(2 of 3)
The method of demonstration and of proof adopted by Queen-Empress Victoria's onetime Page of Honor is to range widely and exhaustively over the material of post-War documents and disclosures, culling testimony from the very statesmen under whom the War lies were forged and used as deadly weapons. Citing chapter and verse, page and line, Laborite Ponsonby produces the following five "proofs" of his above five assertions:
Babies' Hands. In his memoirs Signor Francisco Nitti, the Italian Prime Minister (1918-20) now declares: "During the War France, in common with other Allies, including our own Government in Italy, circulated the most absurd inventions to arouse the fighting spirit of our people. The cruelties attributed to the Germans were such as to curdle our blood. We heard the story of poor little Belgian children whose hands were cut off by the Huns. After the War a rich American, who was deeply touched by the French propaganda, sent an emissary to Belgium with the intention of providing a livelihood for the children whose poor little hands had been cut off. He was unable to dis cover one. Mr. Lloyd George and myself, when at the head of the Italian Government, carried on extensive investigations as to the truth of these horrible accusations, some of which, at least, were told specifically as to names and places. Every case investigated proved to be a myth."
"Old Contemptibles." To this day Britons who fought in France during 1914 proudly refer to themselves collectively, as "The Old Contemptibles." This they do because on Sept. 24, 1914 they read in the British Expeditionary Force Routine Orders of the day that on Aug. 19, 1914 the Kaiser declared, in a General Order issued from German Headquarters, Aix-la-Chapelle:
"It is my Royal and Imperial command that you [German soldiers] ... exterminate first the treacherous English, walk over General French's contemptible little army!"
To completely blast this British fabrication Laborite Ponsonby had adduced two proofs: 1) The indisputable fact that German headquarters were never at Aix-la-Chapelle; and 2) The statement of British General Sir Frederick Maurice who, after the War, had German files and archives thoroughly ransacked without finding a single German newspaper or document indicating that Wilhelm never used the phrase "contemptible little army."
Lusitania Armed. Britain's present Chancellor of the Exchequer, rubicund and Right Honorable Winston ("Winnie") Churchill, is quoted as stating over his signature:
"Included in her [the Lusitania's] cargo was a small consignment of rifle ammunition and shrapnel shells weighing about 173 tons."