Page:Secrets of Crewe House.djvu/86

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52
SECRETS OF CREWE HOUSE

passed. Indeed, the early direction of British propaganda was like an epidemic; it occasionally took strange forms and occurred in unexpected places. Mr. Guest's work was the institution and maintenance of those agencies by which propagandist literature was produced and smuggled into Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Within the War Office, there were some in favour of propagandist activity, but for a long time they were in a minority. Early in 1916, Major-General (now Lieutenant-General) Sir George Macdonogh, K.C.M.G., C.B., returned from France to become Director of Military Intelligence, and mainly owing to his efforts and those of Brigadier-General G. K. Cockerill, C.B. (then Director of Special Intelligence), a propaganda branch of the Military Intelligence Department of the War Office was established. From small beginnings, the activities of this branch grew.

It was in the spring of 1916 that a sub-section of this branch began the preparation of leaflets in German for distribution among enemy troops. One use of the leaflets was to disprove the false beliefs spread among German soldiers that the British and French treated their prisoners with great severity. To counteract this, reproductions of letters