as a whole. The purpose 
 of the present paper is to deal more particu- 
 larly with the Censorship as it affects the 
 supply of publications of enemy origin to 
 American librarians and scholars. 
 
 Detection of German propaganda and 
 contraband of war in the mails is by no 
 means the principal function of the Censor- 
 ship. The London Times, December 12, 
 1916, observes that the Censorship may not 
 unfairly be called the eyes of the blockade. 
 Its principal work, it continues, lies in de- 
 tecting and frustrating the innumerable and 
 everchanging subterfuges contrived by the 
 enemy with the connivance of neutral inter- 
 mediaries for evading the blockade and 
 carrying the sinews of^,war into Central 
 Europe in the form "either of goods or 
 credit. The contrivance of such schemes 
 by cable or by wireless is obviously im- 
 possible, and the examination of the mails 
 has in countless cases proved an insuper- 
 able obstacle to their success. 
 
 GERMAN PROPAGANDIST LITERATURE 
 
 For what follows here I am indebted to 
 Mr. Harry Melvill, librarian of the Censor- 
 ship, who was most generous in granting 
 interviews and in placing at my disposal 
 many of his own interesting memoranda. 
 
Mr. Melvill has gathered, arranged and 
 carefully studied some 2000 specimens of 
 various kinds of German propagandist liter- 
 ature. In his unique library are single 
 copies of every book, pamphlet and periodi- 
 cal of enemy origin detained by the censor 
 since September 1, 1914. This material 
 Mr. Melvill has divided into groups : philo- 
 sophical, religious, educational and pure 
 propaganda. But he has done much more 
 than this in divining the motive behind the 
 publication itself. 
 
 Before the war German propagandist 
 literature for both commercial and religious 
 purposes was sent out on a scale that no 
 other country had ever attempted. Many 
 private individuals and establishments of 
 various sorts scattered all over the world 
 had been receiving gratis — for months, 
 sometimes even for years — German liter- 
 ature in one form or another. Therefore, 
 upon the outbreak of the war, it was not 
 an occasion for special surprise to them to 
 receive the new propagandist literature. 
 And just as for purposes of distribution of 
 ordinary propaganda the Germans used the 
 channels of commerce ready to hand which 
 had been so long and so freely at the service 
 of their commercial propaganda, so there is 
 no doubt in Mr. Melvill's mind that re- 
 ligious congregations of various phases of 
 thought had kept in the closest touch with 
 those of the same persuasion in neutral 
 countries with a view to the distribution 
 of the so-called religious propaganda. 
 
 In a memorandum prepared several 
 months ago, Mr. Melvill divided the objects 
 of the German propaganda into the fol- 
 lowing five classes : 
 
 (1) To draw attention to the perfection of 
 
 German methods of organization. 
 
 (2) To give an exaggerated impression of the 
 
 successes achieved by Germany in the 
 war. 
 
 (3) To neutralize as far as possible the bad 
 
 effects produced by earlier excesses. 
 
 (4) By more subtle touches to indicate the 
 
 growth of dissension among the Allies 
 and modifications in the attitude of 
 neutrals towards the ultimate result of 
 the war. 
 
 (5) To misrepresent, as far as possible, 
 
 thru the distortion of past expressions 
 of opinion by writers of the Allied Na- 
 tions, and by the employment of rene- 
 gades, to deal with such topics as the 
 treatment of subject races by the Allies. 
 
 The first two objects were mainly served 
 by the German war literature in general 
 and the remaining three by propagandist 
 literature. 
 
 THE PROPAGANDIST PRESS 
 
 The earliest steps in regard to propa- 
 ganda proper were taken by the Press. The 
 Ueberseedienst [Transozean] from the first 
 utilized its large pecuniary resources, not 
 only to obtain publication of its garbled 
 war telegrams, Germanophile articles and 
 frequently falsified photographs in a large 
 number of neutral papers, but also to ac- 
 quire entire control of several already ex- 
 isting and to launch new ones of their own. 
 Notable among the latter are the Germania 
 at Buenos Aires, and papers of the same 
 name at Bogota, Guayaquil and San Paulo; 
 the Heraldo Aleman at San Salvador and 
 the Eco Aleman at Guatemala. In China, in 
 association with the Ostasiatischer Lloyd, 
 they founded The War and a Chinese 
 edition of the Deutsche Zeitung fur China 
 at Shanghai and the Umschau and Rund- 
 schau at Bangkok. The Kontinentale 
 Korrespondenz (in German, English, Span- 
 ish and Portuguese) designed to furnish 
 the neutral press with ready made copy, was 
 also their creation. Moreover, they them- 
 selves published various polyglot periodicals 
 and leaflets which found a host of imi- 
 tators, and without doubt many of these 
 made their way to place which books and 
 pamphlets could not reach. 
 
