New-York tribune., 1918-12-10

for receipt"
Friendly Toward Germany
At the afternoon session Mr.. Bic
laski took up a bulky file containing
papers on MIR. Hearst. The testimony
here was:
Mr.. Bielaski-"Ycs, will put that in
The general attitude of Mr.. William
Randolph Hearst's papers on the Euro.
rean War is n matter, think, of pub
hc knowledge. He was the most i'm
took a friendly attitude toward Ger
many from the outbreak of the war.
"lf this inquiry were limited to the
question of paid German propaganda
| do not think it could properly in
clude Mr.. Hearst, so far as | know
We have no evidence whatever that
Mr.. Hearst in any way received any
/ funds or any profit from the attitude
o. is rancrs, from the German gov
ernment or anyone acting for it."
Senator Nclson-"But he was very
active in his paper in behalf Of the
German government all the time, was
he not?"
Mr.. Bielaski-"IIe was, from the be-
ginning of the war, | think, very
active"
Attitude questionable
Senator Nelson-"Of all the leading
English newspapers he was the most
pronounced in his activity in that
direction, was he not?"
Mr.. Bielaski-"Hc was"
Senator Ovcrman-"How about after
we declared war;"
Mr. Bielaski- after the war was
declared his attitude continued to be
very questionable. Many of the publ
cations which he printed or which
were reprinted in his papers after we
went into war, if printed later on, after
the espionage act, especially as it was
amended and became a law, would have
subjected him to prosecution. have
already read some of the communi-
cations between Won Bernstorff and the
Foreign Office, which make reference
to Mr. Hearst. the most pointed being
the one in which he stated with re-
spcct to The Washington Post that
IL viii be lost to the cause, unless, as
IS very desirable, it can be placed in
the hands of Mr.. Hearst"
Senator Nelson-"In other words, the
plan was to get The Washington Post
and put it into the editorial charge of
Hearst, was it not ?"
Quotes Fuehr's Reports
Mr. Bielaski-"In the control of
Hearst, so that he would control its
policy in some way. This is an extract,
believe, from one of Mr. Fuehr's re-
PORTS to Germany:
"On the other hand, the attitude,
friendly from the beginning, of the
syndicate, which reach more than
three million readers daily in all
parts of the country, has recently be-
come still more markedly friendly
as a result of the boycott imposed
by England upon the International
News Service and the exclusion of all
Hearst publications from circulation
in Canada.
"Mr. Hearst has replied to the in
conceivably short-sighted action Of
the British authorities against his
news service in series Of sharp
full-page editorials directed against
the British censorship, which editori-
ais must have considerably shaken
the already weakened confidence Of
the American press in the news en-
anating from England.
"ln the articles in question, not
only was the present English sys-
tenn of suppressing and distorting
the truth subjected to annihiating
America has been for years syste-
matically misled by London in it's
judgment OF foreign peoples; as for
instance, of the Degenerate French
men," Moreover, it was repeatedly
demonstrated in detail by the Hearst
papers that The situation of the
Central Powers in the autumn of
1916 was an absolutely brilliant one,
while that of England and her allies
was entirely hopeless.
at m ust be emphasized that the
Hearst papers are nevertheless not
to be classified as blind champions
of the German cause, since they
print many things which could
scarcely be to our taste; for ex-
ample, occasionally articles about
the German danger an idea which
has received fresh impetus as a re-
suit of the exploits of the u
Deutschland and particularly of the
'U-53' and which is being used rs an
argument for the expansion of the
army and navy.
"The fact is that the papers re-.
ferred to stand upon the ground of
sound American policy, but with
their sharply anti-English tendency
are much more effective in support
of our cause than newspapers with
could possibly be.
Furthermore, the greatest value
of the Germanophile attitdue of
the organs of the Hearst syndicate
is to be found in the fact that their
influence extends not to a single
city or to small part of the land.
but over the whole Union. An Eng
glish critic, s. K. Ratclife, re-
Gently wrote in "The Manchester
Guardian" concerning American
newspapers:
Northern papers are of no ac-
count in the South: the most influ-
entail New York journals do not
exist for the people of the Pacific
Coast, and carry very little weight in
the Middle States. Hence summaries
OF OPINION confined to a
small number of papers published
east OF the Mississippi are imperfect
ly representative of the Republic.'
1T is this correctly discerned evil
OF the geographical limitation i'm
posed upon the influence of the fore
most American papers which is prac-
tlcally overcome in the case Of the
Hearst organization. For the edi
torials which appear to-day in The
New York American are printed to-
morrow in the affiliated papers of
Boston, Chicago and Atlanta, and on
the following day in San Francisco
Violently Anti-British !
Senator Nelson-"H do you account