When the Flanders battle of July 31, 1917, was about to be fought, we employed the old ruse of the Chinese attack. We modernised the trick of medieval garrisons which would make a show of getting ready to break out at one gate when a real sally was to be made from another. The enemy was invited to think that a big attack was at hand. But against Lens, and not east of Ypres. Due circumstantial evidence was provided. There were audible signs that a great concentration of British guns were cautiously registering, west of Lens. A little scuffle on that part of the front elicited from our side an amazing bombardment--apparently loosed in a moment of panic. I fancy a British Staff Officer's body--to judge by his brassard and tabs--may have floated down the Scarpe into the German lines. Interpreted with German thoroughness, the maps and papers upon it might easily betray the fact that Lens was the objective. And then a really inexcusable indiscretion appeared--just for a moment, and then was hushed up--in the London Press. To an acute German eye it must have been obvious that this composition was just the inconsequent gassing of some typically stupid English General at home on leave; he was clearly throwing his weight about, as they say, without any real understanding of anything. The stuff was of no serious value, except for one parenthetic, accidental allusion to Lens as the mark. As far as I know, this ebullition of babble was printed in only one small edition of one London paper. Authority was then seen to be nervously trying, as Uncle Toby advised, "to wipe it up and say no more about it." Lest it should not be observed to have taken this wise precaution some fussy member of Parliament may have asked in the House of Commons how so outrageous a breach of soldierly reticence had occurred. And was there no control over the Press? It all answered. The Germans kept their guns in force at Lens, and their counter barrage east of Ypres was so much the lighter, and our losses so much the less. IV If we did these things in the green leaf, what might we not do in the dry? Mobilize our whole Press, conscribe it for active service under a single control, a--let us be frank--a Father-General of Lies, the unshaming strategic and tactical lies of "the great wars" which "make ambition virtue," and sometimes make mendacity a virtue too? Coach the whole multitudinous orchestra of the Press to carry out the vast conceptions of some consummate conductor, _splendide mendax_? From each instrument under his baton this artist would draw its utmost contributive aid to immense schemes of concerted delusiveness, the harping of the sirens elaborated into Wagnerian prodigies of volume and complexity.