John Charteris

John Charteris, the son of Matthew Charteris (1840–1897), a senior professor at Glasgow University, was born on 8th January 1877. He was educated at Kelvinside Academy (1886–91) before entering the Royal Military Academy in December 1893. He was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in March 1896 and posted to India.

His biographer, John M. Bourne, has pointed out that he later became friends with Douglas Haig: "His career did not take its characteristic shape until 1907, when he entered the staff college at Quetta, from which he emerged in 1909 with a reputation as the outstanding graduate of his year. His elevation to staff officer also brought him into contact with the man who was to dominate his professional life, Douglas Haig, then chief of staff to the commander-in-chief, India. Haig had a liking for young officers with quick wit and lively conversation, provided that they were dedicated, competent, and loyal. Charteris scored on all points. He had the added advantages of being also, like Haig, a Scot, a staunch Presbyterian, and a freemason. Though Haig's wife disliked Charteris's personal habits, his career flourished under Haig's patronage."

Charteris was promoted to staff captain in 1909. The following year he joined the general staff in India. In 1912 Haig became general officer commanding-in-chief, Aldershot. Soon afterwards he joined Haig's personal staff as assistant military secretary. Steve MacGregor has pointed out: "Charteris was close to Haig, advising him on intelligence and wider military matters." However, he was not popular with some of the other officers who tended to call him "Haig’s evil counselor."

On the outbreak of the First World War Charteris followed Haig to the Western Front as his aide-de-camp. Charteris, who spoke fluent German and French, was asked by Haig to specialise in military intelligence. On 5th September, 1914, Charteris reported that the Angel of Mons story, was spreading "through the 2nd Corps, of how the angel of the Lord on the traditional white horse, and clad all in white with flaming sword, faced the advancing Germans at Mons and forbade their further progress." He added: "Men's nerves and imagination play weird pranks in these strenuous times. All the same the angel at Mons interests me. I cannot find out how the legend arose."

It has been argued in The Angel of Mons: Phantom Soldiers and Ghostly Guardians (2005) that the Angel of Mons myth was probably developed by Charteris as a covert attempt by military intelligence to spread morale-boosting propaganda and disinformation. Steve MacGregor agrees with this suggestion: "To understand possible motives we need to look more closely at Charteris career and in particular at the significance of propaganda, disinformation and rumour in 1914. At that time the only means for the public to obtain news other than through personal contact with soldiers was through newspapers, magazines and letters from the front. This was often several days out of date, and content was strictly controlled by the authorities (reporters were not allowed near the front and generally had to rely on information provided by the army; censors controlled the content of soldiers letters). As a result there was a huge appetite for information, and rumours spread wildly by word of mouth. People eagerly repeated the most unlikely stories as fact.... This rumour was clearly beneficial to the Allied cause, and had the added advantage of official deniability without any loss of credibility."

Philip Gibbs, a journalist working on the Western Front, agrees that his colleagues were partly responsible for promoting the myth of the Angel of Mons. "Owing to the rigid refusal of the War Office, under Lord Kitchener's orders, to give any official credentials to correspondents, the British press, as hungry for news as the British public whose little professional army had disappeared behind a deathlike silence, printed any scrap of description, any glimmer of truth, and wild statement, rumour, fairy tale or deliberate lie, which reached them from France and Belgium; and it must be admitted that the liars had a great time."

Charteris developed what became known as a black propaganda campaign. In 1915 he first heard the story of a soldier being crucified by the German Army: "The story... began in a report sent by a sergeant that he had seen Germans sitting round a lighted fire, and what looked like a crucified man. He worked his way closer to them, and found that it was only shadows cast by some crossed sticks on other objects. The report was transmitted back without this explanation."

It seems that Charteris passed an adapted version of the story to The Times. On 10th May, 1915, it reported: "Last week a large number of Canadian soldiers wounded in the fighting round Ypres arrived at the base hospital at Versailles. They all told the story of how one of their officers had been crucified by the Germans. He had been pinned to a wall by bayonets thrust through his hands and feet, another bayonet had then been driven through his throat, and, finally, he was riddled with bullets. The wounded Canadians said that the Dublin Fusiliers had seen this done with their own eyes, and that they had heard the officers of the Dublin Fusiliers talking about it."

