"This judgment may be briefly stated as follows:
"The American Press in general takes sides less passionately with either party than was formerly the case, and is heartily tired of the war. This does not in any way imply that our enemies have not still the support of a number of very influential partisans, who are all the time fighting loyally for the 'Cause of the Allies,' let slip no opportunity to malign Germany and, in the event of a threatened crisis, form an element of danger for us which should not be underestimated. It may even be admitted that the tone which the organs of this tendency, particularly strongly represented in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, adopt against Germany has become, if possible, more bitter during the last few months. But it is questionable whether the great mass of the influential papers, particularly in the remoter districts of the Atlantic coast, have become more impartial. They don't like us and don't trust us, but have also gradually got to know but not to esteem England.
"The present attitude of America towards the cause of the Entente Powers, with which that of the greater part of the independent Press coincide, was defined as follows by the New York Tribune, one of the most inveterate champions of our enemies at the present time: 'Despite a very widespread sympathy for France and a well-defined affection for Great Britain in a limited circle of Americans, there has been no acceptance of the Allied points of view as to the war, and there is not now the smallest chance that this will be the case.... The thing that the British have failed to get before the American people is the belief that the war was one in which the question of humanity and of civilization was uppermost for the British. The Germans have succeeded in making Americans in very great numbers believe that it is purely and simply a war of trade and commerce between the British and the Germans, and the various economic conference proposals have served to emphasize this idea.'
"The violation of Greece, the ruthless procedure against Ireland since the Easter rebellion—on which a well-directed Press service of American-Irish, in spite of the strict English censorship, keeps public opinion constantly informed—the selfish sacrifice of Serbia, Montenegro and Rumania, as well as the illegal economic measures against Holland and Scandinavia, have seriously shaken England's reputation here as the protectress of the small nations.
"Certain remarks of the English Press of altogether too free a nature on the American Government, their disparaging cartoons of the President and the patronizing air adopted by many English war journals and often in the English daily Press towards America—as, for example, in a recent number of the Morning Post, alleged former German hankerings for colonies in South America, from the realization of which the Union is said to have been protected by England—are arousing increasing dissatisfaction here. The persistent and systematic attempts of the British Press Bureau to sow dissension between America and Germany on the question of the submarine war are resented. The sharp British replies to American representations on the question of the 'black list' and the 'post-blockade,' and, England's latest pin-prick, the refusal of the request for a free passage for the Austrian Ambassador, condemned even by such a pro-British paper as the Philadelphian Public Ledger as a 'British affront,' have created a very bad impression. 'It is unmistakable,' says the pro-Entente Evening Sun, 'that American opinion has been irritated and sympathy estranged by many acts which have damaged our interests and wounded our national self-respect.'
"Above all, however, the serious shortcomings of the enemy General Staffs, which are criticised here with unprofessional exaggeration, and their ineffectiveness—'a lamentable succession of false moves,' as they are called by the respected Springfield Republican—have produced a general disillusionment as to the efficiency of our enemies, which has damped even the old enthusiasm over the heroic bearing of the French army and its commander-in-chief, who is very popular over here. 'We give thanks for Joffre,' was the heading of a typical leading article in the New York Sun on Thanksgiving Day. The recent warning of the American banks by the Federal Board against accepting through the post large quantities of unsecured foreign treasury notes—a warning which could only refer to the issue by the Morgan bank of English and French short-dated securities—has also shattered the belief in the inexhaustible economic resources of France and England. With a quite exceptional expenditure of effort the newspapers under British or French influence, of which the most important are the New York Times, New York Herald and Evening Telegram; the Philadelphian Public Ledger, the Chicago Herald, and the Providence Journal, in addition to a number of other sworn partisans of the Entente Powers, among which may be mentioned particularly the New York Tribune, New York Sun and Evening Sun; New York Evening Post, Journal of Commerce, New York Globe; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Boston Evening Transcript and Philadelphian Inquirer, have lately been trying to raise our enemies in the esteem of public opinion here. This is shown particularly in the headlines and the arrangement of the war news in these papers. All news that is detrimental to the German cause, even when it comes from an unreliable source, is printed in heavy type in the most striking position. Every gain of ground by the Allies, however, slight, is hailed as a great victory, and even the communications of private agencies which are in contradiction to the official reports of the enemy, and obviously inventions, appear as accomplished facts in the headlines of the papers. Their leading articles pour out hatred and malice against Germany. Their letter boxes are filled with contributions which are full of venom and gall against Germany and her allies, and their feuilletons or Sunday supplements contain about the strongest attacks that have ever been brought against us even in the American Press. But it looks as though their tactics no longer have the same success as of old. Their utterances, apart from such as deal with the Belgian or Lusitania themes, no longer make any impression.
