In South America, as in Spain, the method is to capture the press, and so disseminate German war-news, pro-German articles, photographs and cartoons. But it was not enough to control or inspire existing newspapers. In many capitals the Germans started new journals, printed in the vernacular. Naturally, the chief effort was made in Buenos Aires. Early in the war, a German organ, _La Unión_, was founded, in order that the Porteño, as he walked the street or travelled by train or tramway, might have the German case daily and forcibly presented to him. Throughout Latin America, a dozen or more of newspapers have been thus founded for propaganda purposes, some of them illustrated by effective cartoons. The strangest examples of this journalistic campaign are two Turkish newspapers, _La Bandera Otomana_ of Buenos Aires and _O Otomano_ of São Pãolo, which urge the cause of the Central Powers among Orientals in those countries. Besides these purely German efforts, a host of newspapers, many of them the local journals of country towns, serve the German cause throughout Latin America, the newspaper offices sometimes acting as distributing agencies for periodicals printed in Germany in the Spanish tongue.
For, besides German and Germanophil periodicals published in America, others are produced in Germany for circulation in those countries. The number and the excellent quality of these Spanish productions of the German printing-press are remarkable. _La Revista de la Exportación Alemana_ is a most effective organ for German business, exhibiting side by side, in pictures and letter-press, triumphs in the field and triumphs of industry. The monthly _Mensajero de Ultramar_ and the weekly _Heraldo de Hamburgo_ have been already mentioned. Hamburg also produces the well-known weekly picture-paper, _Welt in Bild_, with letter-press in twelve languages. These well-written and well-printed newspapers are widely circulated in Latin America in order to uphold the German cause.
In addition to these permanent publications, special war periodicals are issued, every one of them a German trumpet. Not least of these is the comic paper _La Guasa Internacional_, which holds up the Allies to ridicule and abhorrence in cartoons, squibs and sketches. A diary of the war with a review of political and military movements is given in the illustrated monthly _Crónica de la Guerra_. Another chronicle is _La Guerra Europea Mirada por un Sud-Americano_, a piece of war propaganda written by a Latin-American soldier, Señor Guerrero, who was, until recently, Peruvian military attaché at Berlin. But perhaps the most effective of these war periodicals is _La Gran Guerra en cuadros_, which presents, in a series of pictures, the war as meant to be seen by neutral eyes. All these periodicals attribute economic blunders and financial errors or weakness to the Allies, sometimes making adroit use of British or French self-criticisms: on the other hand, they magnify German economic strength and organisation. This main object appears in an article on "After-war commercial relations between Spanish America and Europe" published in _El Mensajero de Ultramar_, which argues that Germany will suffer least of all the belligerents from the effects of the war; and that afterwards she will be the best purchaser and also the most capable provider for Latin America. Such is the reiterated refrain of a host of periodical publications.