In December 1915 Douglas Haig became commander-in-chief in December 1915. Charteris was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general and was given the title of Chief Intelligence Officer at GHQ. This created conflict between Haig and the War Office. Christopher Andrew, the author of Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985): "Haig installed his own man, Brigadier John Charteris, with Kirke as his deputy. Charteris was a determined optimist and his intelligence analyses were soon in conflict with the more realistic estimates produced by Macdonogh in the War Office. Though Kirke's sympathies were with Macdonogh, Haig sided with Charteris". Haig claimed that Macdonogh's views caused "many in authority to take a pessimistic outlook, when a contrary view, based on equally good information, would go far to help the nation onto Victory."

According to John M. Bourne: "Charteris was in many respects an outstanding intelligence officer. He was methodical and hardworking despite poor health... Charteris was generally successful in providing quick and accurate information about German troop deployments, tactical changes, and immediate intentions. He was less successful and less equipped, however, to provide Haig with accurate assessments of wider questions of German morale and manpower."

In a staff lecture at GHQ in February 1916 Charteris claimed "the desire to please" as the most important "pitfalls that every Intelligence Officer must avoid". According to Lieutenant James Marshall-Cornwall, who worked under Charteris, he did not heed his own advice. He claimed that his intelligence summaries "seemed intended to bolster up our own morale rather than to paint a true picture of the enemy's strength and fighting qualities".

Major Desmond Morton served as one of Haig's adjutants. He later recalled: "He (Haig) hated being told any new information, however irrefutable, which militated against his preconceived ideas or beliefs. Hence his support for the desperate John Charteris, who was incredibly bad as head of GHQ intelligence, who always concealed bad news, or put it in an agreeable light."

The Battle of the Somme was planned as a joint French and British operation. The idea originally came from the French Commander-in-Chief, Joseph Joffre and was accepted by General Douglas Haig, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) commander, despite his preference for a large attack in Flanders. Although Joffre was concerned with territorial gain, it was also an attempt to destroy German manpower.

At first Joffre intended for to use mainly French soldiers but the German attack on Verdun in February 1916 turned the Somme offensive into a large-scale British diversionary attack. General Sir Douglas Haig now took over responsibility for the operation and with the help of General Sir Henry Rawlinson, came up with his own plan of attack. Haig's strategy was for a eight-day preliminary bombardment that he believed would completely destroy the German forward defences.

General Sir Henry Rawlinson was was in charge of the main attack and his Fourth Army were expected to advance towards Bapaume. To the north of Rawlinson, General Edmund Allenby and the British Third Army were ordered to make a breakthrough with cavalry standing by to exploit the gap that was expected to appear in the German front-line. Further south, General Fayolle was to advance with the French Sixth Army towards Combles.

Haig used 750,000 men (27 divisions) against the German front-line (16 divisions). However, the bombardment failed to destroy either the barbed-wire or the concrete bunkers protecting the German soldiers. This meant that the Germans were able to exploit their good defensive positions on higher ground when the British and French troops attacked at 7.30 on the morning of the 1st July. The BEF suffered 58,000 casualties (a third of them killed), therefore making it the worse day in the history of the British Army.

Haig was not disheartened by these heavy losses on the first day and ordered General Sir Henry Rawlinson to continue making attacks on the German front-line. A night attack on 13th July did achieve a temporary breakthrough but German reinforcements arrived in time to close the gap. Haig believed that the Germans were close to the point of exhaustion and continued to order further attacks expected each one to achieve the necessary breakthrough. Although small victories were achieved, for example, the capture of Pozieres on 23rd July, these gains could not be successfully followed up.

Christopher Andrew, the author of Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985), has argued that Charteris was partly responsible for this disaster: "Charteris's intelligence reports throughout the five-month battle were designed to maintain Haig's morale. Though one of the intelligence officer's duties may be to help maintain his commander's morale, Charteris crossed the frontier between optimism and delusion." As late as September 1916, Charteris was telling General Douglas Haig: "It is possible that the Germans may collapse before the end of the year."

Haig ordered further attacks on German positions at the Somme and on the 13th November the BEF captured the fortress at Beaumont Hamel. However, heavy snow forced Haig to abandon his gains. With the winter weather deteriorating Haig now brought an end to the Somme offensive. Since the 1st July, the British has suffered 420,000 casualties. The French lost nearly 200,000 and it is estimated that German casualties were in the region of 500,000. Allied forces gained some land but it reached only 12km at its deepest points.

