Content note: Repeats First World War atrocity stories, including invented ones, and their wording. This object is shown as it was published. Why
A CLERGYMAN, while lunching in a restaurant in 1918, was informed by a stranger that the son of a friend of his was interned in a camp in Germany. A recent letter, he said, had contained the passage, “ The stamp on this letter is a rare one; soak it off for little Alf’s collection.” Though there was no one in the family called Alf, and no one who collected stamps, they did as they were told. Underneath the stamp were the words, “ They have torn out my tongue; I could not put it in the letter ” (the news presumably, not the tongue). The clergyman told the man the story was absurd, and that he ought to be ashamed of himself for repeating it, as everyone knew that prisoners’ letters did not bear stamps. If his friend had managed to put a stamp on his letter, it was the best possible way of attracting attention to what he was trying to hide. But the stranger, no doubt from patriotic motives, indignantly refused to have his story spoiled, and it was widely circulated in Manchester.* The interesting point about this lie is that it was also used in Germany with variations. A lady in Munich received a letter from her son, who was a prisoner in Russia. He told her to take the stamp off his letter “ as it was a rare one.” She did so, and discovered written underneath, “ They have cut off both my feet, so that I cannot escape.” The story was eventually killed • “ Artifex,” in the Manchtiter Guardian.
G
by ridicule, but not before it had travelled to Augsburg and other towns.
It was probably one of the stories which are used in every war.
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.