As for Kaiserist propaganda, it started out with the twin curses of amateurishness and bureaucracy, each of them crippling but deadly when paired. German writers and scholars ran wild in 1914 and 1915 in trying to put the blame on the Allies; amateurish in public relations, they succeeded in arousing a tremendous amount of antagonism. They were handicapped by the ponderosity of the German Imperial Government, by the intervention of persons unfamiliar with news or advertising (at that time the most obvious sources of civilian propaganda personnel), and by a military stodginess which made German press communiqués infuriating even to anti-British readers. Overseas propaganda developed through poorly secured clandestine channels, and was mixed up with espionage and sabotage personnel. Inescapable "breaks" gave all German agents a bad name. George Sylvester Viereck, who has enjoyed the odd distinction of being our most vocal pro-German sympathizer in both wars with Germany, later wrote a naïve but revealing account of his operations under the title _Spreading Germs of Hate_ (Boston, 1930). (No British information officer was guilty, even after the war, of a comparable breach of taste.) Viereck praises the British for their sang-froid and skill; coming from him, the praise is more than deserved. More seriously, German propaganda lacked both organization and moral drive. Lieutenant Colonel Nicolai, the Imperial German General Staff officer responsible, puts part of the blame on the German press and on the press officers of the Army and the Reich: "In fact, the enemy remained virtually untouched by any kind of German propaganda. This reproach falls against the press, it would seem, as well as on the responsible officials.... Internationally minded papers themselves failed to cooperate. Yet it was precisely these which were circulated and esteemed abroad. Newspapers with other (pro-militarist) editorial policies, failing to get leadership from the Government, could not aim at any unified effect.... Instead, the goal of the governmental press leadership remained a thoroughly negative one: to prevent the press from doing harm to national policy."[23]