"On the other side the consistently friendly attitude of the ten papers of the Hearst syndicate, which come daily into the hands of more than three million readers in all parts of the country, has of late become even much more friendly as a result of the English boycott of the International News Service and the exclusion of all the Hearst publications from circulation in Canada. Mr. Hearst has replied to the inconceivably shortsighted policy of the British authorities towards his news service in a series of forcible, full-page leading articles against the British censorship which must have seriously shaken the confidence, apart from this already weakened long ago, of the American Press in all news coming from England. Not only did the articles in question contain a crushing criticism of the English system of suppressing and distorting the truth, but they also proved that for years America had been misled systematically from London in its judgment of foreign nations—e.g., the 'degenerate' French. Apart from this the Hearst newspapers repeatedly explained in detail how in the autumn of 1916 the position of the Central Powers was excellent, while that of England and her allies was completely hopeless. It should be emphasized that the Hearst newspapers are, nevertheless, not to be regarded as blindly pro-German, for they publish a good deal that can hardly be desirable for us—e.g., occasional articles on the 'German Peril,' for which new food was provided by the exploits of the Deutschland, and more especially U53, and was exploited here to support the idea of increasing the army and navy. The papers named are based on a sound American policy, but with their sharp, anti-English tendency do us much more good than papers with admitted pro-German bias. The chief value of the pro-German attitude of the organs of the Hearst syndicate lies in the fact that their influence is not limited to any particular town or district, but extends over the whole Union. An English critic, S. K. Ratcliffe, recently wrote about American newspapers in the Manchester Guardian.... 'Northern papers are of no account in the South; the most influential New York journals do not exist for the people of the Pacific coast, and carry little weight in the Middle States. Hence, summaries of opinion—confined to a small number of papers published east of the Mississippi—are imperfectly representative of the Republic.' This accurately observed geographical limitation of the influence of the leading American newspapers is substantially overcome by the Hearst organization, for the leading articles which appear in the New York American to-day will appear to-morrow in the allied papers of Boston, Chicago and Atlanta, and the day after in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
"Another factor that has improved the attitude of the American Press towards Germany is the recent important development of the wireless news service. By this I do not mean so much the extension of the trans-Atlantic service in the communications of which a considerable part of the Press here seems unfortunately to take little interest, but the radiographic transmission of the full reports of American correspondents in Berlin and on the German fronts to the American newspapers or news agencies. Among the interesting reports that have been received direct and unmutilated in this way those of Messrs. William B. Hale, Karl von Wiegand, Cyril Brown and Karl W. Ackerman have exerted a particularly favorable influence for us, especially at the critical moments of the break-through in southern Galicia and the battles of the Somme, when, without the special news service via Nauen, the American Press would have been completely misled by the mass of reports that were flowing in from London. Among American journalists who worked in Germany, Herbert Swope should be particularly mentioned, who, after his return, published in The World and other Pulitzer papers, a series of fourteen articles on the situation and feeling in Germany which attracted the attention of both the Press and the reading public. In a most undesirable way Mr. Swope in his first articles which appeared immediately before the election—it was simply an electioneering manœuvre—emphasized the deep hatred of the German people for the United States and the alleged general wish of all German circles to see Mr. Wilson defeated at the election as a punishment for his unneutral attitude. To compensate for this he performed a very valuable service for us in his later articles by giving a convincing account of the economic situation in Germany at that time, which removed all doubt over here as to the ability of our enemies to starve Germany out, and revived public respect for Germany's efficiency and organizing-power.
"The great and respectful tribute which the American Press pays to German 'efficiency' at every opportunity—and during the last few months there have been many such opportunities—can, however, do little or nothing to alter the deep 'sentiment' against Germany. As soon as the above-mentioned themes of Belgium and the Lusitania are mentioned, there are few papers that do not indulge, either in aggressive or more moderate terms, in expressions of horror at German 'frightfulness' and 'ruthlessness.'
"This deep-rooted feeling of the whole Press has been once more revived in very regrettable fashion by the recent Belgian deportations. The indignation of the Press at this 'slavery' which is being imposed on Belgium is general, deep-rooted and genuine. Even newspapers which express themselves in pretty harsh terms on the subject of the English illegalities condemn these deportations in no measured terms. The interview given by Governor-General von Bissing to the journalist Cyril Brown on the subject of these deportations, published on the front page of the New York Times, has unfortunately not made the slightest impression here. General von Bissing's second statement on the same subject in which, among other things, he emphatically declared it his duty to see that as few Germans as possible should be kept out of the firing line to guard Belgium, was grist for the mill of the enemy Press. 'The cat is out of the bag,' writes the New York Times, which does not miss the opportunity of reminding its readers of General von Bissing's responsibility for the shooting of Edith Cavell. 'Not a word about economic necessity, Germany needs men at the front. Simple, almost crude in fact, and completely German.' The Philadelphian Public Ledger says: 'The original offence, the invasion of Belgian territory, regardless of treaty obligations, has almost been obliterated by the cruelty which is now depopulating the land, stripping it of all its resources, sending its people into exile and slavery, making a wilderness and calling it order. There has not been such a tragedy since the fierce barbarian tribes swept over Europe; none would have believed two years ago that it could be enacted.' Such expressions as 'Huns,' 'Attila,' 'Hohenzollern slave trade,' and others of a similar nature are the order of the day, and the excitement is further fanned by reports from London and Le Havre, which no one here can verify, and provocative interviews, among which special mention must be made of that of Herr Carton de Wiart with the World correspondent. The news that Mr. Lansing had forwarded to Berlin a protest against the Belgian deportations was received with great applause by the whole of the Press. The resulting official statement that this protest had been made not in the name of the United States but in the name of the Kingdom of Belgium, represented by the American Government, caused dissatisfaction and a demand that the United States Government should also protest to Berlin on its own account. Resolutions of protest were sent to the President and published in the Press, and indignation meetings on a large scale are announced to take place in Boston and New York which will offer the Press further opportunities for anti-German demonstrations.