But as between the two great English-speaking nations of the world, it is in the power of the most foolish politician or the most irresponsible sub-editor, on either side of the Atlantic, to create an international complication with a single spoken phrase or stroke of the pen.  And as both countries appear to be inhabited very largely by persons who regard newspapers as Bibles and foolish politicians as inspired prophets, it seems advisable to take steps to regulate the matter.

This brings us to another matter—­the attitude of the American Press toward the War.  A certain section thereof, which need not be particularized further, has never ceased, probably under the combined influences of bias and subsidy, to abuse the Allies, particularly the British, and misrepresent their motives and ideals.  This sort of journalism “cuts no ice” in the United States.  It is just “yellow journalism.” Voila tout! Why take it seriously?  But the British people do not know this; and as the British half-penny Press, when it does quote the American Press, rarely quotes anything but the most virulent extracts from this particular class of newspaper, one is reduced yet again to wondering whence the blessings of a common language are to be derived.

But taking them all round, the newspapers of America have handled the questions of the War with conspicuous fairness and ability.  They are all fundamentally pro-Ally; and the only criticism which can be directed at them from an Allied quarter is that in their anxiety to give both sides a hearing, they have been a little too indulgent to Germany’s claims to moral consideration, and have been a little over-inclined to accept the German Chancellor’s pious manifestoes at their face value.  But generally speaking it may be said that the greater the newspaper, the firmer the stand that it has taken for the Allied cause.  The New York Times, the weightiest and most authoritative newspaper in America, has been both pro-Ally and pro-British throughout the War, and has never shrunk from the delicate task of interpreting satisfactorily to the British people the attitude of the President.

Journalistic criticism of Great Britain in America is frequently extremely candid, and not altogether unmerited.  Occasionally it goes too far; but the occasion usually arises from ignorance of the situation, or the desire to score an epigrammatic point.  For instance, during the struggle for Verdun in the spring, a New York newspaper, sufficiently well-conducted to have known better, published a cartoon representing John Bull as standing aloof, but encouraging the French to persevere in their efforts by parodying Nelson’s phrase:—­“England expects that every Frenchman will do his duty.”  The truth of course was that Sir Douglas Haig had offered General Joffre all the British help that might be required.  The offer was accepted to this extent, that the British took over forty additional miles of trenches from the French, thus setting free many divisions of French soldiers to participate in a glorious and purely French victory.