A propaganda campaign against the German press in America is now in full progress. The superpatriots of the National Security League and the Ku Klux Klan are possessed with a deep hatred for the German newspapers that maintain the language and customs of the old homeland among Americans of German extraction. Their anti-German propaganda has been secretly carried on for years, but it has now entered a new and more bitter phase, while at the same time French propaganda, following the visit of Pierre Laval, the former French Prime Minister, has become more active.

Traces of this French propaganda can be found everywhere: in opera, in concerts, in art exhibitions, in lectures over the radio, in the foreign policies of the United States, and particularly in direct attacks on German societies, churches, and newspapers.

L'Institut Francais de Washington, at the head of which are James Brown Scott, a former teacher of international law, and Thomas Henry Healy, Professor of International Law at Georgetown University, has been working for months toward the realization of its sole aim, namely: to undermine German prestige in the United States and invalidate German customs and traditions. Dr. Brown Scott does not favor the German press because it has on several occasions told him bluntly the plain truth. Scott makes no secret of the fact that he does not like Germans, regardless of where he meets them or where they live. To divert the interest of the American people in the Goethe festivals, I'Institut Francais resorts to the broadcasting of radio programs in French, to the arrangement of great celebrations to immortalize war hatred--like, for instance, the distribution of the "On Ne Passe Pas" medals of the city of Verdun, in the documents relating to which the Germans are described as an "avalanche of barbarians" --to campaigns on behalf of French music and painting, and to demands for greater emphasis on the teaching of the French language in American high schools, this last activity representing an attempt to damage the 3reputation of the German language.

Efforts to Minimize the Importance of the German Language

The propaganda against the German press is dangerous to the latter because of the effect of such propaganda upon the advertisers and because the attempt is being made, on the basis of census reports, to minimize the importance of German influence in this country. The impression is created that immigrants are the only people who read newspapers printed in German. Since the number of United States residents born in Germany is estimated, according to the 1930 census, at 1,608,814, it is taken for granted that the number of readers of German newspapers is undergoing a rapid decline. Mention is rarely made, however, of the fact that the same census sets at 5,264,289 the number of American-born children of German percentage.

The injustice of using census data to determine the potential circulation of newspapers printed in German becomes even more evident if one bears in 4mind the fact that the German language is not confined to Germany alone, but is spoken in Austria, in Switzerland, and in sections of other countries. If an accurate figure is to be reached, immigrants coming from German-speaking nations, and from those sections of other countries where German is spoken, must be added to the number of German-born immigrants.

Explanation Demanded from Census Bureau

The attention of the director of the census, Mr. William M. Stewart, was called to the injustice which is being done to the German-speaking element as a result of the inaccuracy of the 1930 census. It was explained to him that the estimate of 1,608,814 as the number of German-born residents in the United States was being used for purposes unfairly detrimental to the interests of the German-Americans, by the opponents of the German press. It was further stated, for the better understanding of Mr. Stewart and his staff of ethuographers and linguistic statisticians, that German is the mother tongue of 6,534,481 Austrians; 2,750,622 Swiss; 271,231 Luxemburgers; 53,123,568 residents of Czecho-Slovakia; 513,473 Jugoslavs; 3,171,570 Ukrainians; 750,000 Rumanians; 88,652 Belgians; 51,000 Lithuanians; 48,000 Letts; 26,000 Estonians; and a great number of Volga Germans. In addition to these, there are German-speaking residents of Alsace-Lorraine and the Saar district. It should be noted, too, that the South Tyrol is a section in which the German language is the mother tongue.

From the German-speaking sections of all the countries mentioned above there has come a proportionately larger number of immigrants to the United States than has come from the other sections of the same countries. These German-speaking immigrants value their mother tongue just as highly as those from Germany, Austria, and the German section of Switzerland do.

Therefore, we recommend that the Census Bureau publish an explanation in regard to the above-mentioned facts, or, still better, that it publish statistics in regard to the language status of immigrants, particularly those of German extraction who, because of the political rearrangements 6of boundaries, are excluded from Germany but continue to use the German language.