This new phase in the negotiations has been heralded by
a bitter Press campaign in Germany against Great Britain. The attacks have, however, been confined, the Times correspondent says, to newspapers of the second order. The principal pretext for abuse has been an article published in the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna. This article professed to contain the views about Germany of a high diplomatic authority, and the views were certainly expressed with offensive plainness. The Neue Freie Presse wrote of the article with much deprecation, but explained that it had felt it a duty to publish it. We all know the habit of Con- tinental newspapers of attributing startling opinions to nameless people who are said to occupy positions of the utmost importance. The next step is to identify the anonymous ones. This step was duly taken in the case of the Neue Freie Presse article, and the dis- tinguished authority who had expressed his views was unhesitatingly said to be Sir Fairfax Cartwright, the British Ambassador in Vienna. Probably the majority of German newspapers do not doubt that Sir Fairfax Cartwright really expressed the views attributed to him. Yet every Englishman knows by instinct, and with an absolute certainty of
conviction, that no British Ambassador would ever have had anything to do with such an article.
