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Title: Germany, The Next Republic?

Author: Carl W. Ackerman

Release date: May 5, 2005 [eBook #15770]
                Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

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GERMANY, THE NEXT REPUBLIC?

by

CARL W. ACKERMAN

New York
George H. Doran Company

1917







The title "GERMANY, THE NEXT REPUBLIC?" is chosen because the author
believes this must be the goal, the battlecry, of the United States and
her Allies.  As long as the Kaiser, his generals and the present
leaders are in control of Germany's destinies the world will encounter
the same terrorism that it has had to bear during the war.  Permanent
peace will follow the establishment of a Republic.  But the German
people will not overthrow the present government until the leaders are
defeated and discredited.  Today the Reichstag Constitutional
committee, headed by Herr Scheidemann, is preparing reforms in the
organic law but so far all proposals are mere makeshifts.  The world
cannot afford to consider peace with Germany until the people rule.
The sooner the United States and her Allies tell this to the German
people officially the sooner we shall have peace.





[Frontispiece: A document circulated by "The League of Truth"]





PREFACE

I was at the White House on the 29th of June, 1914, when the newspapers
reported the assassination of the Archduke and Archduchess of Austria.
In August, when the first declarations of war were received, I was
assigned by the United Press Associations to "cover" the belligerent
embassies and I met daily the British, French, Belgian, Italian,
German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and Japanese diplomats.  When
President Wilson went to New York, to Rome, Georgia, to Philadephia and
other cities after the outbreak of the war, I accompanied him as one of
the Washington correspondents.  On these journeys and in Washington I
had an opportunity to observe the President, to study his methods and
ideas, and to hear the comment of the European ambassadors.

When the von Tirpitz blockade of England was announced in February,
1915, I was asked to go to London where I remained only one month.
From March, 1915, until the break in diplomatic relations I was the war
correspondent for the United Press within the Central Powers.  In
Berlin, Vienna and Budapest, I met the highest government officials,
leading business men and financiers.  I knew Secretaries of State Von
Jagow and Zimmermann; General von Kluck, who drove the German first
army against Paris in August, 1914; General von Falkenhayn, former
Chief of the General Staff; Philip Scheidemann, leader of the Reichstag
Socialists; Count Stefan Tisza, Minister President of Hungary and Count
Albert Apponyi.

While my headquarters were in Berlin, I made frequent journeys to the
front in Belgium, France, Poland, Russia and Roumania.  Ten times I was
on the battlefields during important military engagements.  Verdun, the
Somme battlefield, General Brusiloff's offensive against Austria and
the invasion of Roumania, I saw almost as well as a soldier.

After the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the beginning of critical
relations with the United States I was in constant touch with James W.
Gerard, the American Ambassador, and the Foreign Office.  I followed
closely the effects of American political intervention until February
10th, 1917.  Frequent visits to Holland and Denmark gave me the
impressions of those countries regarding President Wilson and the
United States.  En route to Washington with Ambassador Gerard, I met in
Berne, Paris and Madrid, officials and people who interpreted the
affairs in these countries.

So, from the beginning of the war until today, I have been at the
strategic points as our relations with Germany developed and came to a
climax.  At the beginning of the war I was sympathetic with Germany,
but my sympathy changed to disgust as I watched developments in Berlin
change the German people from world citizens to narrow-minded,
deceitful tools of a ruthless government.  I saw Germany outlaw
herself.  I saw the effects of President Wilson's notes.  I saw the
anti-American propaganda begin.  I saw the Germany of 1915 disappear.
I saw the birth of lawless Germany.

In this book I shall try to take the reader from Washington to Berlin
and back again, to show the beginning and the end of our diplomatic
relations with the German government.  I believe that the United States
by two years of patience and note-writing, has done more to accomplish
the destruction of militarism and to encourage freedom of thought in
Germany than the Allies did during nearly three years of fighting.  The
United States helped the German people think for themselves, but being
children in international affairs, the people soon accepted the
inspired thinking of the government.  Instead of forcing their opinions
upon the rulers until results were evident, they chose to follow with
blind faith their military gods.

The United States is now at war with Germany because the Imperial
Government willed it.  The United States is at war to aid the movement
for democracy in Germany; to help the German people realize that they
must think for themselves.  The seeds of democratic thought which
Wilson's notes sowed in Germany are growing.  If the Imperial
Government had not frightened the people into a belief that too much
thinking would be dangerous for the Fatherland, the United States would
not today be at war with the Kaiser's government.  Only one thing now
will make the people realize that they must think for themselves if
they wish to exist as a nation and as a race.  That is a military
defeat, a defeat on the battlefields of the Kaiser, von Hindenburg and
the Rhine Valley ammunition interests.  Only a decisive defeat will
shake the public confidence in the nation's leaders.  Only a destroyed
German army leadership will make the people overthrow the group of men
who do Germany's political thinking to-day.

            C. W. A.

New York, May, 1917.




     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

"Abraham Lincoln said that this Republic could not exist half slave and
half free.  Now, with similar clarity, we perceive that the world
cannot exist half German and half free.  We have to put an end to the
bloody doctrine of the superior race--to that anarchy which is
expressed in the conviction that German necessity is above all law.  We
have to put an end to the German idea of ruthlessness.  We have to put
an end to the doctrine that it is right to make every use of power that
is possible, without regard to any restriction of justice, of honour,
of humanity."

