This was A.P.’s great opportunity, but the agency was fearful of losing the advantages of cartel membership if it made a bid for South America. Manager Melville Stone considered that the cartel might oust A.P. and admit the newer United Press to membership. Accordingly, he left unanswered a request by _La Nacion_ of Buenos Aires, one of the world’s leading newspapers, for A.P. service. New pressures, however, were at work. Within A.P., Kent Cooper, then only Traffic Manager, learned for the first time of the cartel and of A.P.’s humiliatingly inferior position in it. He began what he likes to call his “great crusade,” by which he means a thirty-year fight to substitute American for British news domination of the world. From outside the agency came insistent demands by the government for aid in advancing national policy. The State Department made a crude subsidy offer with the aim of bribing the South American press. Stone later wrote: The State Department asked me to employ the editors of almost every leading paper in South America on handsome salaries as correspondents of A.P. ... whether they sent us news or not ... and the government would recoup us for anything we paid.... They want something more than a mere news report.... They want some sort of illuminating service from the United States to indicate that this country is not money-grabbing or territory-grabbing. Incidentally, a similar proposal was made for the Far East. A.P. rejected the proposals. Moreover, “government propaganda” was one important reason. Moreover, “government propaganda” organizations were regarded as inadequate and unstable instruments for conquering news control. A.P. felt the government interest, for one thing, was not likely to survive the war. Even more important was the fact that the American news industry has always heavily exploited its alleged “independence of direct government ties” as proof of its non-partisan character. But far from refusing all forms of subsidy, the news industry fought for and obtained aid in the form of “practical rates for news transmission; rates attractive enough to encourage the export of news from the U.S.” The government had for some years encouraged the laying of new American-owned cables. Now, at the “behest of the State Department,” the American-owned cable company gave lower rates to American clients than to Havas, for news to South America. American news went to South America after all, therefore, on behalf of the State Department.