amination: "I am interested
in trying to distil some truth from a mass of statements which are
so manifestly unfair and distorted that it is hard to characterize
them in parliamentary language."

As for the fantastic figures with which the Americans have undertaken
to estimate the cost of our propaganda, they rest--in so far as
they are not simply the fruit of a malicious imagination--on the,
to say the least of it, superficial hypothesis that all the money
paid out by the different German offices from the outbreak of war
until the breaking off of diplomatic relations between Germany and
America, the amount of which has been arrived at on the strength
of a minute scrutiny of the books of all the banks with which these
offices have done business, were used for purposes of propaganda.
As a matter of fact, of course, far the greater part of this outlay
went to finance the very extensive purchases of Privy Councillor
Albert as well as certain business transactions concluded by Captain
von Papen, which will be discussed later. In comparison with this
the sum we devoted to propaganda work was quite small. The Press
Bureau was frequently very appreciably hampered by the fact that
even for quite minor expenditure outside the fixed budget, previous
sanction had to be obtained from Berlin. Consequently much useful
work would have had to remain undone if, particularly in the first
months of the war, self-sacrificing German-Americans to whom it
was only of the slightest interest that the German point of view
should be accurately and emphatically explained, had not placed
small sums at the disposal of the leaders of our propaganda. In the
two and a half years between the outbreak of war and the rupture
between Germany and America the sums paid out from official funds
for propaganda work in the Union--including minor contributions
for other countries, as, for example, the pictures distributed
from New York over South America and Eastern Asia--do not, all
told, exceed a million dollars. That is surely only a small fraction
of what England and France have expended during the war in order,
in spite of very thorough preparation in peace time, to win over
American public opinion to their cause. It is actually only a sixth
of what, according to the _Chicago Tribune_ on the 1st November,
1919, the official American Press Bureau of Mr. George Creel has
spent in order to "cement enthusiasm for the war" during the eighteen
months between Ame