JOHN BULL

London, England

6 March 1920

(page 6)

MORE POISON FROM THE PRESS.

PERNICIOUS LITERATURE WHICH IS

SERVED OUT THROUGH THE POST OFFICE.

No one appreciates more than I do the priceless value of the freedom of the Press, and as one who was made to suffer under the Asquith Government, for proclaiming to the world the truth about the Kitchener plot, I am not likely to write or say a word which would interfere with those legitimate liberties for which we have fought. But there is all the difference between liberty and licence, and to-day this country is suffering from a grievous of supervision and control on the part of the authorities. I am not concerned at the moment to apportion the blame to any particular Minister or Department. But the fact remains that this country is being flooded by pernicious literature from poisonous pens. In my opinion, it is the first duty of the Government to stop the flow of anti-British propaganda which, unless checked, is calculated to inflict the gravest possible harm.

Already I have exposed in these columns the pestilential efforts of renegades like Frank Harris, Alister [sic] Crowley, Aubrey Stanhope, Philip Price, and a certain Rev. Richard Lee. The Government, so far as I can ascertain, have taken no steps to deal with these, traitors, and, for all I know, they are at liberty at any moment to return to this country. But while there appears to be complete indifference as to the action or whereabouts of men of this type, there is at the same time a deliberate avoidance of responsibility by the Government in the matter of the poisonous products of the German and Continental Press. If the Post Office can concern itself in regard to the lottery letters which leave this country, it is strange that a plea of inability to censor incoming letters and packages is put forward. Any money could be spent on this great and necessary precaution during the war; why should all supervision have ceased just because we are technically at peace? In truth, we should be at war with a propaganda which is likely to prove a menace as serious as it is subtle.

For instance, I have lately received a copy of “An open Letter to an English Officer, and Incidentally to the English People.” It is the effort of a certain Ferdinand Hansen, of Hamburg, who is doing his best to scatter it broadcast in this country. In the course of some seventy pages, it repeats the foul lies which the enemy tried to circulate about us over the whole world during the war. Hansen seeks to justify the murderous submarine warfare because of the blockade which was England’s “cowardly means of bringing to her knees an adversary she was unable to conquer by fair and manly weapons.” Our “hellish designs,” we are told in this pamphlet which the Government permit to circulate anywhere our traducer chooses, were based upon an experience as starvation experts—“as millions upon millions of fleshless bodies and bleaching skeletons in India, Ireland, Egypt and the Boer Republics have proved.” This sort of thing can be posted to that great Eastern Dependency of ours about which the Prime Minister is so solicitous—even to the extent of breaking his pledged word over Constantinople—with complete impunity. And, as to Ireland, is it not easy to imagine its effect on rebellious fertile soil?

This pamphlet, written, be it said, after the Armistice, declares that “noble-minded Englishmen” (amongst whom Hansen includes E. D. Morel of the Union of Democratic Control) are aware of the wrongs inflicted on the German people by the victorious Allies. But their voices are drowned by “the roars and yells of the great mob of the press-ridden English” who—mark this abominable lie—“pelt the harried and broken civilian prisoners with stones and foul epithets as they make their way through the streets of English towns to embark for Germany.” Shades of Ruhleben! Who is this Ferdinand Hansen? He is a German who became an American citizen, and when the States got too hot for him, returned to the Fatherland in 1915. Among the friends, as he tells us, who welcomed him back were the notorious Herman Scheffauer, T. St. John Gaffney, a member of the Executive Committee of the German Irish Society whose object was the encouragement of treason in Ireland, and Rutledge Rutherford, who acted as an enemy agent in Holland during the war. A nice collection of rascals, whom it should even yet. be possible to bring to justice!

But this foul effusion of Hansen is surpassed by a blasphemous pamphlet "Jesus at the Peace Conference," written by a certain J. Lepsulis D.D., last year, and printed in Berlin by the firm of Hans Heenemann. I decline to say more of this abominable product of the press than that, Mr. Lloyd George, M. Clemenceau, and President Wilson are represented as engaged in argument with Christ. It might have been thought that no publication issued in this country would have defiled its pages by reproducing the pamphlet. But the official organ of E. D. Morel's Union of Democratic Control—the coincidence is worth noting—recently printed the abomination in full, describing its author, by the way, as a well-known internationalist and "divine."

Nor does the coincidence stop here, for the original pamphlet contains a. disgusting cartoon drawn by A. M. Cay, the "artist" of the Continental Times—that villainous anti-British paper which was edited by Aubrey Stanhope, assisted by Scheffauer and D. G. Chatterton Hill, who was also a member of the German-Irish Society already referred to. Can there be a shadow of doubt that these scoundrels and renegades who poured forth their poison against us in neutral countries during the war are still in close association, and are now in conspiracy to spit forth their venom in this country? The pity of it is that there are evil men over here only too ready to assist in disseminating the virus of ill-will against the British Throne and Constitution.

If Mr. Lloyd George has any regard for the law-abiding people at home, it is his duty to take rigorous measures to stop this propaganda. Its purpose is to fan the sickly flame of disaffection lighted by the anarchists lurking behind the Labour movement. Once more I call upon the Government to take the necessary steps to stop these poisonous emanations from a press still bitter and hostile.