Page:Secrets of Crewe House.djvu/210

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152
SECRETS OF CREWE HOUSE

3. Propaganda material;

4. Educative work among prisoners of war who might return to Germany to tell their compatriots the real facts.

Unless based on a definite policy, propaganda could only be fragmentary and superficial. On the basis of a clear policy it might become destructive of enemy moral, a valuable adjunct to military operations, and constructive of the necessary conditions of a lasting peace.

The three enemy countries with which his Department was mainly concerned were Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Germany. He cited Austria-Hungary first, because, of all our enemies, the Hapsburg Monarchy was the field where positive results were most readily attainable.

In the early months of 1918, when he began that work, Germany was too flushed with her facile triumphs in Russia to be susceptible to propaganda, and the attitude of Bulgaria was too closely bound up with German fortunes to be at that moment easily affected by propaganda. Allied policy in regard to Bulgaria was, moreover, closely connected with the general Balkan policy of