In this connection the remark made to me by the editor of a little paper in East Prussia is interesting.  After the Russians had fallen back he told me of two boys in a neighbouring village whose hands had been cut off.  He said that he was going to run the story, and suggested that I also use it.  I proposed that we make a little trip of investigation, as we could do so in a couple of hours.

He looked surprised.  “Why, we have the story already,” he declared.

“But I am not going to write it unless I can prove it,” I replied.

A moment later I heard him sigh with despair as he half whispered to a cavalry captain:  “Yes, yes, alas, over there the Press is in the hands of the people!”

Many newspaper readers run more or less carelessly through articles, and many more simply read the headlines and headings.  The Official Press Bureau, for which no detail is too minute, realises this perfectly, with the result that German newspaper headings are constructed, less with a view to sensationalism, as in some British and American papers, or with a view to condense accurately the chief news feature of the day, as to impress the reader—­or the hearer, since the headlines are cried shrilly in Berlin and other cities—­with the idea that Germany is always making progress towards ultimate victory.  The daily reports of the General Staff have been excellent, with a few notable exceptions such as the Battle of the Marne and the Battle of the Somme.  During reverses, however, they have shown a tendency to pack unpalatable truths in plenty of “shock absorber,” with the result that the public mind, as I know from my personal investigations, is completely befogged as to the significance of military operations which did not go in a manner satisfactory to the German leaders.  In all this the headline never failed to cheer.  When the Russians were smashing the Austrians in the East, while the British and French were making important gains and inflicting much more important losses on the Somme, the old reliable headline—­TERRIBLE RUSSIAN LOSSES—­was used until it was worn threadbare.

What would you think, you who live in London or Hew York, if you woke up some morning to find every newspaper in the city with the same headlines?  And would you not be surprised to learn that nearly every newspaper throughout your country had the same headlines that day?  You would conclude that there was wonderful central control somewhere, would you not?

Yet that is what happens in Germany repeatedly.  It is of special significance on “total days.”  Those are the days when the Government, in the absence of fresh victories, adds the totals of prisoners taken for a given period, and as only the totals appear in the headlines the casual reader feels nearer a victorious peace.  On the morning of March 13, 1916, most of the papers had “total” headlines for Verdun.