"I read your newspapers, and I read our own. I do not think our journalists, though they do their best, can fairly claim to excel yours in the contest {157} of boastfulness and vulgar abuse. And as regards the utterances of responsible public men in our two countries, can you really contend that we Germans are more open to the reproach of vainglorious and undignified speech than the British? Our Kaiser denies having used the words, so often attributed to him in your press, about 'General French's contemptible little army,' and in Germany we believe his denial. But even if he did in fact utter this expression, is it not quite as seemly and restrained as references to 'digging rats out of a hole'--as applied to our gallant navy--or to that later announcement from the same quarter which was recently addressed to the Mayor of Scarborough about 'baby-killers'? Such expressions are regrettable, no doubt, but not of the first importance. They are a matter of temperament. An ill-balanced, or even a very highly-strung nature, will be betrayed into blunders of this sort more readily than the phlegmatic person, or one whose upbringing has been in circles where self-control is the rule of manners. [Sidenote: TRUST IN THE PEOPLE] "But what puzzles us Germans perhaps more than any of your other charges against us is, when you say that our rulers do not trust the people as the British Government does. "You accuse our War Office of publishing accounts of imaginary victories to revive our drooping confidence, and of concealing actual disasters lest our country should fall into a panic of despondency. There was surely nothing imaginary about the fall of Liège, Namur, Maubeuge, Laon, or La Fere. The engagements before Metz, at Mons, Charleroi, and Amiens, the battles of Lodz and Lyck, were {158} not inconsiderable successes for German arms, or at the very least for German generalship. The victory of Tannenberg was among the greatest in history, reckoning in numbers alone. Our government made no secret of the German retirement--retreat if you prefer the term--from the Marne to the Aisne, or of that other falling back after the first attempt on Warsaw. Naturally they laid less emphasis on reverses than on conquests, but what government has ever acted otherwise? Certainly not the French, or the Russian, or your own. And what actual disasters have we concealed? In what respect, as regards the conduct of this war, have we, the German people, been trusted less than yours?