manently
stationed in Berlin. Two or three who did not desire to hand over
the control of their personal movements to the German Government
for an unlimited number of years did not "take the pledge," with
the result that they were not invited to join the personally
conducted junkets to the fronts which were subsequently organised.

Nothing that has happened in Germany during the war illustrates so
well the vassalage to which neutral correspondents have been
reduced as the humiliating pledges extorted from them by the German
Government as the price of their remaining in Berlin for the
practice of their profession.

It was undoubtedly this episode which inspired the American
Ambassador, Mr. Gerard, to tell the American correspondents last
summer that they would do well to obtain their freedom from the
German censorship before invoking the Embassy's good offices to
break down the alleged interference with their dispatches by the
British censorship. When the Germans learned of the rebuff which
Mr. Gerard had administered to his journalistic compatriots, the
Berlin Press launched one of those violent attacks against the
Ambassador to which he has constantly been subject in Germany
during the war.

As I have shown in a previous chapter the German Government
attaches so much importance to the control and manufacture of
public opinion through the Press that it is drastic in the
regulation of German newspapers. It is therefore comprehensible
that it should strive to enlist to the fullest possible extent the
Press of other countries. At least one paper in practically every
neutral country is directly subsidised by the German Foreign
Office, which does not, however, stop at this. The attempt to
seduce the newspapers of other nations into interpreting the
Fatherland as the Wilhelmstrasse wishes it to be interpreted leads
the investigators to a subterranean labyrinth of schemes which
would fill a volume.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28, 1914. Long
before that Dr. Hammann, head of the _Nachrichtendienst_ of the
German Foreign Office, had organised a plan for the successful
influencing of the Press of the world. In May, 1914, the work of a
special bureau under his direction and presided over by a woman of
international reputation was in full operation.

The following incident, which is one of the many I might cite,
throws interesting light on one method of procedure. The head of
the special burea