factories by plotters, but never about the charges against and arrests of German reservists.  Just as the German Government has never permitted the people to know that it prepared for a war against nine nations, as the document I saw in the Chief Telegraph Office shows, so has it not explained to the people the real motives and the real arguments which President Wilson presented in his many submarine notes.  Whenever these notes were published in the German newspapers the Government always published an official explanation, or correspondents were inspired to write the Government views, so the people could not think for themselves or come to honest personal conclusions.

The effectiveness of Mr. Wilson’s diplomacy against Germany was decreased by some German-Americans, and the fact that the United States is to-day at war with Germany is due to this blundering on the behalf of some of those over-zealous citizens who, being so anxious to aid Germany, became anti-Wilson and in the long run defeated what they set out to accomplish.  Had the German Government not been assured by some German-Americans that they would never permit President Wilson to break diplomatic relations or go to war, had these self-appointed envoys stayed away from Berlin, the relations between the United States and Germany might to-day be different than they are.  Because if Germany at the outset of the submarine negotiations had been given the impression by a united America that the President spoke for the country, Germany would undoubtedly have given up all hope of a ruthless submarine warfare.

I think President Wilson and Mr. Gerard realised that the activities of the German-Americans here were not only interfering with the diplomatic negotiations but that the German-Americans were acting against their own best interests if they really desired peace with Germany.

When some of the President’s friends saw that the German people were receiving such biased news from the United States and that Germany had no opportunity of learning the real sentiment here, nor of sounding the depth of American indignation over the Lusitania they endeavoured to get despatches from the United States to Germany to enlighten the people.  Mr. Roy W. Howard, President of the United Press, endeavoured several times while I was in Berlin to get unadulterated American news in the German newspapers, but the German Government was not overly anxious to have such information published.  It was too busy encouraging the anti-American sentiment for the purpose of frightening the United States.  It was difficult, too, for the United Press to get the necessary co-operation in the United States for this news service.  After the settlement of the Sussex dispute the Democratic newspapers of Germany, those which were supporting the Chancellor, were anxious to receive reports from here, but the German Foreign Office would not encourage the matter to the extent of using the wireless towers at Sayville and Tuckerton as means of transmitting the news.