During the early stages of the First World War rumours began to spread that Germany was building corpse factories. These rumours died out until the story reappeared in the North China Herald in Shanghai. On the 10th April 1917, it appeared in the Independence Belge. A week later a report of corpse factories was published in The Times: "We have known for long that the Germans stripped their dead behind the firing line, fastened them into bundles of three or four bodies with iron wire, and then dispatched these grisly bundles to the rear... the chief factory of which has been constructed 1,000 yards from the railway connecting St Vith, near the Belgian frontier, with Gerolstein, in the lonely, little-frequented Eifel district, south-west of Coblenz. The factory deals specially with the dead from the West Front. If the results are as good as the company hopes, another will be established to deal with corpses on the East Front... The trains arrive full of bare bodies, which are unloaded by the workers who live at the works. The men wear oilskin overalls and masks with mica eyepieces. They are equipped with long hooked poles, and push the bundles of bodies to an endless chain, which picks them with big hooks, attached at intervals of two feet. The bodies are transported on this endless chain into a long, narrow compartment, where they pass through a bath which disinfects them. They then go through a drying chamber, and finally are automatically carried into a digester or great cauldron, in which they are dropped by an apparatus which detaches them from the chain. In the digester they remain for six to eight hours, and are treated by steam, which breaks them up while they are slowly stirred by machinery."

It was later discovered that the story was planted in the newspapers by Charteris. According to the New York Times he later admitted: "One day there came to the desk of General Charteris a mass of material taken from German prisoners and dead soldiers. In it were two pictures, one showing a train taking dead horses to the rear so that fat and other things needed for fertiliser and munitions might be obtained from them, and the other showing a train taking dead Germans to the rear for burial. On the picture showing the horses was the word cadaver ... General Charteris had the caption telling of cadaver being sent back to the fat factory transposed to the picture showing the German dead, and had the photograph sent to a Chinese newspaper in Shanghai."

On 20th April, 1917, The Times published an interview with a soldier who had talked to a German who had worked in one of the corpse factories. The soldier claimed: "One of them who spoke English told me - mind, I don't know that it's true, but he told me - that even when they're dead their work isn't done. They are wired together in batches then, and boiled down in factories as a business, to make fat for munition making and to feed pigs and poultry, and God knows what else besides. Then other folk eat the pigs and poultry, so you may say it's cannibalism, isn't it? This fellow told me Fritz calls his margarine corpse fat, because they suspect that's what it comes from."

Questions about the story were asked in Parliament on 30th April, 1917. John Dillon, the MP for County Tipperary, commented: "Has their attention (the government) to the fact that it is not only a gross scandal, but a very great evil to this country to allow the circulation of such statements, authorised by Ministers of the Crown, if they are, as I believe them to be, absolutely false?"

Lord Robert Cecil, the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, replied for the government: "In view of other actions by German military authorities there is nothing incredible in the present charge against them... I confess I am not able to attach very great importance to any statements made by the German government."

Robert Leonard Outhwaite, the Liberal Party MP for Hanley, raised another issue arising out of this story: "May I ask if the Noble Lord is aware that the circulation of these reports has caused anxiety and misery to British people who have lost their sons on the battlefield, and who think that their bodies may be put to this purpose, and does not that give a reason why he should try to find out the truth of what is happening in Germany?"

After the failure of British tanks in the thick mud at Passchendaele, Colonel John Fuller, chief of staff to the Tank Corps, suggested a massed raid on dry ground between the Canal du Nord and the St Quentin Canal. General Sir Julian Byng, commander of the Third Army, accepted Fuller's plan, although it was originally vetoed by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig. However, he changed his mind and decided to launch the Cambrai Offensive.

Charteris was involved in the planning of the offensive at Cambrai in November 1917. Lieutenant James Marshall-Cornwall discovered captured documents that three German divisions from the Russian front had arrived to strengthen the Cambrai sector. Charteris told Marshall-Cornwall: "This is a bluff put up by the Germans to deceive us. I am sure the units are still on the Russian front... If the commander in chief were to think that the Germans had reinforced this sector, it might shake his confidence in our success."

Haig, who was not given this information, ordered a massed tank attack at Artois. Launched at dawn on 20th November, without preliminary bombardment, the attack completely surprised the German Army defending that part of the Western Front. Employing 476 tanks, six infantry and two cavalry divisions, the British Third Army gained over 6km in the first day. Progress towards Cambrai continued over the next few days but on the 30th November, 29 German divisions launched a counter-offensive.

By the time that fighting came to an end on 7th December, 1917, German forces had regained almost all the ground it lost at the start of the Cambrai Offensive. During the two weeks of fighting, the British suffered 45,000 casualties. Although it is estimated that the Germans lost 50,000 men, Sir Douglas Haig considered the offensive as a failure and reinforced his doubts about the ability of tanks to win the war.

