by such news as never before had it seen in America. Now and again something of this would break which obviously was public property and ought to be known—the notorious transactions of von Bernstorff, von Papen, Dr. Albert, Boy-Ed, Bolo; such crimes as the blowing up of the international bridge in Maine; the mysterious fires and explosions whose regularity attracted attention; the diplomatic revelations regarding Dumba and Dernburg and their colleagues, which finally resulted in the dismissal of the clique of high German officials whose creed had been one of diplomatic and personal dishonor.
The stories of German attempts to control several New York newspapers; their efforts to buy or subsidize some thirty other journals in all parts of the country; the well-known subsidizing of certain writers to spread propaganda in the press—all these things also necessarily got abroad to such an extent that the United States Government could not fail to take cognizance of it. At length, charges came out linking up a Washington daily with wealthy commercial interests of a supposedly pro-German nature, and a great deal of acrimonious comment appeared in all parts of the country. Washington resolved to investigate these charges. The process took the form, in the late fall of 1918, of the appointment of a sub-committee of the great Senate Judiciary Committee, which popularly was known as the Overman Committee.
The work of this committee, which summoned before it officers of the Attorney General's establishment in New York, agents of the Bureau of Investigation in Washington, of Military and Naval Intelligence in Washington, and all the larger figures of the accused or suspected persons implicated in what now had become a wide-reaching national scandal, was continued over many weeks. The proceedings were made public regularly, and at last the readers of America began to get, at first hand, authentic ideas of what menace had been at our doors and inside our doors. It was before this Overman Committee that many of the great New York cases in which A. P. L. assisted passed to their final review.
Perhaps the most important single witness called before this Senate committee was Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief
