The article confirms the various particulars set out in my despatch; it confirms more especially the fact that the Imperial Foreign Office is supporting the scheme with an annual subscription of £12,500 paid out of its secret service fund. It supplies a list of the members of the society, the names of the directors, etc. The last paragraph of the article merits special attention on account of a certain refreshing ingenuousness.
I am informed that the order has gone forth from high official quarters not to reproduce or in any way to refer to this article, as its inadvertent publication is not unnaturally considered extremely inopportune and embarrassing.—I have, etc.,
W.E. Goschen.
The article is as follows:
Our readers will remember that one of the items in the programme of the German Association for World Commerce was the establishment of a news service abroad on generous lines. Whilst the other parts of the Association's programme met with hostile criticism as soon as they became known, the proposed service for the supply of news abroad was greeted with general sympathy, as such activity promised to have a useful effect on our foreign relations. The failure to organise the Association for World Commerce seemed unhappily to render it doubtful whether the organisation of the news service could be realised. It is all the more gratifying that, according to information which has reached us from well-informed quarters, the scheme for a German news service in foreign countries has by no means been abandoned, but that, on the contrary, an extensive organisation is actually doing work in the desired direction.
A German syndicate was very quietly formed a few weeks ago for the purposes of this foreign news service. It uses the organisation of a news agency already in existence; its activity is gradually to be extended over the whole globe. Its main object will be to reply in an appropriate form to the prejudiced news concerning Germany and to the attacks made upon her, and by the judicious publication of newspapers inspiring the necessary articles to spread abroad the knowledge of the true state of German industry and of Germany's cultural achievements.
We are in a position to give the following information concerning the organisation of the enterprise. It is presided over by a directorate, consisting of three men, viz.: Privy Councillor von Borsig, "Landrath" Roetger (retired), and Herr Schacht, a director of the Deutsche Bank.
A special administrative board, the main duty of which it is to make suggestions as to the organisation and the methods of reporting comprises among others: Professor Duisburg, of the dye works, "Bayer"; Herr Hagen, of the Disconto Gesellschaft; Commercial Councillor Hasenclever, of Remscheid; Herr Hermann Hecht, of Berlin; Director Heineken, of the North German Lloyd; Director Helfferich, of the Deutsche Bank; Director Huldermann, of the Hamburg-America Line; Director Kosegarten, of the "Deutsche Waffen-und-Munitions-Fabrik"; Herr von Langen, of the Disconto Gesellschaft; Privy Councillor Rathenau; Director Reuter, of the Maschinen Fabrik, Duisburg; Director Salomonsohn, of the Disconto Gesellschaft; Privy Councillor von Siemens; Herr Edmond Bohler, Hamburg, etc.