 Furthermore, the Pressc-Abteilung zur 
 Bceinflussnng dcr Ncutralen served a simi- 
 lar purpose and was more or less responsi- 
 ble for the publication of the War Chron- 
 icle in German, English, French, Spanish 
 and Dutch, and for De Toekomst published 
 in Holland in Dutch. This organization 
 was solely responsible for the creation of 
 a propagandist comic paper printed in Span- 
 ish and entitled La Guasa inter nacional. 
 The Hamburger Fremdenblatt, with its 
 "Welt im Bild" issued in twelve languages, 
 and the Hamburger Nachrichten, with 
 Spanish and Portuguese editions, were 
 some of the first recruits, while the enrol- 
 ment of the most disreputable of the latter 
 belongs also to the initial stages of the cam- 
 paign. There were also the British rene^; 
 gades and cosmopolitan hacks constituting 
 the staff of the Continental Times, a sheet 
 
purporting to be established for "Ameri- 
 cans in Europe." The Gazette des Ar- 
 dennes, tho belonging to a later period 
 may be mentioned here, as the two are 
 often classed together. Published in Charle- 
 ville, it endeavors, by the insertion of lists 
 of French prisoners in Germany, to obtain 
 readers in the occupied portion of France, 
 while the Russki Vyestnik, published in 
 Berlin, was produced for distribution 
 among Russian prisoners of war and in 
 occupied parts of Poland. 
 
 The mobilization of the whole German 
 press, explained Mr. Melvill, was equally 
 complete. Every newspaper, which hither- 
 to had published general or special news, 
 published practically nothing but war news. 
 As an instance to which this policy had 
 been carried out he cited the fact that the 
 Criminal Zeitung continues to appear under 
 its old title, but has replaced records of 
 crime by the exploits of soldiers; that art 
 journals substituted "Kriegsjahr" for the 
 year of publication, and that the Miinchener 
 Medizinische Wochenschrift has extended 
 the hospitality of its columns to a prose 
 paraphrase of the Hymn of Hate. While 
 it was not suggested that the mass of 
 scientific, technical and medical journals 
 published in Germany ceased to devote 
 themselves to subjects of special interest 
 to their readers, Mr. Melvill was convinced 
 that they also served a propagandist pur- 
 pose by being distributed in isolated num- 
 bers to show that "Continuous research 
 and industrial development under, and in 
 spite of war conditions" is to be taken as 
 Germany's somewhat ponderous reply to 
 the British slogan: "Business as usual." 
 
 GERMAN USE OF ENEMY LITERATURE 
 
 That the Germans in general, and those 
 engaged in the preparation of propaganda 
 in particular, have a fund of knowledge of 
 the literature of their enemies, is indis- 
 putable. There is very little that the Allies 
 have said against themselves or each other 
 which has not found its way to the shelves 
 in the Wilhelmstrasse. Carlyle and Her- 
 bert Spencer, files of the Times and Punch 
 are all requisitioned. The censorship li- 
 brarian suggested that the "England von 
 Innen" number of the Silddeutsche Monats- 
 hefte might bear as a sub-title, dear to 
 Germans : "See what they say of them- 
 
 selves." The corresponding "Frankreich 
 von Innen" number represents what the 
 Germans say of the French, although it is 
 to be noted that the Germans recently have 
 represented the French as the most humane 
 and cultivated of their enemies. In this 
 utilization of Allied material, there is of 
 course much that is mutilated and distorted, 
 but there is a growing tendency to publish 
 without comment wherever possible. A 
 good instance of this policy (and at the 
 same time a nice literary touch in propa- 
 ganda) is afforded by De Engelsche Tier- 
 anny, a recent production of the Dutch 
 Germanophile organ De Toekomst. Orig- 
 inally published at Amsterdam in 1781, it 
 is now reprinted in the old type on an 
 exact reproduction of the old paper and 
 with the old engravings of supposed Eng- 
 lish pillage and oppression. The text is 
 made up of conversations between a father 
 and a son, recalling legendary grievances 
 of the Dutch against the English and fore- 
 shadowing, almost verbatim, the comments 
 on the British attitude toward small na- 
 tions which are never out of the mouths 
 of their enemies to-day. 
 
