GAINING AMERICA'S EAR
GERMAN PRESS BUREAU AT WORK ALLIES LAG BEHIND ("Daily Mail" Correspondent.) New York, December 10. With a gesture of mock despair the general manager of ono of the largest news agencies in the United States beckoned me into his office and spread before my eyes a huge batch of letters complaining of tho "pro-German" character of his foreign dispatches. They came from all parts of tho United States, and expressed in varied tones of objurgation the discontent of the writers .with the preponderance of German over British war news. "But what can wo do?" remarked tho general manager. "Our Berlin correspondent simply dominates the news field. Everywhere in the Fatherland the doors of officialdom have been opened to him. He sent us only tho other day a corking interview with the Crown Prince. Since then bo has been received by the Kaiser. It is true he is not allowed to quote tho Emperor's words, but be has based on them a most valuable article brimful of German information. To-day again he telegraphs us that he has a sensational interview with Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. We .should bo fools if wo did not publish his extraordinarily interesting dispatches. It is true_ they, are gaining for us the reputation of being a German Press Agency. My own opinion is that Allies, instead of barring their doors to journalistic sympathisers would be well advised to do some 'Press agenting' on their own account; for the German policy of the 'open door' for foreign journalists is undoubtedly influencing the sympathies of a growing body of Americans." The Personal Touoh Lacking. A casual .glance through the daily, papers of America confirms the -trictures passed upon the Press methods of the British and French Governments. With the vast majority of the American public thirsting to read of the military exploits of the Allies, all that the editors can offer them is an intimate ami human account, to which fresh chapters are added daily, of the life of German and Austrian soldiers in the trenches. From British and French sources their war dispatches arc conlined to the reproduction of "Eye-Witness's" stories, admirable enough in •■ hemselves, but lacking in tho intimate personal touch which Americans love, and cut-and-dried official and semi-offi-cial reports. And from Russia, against whom an overwhelming body of prejudice exists in this country, not a single word of independent comment or description appears in the American Press. Apparently no American newspaper has even thought it" worth while to station a correspondent in Petrograd.
The German and Austrian authorities hare behaved in a very different spirit from that exhibited by the Allies. Their censorship has been fool-proof. But it has been exercised with a wise discrimination. It has displayed a "Press strategy" admirably calculated to encompass the sympathies of American readers. . Cermany's Thorough Way. The result, is that, without the betrayal of a 'single military secret, the American public has been furnished with a series of thrilling personal accounts of the German and Austrian Armies in tho heat of battle. It has been enabled in imagination to share tho sufferings and admire tho heroism of the imperial soldiers both on the eastern and western fronts. In Galicia two American correspondents, one of them a woman, have been accorded the full liberty of the trenches, and they have been allowed to send to this side wonderfully vivid pictures of the horrors, tragedies, and humours of the war. And on the western front the Crown Prince himself has requested an American correspondent to inspect for himself a long line of trenches not more than two hundred yards from the French lines. "You must take my doctor along with you in case you get hurt," the Prince laughingly told tho correspondent. And off went the correspondent with his doctor,'who promised "to pull the Press together again if' it gets damaged." _ Tho expedition was a thrilling journalistic success. It has put the American nation in accord with the German Army, and earned for the Kaiser's soldiers countloss sympathies untouched with political-considera-tions. The account of life in the German trenches in the Argonne was a fitting sequel to the description published a few days before of the headquarters of the German General Staff and of the daily activities of the Kaiser and his generals.,
American Reporters with the Germans. In a word, the German, military authorities, taking the advice of Messrs. Dernburg, Bernstorff, and- Co. in the United States, have opened the door wherever possible to the American reporter. So far there are no signs that they repent of this policy, which has proved harmless from a military point of view, and most fruitful in the sympathies it has won for the German soldier and his leaders. It is true the emergency, so far as- American .sympathies were concerned, was a pressing one. But it has been met in a manner which entitles Dr. Dernburg and Count von Bernstorff to claim their first import-' ant publicist success. Through the medium of the "Correspondents at the German Front," supported' by the jovial condescension of the Crown Prince, they have brought the American public from an absolutely hostile and horrified into a calm and receptive frame of mind. The "highbrows" of the nation, outside tho ranks, of the Ger-man-Americans, aro still solidly arrayed against the Kaiser, whom the vast majority on this continent regard with profound disapproval as tho author of the war. The leader-writers of all tho birr dailies and weeklies are able, too, to level at any German apologist a terrific broadside of White and Orange Paper shrapnel the'moment he shows his head. But faced by an apparently hopeless task, the German army of publicists are stubbornly digging with their pens ever wider trenches in tho journalistic battlefield. Fire of "Free Copy." | Every night from the offices of tho Gorman Literary Defence Bureau wagonloads of paper ammunition are conducted to these trenches. "Free copy" is fired unremittingly into tho columns.of hundreds of small daily and weekly papors iu the country districts of every State in America, and it is undoubtedly having its effect on tho rural and semi-urban population. Even tho metropolitan Press displays increasing evidences in its nows columns of the German bombardment. And as for the newsvendors' stands, they aro literally ablaze with highly-coloured German pamphlets labelled with characteristic lack of humour like tho difl'orent qualities of eggs: "The Truth About' Germany," "The Ileal Truth About Germany," "The Absolute Truth About Germany." All in all, 1 think the British authorities would be well advised to reconsider their methods of treating the foreign Press. Their "Press strategy" hitherto has boon distinctly inferior to th* German. In fact, under the British system of censorship tho minimum of encouragement has boon given to British sympathies in the United States, and, through the medium of the American Press, the maximum of information useful to Germauy has been made pujilic.,
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Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2382, 11 February 1915, Page 8
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1,149GAINING AMERICA'S EAR Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2382, 11 February 1915, Page 8
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