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Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16377, 23 November 1918, Page 8

The campaign which, according to the State Department at Washington, has been commenced by German agents in tho States, involved merely a change of direction in an elaborate system of pro-German propaganda, of which the foundations were being laid last August. The now "offensive" is directed to biassing the American mind in favour of easier terms at the peace table than tho Allies might be prepared to impose. The former movement was apparently designed to benefit German commerce. It was initiated by an organisation, lod by Albert Ballin, the Director-General of the HamburgAmerika Line, and composed of leading Germans in industrial, commercial, shipping, and literary circles. Large sums of money had been placed at their disposal, and these wero to be used mainly in reviving the German Press in America, which has been killed so effectually by the war that even tho "Staats-Zeitung" in Chicago, a city described by a German paper as "that German fortress in America" has ceased publication. The new propaganda, which was to replace the widespread schemes of war-time conspiracy, resulting in explosions in munition factories and similar crimes, was to be earned on mainly by newspaper articles, miscellaneous literature, and other printed matter. Every German paper that was set going in the States was to receive its share of the funds subscribed, and besides newspapers, it was proposed to employ tho cinematograph in the work. Nothing was to be left undone that could spread information about Germany throughout America, and to convince the Americans that they had been wronging Germany, in tho belief that by this moans they would bo induced to forget nil about Germany's wrongdoing.

The present Gorman effort seems , to bo directed towards bringing pressure or. Congress, and thence on the President, to induce the Allies to modify the terms of peace. The loud howls that are being uttered in Germany regarding the harshness of the terms are mainly addressed, it will be noticed, to America, as the belligerent who knows least about German methods of warfare, and is therefore the one most likely to be moved by appeals for mercy. Under the circumstances it is perhaps just as well that the President is going to France to attend the peace conference. If the French Government do the right thing, they will take care that Mr Wilson sees something of ruined France, her shattered towns, her desolated countryside, and her desecrated cathedrals, before he sits down at the same table as the German delegates. It is a pity that he could not be there now, to watch the returned prisoners come back, and to see with his own eyes the ruin that German cruelty can make of British and French manhood. There is much to see in France to-day that might convince the most determined pacifist that the Allies' terms of peace, instead of being too harsh, err on the side, of leniency. Lord Northcliffe, the other day, urged delay in relaxing the censorship of commercial cables, otherwise Germany, who was ready to push a most elaborate organisation of oversea commerce, would flood the world with trade correspondence through neutral firms. It is just possible that Germany's ability to resume immediately her former activity in exploiting the world's markets i 3 being somewhat exaggerated. She has yet to bind up her wounds and to restore something like stable conditions at home. But there is no doubt that, given the opportunity, she will, as soon as possible, try to pick up the broken threads of her former great export trade. For such efforts all the Allied nations must be prepared. ♦ The question of tariffs, by which Germany's foreign commercial activity could bo handicapped has yet to be settled, but it is not too soon for individuals to take measures against helping Germany to equip herself for another war of conquest, which is among the certainties of the future, unless tho nation is more, completely purged of its militarism than appears now to be the case. A number of people in tho last four years have lashed themselves into a state of indignation at being

offered by a shopkeeper some article of German inake which the trader, or the merchant from whom he got it, bought long before the war. We should like to 'think that their dislike to buying anything made by a nation convictod of*so many crimes agamst humanity, will be as violent five years hence, and this time next year, as it has appeared to be during the war.