while been organized by Geheim Oberregierungrat Meyer Gerhardt
and Rittmeister Hecker, would have left America if there had remained
any possibility of doing so. There was not, however, as the English
inspected all neutral ships shortly after they left the American
ports and--in flagrant contravention of international law, which
only allows the arrest of persons who are already enrolled in the
fighting forces--summarily arrested and interned every German capable
of bearing arms. As Dr. Dernburg was thus an unwilling prisoner
in New York he began to write articles on the world-war for the
daily Press. He had a gift for explaining the causes of the war
in a quiet, interesting manner, and particularly for setting out
the German standpoint in a conciliatory form. His propaganda work
therefore met with extraordinary success. The editors of newspapers
and periodicals pressed him to contribute to their columns, and
the whole New York Press readily printed all the articles he sent
in to contradict the statements of the anti-Germans.

Out of this activity developed, in co-operation with the Foreign
Office, Dr. Dernburg's New York Press Bureau, a solution of the
propaganda question which was exceedingly welcome to me. As a private
person Dr. Dernburg could say and write much that could not be said
officially and therefore could not come from me. Consequently I
took it for granted that--in spite of certain suggestions to the
contrary--Dr. Dernburg would not be attached to the Embassy, which
would only hamper his work, and also that the Press Bureau would
retain its independent and unofficial character. I may take it as a
well-known fact that Washington is the political, and New York the
economic, capital of the United States, which has always resulted
in a certain geographical division of the corresponding diplomatic
duties. It naturally had its disadvantages that there should be,
apart from the Consulate-General, four other independent German
establishments in New York, namely, the offices of Dr. Dernburg,
Privy Councillor Albert, the military attache Captain von Papen
and the naval attache Commander Boy-Ed. In order to keep, to some
extent, in touch with these gentlemen, I occasionally travelled to
New York and interviewed them together in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel,
where I usually stayed and in which Dr. Dernburg lived; for their
offices, scattered as they were over the lower town, and which,
moreover, I never entered, were unsui