GERMAN PROPAGANDA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17040, 23 December 1918, Page 7

GERMAN PROPAGANDA.

EVIDENCE IN AMERICA.

PURCHASE OF FRENCH PAPER

Australian and N-Z- Cable Association.

(Rccd. 6.6 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Dec. 20.

Mr. Alfred Becker, Deputy-Attorney-General for New York, giving evidence before the Senate Committee of Investigation into Pro-German Propaganda, said 8010 Pasha sought unsuccessfully to induce the president of the Bethelem Steel Company to purchase the Paris Journal. There was nothing to show that the Paris Journal had changed in its loyalty towards France because of the German financing. It was apparent that the whole thing, so far as tho newspaper was concerned, was a pure swindle.

Eolo Pasha, a Levantine financier, who was a conspicuous figure in the series of espionage scandals in France last year, was finally condemned by court-martial and executed. One of tho facts brought to light curing his trial was that ho had invested £240,000 in the Paris Journal. It was proved that the money came from a German source, and had been paid to 8010 by the Deutsche Bank through American, French and 1 * Swiss hanks. The idea was to engineer financial panic in allied countries by obtaining a controlling interest in newspapers of standing, and manipulating them in the interests of Germany. It transpired also that 8010 Pasha visited London and attempted unsuccessfully to purohaso an interest in the Financial News.