It is a matter of interest to notice German quotations from the enemy press. Only those things seem to be copied which the Germans like to believe. From American papers they seize items which "prove "that Washington's war policy is half-hearted, that the country is in the grip of the I. W. W., that strikes are everywhere impeding Government work, and that the Hearst propaganda is undermining the American morale. The alleged report of an American military commission testifying to the invincibility of the German position in the West is eagerly copied, and La Follette's "disclosures" are represented as seriously embarrassing the Administration. German editors like to clip items about the Sinn Fein agitation and the immense number of troops that England must send to Ireland. Naturally enough they welcome indications of dissension among their foes, but in attempting to prove this they resort to the most far-fetched selection and the most unscrupulous perversion. The complaints of a United States Senator regarding financial contributions to the Allies, the alarm of France because of England's designs upon Calais, Portugal's uneasiness at British ambitions in Africa, the "inevitable" clash between Japan and England over Chinese problems, and the coming rivalry between the greatly enlarged merchant marine of the United States and that of England-these and similar items are given a wholly unmerited emphasis. In some cases if such reports were traced to their source they would be found to have originated in German propaganda. The German public, reading propaganda items planted in enemy papers and reprinted in their own, can secure only the most grossly distorted notion of Entente opinion.

A serious charge against the censorship is its one-sided character. While moderate peace advocates are suppressed, a free hand is given to the Pan-Germans to publish what they will. With an arrogant monopoly of patriotism, these men who rave at the "eternal peace twaddle," who refer to the Reichstag as "an idiot asylum," and denounce the whole parliamentary system, have organized what they call the "Fatherland party," claiming for themselves alone the right to say what is German and what is patriotic (vaterländisch). Germany is supposed to be under a party truce (Burgfrieden) during the war, and the army is supposed to have no politics, but Government buildings are used as headquarters for the Fatherland party, and officers carry on an active

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Belgium has grown up. Of these secret journals the most interesting and defiant is La Libre Belgique. No one knows where it is published. Its habitat is fantastically referred to as une cave automobile "-a sort of migratory cellar-and its telegraph address is ironically given as "The Governorship, Brussels." There is no definite price and no regular time of issue, but an average of three or four editions a month has been maintained. Not even the carriers of the paper know where it is published, and the German authorities have been entirely baffled in their elaborate attempts to locate the offenders, partly because anonymous letters have sent them chasing false scents. The late General von Bissing would always find two copies of each issue on his desk and one of the issues prominently pictured the Governor-General with his "favorite paper," La Libre Belgique, in his hands. The Belgians enjoy it, and all the copies are carefully treasured. Besides this, many secret pamphlets have been distributed in Belgium, and their circulation has been sufficiently wide to nullify the effects of the German propaganda with which that unfortunate country has been flooded.

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Another side to Germany's news system is what might be called its foreign policy-the attack upon neutral and enemy opinion. Laborious methods are used to discredit the enemy's official reports. Before the commencement of the Somme offensive (which they foresaw) in 1916, the Germans circulated exaggerated reports regarding the "great successes of the Allied armies, so that the people would discover the falsity of these rumors, and fail later to believe the genuine reports. German wireless operators sent out on the night of June 27, 1916, messages which purported to emanate from Allied stations announcing the "taking of Lille," the " ture of St. Quentin," "Constantinople in flames" and other such interesting developments. These messages began: "Attention! French wireless station-the following is the latest news!" Because of this clumsy wording and the tone of the waves, the Allies had no difficulty in determining that the reports emanated from German stations. At various times the Germans transmit false items to the neutral press with the prefix "via London" or "via Paris" in order to convey the idea that the reports have been passed upon by the Allied censors and are admitted as correct. They publish in neutral papers inspired articles purporting to come from official sources in one of the Allied capitals concerning such

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a point, for instance, as the capture of a position held by the Germans. This is then followed by a denial" with full references to German papers, and newspaper men are even in some cases sent out to confirm the "untruthfulness" of the enemy's statement.

The world is painfully familiar with the enormous expenditure of energy and money in the German onslaught upon neutral sentiment. Every neutral country of Europe has its German news service, and a crop of German newspapers. The Wolff Bureau has its sub-agencies in neutral towns, and the Overseas Agency of Berlin sends out daily wireless messages of various wave-lengths to be picked up at different stations, furnishes many special feature articles, and conducts an intelligence section employing correspondents all over the world. In Switzerland the Neue Zürcher Nachrichten sows the seed of German propaganda, while for Holland this service is performed by the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. There is a special bureau (under the control of the German Foreign Office) for furnishing news to Portugal and Spain. German newspapers are dotted thickly over Central and South America, and the Far East has not been neglected.

