informing his home government of negotiations whereby Russia was to be allowed to seize Constantinople. He told how the French newspapers might be used, and pointed out how Italy did this while she was grabbing Tripoli:
It is of the highest importance to see to it that we have a good
press here. . . . As an example of how useful it is to have money to
offer the press . . . I know how Tittoni has worked up the leading
French papers most thoroughly and with the most open hand. The
result is now manifest to all.
We read about such infamies in Europe, and shudder at
them, and congratulate ourselves that our "sweet land of
liberty" is more clean. But put yourself in the place of an
educated Mexican, and see how it appears to him. American
financial promoters bring their wealth to Mexico, and buy the
Mexican government, and obtain ownership of the most
valuable land and oil and minerals of the country. The
Mexican people overthrow this corrupt government, and
attempt to tax these legally stolen properties; but the foreign
governments say that these properties may not be taxed, and
the newspapers owned and published by these foreign interests
carry on for years an elaborate campaign of slanders against
Mexico, to the end that the American people may make war
upon the Mexican people and exploit them. And this is done,
not merely by the Otis paper and the Hearst papers, which
all thinking people know to be corrupt; it is done by papers
like the "New York Times" and "Tribune" and "Chicago
Tribune," which are considered to be entirely respectable. As
I write, the correspondent of the "New York Tribune" in
Mexico, L. J. de Bekker, resigns, and states as his reason that
his dispatches were suppressed or cut in the "Tribune" office.
And of course, in a campaign of this sort they count upon the cordial help of the Associated Press. Says the "Heraldo de Mexico," August 15, 1919: "We see that the Associated Press lies with frequency." And you do not have to take this solely on the word of a Mexican newspaper. The Mexican minister of foreign relations gives out a letter from the vice-president of the Mexican Northwestern Railroad, whose offices are in Toronto, Canada: "I see that the Associated Press mentions with frequency, in its reports, the name of our company." He goes on to explain that the Associated Press has stated that his company complains of the confiscation of lands,
