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168 assuredly a very great work, if one were to judge of its activity not only by personal convictions but by the convictions of the foe, who had publicly acknowledged that the defeat on the Piave was partly caused by the efforts of the Padua Commission, and by information that had been brought to them by the Jugo-Slavs and Czecho-Slovaks. Allied propaganda must be a propaganda of truth. The chief difficulty lay in making a distinction between copying the enemy's system of actual military operations and imitating his methods in the war of ideas. It was true that the military technique of war must be dependent upon that of the adversary, unless we were to be at a disadvantage; but there was a danger that we might imitate methods adopted by the enemy in the war of ideas—that is to say, that we might copy German methods of propaganda. Although there were people who thought that the Allies should copy lies and hypocritical statements of German propaganda, he was convinced that their real arm in the propaganda war was the truth. The Allies could tell the truth because they were persuaded that they were right. It was easy for them to have a system of ideas, because they believed in them as in a