Nearly everyone has heard the story of the Red Cross sweater which had a five-dollar bill pinned to it for the lucky unknown soldier who might be the recipient. This sweater is always reported to have been sold and to have turned up in some part of America with the proof attached to it. In no instance has there been any foundation for this rumor. A like baselessness marks the stories of Red Cross graft and misappropriation of funds and waste of money. No doubt there was a certain amount of inefficiency in this work; but that the Red Cross was looted or conducted by dishonest persons was never believed to be true even by the German agents who started the stories.
During the time of the influenza epidemic, a common story was that doctors had been found spreading influenza germs in the cantonments. It was reported, as no doubt every reader will remember, that two doctors had been shot in one post. Sometimes the story would come from a man who got it from an enlisted man who had been one of the firing squad who had executed several doctors in this way. There was not a word of truth in any of this. The inoculation propaganda was German propaganda, pure and simple. It might not seem clear how such mendacity could be of direct help to Germany; but it had this result—it made American mothers and fathers more uneasy about their sons. It made them want to keep their boys at home.
The powdered glass rumor was one of the most widely spread instances of German propaganda. Who has not heard it divulged in secrecy by some woman, with the injunction that not a word must be said about it? A German nurse had been detected putting powdered glass in the rolled surgical bandages in the Red Cross work rooms. She had disappeared before she could be arrested, and she had not left her name. That mysterious German woman who worked with the Red Cross is still absent. The rumors of powdered glass in bandages have been practically groundless—only one division, that in upper New Jersey, reports any case of that sort actually run down. The charges of powdered glass in food sent to the soldiers or put in tinned goods have been found equally baseless. Two cases of glass found in food stuffs are authentically reported,—both accidents, and the glass was broken and not powdered.