An official inquiry carried out after the military defeat at Cambrai blamed Charteris for "intelligence failures". The Secretary of State for War, the Earl of Derby, insisted that Haig sacked Charteris and in January 1918, he was appointed as deputy director of transportation in France. Haig wrote at the time: "He (Charteris) seems almost a sort of Dreyfus in the eyes of our War Office authorities."

Charteris retired from the army in 1922. From 1924 to 1929 he was Conservative Party MP for Dumfriesshire. According to his biographer, John M. Bourne: "His parliamentary career was marked by a humane interest in agriculture, and in the welfare of animals and of war veterans and their families."

In 1924, Bertrand Russell argued in an essay on propaganda, Those Eventful Years, that the corpse factory story was released in China when the nation's participation in the First World War was required: "Worldwide publicity was given to the statement that the Germans boiled down human corpses in order to extract from them gelatine and other useful substances... The story was set going cynically by one of the employees in the British propaganda department."

The following year Charteris admitted that he invented the story when he was visiting New York City. It was reported in the New York Times that he gave a speech at a private dinner function at the National Arts Club. He admitted that he had provided false information to government ministers when they were asked questions about it in the House of Commons.

Charteris went onto say: "The matter might have gone even further, for an ingenious person in his office offered to write a diary of a German soldier, telling of his transfer from the front after two years of fighting to an easy berth in a factory, and of his horror at finding that he was to assist there in boiling down his brother soldiers. He obtained a transfer to the front and was killed. It was planned to place this forged diary in the clothing of a dead German soldier and have it discovered by a war correspondent who had a passion for German diaries. General Charteris decided that the deception had gone far enough and that there might be an error in the diary which would have led to the exposure of the falsity."

The speech was reported in London and Charteris was forced to issue a statement: "I feel it, therefore, necessary to give again a categorical denial to the statement attributed to me. Certain suggestions and speculations as regards the origin of the Kadaver story which have already been published in Those Eventful Years and elsewhere, which I repeated, are, doubtless unintentionally, but nevertheless unfortunately, turned into definite statements of fact and attributed to me. Lest there should still be any doubt, let me say that I neither invented the Kadaver story, nor did I alter the captions in any photograph, nor did I use any faked material for propaganda purposes. The allegations that I did so are not only incorrect, but absurd."

The Times responded on 4th November, 1925: "This paper makes the significant observation that in the course of his denial he offered no comment on his reported admission that he avoided telling the truth when questioned about the matter in the House of Commons, or on his own description of a scheme to support the Corpse Factory story by planting a forged diary in the clothing of a dead German prisoner - a proposal which he only abandoned lest the deception might be discovered."

Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on 6th December: "A few years ago the story of how the Kaiser was reducing human corpses to fat aroused the citizens of this and other enlightened nations to a fury of hatred. Normally sane men doubled their fists and rushed off to the nearest recruiting sergeant. Now they are being told, in effect, that they were dupes and fools; that their own officers deliberately goaded them to the desired boiling-point, using an infamous lie to arouse them... In the next war, the propaganda must be more subtle and clever than the best the World War produced. These frank admissions of wholesale lying on the part of trusted Governments in the last war will not soon be forgotten."

After leaving the House of Commons he published John Singer Sargeant (1929). This was followed by two sympathetic biographies of Douglas Haig, his long-term friend: Field-Marshal Earl Haig (1929) and Haig (1933). He also published an account of his conduct of intelligence operations, At GHQ (1931).

John Charteris died at his home, Bourne House, Thorpe, Surrey, on 4th February 1946.

Primary Sources

(1) Brigadier-General John Charteris, the Chief Intelligence Officer at GHQ (5th September, 1914)

Then there is the story of the "Angels of Mons" going strong through the 2nd Corps, of how the angel of the Lord on the traditional white horse, and clad all in white with flaming sword, faced the advancing Germans at Mons and forbade their further progress. Men's nerves and imagination play weird pranks in these strenuous times. All the same the angel at Mons interests me. I cannot find out how the legend arose.

