n of the raw materials
necessary for the fabrication of asphyxiating gas. It appears that
Sweden, which in peace time was wont to import from the Tsardom a
certain quantity of those products, trebled its demands during the
first year of the war.

[115] It is noticed by the Italian and French press; cf., for
instance, _Roma_, October 31, 1915.

Contingents of contrabandists were despatched to Greece, Spain,
Morocco, Holland, Italy, Switzerland and the United States. Secret
stations were established for supplying submarines with the
wherewithal to carry on their war against inoffensive passenger
steamers. Agents were kept in the neutral countries to corrupt the
local press and poison the wells of information in order to allure the
neutrals into belligerency. A highly organized news-distributing
bureau was equipped in Berlin with all the requisites for falsifying
facts and distorting military tidings. Its branches are spread over
the globe. Passports were forged at first and later on genuine ones
abstracted from the Berlin Foreign Office and handed over to spies.
Strikes and outrages were engineered in the United States, Italy, and
Russia. The Putiloff works, which before the war were nearly falling
into German hands and have since been supplying munitions for the
Tsar's army, were stricken with creeping paralysis, against which
exhortations and threats were vain, and finally they had to be
sequestrated by the State. Millions of dollars were expended in the
United States in efforts to prevent the manufacture or the transport
of munitions to the Allies. In Greece vast sums were cheerfully
disbursed by Baron Schenk to work the elections and defeat Venizelos.
Roumania was overrun by bands of Germans whose functions were to
calumniate, vilify, corrupt and threaten. Spain has been wrought upon
in like manner by a small army of Teutons abundantly supplied with the
same weapons. Persia was scoured by German agitators who deployed all
their talents and acquirements, their knowledge of the language and
acquaintance with the native religion, to rouse the natives against
Russia and Great Britain. Abyssinia, although deprived by Italy of
the presence of the German "scientific expedition," was induced by the
German Minister at Adis Abeba to behave in such a way that in the
month of March 1916 King Victor's Government found it advisable to
issue a decree ordering _urgent_ fortifications to be constructed in
Erythea.[116] Swed