Evolution of a new American policy toward Germany as a result of a long series of acts, exclusive of debt defaults by the German government, which border on treaty violations, is predicted by Junius B. Wood in a Berlin dispatch to the Chicago Daily News.
Pointing out that although the German government considers itself well within its rights, Weed declared that “others feel that the line has been overstepped in many instances and it is known that the situation has reached the stage where the American State department is seriously considering it today.
“It is being considered not only in Washington, but in other world capitals as well until there is a possibility that Berlin will have a diplomatic corps which presents a united front, representing the nations to which the present policies of Germany are antagonizing.
“The expulsion of Dorothy Thompson, wife of Sinclair Lewis, the author, and herself one of the best known writers on European affairs, may have been the last straw, but it was only one of other cases of a different character. She is the first American correspondent to be officially expelled.
“Expulsion of foreign correspondents has been revived by Propaganda Minister Goebbels,” Mr. Wood said, “as his part in the present terrorist policy in Germany.
“His efforts have been to compel correspondents to report events in Germany according to the official Nazi party interpretation, and not according to the standards of human rights and social and economic conditions in their own countries.
“Many of the correspondents who were in Berlin under previous regimes have been driven out of Germany either by official orders or by threats. The German authorities have the mistaken belief that, with their own newspapers, radio and citizens forbidden to voice anything except what is officially announced, and with their tireless spellbinder constantly vociferating that everything is utopian, nobody in Germany knows or thinks differently.
NEW CLEANUP STARTED
“They have so easily assumed that new correspondents could learn nothing. A year has passed since the last cleanup, and a new one has started.
“Several Britishers have been expelled without protest by their government, but France and the Soviet Union threatened reprisals in similar cases and the expulsions were revoked. Other smaller countries protested in vain. Though the American State department neither acquiesced northreatened when the German authorities foresaw mob violence to American correspondents if they did not leave, this is the first time the department has been called on to take an open stand.
“The six chief causes of diplomatic friction lie, Mr. Wood declared, in the defacing of American passports, orders from the German foreign office refusing to recognize additional pages in Americans passports, censorship and seizure of mail addressed to officials with diplomatic privileges, opening letters of foreign residents and tourists, arrests of American citizens without warrants and two decrees which the American government holds violate existing treaties.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
