Campbell Stuart

“ It should be pointed out that nothing stands between enemy peoples and a lasting peace except the predatory designs of their ruling dynasties and military and economic castes; that the design of the Allies is not to crush any people, but to assure the freedom of all on a basis of self-determination to be exercised under definite guarantees of justice and fair play; that, unless enemy peoples accept the Allied conception of a world peace settlement, it will be impossible for them to repair the havoc of the present war, to avert utter financial ruin, and to save themselves from prolonged misery ”

“ Therefore, German Army, German Homeland, if one of these thrown-out pieces of poison in the form of leaflet or rumour comes before your eyes and ears, remember that its originates with the enemy. Remember nothing comes from the enemy which is not harmful to Germany. Every one must be mindful of this, whatever his position or party. If you meet anyone whose name and origin indeed are German, but who by nature stands in the enemy's camp, keep him at a distance, despise him, put him publicly in the pillory in order that every other true German may despise him. ”

“ It did this with such method and on such a scale that many people were no longer able to distinguish their own impressions from what the enemy propaganda had told them. This propaganda was all the more effective in our case as we had to rely, not on the numbers, but on the quality of our battalions in prosecuting the war. The importance of numbers in war is incontestable. Without soldiers there can be no war. But numbers count only according to the spirit which animates them. As it is in the life of peoples, so it is also on the battlefield. ”

“ The honest co-operation of Germany in the League of Nations, in disarmament, and in world reconstruction is, therefore, fundamentally necessary. There is now no other rational policy. And since it is impossible to hope for any such help or co-operation from the Germany of the Belgian outrage, the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the betrayal of Ukrainia, the changing of Germany becomes a primary war aim, the primary war aim for the Allies. How Germany is to be changed is a complex question. The word Revolution is, perhaps, to be deprecated. ”

“ As your Commander-in-Chief I send you my heartiest thanks for the bravery by which you have contributed to the victory of our nation, of Italy, the Allies and all mankind.
We cannot help telling you how proud we are of the recognition by our beloved leader, who will guide us and our nation to the goal of victory.
We are convinced that you also, in concert with the whole nation, see the salvation of our country and the realisation of our sacred rights only in the destruction of Austria. ”

“ An axiom for propaganda of allies in future wars is that a clear common policy must be defined, based upon such a foundation of fact and justice that it need not be altered in its essential principles, but can be, and must be, rigidly adhered to. It will doubtless be necessary to lay down such a policy for each nation of an opposing alliance, in the event of the enemy not being a single nation. ”

“ But the enemy is not merely satisfied in attacking the spirit of our Front, he wishes above all also to poison the spirit of our home. He knows what sources of strength for the Front rest in the home. True, his aeroplanes and balloons do not carry these leaflets far into our homeland; they lie far from it in the lines in which the enemy vainly struggles for victory by arms. But the enemy hopes that many a field-grey soldier will send home the leaflet which has innocently fluttered down from the air. ”

“ If she haggles over the conditions, or is sullen and obstructive in her mode of carrying them out, then our profound distrust of her spirit and motives will survive into the subsequent stages and still further delay that re-establishment of tolerable relations which must be our object. But if Germany by word and deed makes plain her abandonment of that belief in Might which her rulers, supported until recently by the majority of her people, have used as a menace to the power of Right, the greatest obstacle in the path of equal justice will have been removed. ”

“ Unsuspectingly many thousands consume the poison. For thousands the burden the war in any case imposes upon them is increased, and the will and hope for a victorious issue of the war is taken from them. All these again write their doubts to the Front, and Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau rub their hands. The enemy attacks the spirit of the home in another way besides. The silliest rumours, designed to break our inner power of resistance, are put into circulation. ”

“ Among the Allies, the two chief Imperial Powers, measured by the extent of territory they control, are Britain and France, and each of these is more completely prepared to-day than ever it has been before to consider its imperial possessions as a trust for their inhabitants and for mankind, and its position in the more fertile and less settled regions of the world as that of a mandatory and trustee. These admissions involve a plain prospect and promise of the ultimate release and liberation of all the peoples in these great and variegated Empires to complete world-citizenship. ”

“ Moreover, it has been possible for German writers to misrepresent our war aims as dictated by Imperialistic ambitions, similar in kind to those by which they are themselves actuated, and involving 'annexations and indemnities,' such as have in the past been too often the result of victory in war. I take it that the real object of the Allies is, after defeating Germany, to establish such a world peace as shall, within the limits of human foresight, preclude another conflagration. ”

