For long years Reuters, acceptably to Havas and Wolff, had divided the globe among the three according to Reuters’ idea of proper spheres of influence for each.... Reuters received English-speaking North America, in which since 1893 the A.P. had bought exclusive territorial rights. For long years Reuters, acceptably to Havas and Wolff, was granted a free hand in Canada. Later this free hand was extended to include Mexico, Central America and the West Indies where Reuters and Havas held the sovereign rights. The two, however, admitted no control whatever to Wolff, the German Agency, in the Western Hemisphere. Reuters had Great Britain, including all the colonies and dominions, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, China and what might be called the suzerain states, or those in which England had exerted a sphere of influence. Havas [since succeeded by France-Presse] controlled the French Empire, Switzerland and all the Latin countries, including Italy, Spain, Portugal and those in South America. [Also the Balkans.] To Wolff [later D.N.B. or the Deutsches Nachtrichten Buro] fell the Scandinavian states, with Russia and all the Slav nations. Austria also came under the jurisdiction of the German agency. A Conflict Is Born Reuters used its control frankly in the interest of the British Empire and of British business interests. Havas and Reuters combined to carry stories that would tend to ridicule American manufactures and America, but they refrained from such handling of Britain and France respectively. All over the world, news from America was top-heavy with Indians on the warpath, lynchings in the South, bizarre crimes in the North. Havas headed off American business competition with France in South America--a Havas exclusive territory--by stories belittling U.S. automobiles and other products. (Very reminiscent, one may note, of the American news industry’s deliberate belittling of Soviet industrial products and skills and planning, propaganda that misled even our highest authorities prior to Stalingrad.) Anglo-French ridicule was gall and wormwood to American Big Business as it moved more and more into competition for world markets, world influence and world power. It was more immediately vexing to Associated Press but A.P. never went outside the gentlemanly bounds of the conspiracy. It used the cartel as a club to beat back United Press and other would-be rivals at home.