(2) Christopher Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985)

Further complications were caused by the change of intelligence staff at GHQ which followed the appointment of Sir Douglas (later Earl) Haig to succeed Sir John French as commander-in-chief in December 1915. Macdonogh was recalled to the War Office as DMI together with Edgar Cox who became head of M13, responsible for battle order intelligence. Though French had recommended Kirke as Macdonogh's successor at GHQ, Haig installed his own man, Brigadier John Charteris, with Kirke as his deputy. Charteris was a determined optimist and his intelligence analyses were soon in conflict with the more realistic estimates produced by Macdonogh in the War Office. Though Kirke's sympathies were with Macdonogh, Haig sided with Charteris and sharply criticised Macdonogh.

(3) John Charteris, At GHQ (1931)

The story... began in a report sent by a sergeant that he had seen Germans sitting round a lighted fire, and what looked like a crucified man. He worked his way closer to them, and found that it was only shadows cast by some crossed sticks on other objects. The report was transmitted back without this explanation.

(4) James Hayward, Myths and Legends of the First World War (2002)

The legend of the German corpse rendering factory remains the most notorious atrocity myth of the conflict, and fully deserves its appraisal by George Viereck as "the master hoax" of the First World War. Indeed the story proved so durable that it would not finally be exposed as a fiction until 1925. The central premise of this ghoulish tale, first circulated in its popular form in April 1917, was that close behind their front line the Germans had established a facility for boiling down the corpses of dead soldiers, the by-products being used in the production of munitions, soap, fertiliser and pig food. For the Allied propaganda machine, the story played as a near-perfect conjunction of German science and Hunnish barbarity. Today, credit for the deliberate creation of the myth is usually given to British intelligence agencies, and in particular the omnipresent General Charteris.

(5) The Times (17th April, 1917)

We have known for long that the Germans stripped their dead behind the firing line, fastened them into bundles of three or four bodies with iron wire, and then dispatched these grisly bundles to the rear. Until recently the trains laden with the dead were sent to Seraing, near Liege, and to a point north of Brussels, where there were refuse consumers. Much surprise was caused by the fact that of late this traffic has proceeded in the direction of Gerolstein, and it is noted that on each wagon was written DAVG.

German science is responsible for the ghoulish idea of the formation of the German Offal Utilization Company Limited (DAVG), a dividend-earning company with a capital of £250,000, the chief factory of which has been constructed 1,000 yards from the railway connecting St Vith, near the Belgian frontier, with Gerolstein, in the lonely, little-frequented Eifel district, south-west of Coblenz. The factory deals specially with the dead from the West Front. If the results are as good as the company hopes, another will be established to deal with corpses on the East Front.

The factory is invisible from the railway. It is placed deep in forest country, with a specially thick growth of trees about it. Live wires surround it. A special double track leads up to it. The works are about 700 feet long and ll0 feet broad, and the railway runs completely round them. In the north-west corner of the works the discharge of the trains takes place.

The trains arrive full of bare bodies, which are unloaded by the workers who live at the works. The men wear oilskin overalls and masks with mica eyepieces. They are equipped with long hooked poles, and push the bundles of bodies to an endless chain, which picks them with big hooks, attached at intervals of two feet. The bodies are transported on this endless chain into a long, narrow compartment, where they pass through a bath which disinfects them. They then go through a drying chamber, and finally are automatically carried into a digester or great cauldron, in which they are dropped by an apparatus which detaches them from the chain. In the digester they remain for six to eight hours, and are treated by steam, which breaks them up while they are slowly stirred by machinery.

From this treatment result several products. The fats are broken up into stearine, a form of tallow, and oils, which require to be re-distilled before they can be used. The process of distillation is carried out by boiling the oil with carbonate of soda, and some part of the by-products resulting from this is used by German soap makers. The oil distillery and refinery lie in the south-eastern corner of the works. The refined oil is sent out in small casks like those used for petroleum, and is of a yellowish brown colour.

The fumes are exhausted from the buildings by electric fans, and are sucked through a great pipe to the north-eastern corner, where they are condensed and the refuse resulting is discharged into a sewer. There is no high chimney, as the boiler furnaces are supplied with air by electric fans. There is a laboratory and in charge of the works is a chief chemist with two assistants and 78 men. All the employees are soldiers and are attached to the 8th Army Corps. There is a sanatorium by the works, and under no pretext is any man permitted to leave them. They are guarded as prisoners at their appalling work.

(6) New York Times, report on a speech made at the National Arts Club in New York City (20th October, 1925)

One day there came to the desk of General Charteris a mass of material taken from German prisoners and dead soldiers. In it were two pictures, one showing a train taking dead horses to the rear so that fat and other things needed for fertiliser and munitions might be obtained from them, and the other showing a train taking dead Germans to the rear for burial. On the picture showing the horses was the word "cadaver" ... General Charteris had the caption telling of `cadaver' being sent back to the fat factory transposed to the picture showing the German dead, and had the photograph sent to a Chinese newspaper in Shanghai...

