"The Lokal Anzeiger, following up its attack of yesterday, to-day says:
"'The answer of the United States is no surprise to Germany and naturally it fails to convince Germany that a flourishing trade in munitions of war is in accord with strict neutrality. The German argument was based upon the practice of international law, but the American reply was based upon the commercial advantages enjoyed by the ammunition shippers.'"
April 24th was von Tirpitz day. It was the anniversary of the entrance of the Grand Admiral in the German Navy fifty years before, and the eighteenth anniversary of his debut in the cabinet, a record for a German Minister of Marine. There was tremendous rejoicing throughout the country, and the Admiral, who spent his Prussian birthday at the Navy Department, was overwhelmed with congratulations. Headed by the Kaiser, telegrams came from every official in Germany. The press paid high tribute to his blockade, declaring that it was due to him alone that England was so terror-stricken by submarines.
I was not in Germany very long until I was impressed by the remarkable control the Government had on public opinion by censorship of the press. People believe, without exception, everything they read in the newspapers. And I soon discovered that the censor was so accustomed to dealing with German editors that he applied the same standards to the foreign correspondents. A reporter could telegraph not what he observed and heard, but what the censors desired American readers to hear and know about Germany.
[Illustration: A Berlin "Extra">[
I was in St. Quentin, France (which the Germans on their 1917 withdrawal set on fire) at the headquarters of General von Below, when news came May 8th that the Lusitania was torpedoed. I read the bulletins as they arrived. I heard the comments of the Germans who were waging war in an enemy country. I listened as they spoke of the loss of American and other women and children. I was amazed when I heard them say that a woman had no more right on the Lusitania than she would have on an ammunition wagon on the Somme. The day before I was in the first line trenches on the German front which crossed the road running from Peronne to Albert. At that time this battlefield, which a year and a half later was destined to be the scene of the greatest slaughter in history, was as quiet and beautiful as this picturesque country of northern France was in peace times. Only a few trenches and barbed wire entanglements marred the scene.
On May 9th I left St. Quentin for Brussels. Here I was permitted by the General Government to send a despatch reflecting the views of the German army in France about the sinking of the Lusitania. I wrote what I thought was a fair article. I told how the bulletin was posted in front of the Hotel de Ville; how the officers and soldiers marching to and away from the front stopped, read, smiled and congratulated each other because the Navy was at last helping the Army "win the war." There were no expressions of regret over the loss of life. These officers and soldiers had seen so many dead, soldiers and civilians, men and women, in Belgium and France that neither death nor murder shocked them.
The telegram was approved by the military censor and forwarded to Berlin. I stayed in Belgium two days longer, went to Louvain and Liége and reached Berlin May 12th. The next day I learned at the Foreign Office that my despatch was stopped because it conflicted with the opinions which the German Government was sending officially by wireless to Washington and to the American newspapers. I felt that this was unfair, but I was subject to the censorship and had no appeal.