Rumours that the Germans used the bodies of their soldiers to create fat appear to have been circulating by 1915. Cynthia Asquith noted in her diary on 16 June 1915: “We discussed the rumour that the Germans utilise even their corpses by converting them into glycerine with the by-product of soap.” Such stories also appeared in the American press in 1915 and 1916. The French press also took it up in "", in February, 1916. In 1916 a book of cartoons by Louis Raemaekers was published. One depicted bodies of German soldiers being loaded onto a cart in neatly packaged batches. This was accompanied with a comment written by Horace Vachell: “I am told by an eminent chemist that six pounds of glycerine can be extracted from the corpse of a fairly well nourished Hun... These unfortunates, when alive, were driven ruthlessly to inevitable slaughter. They are sent as ruthlessly to the blast furnaces. One million dead men are resolved into six million pounds of glycerine." A later cartoon by Bruce Bairnsfather also referred to the rumour, depicting a German munitions worker looking at a can of glycerine and saying "Alas! My poor Brother!" (parodying a well-known advertisement for Bovril).