 As a pioneer of the propaganda proper 
 in its relation to books and pamphlets, Mr. 
 Melvill thinks that pride of place may be 
 accorded to Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 
 though his success as an evangelist has 
 been in the inverse ratio to his prestige 
 as a British-born apostle of German "Kul- 
 tur." 
 
 Touching upon the endeavor to stimulate 
 unrest in India, my informant said that the 
 Indische Gesellschaft, hand in glove with 
 the Hindustan Ghadar of San Francisco 
 and the so-called Indian National Party, 
 have produced a mass of literature, much 
 of which claims to have been printed in 
 England by presses which never existed. 
 "British Rule in India condemned by the 
 British themselves" is a patchwork of ut- 
 terances by more or less distinguished 
 Britishers, ranging from Lord Clive to 
 Keir Hardie. It is prefaced by John Stuart 
 Mill's pronouncement: "The Government 
 of a people by itself has a meaning and a 
 reality, but such a thing as government of 
 one people by another does not and can not 
 exist." Like the reprint of William Jen- 
 nings Bryan's article with an almost similar 
 
8 
 
 title, it has received the honor of transla- 
 tion into almost every known language and 
 has found a sequel in "Why India is in 
 revolt against British rule." This pamphlet 
 purports to come from a mythical Labor 
 Press, Edinburgh, but the very fact that 
 the word Labor is spelled without a u shows 
 it to be the product of an American press. 
 Of the mass of other pamphlets in native 
 languages, including Chinese, some are il- 
 lustrated with photographs of the execu- 
 tion of Egyptian natives in connection with 
 the Denshawi incident of some years ago. 
 
 INSTRUCTIONAL BOOKS 
 
 The Germans made special endeavors to 
 distribute propaganda in instructional books 
 because they rightly thought that such were 
 allowed to pass. But Mr. Melvill believes 
 that they never have realized the thoroness 
 with which the censoring is conducted and 
 doubtless have no idea that any book is 
 ever read from cover to cover. The use 
 of every kind of publication in Germany 
 for furthering its cause has, however, made 
 this extreme caution necessary. Attention 
 was called to the September, 1916, number 
 of a serious magazine like the Deutsche 
 Rundschau containing an article on the 
 martyrdom of Roger Casement, bound for 
 export in a cover dated September, 1902, 
 in the hope that the censor would dismiss 
 it as pre-war literature. The record of 
 Lieut. Pluschow's double exploit in escap- 
 ing from Sing Tau by aeroplane and from 
 Donington Hall by a neutral boat was 
 bound up in a school-boy's ink-stained copy 
 of another Odyssey, that of Homer, in the 
 belief that instructional books were sub- 
 jected to only the most cursory examina- 
 tion. Not content with this, grammars in 
 Turkish and Portuguese, detained in the 
 mails, have been found to have all their 
 examples and exercises of a definitely pro- 
 pagandist character. As an instance of the 
 former, the Tiirkische Lesestiicke, by Dr. 
 Hans Stumm (Leipzig, 1916) contains a 
 letter from a Turkish soldier to his mother, 
 extolling the German comrade-in-arms and 
 vilifying the French and English opposition 
 in the Dardanelles. A grammar in the 
 Portuguese language imparts a glowing 
 glorification of German trade enterprises in 
 Brazil. 
 
