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JOHANN BERNSTORFF PUBLISHER There is an clement of the ironic in the fact that Count yon Bernstorff alleged ambassador but really the kaisers chief spy in the United States should have been the owner of a paper in this country en ¬ titled Fair Play Apart from the gross impropriety of a diplomatic representative of a foreign power owning and controlling a paper or periodical aimed at influencing public opinion in the country to which he is accredited could there be anything more preposterous as regards the case in point than calling such a paper by sucli a name nameIf If there is one thing which Bernstorff together witli the bulk of his countrymen has shown him ¬ self utterly regardless of It is fair play Of courso they will say that such phrases as fair play or playing the game are merely British or American that war is not a game and that all is fair in war as in love But that is not the view of an honor ¬ able people of any people with correct Ideas and high ideals or with a duly developed sense of right and wrong wrongThere There are things which all decent men shrink from and avoid both in love and war They will not deliberately profane the sanctities of the do ¬ mestic hearth or violate friendship in the name of love and the man who does so is regarded as a libertine and unfit for the society of decent and honorable persons Nor will they in war under a veil of friendship intrigue against the T eace and good order of a neutral country which is affording them hospitality and protection and extending to them confidence and good will by admitting them to its homes clubs and social institutions But such offenses and even worse were committed by Bernstorff and his pernicious gang including such persons as Papen BoyEd Rintelen Tauscher and scores of others who were admitted to the inti mucy of American hearths and homes And to niake his conduct a few degrees worse if possible Bernstorff besides debauching n number of journal fsts some unfortunately calling themselves Ameri ¬ cans ran his own paper in this country under the name above all of Fair Play It bears comparison with the idea of Herod running an institution for orphan children or a cracksman establishing a safe deposit society or an mitiburglar insurance cor poration New York Herald
