Candid Charteris

Warmed by the hospitality of the National Arts Club, Gramercy Park, Manhattan, Brigadier General John A. Charteris, Chief of Britain’s Army Intelligence Service during the War, unsealed his lips at a dinner last week and became confidential if not indiscreet.

Said he, according to reports by his fellow diners: “A bit of propaganda may often grow far beyond its original purpose and get completely out of control. For example, take the story to the effect that during the War Germany boiled down the bodies of her dead soldiers to utilize the resultant fat for fertilizer. That story was released and grew as follows:

“England was worried about the attitude of China, which seemed to favor Germany. One day there came to my desk a mass of material taken from German prisoners and dead soldiers. In it were two pictures, one showing a train taking dead horses to the rear so that fat and other things needed for fertilizer and munitions might be obtained from them; and the other showing a train taking dead Germans to the rear for burial. On the picture showing the horses was the word ‘Cadaver.’

“Knowing how the Chinese revere their dead, I had the caption telling of the ‘cadaver’ being sent back to the fat factory transposed to the picture showing the German corpses, and had this photograph sent to a Chinese newspaper in Shanghai. . . . Six weeks later ‘the horrible boiling down of German soldiers was blazoned to the world, after a letter had been received in England from a reader of the Chinese newspaper.

“Although I had by then forgotten all about the matter … I was interrogated by the House of Commons . . . and thought it best to dodge the truth for the first and only time during the War. … I said that from what I knew of the German mentality, I was prepared for anything. … Of course by that time the German newspapers had printed indignant denials.

“An ingenious fellow in my office prepared a fake ‘diary’ of a German soldier, who was supposed to have had to assist in boiling down some of his comrades. And it was planned that a certain correspondent who had a passion for German diaries should be allowed to ‘discover’ it. … But I felt that the deception had gone far enough. . . . An error in the diary might have led to an exposure of the falsity, which would have imperiled the effectiveness of all British propaganda. … It was never used and is now in the London War Museum.”

The General concluded with an appeal to Americans to give England their sympathy during her present economic struggle.

There ensued an interval in which everyone asked: “What will Britannia say to this?” There came the answer of British newspaperdom: “It is almost incredible that a British officer should have done such a thing . . . that a man in public life should choose the hour when peace and amity were dawning at Locarno, to revive one of the most unsavory stories of the War.”

The Evening Standard cried: the statement, it is vital that he deny it instantly. . . . Its effect is to discredit British propaganda past, present and future.”

The Westminster Gazette: “This is a disgusting thing to be reminded of when we are endeavoring to forget the madness which the War engendered.”

The Star: “This story of scandal and abominable lying is a scandal and a disgrace which Parliament cannot ignore. It is not the reputation of Gen. Charteris, but of the British nation which is at stake.”

After all this rumpus had proceeded unchecked for several days, General Charteris at length spoke. To reporters who crowded round him as he was about to set sail for Glasgow, aboard the liner Transylvania, he delivered himself warmly as follows: “Mv speech was made at a private dinner at which the toastmaster began his remarks with the statement that no reporters were present. … It was not necessary for us to spread false propaganda, as sufficient false propaganda was being spread from other sources to offset any which was spread for a good purpose . . . My whole idea in speaking was to show that propaganda not based on truth is futile. . . .

“The comments or remarks attributed to me in that speech were taken from the context of the talk. The ‘corpse factory’ story was referred to. This story was never used for the simple reason that it was not truthful, and any reports that any pictures were used is entirely fictitious.”

A correspondent of The New York World later declared positively that at the British General Headquarters in 1917, he was shown by a subordinate of General Charteris photographs of a huge cauldron choked with fragments of bodies, arms and legs. He was told that this picture was at the time being used in the East for propaganda.

An Australian explorer, formerly a staff photographer for an Australian corps, has come forward with the story that he piled fragments of German corpses into a captured German field kitchen cauldron, photographed the gruesome mess, and thus obtained the picture in question.