Neutral correspondents, after a careful testing, are escorted upon personally conducted tours to prison camps or sections of the front where Germany is conspicuously successful, and, if sufficiently deaf and blind about things they are not supposed to hear and see, they are permitted to send home censored dispatches. Though these correspondents find it hard to get what they want, they are flooded with literature written in German by Germans.

Tons of pamphlets are thrust upon neutral readers, and the journals of Germany are lavishly distributed, either gratis or at special prices, often with significant passages marked. Many of the German papers have special foreign editions, as for instance Die Welt im Bilde, an illustrated edition in seven languages issued by the Hamburger Fremdenblatt. Stereotypes made in Germany are furnished to Dutch newspapers, and a German organization exists for supplying without cost the articles of leading journals translated into Dutch. The departments of the German government of occupation in Belgium are in correspondence with Dutch journalists, and thus a great amount of news unfavorable to Belgium is made to originate in Belgium itself.

All this press "copy" for neutral countries is obviously

propaganda. The public is constantly informed of the great deeds of the Germans, the excellent conditions prevailing in the country, and the invincibility of the German army. Such topics as the Entente's responsibility for the war and alleged atrocities perpetrated by the Entente countries are favorite themes. America's "hunger war" against Holland is vigorously denounced. Actual observers are made to report that conditions in Belgium are practically normal and that the suffering has been greatly exaggerated. Prussia's new arrangements for Poland are enthusiastically praised by "impartial" observers, and Austria's "beneficent" administration of subject nations is eulogized.

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If its total results were reckoned and objectively judged, Germany's political censorship would be found to constitute in the long run a national liability rather than an asset. The attempt to suffocate opinion has undermined confidence in the Government and embittered the liberal element. nalistic enterprise has been seriously hurt on the business side and has suffered a loss of prestige as well, for so ready a response to governmental pressure has done much to justify Bismarck's uncomplimentary reference to the "reptile press." Radical views have not been supplanted with all the censor's strictness, but a worldwide circulation has been given to those daring utterances which have produced governmental irritation utterances which without the censorship would have enjoyed only a limited audience. Independent opinion has been perverted into defiant agitation, and has endangered German unity. The immense advantage in international understanding which arises from a genuine expression of popular opinion has been denied Germany, while the voice of the Government awakens only distrust abroad. As Harden put it: "Right and left the foe is listening, but nowhere can he detect the voice of the German people. Could he but hear it, we should be near to peace."

In like manner the enormous external propaganda will ultimately fail to net Germany any advantage. One can read the failure of this intellectual campaign in the revulsion of neutral feeling towards Germany's war methods, in the universal sympathy with the outraged Belgian people, in the growing neutral demand for real news untouched by a German bias, and in the lengthening roll of Germany's enemies. JAMES G. RANDALL.

UNPUBLISHED CORRESPONDENCE OF MME. DE STAËL WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON

INTRODUCTION BY MARIE G. KIMBALL

AMONG the neglected papers in the folders of uncatalogued manuscripts of Thomas Jefferson are several letters of Madame de Staël to Jefferson, which, when their almost illegible French has been deciphered, prove of exceptional interest in relation to events of the present. These letters, among papers so long lost and but recently rediscovered, have never been translated or published, and thus come to us as a fresh pronouncement at the moment when their relevance is greatest. Jefferson's replies have also been preserved in the Library of Congress, and, although certain of them have been published in his works, the finding of the other half of the correspondence throws a new light even on the letters already printed, and the unity and importance of the whole series now become apparent.

The discussion turns on the Napoleonic Wars, the struggle for commercial supremacy on the ocean, the freedom of the seas, the intervention of America in European affairs, and the efforts of the South American countries to attain independence. Through all the varied subjects, however, runs as a fundamental note a passionate belief in human liberty on the part of both correspondents. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, the counsellor of the Moderates in the French Revolution, and the champion of freedom in politics, religion and education, was equalled in his devotion to the cause he had at heart by the daughter of Necker, the steadfast opponent of Napoleon, the apostle of liberty for oppressed nationalities and of freedom in literature and art. As a unique interchange of ideas between two of the foremost minds of the time, these letters have seldom been equalled. The striking analogies between sit