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Rh was made of the factors governing the political, economic, and military position of each of the enemy countries concerned before action was taken. As The Times observed in a leading article (October 31, 1919) Lord Northcliffe′s work "differed from the praiseworthy and painstaking efforts that had preceded it mainly by adopting as its guiding principle the very maxim which Ludendorff lays down. The consideration that, without a definite policy in regard to each enemy country, propaganda must be at best a hand-to-mouth business was, from the first, regarded as self-evident by Lord Northcliffe and the handful of experts who advised him."

Ludendorff compared the work of the British and German propaganda departments, to the great disparagement of the latter. Indeed he attributed the moral collapse of the German soldier—and consequently the military defeat—in part to British propaganda and in part to the demoralisation of the German home population, which, in turn, he ascribed to British propaganda and to the feebleness of the German Government in counteracting it. Of British propaganda he wrote:—

Lloyd George knew what he was