Germany to the American people. At this time there
was practically no food problem. German banks and business men were
preparing for and expecting peace. The Government was already making
plans for after the war when soldiers would return from the front. A
Reichstag Committee had been appointed to study Germany's possible peace
time labour needs and to make arrangements for solving them.

But in the fall of 1915 the changes began. The _Lusitania_ had been
destroyed in May and almost immediately the hate campaign against America
was started. I saw the tendency to attack and belittle the United States
grow not only in the army, in the navy and in the press, but among the
people. I saw that Germany was growing to deeply resent anything the
United States Government said against what the German Government did.
When this anti-American campaign was launched I observed a tendency on
the part of the Foreign Office to censor more strictly the telegrams
which the correspondents desired to send to the American newspapers.
Previously, the Foreign Office had been extremely frank and cordial and
permitted correspondents to send what they observed and heard, as long as
the despatches did not contain information which would aid the Allies in
their military or economic attacks on Germany. As the hate articles
appeared in the newspapers the correspondents were not only prohibited
from sending them, but they were criticised by the Foreign Office for
writing anything which might cause the American people to be angered at
Germany. One day I made a translation of a bitter article in the _B. Z.
am Mittag_ and submitted it to the Foreign Office censor. He asked why I
paid so much attention to articles in this newspaper which he termed a
"Kaese-blatt"--literally "a cheese paper." He said it had no influence
in Germany; that no one cared what it said. This newspaper, however, was
the only noon-day edition in Berlin and was published by the largest
newspaper publishing house in Germany, Ullstein & Co. At his request I
withdrew the telegram and forgot the incident. Within a few days,
however, Count zu Reventlow, in the _Deutsche Tageszeitung_, and Georg
Bernhard, in the _Vossische Zeitung_, wrote sharp attacks on President
Wilson. But I could not telegraph these.

Previous to the fall of 1915 not only the German Government but the
German people were charitable to the opinions of neutrals, especially
those who happened to be in Germa