So it was a crooked Kamerad cry, a peace offensive intended to sing us to sleep, that Germany launched in September, 1918.  Of a sudden, our newspapers were filled with what appeared to be straight news dispatches dated at Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, London, Paris, Geneva, and even Berlin, telling tales (that were not so) of starvation and disaffection in Germany, or broken morale in the German armies, and riotous demonstrations demanding peace.  The impression was immediate and came near to being disastrous.

Many urgent requests were being made just then for public help from America.  The gigantic fourth loan, the needs of the Red Cross, the thousand and one things, big and little, that had to be taken care of, and the very earnest and pressing call for a sharper realization of war’s awful facts, were being driven with might and main, all over the land; and all was going well.

Within three days, before even the Associated Press discovered the fraud, these outrageous German lies had taken effect.  Subscriptions to the loan began to slacken, alarmingly.  Interest in the battle news began to fade.  People were telling each other the war was over.

PRINCE MAX WRITES A NOTE

Then on October 6th, 1918, came the note of the German Chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden, asking an armistice and a peace conference—­in essence, an astounding request for time to reconsolidate the German armies and bring up fresh guns and munitions.  America might have been fooled into a frightful error if the great war-organizations had not come forward with a roaring counterblast.  The peace offensive failed.  More than that, the people resented it in a prompt and highly practical way.  They oversubscribed the six billion loan.  Most of them, especially the smaller subscribers, doubled their subscriptions in the last two days of the time allotted for the flotation.  October 7th, President Wilson answered Prince Max’s request with a refusal.

But it was a fortunate thing for the allied cause that the peace offensive was made, for its one effect was to create a profound distrust of all war news coming out of Amsterdam or Copenhagen.  It revealed the fact that Berlin had been closely censoring all news dispatches that assumed to disclose the state of affairs in the central empires; censoring them rigorously, and inventing most of them.  Germany had not yet learned that lies would not win the war; but the rest of the world had learned that Germany, as a liar, was so supernally endowed that her feeblest efforts in that domain would have made Ananias, Baron Munchausen, and Joe Mulhatton look like a trio of supersaints, choking with truth.

FIRST HUN CRY FOR PEACE