of American citizenship. Participation in the war effort had accelerated the Americanization process. Atlantis distributed handbooks and encouraged its readers to begin the naturalization process. Vlasto tried to introduce immigrants to US politics and was a staunch supporter of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1911, perhaps as a result of Vlasto's influence, the majority of the 2,000 New York Greeks who had taken American citizenship supported the Republican Party and had even founded a Republican Political Club. Atlantis and The National Herald Greek Americans, eager for news of their homeland in a language they could read, helped make the Atlantis the largest-circulation Greek newspaper in America. Its only serious competition was the Ethnikos Kyrix (The National Herald). Having effectively dominated Greek-American journalism for almost two decades, Vlasto faced his strongest rival in 1915. Petros Tatanis, a successful merchant, accumulated $100,000 for the launching of The National Herald on April 2, 1915. The two papers were radically different in their political views. The Atlantis supported the monarchy in Greece and the Republicans in America, criticizing the Democrats and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs of the 1930s. The National Herald supported liberal causes in Greece and America and defended the New Deal. As politics in Greece became steadily polarized, the two major opposition groups found themselves represented by journalists over five thousand miles away. In the resulting struggle which endured for many years, Atlantis generally defended conservative, pro-royalist positions, while The National Herald supported the liberal, progressive forces of Eleutherios Venizelos The Greek monarchy and Eleutherios Venizelos Atlantis moved into national prominence about the time that the conflict (the so-called "National Schism") between Greek liberal leader Eleutherios Venizelos and King Constantine of Greece with his strong German ties reached its height. Eleutherios Venizelos, Prime Minister since 1910 and head of the Liberal Party, advocated an alliance with the French and British on the premise that the nation would be amply rewarded with new territory for this support. King Constantine, who was German-educated and relied heavily on pro-German military advisers, warmly backed the objectives of the Megali Idea, but demanded certain guarantees in arms, troops, and money from the Allies to ensure national security. The dispute sharpened during 1915 with Venizelos maintaining that the King exceeded his constitutional prerogatives in blocking Greece's entrance into the war. In 1916, Venizelos declared a separate Provisional Government in Thessaloniki to place pressure on the royalist regime in