The Sentinel=record., 1917-02-20

Berne, Switzerland. Feb. 1Q.-(From a Staff Correspondent of The Asso- ciated Press) )-According 10 state ments made to the correspondent be- fore his departure from Berlin with former Ambassador Gerard by public men in Germany, the German govern ment did not awake until long after the beeinning of the war to the de.
 sirability of making a favorable i'm pression of public opinion in neutral countries, or in at least in having it's side of the case given a hearing in the neutral press
 An outlay Of untold hundreds of thousands of marks since has been
 made with the employment of not .ncohsiderable s.affs of officers and men and with constantly changing sy tens in the effort to achieve the desired ends.
 Correspondents from neutral conn. tries have experienced constant diffl- Sulty since the beginning of the war
 Tn attempting to report facts in an
 unbiased manner. In the thirteenth
 months of the war Germany applied
 the same newspaper methods 10 news. laper men as in the first months ahe censorship has been tho main source CT trouble, largely because it has been working at cross purposes with tho very best officials who have had it in their power to ad- just the difficulties These officials
 usually have recognized faults which
 have been pointed out, and have made
 inc most earnest efforts to facilitate the gathering of news, but never have
 ahered materially the censorship sys-
 tenn, which set at naught all they and
 the correspondents did effccnallv
 canning up the streams of news which had been opened.
 shortly after the outbreak of the
 War the foreign office mobodlized oonSults who supposedly were familiar With foreign languages and installed | them as censors in reality. few of , them versed in any lanGuaae cxcent German. None of them has any con. ception of newspaper work or any military or political knowledge which gives especial qualification for the
 task The correspondents speediiv came into conflict with these censors. and the government, discovering something was amiss. attempted to
 remedy the trouble However. it's of. ! iors consisted of opening up addi-
 uonal channels of news which the cen.
 sors stopped
 The foreign office created the so. called central bureau for foreien ser. vice, which flooded neutral countries with photographs and with literature written from the German standpoint
 merely translated into Dutch. Swedish
 or Rumanian. This literature damag.
 ed rather than assisted the German | cause, in Holland. for instance. Ii was amended when Dutch correspon. dents told the foreign office that Hol.
 land desired real news.
 The constantly increasing number | oi correspondents in Germany. all seeking an opportunity to see some. l thing of the war and to obtain news. ! led to the establishment of what was known as the neutral war press bu-
 reau. Theoretically this bureau was
 headed by Major Deutelomser. a man
 well qualified for the position, but he
 was so occupied with other things that rele9ated this work to a subordi- hate
 This bureau existed from October. 1915, until last summer Under its
 auspices correspondents travelled to various fronts, submitting all dis
 patches for censorship Ie became ap- parent quickly that the bureau was at odds with the foreiglr office. It sought