Content note: Repeats First World War atrocity stories, including invented ones, and their wording. This object is shown as it was published. Why
It is not often that we have a confession of falsehood, but the story of the baby of Coutbeck Loo is an illuminating example of an invention related by its author.
Captain F. W. Wilson, formerly editor of the Smaay Times, related the story in America in 1922. The following account appeared in the New York Times (reproduced in the Crusader, February 24, 1922) :
A correspondent of the London Daily Mail, Captain Wilson, found himself in Brussels at the time the war broke out. They telegraphed out that they wanted stories of atrocities. Well, there weren’t any atrocities at that time. So then they telegraphed out that they wanted stories of refugees. So I said to myself, “ That’s fine, 1 won’t have to move.” There was a little town outside Brussels where one went to get dinner—a very good dinner, too. I heard the Hun had been there. I supposed there must have been a baby there. So I wrote a heart-rending story about the baby of Courbeck Loo being rescued from the Hun in the light of the burning homesteads.
The next day they telegraphed out to me to send the baby along, as they had about five thousand letters offering to adopt it. The day after that baby clothes began to pout into the office. Even Queen Alexandra wired her sympathy and sent some clothes. Well, I couldn’t wire back to them that there wasn’t a baby. So I finally arranged with the doctor that took care of the refugees that the blessed baby died of some very contagious disease, so it couldn’t even have a public burial.
And we got Lady Northcliffe to start a creche with aU the baby-clothes.
Falsehood in War-Time, Arthur Ponsonby. Published in the United Kingdom in 1928, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States. Ponsonby died in 1946, so the text is also in the public domain in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years. Provenance and rights.