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.