Falsehood
in War-time, Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout
the Nations During the Great War is a 1928 book by Arthur
Ponsonby,[1] listing and
refuting pieces of propaganda
used by the Allied Forces
(Russia, France, Britain and
the United States) against the Central Powers (Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria).[2]
After the Second World War, a new edition of the book was
given the updated title Falsehood in War-Time: Propaganda Lies of the
First World War.
Arthur
Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, was born Arthur
Augustus William Harry Ponsonby in 1871.[3]
Lord Ponsonby attended Eton
College and Balliol College,
Oxford, after which he joined the Diplomatic Service. In 1906,
Ponsonby ran as a Liberal
candidate, unsuccessfully, at the general election but was elected a
Member of Parliament of the
United Kingdom (MP) at a by-election
in 1908.
Lord Ponsonby was opposed to Britain's
involvement in World War I and helped form the Union
of Democratic Control (UDC). He stood as an "Independent
Democrat" in the new Dunfermline
Burghs constituency in the 1918 general election and was
defeated, and joined the Labour
Party, becoming the MP for the Brightside Division of Sheffield
in the 1922 general election. He was appointed Parliamentary
Secretary to the Ministry of Transport after the 1929 general
election. He was granted a peerage and became Leader of the House
of Lords in 1930.
In 1940, Lord Ponsonby resigned
from the Labour Party because he was opposed to its decision to join
the coalition government of Winston
Churchill.
Falsehood in War-time identifies the role
propaganda played in World War I in general and specific terms and
lists more than 20 falsehoods that were circulated during the First
World War.
Ponsonby regarded these falsehoods as a
fundamental part of the way the war effort was created and sustained,
stating that without lies there would be "no reason and no will
for war".[4]
In
detail, Ponsonby analyses the case of the invasion
of Belgium as a cause of the war, the
claim of Germany's sole responsibility, the myth
of a nurse mutilated by German soldiers, the depiction of the
German Emperor as a criminal,
the case of a Belgian baby whose
hands were cut off, the Leuven
altarpiece which had allegedly been destroyed by Germans, the
baby of Courbeck Loo, the
crucified Canadian soldier, the German
Corpse Factory, the German
U-boat outrage, the case of the sinking
of the Lusitania, atrocity
stories reported on German Army troops which were reported
killing and maiming of innocent civilians and captured soldiers,
faked photographs, the doctoring of official documents, and the
"hypocritical" indignation.
As to the Song
of the Germans, base for the later German national anthem of the
Weimar Republic (since 1922):
"Deutschland über alles in der Welt" (Germany above
everything in the world), Ponsonby said it was popularly accepted as
meaning, "[Let] Germany [rule] over every country in the world",
i.e. the German domination of the world. However, German grammar
distinguishes between über Alles (i.e. more important than
everything else) and über alle, meaning "on top of
everybody".[5] According
to Ponsonby, the latter misleading translation was chosen by the
Allies during both World Wars for propaganda purposes.
Falsehood
in War-Time was positively received on its release. The International
Journal of Ethics calls Ponsonby's work "an interesting study of
the moral degradation involved in all wars." In addition, the
World Tomorrow welcomed the book as a direct way of describing
propaganda in World War One and states it is, "decidedly to the
good". One of Ponsonby's critics, The
Times of London, mentioned Ponsonby omitted the Bryce
report. However, The Times recognized that Ponsonby's writing "is
a useful warning against undue credulity". The reception of the
book in Germany was positive, where the German Foreign Ministry
regarded it as the "best and most effective book... against war
atrocity lies" and helped get it translated into French and
German.[6]
Anne
Morelli systematised the essential propaganda
techniques of Ponsonby's work in her book Principes
élémentaires de propagande de guerre. Morelli explains how
these principles not only worked during the First World War, but were
also applied in wars into 2001.[7]
We do not want war.
The opposite party alone is
guilty of war.
The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the
devil.
We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.(Just
war theory)
The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our
mishaps are involuntary.
The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
We
suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
Recognized
artists and intellectuals
back our cause.
Our cause is sacred.
All who doubt our
propaganda are traitors.[8][9]
In his book The Last Great War: British Society and the
First World War, Adrian Gregory criticised what he saw as
methodological errors within Falsehood in War-Time.
He
wrote that, in some instances, Ponsonby incorrectly charged the
British press as manufacturing stories that actually derived from
various other sources including rumours, urban myths and German
propaganda.
He concluded, "material from American
isolationist sources, the British pacifist press and even from
Germany is taken as truth, British official pronouncements and the
British press are assumed to be lying. His book is not an inquiry
into propaganda; it is propaganda, of the most passionate sort:
Exposure may therefore be useful, even when the struggle is over, in
order to show up the fraud, hypocrisy and humbug on which all war
rests".[10]
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Quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time
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Shaykh Hamza Yusuf EXPOSES
'The Ponsonby report, A War Game Played To Convince The Masses!
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Once upon a time Queen Victoria thought she had made quite a good Page of Honor out of little Arthur Augustus William Harry Ponsonby.
The child
seldom sniveled—a great point in his favor with Her Majesty—and
presently he showed more smartness than most in fetching her Bible
and carrying her "salts." Moreover Page Ponsonby had good
blood, the blue of his maternal great grandsire Earl Grey (Prime
Minister 1830-34); .and so the Great Queen kept "that dear
Ponsonby child" in her service for five whole years, placing him
less than a decade later in the Diplomatic Service. Unfortunate
Victoria! She could not know that in 1929—in fact this
month—onetime Page Ponsonby would publish a most scathing and
compactly venomous report exposing lies and shady tricks used by
Allied and British statesmen to win the War.
No longer
page or puppet, Arthur Ponsonby M. P. is today one of the old
progressive guard of Campbell-Bannerman Liberals who have followed
their principles into the Labor ranks.
Through 1906-08 young Mr. Ponsonby served as Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman; but 1924 saw him Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs and right-hand-man to the only Laborite who has ever been British Prime Minister, James Ramsay MacDonald. Thus, when onetime Page Ponsonby released his report in 192 closely packed and reasoned pages, he revealed the insight of one who has been behind the British scenes, both before and after the War, and the weighted judgment of a Parliamentarian 16 years in the House. Briefly, Laborite Ponsonby seeks to destroy at least a portion of "the weapon of falsehood" forged by Allied propagandists during the War, and more especially to unmask the more notorious lies spread by "the British official propaganda department at Crewe House under Lord Northcliffe." For good measure and impartiality certain German War lies are also exposed.
Most significant, amid present hue
and cry against Soviet Russian propaganda, is evidence here cited
that 10,500 paid British propagandists were operating throughout the
U. S. in 1917.
Lies, Lies, Lies. In smashing contradiction
of many a still prevalent belief, Laborite Ponsonby sets out to
demonstrate:
1) That, generally speaking, "German
atrocities" were extremely rare; and, specifically, German
soldiers in Belgium and France never cut off the hand or hands of a
single child;
2) That Allied propagandists created and
attributed to Wilhelm II the reference to "England's
contemptible little army" which became the most effective
British recruiting slogan of the entire War;
3) That the
sinking of the Lusitania was justified by the fact that she carried
arms;
4) That German submarine commanders did not in any
instance aggravate their torpedoing of merchant ships by an
"atrocity" or act of cruelty; and
5) That the portion
of the ... Treaty of Versailles which fixes sole War guilt upon
Germany is simply
tosh.
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https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,732165,00.html
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