gain and that some are subservient to special interests; but the roll of American journalists is honoured by the presence of many names which command respect at home and abroad because of a long-standing reputation for honesty, fearlessness, and distinguished service in the cause of humanity.  To one such name was added at our last commencement the degree representing one of the highest honours which Columbia University has to bestow upon a man of lofty ideals and honourable achievement.  The paper edited by this man is among those most extensively read by myself and hundreds of thousands of other Americans who demand to know the truth.  However low may be the moral plane of some newspapers, your characterisation of all newspapers as mere business concerns, founded and carried on with the purpose of enriching their owners, and supporting certain special interests, “quite regardless of their effect, beneficial or the reverse, upon the real public interests of their own country, regardless of truth and justice,” is not at all true of the class of papers read by the majority of intelligent Americans.  I am not sufficiently familiar with a large number of German newspapers to make assertions as to their standards; but, in spite of the smaller amount of freedom allowed to the press in your country, I can scarcely imagine that conditions are bad enough to justify your sweeping condemnation of all newspapers.

If you had stopped to consider the radically different relations existing between the press and the Government in Germany and in America, you would scarcely have fallen into the error of asserting that a considerable proportion of our papers, in common with those of other nations, have “laboured in the employ or at the instigation of” the Government, “with all the implements of mendacity and defamation, to spread hatred and contempt for Germany.”  Unlike your own, our press is wholly free from Government control.  Any attempt on the part of our Government to dictate the policy of any newspaper would be hotly resented, and would be doomed to certain failure.  Americans do not believe in the German doctrine that the press must be “so far controlled as is requisite for the welfare of the community,” and hold that absolute freedom of speech is essential to true liberty.  There is no censorship of the American press.  You have a censorship which all the outside world knows has been wonderfully effective in keeping some important facts from the knowledge of the German people.  No American paper can be suppressed because of what it prints.  You are, of course, well aware that, on more than one occasion, German papers have been suppressed for certain periods because your Government did not believe that what they said was for the good of the country.  I enclose a message received by wireless under German control which is only one of the many announcements telling of suppression of your papers.  It does not alter the situation to say that censorship and suppression are necessary