"without a word, but looking straight into my eyes, he held out to me his left hand wide open, which I clasped tightly in both of mine," to quote the Memoirs. What Bismarck was wont to term "action on the Press" was undertaken also by Stieber during the course of the war of 1870. For this purpose the sleuth had in 1868 requested Bismarck for an appropriation of £15,000 annually, in return for which he promised the Chancellor to make many of the important provincial and other French papers "talk Prussian," as he put it. In a large measure he may be said to have contributed to the modern importance which has grown up around the Press, and by 1870 he declared that he could control the opinions of some eighty-five writers in the French daily and weekly newspapers. He had divided his corps of writers into _home_ and _foreign_ bodies. Writers, for example, who were able to influence the insertion of articles favourable to Prussia and Prussian policies were paid several times the amount which they commonly received for their articles through the ordinary channels of remuneration. These foreign writers were not confined to France, but were active also in Austria, Italy and England. Well-known bankers, business men and the heads of news agencies—many of them German Hebrews—were the instruments through whom Stieber worked. Most of these individuals were able, through acquaintanceship with professional leader-writers and journalists, to procure the insertion into articles of views held by the Prussian Government; such gentry were themselves receiving Prussian Orders and decorations, while their particular private scribes were rewarded in cash. It was by means of Germans occupying high positions in the public life of European countries that in 1864 the world was prepared intellectually for the partition of Denmark, in 1866 for the war with Austria and thenceforth for the federation of the Germanic States under the ægis of Prussia. It must not be imagined that this propaganda ceased with Prussia's attainment of the headship of the Teutonic Bond. Indeed, it may be said only to have been inaugurated with its early successes under Bismarck, whose control of a venal Press in Vienna, Rome and even London was hardly less effective in its day than that which he exploited and subsidised all over Germany. By 1870 Stieber had, he himself tells, assured himself of a Press in Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, which kept the Prussian view openly and permanently before the inhabitants of those important cities.