The controversy raged until all England thought it must be true, and the German newspapers printed indignant denials. The matter came up in the House of Commons and an interrogation was made which was referred to General Charteris, who answered that from what he knew of the German mentality, he was prepared for anything. It was the only time, he said, during the war when he actually dodged the truth.

The matter might have gone even further, for an ingenious person in his office offered to write a diary of a German soldier, telling of his transfer from the front after two years of fighting to an easy berth in a factory, and of his horror at finding that he was to assist there in boiling down his brother soldiers. He obtained a transfer to the front and was killed.

It was planned to place this forged diary in the clothing of a dead German soldier and have it discovered by a war correspondent who had a passion for German diaries. General Charteris decided that the deception had gone far enough and that there might be an error in the diary which would have led to the exposure of the falsity. Such a result would have imperilled all the British propaganda, he said, and he did not think it worth while, but the diary is now in the war museum in London.

(7) John Charteris, statement (4th November, 1925)

On arrival in Scotland I was surprised to find that, in spite of the repudiation issued by me at New York through Reuter's Agency, some public interest was still excited in the entirely incorrect report of my remarks at a private dinner in New York. I feel it, therefore, necessary to give again a categorical denial to the statement attributed to me. Certain suggestions and speculations as regards the origin of the Kadaver story which have already been published in Those Eventful Years and elsewhere, which I repeated, are, doubtless unintentionally, but nevertheless unfortunately, turned into definite statements of fact and attributed to me.

Lest there should still be any doubt, let me say that I neither invented the Kadaver story, nor did I alter the captions in any photograph, nor did I use any faked material for propaganda purposes. The allegations that I did so are not only incorrect, but absurd; as propaganda was in no way under GHQ France, where I had charge of the intelligence services. I should be as interested as the general public to know what was the true origin of the Kadaver story. GHQ France only came in when the fictitious diary supporting the Kadaver story was submitted. When this diary was discovered to be fictitious it was at once rejected.

I have seen the Secretary of State for War this morning, and have explained the whole circumstances to him, and have his authority to say that he is perfectly satisfied.

(8) The Times (4th November, 1925)

This paper makes the significant observation that in the course of his denial he offered no comment on his reported admission that he avoided telling the truth when questioned about the matter in the House of Commons, or on his own description of a scheme to support the Corpse Factory story by `planting' a forged diary in the clothing of a dead German prisoner - a proposal which he only abandoned lest the deception might be discovered.

(9) Richmond Times-Dispatch (6th December, 1925)

A few years ago the story of how the Kaiser was reducing human corpses to fat aroused the citizens of this and other enlightened nations to a fury of hatred. Normally sane men doubled their fists and rushed off to the nearest recruiting sergeant. Now they are being told, in effect, that they were dupes and fools; that their own officers deliberately goaded them to the desired boiling-point, using an infamous lie to arouse them, just as a grown bully whispers to one little boy that another little boy said he could lick him.

The encouraging sign found in this revolting admission of how modern war is waged is the natural inference that the modern man is not over-eager to throw himself at his brother's throat at the simple word of command. His passions must be played upon, so the propaganda bureau has taken its place as one of the chief weapons. In the next war, the propaganda must be more subtle and clever than the best the World War produced. These frank admissions of wholesale lying on the part of trusted Governments in the last war will not soon be forgotten.

(10) Ernest Sackville Turner, Dear Old Blighty (1980)

Little more might have been heard of the story had not Brigadier-General John Charteris delivered an unfortunate speech at a dinner of the National Arts Club in New York in October 1925. He was reported as saying that the story began as propaganda for use in China. Two photographs had been found on a German prisoner, one showing a trainload of wounded soldiers, another a trainload of dead horses labelled Kadaver. By switching the captions, a mischievously false impression was given, and the result was sent off to a newspaper in Shanghai. When the report of his speech raised a stir General Charteris hastened to deny what he called a wholly inaccurate report of a speech at a private dinner. He had not transposed any picture captions and would be as interested as the general public to know the true origin of the story. General Headquarters in France, where he served as head of Intelligence services, had come into the matter only when a diary faked to give substance to the story had been submitted for planting on a dead German, but the idea was rejected. The General maintained his innocence in an interview with the Secretary for War.