PRO-GERMANISM IN AMERICA.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 16 February 1917, Page 3

PRO-GERMANISM IN AMERICA.

What relation is there between this strong clique of pro-German i>lanners and plotters and President Wilson? To that question Mr Curtin replies that he has never heard it suggested that there was any connection between Mr Schiff and President Wilson. "I do not know,'' lie says, '' whom Mr Schiff 'supported' in the recent close American Presidential campaign. As the official German-American influence was wielded against the President, it is not improbable that Mr Schiff opposed him too. But it is significant that one of Mr Schiff's co-adjutors on the Ame'rican Neutral Committee has been looked upon as one of the President's most trusted counsellors' — Mr Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the New York Evening Post. Their relations a year or so ago were so intimate that reports were current that Mr Willard had succeeded Colonel E. M. House as President Wilson 's "man behind the throne.'' All these circumstances suggest the wisdom of ignoring the doings of "American Neutral Conference Committee," headed "oy the New York financier who endeavours to appear in the guise of a world-wide philanthropist, but whose predilections and objects are all powerfully German.