Prejudices, third seriesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
History
Prejudices, third series
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
American essays -- 20th century; American literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
are accepted and rewarded in the national coin they renounce Moses
altogether and get themselves baptized in St. Bartholomew’s Church.
Whenever ideas enter the United States from without they come by way of
England. What the London _Times_ says to-day, about Ukranian politics,
the revolt in India, a change of ministry in Italy, the character of
the King of Norway, the oil situation in Mesopotamia, will be said
week after next by the _Times_ of New York, and a month or two later
by all the other American newspapers. The extent of this control of
American opinion by English news mongers is but little appreciated in
the United States, even by professional journalists. Fully four-fifths
of all the foreign news that comes to the American newspapers comes
through London, and most of the rest is supplied either by Englishmen
or by Jews (often American-born) who maintain close relations with
the English. During the years 1914–1917 so many English agents got
into Germany in the guise of American correspondents—sometimes with
the full knowledge of their Anglomaniac American employers—that
the Germans, just before the United States entered the war, were
considering barring American correspondents from their country
altogether. I was in Copenhagen and Basel in 1917, and found both
towns—each an important source of war news—full of Jews representing
American journals as a side-line to more delicate and confidential work
for the English department of press propaganda. Even to-day a very
considerable proportion of the American correspondents in Europe are
strongly under English influences, and in the Far East the proportion
is probably still larger. But these men seldom handle really important
news. All that is handled from London, and by trustworthy Britons. Such
of it as is not cabled directly to the American newspapers and press
associations is later clipped from English newspapers, and printed as
bogus letters or cablegrams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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