America

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 48, 27 February 1915, Page 5

America

DEADLOCK! AMERICAN UNEASINESS IN GERMANY. Times and Sydney Sun Service. (Received 8 a.m.) London, February 26. Amsterdam reports that there is a feeling in Berlin that the GerxnanAmerican negotiations have reached a deadlock. Both parties are obdurate, and the gravest developments involving rupture may happen at any moment, everything depending on the discretion;of the German submarine com. manders.

Uneasiness prevails among the Americans in Berlin, Dresden, and Munich.

Washington states that America is considering the raising of the war-risk premium, consequent on the destruction of the American vessels in the war zone.

“BENEVOLENT MEDDLING." United Press Association. New York, February 26. The Sun says President Wilson’s attempt to effect a compromise is “benevolent meddling,” Germany’s attempt to sink a Channel steamer was an act of savagery worthy of the Dyak pirates. Germany may see a warning Iff the fa c t that the first and second lines of battleships, with their Auxiliaries, are mobilised at Quantonomy, and others at Florida. The naval yards are working at fullest pressure.

COUNT BERNSTORFF AS A “PLAGIARIST.” The most unhappy man in America to-day (wrote the London “Telegraph” correspondent recently) is Count Bernstorff, the German Ambassador. His troubles began when Herr Dernburg arrived from Berlin to aid him in presenting the Kaiser’s “case”

to the American people. Count Bernstorff signally failed to achieve success singlehanded, and, as running mate with the former Minister of the Colonies, he has been just as much ai failure. •

The climax of his missionary career came when every leading paper in America devoted great space to an article reproduced from the “Nation,” showing that a celebrated oration Count Bernstorff recently delivered on “The Development of Germany as a World Power”—considered in America as the diplomatist’s most notable speech—was really a series of extracts from a book by Mr W. H. Dawson, called “The Evolution of Modern Germany.” It is bad enough (. from the American standpoint, to filch a man’s brains without a word of acknowledgment,

but in this case the Count’s offence s the more strongly resented seeing that he delivered the oration before

the American Academy of Political Sconce. Now sarcastic {critics are suggesting that /Count Bernstorff’s ideas regarding the integrity of pri-

vate property are no better than his master’s, and that we should blame his employer at least as much as the

lervant. Up to the present Count Bernstorff

has offered no defence of his action. -To quote an expressive Americanism, “he has been caught with the goods,” and it is difficult to see what he could say by way of defence.