 But perhaps the best example of German 
 inventiveness on record in the library of the 
 Censorship is an attempt to smuggle to a 
 prisoner of war political information be- 
 tween the covers of a pocket edition of a 
 humorous publication entitled Stratenfegels 
 — one of a series of the Reclam's Universal- 
 Bibliothek. An exceedingly innocent look- 
 ing little collection of verse and tales in 
 low German, the "inventor" of it doubtless 
 thought that no mere censor could or would 
 take the trouble to read through its 90 
 pages in order to discover that although 
 page 48 continues quite properly over to 
 page 49 and for five lines thereon, the 
 sixth line begins a letter to "Dear Brother." 
 This letter, containing information about 
 the situation in Germany, occupies four 
 pages, each one thus cleverly placed at 
 intervals throughout the book. All well 
 known names are disguised in the supposi- 
 tion that the little volume would at most be 
 glanced at only hastily and thus the eye 
 would not be attracted to them. For exam- 
 ple, Bethman-Holweg becomes for pur- 
 poses of evasion Manbeth-Wegholl. 
 
 The manifesto of the French Catholic 
 bishops gave the first impetus to the ex- 
 tensive contributions of so-called religious 
 propaganda which have figured so largely 
 in the campaign, Deutsche Kultur, Katho- 
 lisismus und Welt Krieg leading the way. 
 Protestant as well as Catholic weekly and 
 monthly letters sprang into existence and 
 have since been extensively circulated, 
 wrapped up in war literature, or vice versa. 
 Jesus und dcr Krieg and Die Bibel als 
 Kriegsbuch are the titles of two brochures 
 and Mr. Melvill regards it as scarcely an 
 exaggeration to say that the Germans have 
 pressed every phase of religious belief into 
 their service. An exception must be made 
 for Christian Science, he adds, which, 
 though originating in America, is consid- 
 ered by the Germans a purely British pos- 
 session. 
 
 THE CENSORSHIP LIBRARY 
 
 The collection of propaganda proper in 
 the possession of the War Office Postal 
 Censorship is most varied and comprehen- 
 sive. As respects German war literature in 
 general, as distinct from propaganda 
 proper, it was impressed upon the writer 
 
that the former has been distributed by the 
 same recipients as the latter. Ample con- 
 firmation is afforded by intercepted letters 
 of the fact that such literature is looked 
 upon as propaganda by the Germans them- 
 selves. All German war publications must 
 therefore be regarded by the Censorship 
 as propagandist. The amount of it sent 
 through the mails clearly proves that it is 
 designed to help the German cause. The 
 ever-increasing mass of war literature has 
 been promoted by means of translation to 
 take its place in the propagandist ranks. 
 Die Kriegsgefangenen in Deutschland, one 
 of the Montanus Biicher series — uniform 
 with similar publications dealing with Ger- 
 man history, naval and military efficiency, 
 and profusely illustrated — was naturally of 
 great interest to the Germans who were en- 
 tertaining within their gates so many 
 strangers of various types and nationali- 
 ties. It has been translated into Spanish 
 and all the languages of the Allies, and has 
 been one of the publications most widely 
 distributed for propaganda purposes. The 
 innumerable books dealing with every 
 phase of the campaign, East and West, un- 
 doubtedly play their part, if only by their 
 titles in a publisher's catalog, as showing 
 how many places German troops have vis- 
 
 ited, tho their stay in some cases has not 
 been very prolonged. The wholesale ideal- 
 ization of their heroes, undertaken in the 
 first flush of their success, has been indus- 
 triously continued. Countless details about 
 the lives of Hindenburg and Mackensen, 
 Weddigen and Immelmann, personal nar- 
 ratives of Captain Koenig, and commanders 
 of other ships and submarines, the fre- 
 quency with which the Goeben and the 
 Breslau, the Emden and the Dresden figure 
 on the backs of books, however trivial, all 
 contribute to recall their exploits. 
 
 It is too early for the Censorship to esti- 
 mate how completely the propagandist cam- 
 paign has failed to justify the time, money 
 and trouble lavished upon its prosecution. 
 Even without Great Britain's interference 
 with the mails, it would appear probable 
 that no amount of variety could have pre- 
 vented its very volume and insistence from 
 defeating its own ends. As Mr. Melvill 
 points out, its material has revealed a mine 
 of knowledge, its methods are characterized 
 by much German efficiency, and certain of 
 its manipulations have developed much quite 
 un-German suppleness, but as regards the 
 Wilhelmstrasse's main objectives, it has 
 missed the mark. 
 
631 
 
 >K6 
 
020 913 402