Graves, C. L. and Lucas, E. V.

“ My Dear Friend,—I am sure you will like to hear from me, especially as I am in a position to enlighten you as to the deplorable condition of things in England under the fear of the Mailed Fist and forebodings of the worst. For it is only too true that all the best and most knowledgable people here have thrown up the sponge and are prepared for the inevitable. ”

“ As a sign of the times I may tell you that a Company, called the Aerated Dread Co., has been formed to provide iron suits for those who can afford them, and on the Board of Directors are both the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Grey. So awful is the agitation from which everyone here is suffering under the Zeppelin menace that the noise of a tyre bursting in the street often prostrates as many as forty passers-by. ”

“ You may have gathered from the papers that football goes on as usual. This is so, outwardly, but as a matter of fact the games are played with no spirit and are kept going wholly by force applied by the Government, whose aim is thus to suggest a security in the country. A few misguided people, who completely misunderstand the situation, hold that footballers should go to the Front and fight ”

“ There are also hundreds of young actors in Londone alone who are being forcibly kept in the country to go on entertaining and playing the fool for the same sedative purpose. These youths are all healthy and fit, but it is held that their true function is to work in the theatres and halls to beguile the audiences and divert their thoughts from the terrible reality of German invasion. ”

“ The ingenious German device of writing private letters to English friends filled with German justifications of the War and news of the gaiety and normal prosperity of Berlin is now being carried farther, and extracts from private letters purporting to be addressed by English people to German friends have begun to be printed in the Berlin papers. ”