“ I frankly admit that the perfect form of government does not exist, and that the genius of Germany may evolve some form as good as, or even better than, existing constitutions.
But Germany must understand that it will take time to convince the world, which has so much reason to distrust her, that this sudden change is to be a permanent reality. Fortunately the stages which I have described do not require for their accomplishment more than the hope that Germany has set out on the right path. ”

“ The result was the greatest victory achieved by war propaganda—the culmination of a constructive campaign, which, could it have been extended to its logical conclusions, would have achieved a just and lasting peace, liberating millions of our fellow-men from a tyrannous yoke to the enjoyment of that political freedom which is the inalienable right of civilised mankind. ”

“ The part which Italy has been assigned by history has been manifested to-day more strongly than ever. She is the protector of the weak, the bearer of freedom and of the ideal for which the Allies have been fighting for four years. The aim of the fighting is not the peace of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, but the freedom of the weak and oppressed. ”

“ Experience gained at Crewe House proved that it is as necessary for Allies to co-ordinate propaganda against a common enemy as to unify military command. To conduct propaganda without a policy is bad enough; but to shut up sets of propagandists working independently of each other in a number of water-tight compartments, each set representative of a different nationality, is to court ridicule instead of attracting serious attention from an intelligent enemy, and to result in the production of contradictory thoughts and confusion in the minds of unintelligent adversaries. ”

“ Nothing was more important than to defend Allied public opinions against such enterprises, which would certainly be undertaken by Germany. The liberation of the peoples, affirmation of the justice of the Allied cause, demonstration of the violation of right perpetrated by the Central Empires—such must be the basis of Allied propaganda. ”

“ They will be an earnest of a complete break with the past on the part of Germany. They will go far to satisfy the natural desire of those who demand that the guilty should be punished, and yet I believe that they contain nothing that is not imperative for a just and lasting peace. And I hope that their imposition and acceptance will, in the subsequent stages, make it possible to take advantage, for the benefit of the world, of those powers of discipline and organisation which Germany has perverted to the great harm of the world. ”

“ We had fought against the world, and could continue to do so with good conscience so long as we were spiritually ready to endure the burden of war. So long as we were this, we had hope of victory and refused to bow to the enemy's determination to annihilate us. ”

“ They acquiesce in the continuance of the present offensive chiefly because they are assured by their leaders that this is the only way in which a speedy peace can be achieved. It is, therefore, necessary to impress upon them that they are face to face with a determined and immutable will on the part of Allied nations to continue the war at whatever cost, notwithstanding German military successes, and that for this reason military success is not the way to bring about the peace they desire. It must be made plain that we are prepared to continue a ruthless policy of commercial blockade. ”

“ Ask brave men who have succeeded with unspeakable difficulty in escaping from the enemy captivity about this. Plundered to the utmost in wire compounds, roofless, goaded by hunger and thirst into treasonable utterances, forced by blows and threats of death to betray their comrades, spat upon, pelted with filth by the French populace while being driven to hard labour, that is what the paradise that the enemy conjures up really looks like. ”

“ Without any exaggeration the prospect of the nations facing these economic difficulties in an atmosphere of continuing hostility, intrigue, and conflict, under a continuing weight of armaments, and with a continuing distrust, is a hopeless one. The consequences stare us in the face; Russia is only the first instance of what must happen generally. The alternative to a real League of Nations is the steady descent of our civilisation towards a condition of political and social fragmentation such as the world has not seen since the fall of the Roman Empire. ”

“ The campaign of systematic untruth which was being waged by the enemy need not for one moment divert the Allies from their line. Honesty had never seemed to the Allies to be an inferior policy. In the second place, French propaganda had taken care to put in a strong light the responsibility for the war. The war, on the part of our enemies, was a war of aggression and the service of a policy of conquest and the enslavement of nationalities. ”

“ The militarist Government of Germany, fighting now for bare existence, is concealing from its people this world-wide disposition to boycott German trade and industry at any cost to the boycotting populations, and buoying them up with preposterous hopes of 'business as usual' as soon as peace is made. The fact has to be faced that while the present German Government remains no such economic resumption is possible. The 'War after the War' possibility has to be added to the economic destruction in Russia, Belgium, and elsewhere in any estimate of the situation after the war. ”