The powdered glass rumor was one of the most widely spread instances of German propaganda. Who has not heard it divulged in secrecy by some woman, with the injunction that not a word must be said about it? A German nurse had been detected putting powdered glass in the rolled surgical bandages in the Red Cross work rooms. She had disappeared before she could be arrested, and she had not left her name. That mysterious German woman who worked with the Red Cross is still absent. The rumors of powdered glass in bandages have been practically groundless—only one division, that in upper New Jersey, reports any case of that sort actually run down. The charges of powdered glass in food sent to the soldiers or put in tinned goods have been found equally baseless. Two cases of glass found in food stuffs are authentically reported,—both accidents, and the glass was broken and not powdered. The charges of poisoned wells around cantonments was another canard. Rumors came out that horses, and men also, had been killed by the poisoned water. The entire investigating force of the United States has found one case of poisoned water in a horse trough in West Virginia—and no horse drank of it. The charges about poisoned court-plaster were proved to be equally groundless—indeed, they would seem to be of small reason in any case, because, if Germany was putting out the court-plaster, why should she speak of it; and why should America put it out at all? The psychology of it is this: anything which makes the people feel uneasy or anxious is good propaganda for the enemy. Stories were spread very widely at one time that Canada and England were not practicing food conservation—that we were shipping our food to England and she was eating it without reservation, whereas we were denying ourselves sugar and butter. Perhaps you had best talk with someone who lived in England during the war as to the truth of that. It was one of the many German lies. There was the charge that the price of gasoline was due to the fact that the Standard Oil Company was dumping and wasting large quantities of gasoline. There was nothing in that, of course. The report of Polish pogroms, general Jew killing expeditions by the Poles, were magnified and distorted, all with the purpose of making both the Poles and Jews dissatisfied with the conduct of the war. Continually these anti-Ally stories got out, and always they were hard to trace.