Thursday, Oct. 18, 1917
A letter submitted to the “Pulse of the People” column arrives at The Record office this morning, but instead of going into this evening’s letters column it ends up in an editorial as evidence that “Troy is not free from the traitors.”
The author of the letter is unknown. An editorial writer notes that the name doesn’t appear in the current Troy City Directory. In addition, the missive “is in a disguised handwriting and is written on plain paper, every effort being made to hide the source.”
Normally our paper won’t publish a letter if we can’t verify the author’s identity. In this case, our editors make an exception, publishing the letter in full.
“Why all this nonsense spending money on liberty loans? The Boches [i.e. the Germans] are starved – mutiny in the navy – demoralization in the army. The Kaiser is down and out, howls peace, peace, peace; crown prince has committed suicide; Ludendorff crippled in an accident; Hindenburg drowned in the little sense he had in whisky.
“Air raids of the Boches are so amusing to Londoners that they go out of the roofs to take in the sight when the Boches come. Submarines are a thing of the past, bagged every day. Let the people keep their money.
“End of the war will come soon. Tommy [the generic British soldier] takes 40 Boches prisoners at a time. So good cheer to the Boches.”
Our morning edition included a report that “officials of the United States government have discovered a well-defined plot to discredit the new Liberty loan by personal appeal, business pressure and publicity.” Our editors suspect that this letter may be part of the propaganda campaign against the Liberty Loan campaign to fund the U.S. war against Germany through the sale of Liberty Bonds.
“It is a tissue of untruth, designed to decrease the total of the loan,” our writer charges, “That such appeals could influence a patriotic thinking man is impossible to believe, but all patriotic men do not think.
“To attempt to make the course of the government difficult by such a course is to play along the edge of treason. It is unpleasant to be compelled to realize that Troy is giving room to one of such a contemptible breed of disloyal citizens.”
Some of the letter writer’s statements, particularly regarding Germany’s leaders, are obviously untrue. However, the letter’s main point, that Germany is near the end of its rope, is echoed in a Record editorial on the very same page on the possibility of a popular uprising in Germany because “the people are tired of war.”