"NEWS."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10304, 8 November 1911, Page 2

"NEWS."

In theso days of cheap Press telegrams between Britain and the Continent, one would think that the important speeches of responsible British statesmen would lind their way to Berlin in a form that would bear some relation to the roe 1 utterances of the speakers. On several occasions of late, however, says the London correspondent of the "Lyttelton Times," the speeches of leading .politicians have been so grotesquely rnisreported in the German Press that the misrepresentation suggests deliberate attempts on the part of the agencies supplying British news to German newspapers to promote friction between the two countries. An instance of this kind is afforded by the manner in which the speech of Mr M'Kenna, the First Lord of the Admiralty, in Monmouth, was reported and commented upon in the Press of the Fatherland. Ml- M'Kenna was reported to have spoken of Germany's methods of intimidation in Persia and elsewhere, in the Orient, and in Morocco, and to have made unfavourable comparisons between the methods of the British Foreign Office and "Wilholmstrasse. Commenting caustically on these things, the Berlin "Tageblatt" expressed the opinion that the tone of the speech would not tend to improve Anglo-German relations, and other journals commented on similar lines. The amazing part of this business is that the verbatim reports of Mr M'Kenna's speech which have been published in England contain no reference to Germany, no reference to Persia, the Orient, or Morocco, no reference to intimidation, no reference to any foreign office, and therefore no comparison between any foreign offices. Comment on a system of news supply which can produce such results as those indicated are superfluous. Small wonder it is that the people of the Fatherland do not view Britain with the kindly eye of friendship, when speeches of leading politicians are placed before them so effectively disguised as was Mr M'Kenna's. The speech, one Berlin correspondent says, arrived in "very imperfect form." Evidently what did arrive consisted chiefly of what the spoaker did not say.