ly easy to
bear.

As is known, American public opinion at that time had been given a
one-sided view of the causes and course of the war, for England, who,
immediately after the declaration of war, had cut our Transatlantic
cable, held the whole of the Transatlantic news apparatus in her hands.
Apart from this, however, our enemies found from the beginning very
important Allies in a number of leading American newspapers, which,
in their daily issue of from three to six editions, did all they could
to spread anti-German feeling. In New York the bitterest attacks
on Germany were made by the _Herald_ and the _Evening Telegram_,
which were in close touch with France, as well as the _Tribune_ and
_Times_, which followed in England's wake; somewhat more moderate
were the _Sun_ and the _Globe_; the only neutrals were the _Evening
Post_ and the _American_. Outside New York the Press raged against
us, particularly in New England and the Middle-Atlantic States.
In the South and West we were also baited by the Press, but with
considerably less intensity. The only papers which could be called
neutral were those of the Hearst Press, which took up an outspoken
National-American standpoint, and, in addition, the _Chicago Tribune_,
the _Washington Post_, and a few minor newspapers. It was already
very significant that papers like the _Boston Transcript_, the
_Brooklyn Eagle_, the _Baltimore Sun_, and a few others opened
their letter-boxes to anti-German articles, which, it is true,
they condemned with fair regularity in their leading articles or
editorial notes. Against this campaign, fed systematically and
daily with British propaganda information--especially on the subject
of German atrocities in Belgium--the small number of papers in the
German language, which, moreover, were little heeded by public
opinion, and at the head of which stood the old _New Yorker
Staatszeitung_ and the courageous weekly _Fatherland_, founded
shortly after the outbreak of war by the young German-American,
G. S. Vierick, could make but little headway.

On my arrival in New York, and during the next few weeks, I made
an honest effort by daily interviews of the representatives of
the leading daily newspapers to explain the German standpoint to
the American public. I soon noticed, however, that these efforts
were not only practically fruitless but that they were even fraught
with certain dangers for me. The daily struggle with the Press was
threatening to