There was overwhelming evidence as to the enemy's
intentions. Intelligence officers took me on one side and said:
"England ought to know. The people ought to be prepared. All this is
very serious. We shall be 'up against it.'" G.H.Q. was convinced. On
February 23d the war correspondents published articles summarizing the
evidence, pointing out the gravity of the menace, and they were passed
by the censorship. But England was not scared. Dances were in full
swing in London. Little ladies laughed as usual, light-hearted.
Flanders had made no difference to national optimism, though the
hospitals were crowded with blind and maimed and shell-shocked.
"I am skeptical of the German offensive" said Mr. Bonar Law.
Nobody believed the war correspondents. Nobody ever did believe us,
though some of us wrote the truth from first to last as far as the
facts of war go apart from deeper psychology, and a naked realism of
horrors and losses, and criticism of facts, which did not come within
our liberty of the pen.
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