            _New York Tribune,
              April 7, 1917._

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *




CONTENTS


PREFACE

CHAPTER

    I.  MOBILIZATION OF PUBLIC OPINION
   II.  "PIRATES SINK ANOTHER NEUTRAL SHIP"
  III.  THE GULF BETWEEN KIEL AND BERLIN
   IV.  THE HATE CAMPAIGN AGAINST AMERICA
    V.  THE DOWNFALL OF VON TIRPITZ AND VON FALKENHAYN
   VI.  THE PERIOD OF NEW ORIENTATION
  VII.  THE BUBBLING ECONOMIC VOLCANO
 VIII.  THE PEACE DRIVE OF DECEMBER 12TH
   IX.  THE BERNHARDI OF THE SEAS
    X.  THE OUTLAWED NATION
   XI.  THE UNITED STATES AT WAR
  XII.  PRESIDENT WILSON

APPENDIX




ILLUSTRATIONS


A DOCUMENT CIRCULATED BY "THE LEAGUE OF TRUTH"--THE RED BLOODY HAND ON
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE . . . Frontispiece

FIRST PAGE OF THE AUTHOR'S PASSPORT

A "BERLIN" EXTRA

BLOOD-TRAFFICKERS

FIRST PAGE OF THE MAGAZINE "LIGHT AND TRUTH"

AN ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA DOCUMENT

GOTT STRAFE ENGLAND

THIS IS THE PHOTOGRAPH OF VON HINDENBURG WHICH EVERY GERMAN HAS IN HIS
HOME

THE FOOD SITUATION AT A GLANCE

THE POPE TO PRESIDENT WILSON----"HOW CAN MY PEACE ANGEL FLY, MR.
PRESIDENT, WHEN YOU ALWAYS PUT SHELLS IN HER POCKETS?"

"GOD WILL NOT PERMIT THE GERMAN PEOPLE TO GO DOWN"

THE NEW WEATHER CAPE

CHART SHOWING TONNAGE OF SHIPS SUNK BY GERMAN SUBMARINES FROM REAR
ADMIRAL HOLLWEG'S BOOK

AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THE BERLIN "DEUTSCHE TAGES-ZEITUNG" FOR THE
BOOK--"PRESIDENT BLUFF" MEANING PRESIDENT WILSON

THE KAISER'S NEW YEAR ORDER TO THE ARMY AND NAVY

SCHWAB TO MR. WILSON--"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, GREAT LITTLE LEADER, THE
WHOLE PLACE WILL BLOW UP IF YOU SMOKE HERE!"

"THE NEW OLD PRESIDENT.  LONG LIVE AMERICA!  LONG LIVE PEACE!  LONG
LIVE THE AMMUNITION FACTORIES!"

THE WILSON WILL

THE AUTHOR'S CARD OF ADMISSION TO THE REICHSTAG ON APRIL 5TH, 1916

AMBASSADOR GERARD ARRIVING IN PARIS

A POST-CARD FROM GENERAL VON KLUCK




GERMANY, THE NEXT REPUBLIC?


CHAPTER I

MOBILIZATION OF PUBLIC OPINION

I

The Haupttelegraphenamt (the Chief Telegraph Office) in Berlin is the
centre of the entire telegraph system of Germany.  It is a large, brick
building in the Franzoesischestrasse guarded, day and night, by
soldiers.  The sidewalks outside the building are barricaded.  Without
a pass no one can enter.  Foreign correspondents in Berlin, when they
had telegrams to send to their newspapers, frequently took them from
the Foreign Office to the Chief Telegraph Office personally in order to
speed them on their way to the outside world.  The censored despatches
were sealed in a Foreign Office envelope.  With this credential
correspondents were permitted to enter the building and the room where
all telegrams are passed by the military authorities.

During my two years' stay in Berlin I went to the telegraph office
several times every week.  Often I had to wait while the military
censor read my despatches.  On a large bulletin board in this room, I
saw, and often read, documents posted for the information of the
telegraph officials.  During one of my first waiting periods I read an
original document relating to the events at the beginning of the war.
This was a typewritten letter signed by the Director of the Post and
Telegraph.  Because I was always watched by a soldier escort, I could
never copy it.  But after reading it scores of times I soon memorised
everything, including the periods.

This document was as follows:


  Office of the Imperial Post & Telegraph
        August 2nd, 1914.

  Announcement No. 3.

To the Chief Telegraph Office:

From to-day on, the Post and Telegraph communications between Germany
on the one hand and:

  1. England,
  2. France,
  3. Russia,
  4. Japan,
  5. Belgium,
  6. Italy,
  7. Montenegro,
  8. Servia,
  9. Portugal;

on the other hand are interrupted because Germany finds herself in a
state of war.

(Signed) Director of the Post and Telegraph.


This notice, which was never published, shows that the man who directed
the Post and Telegraph Service of the Imperial Government knew on the
2nd of August, 1914, who Germany's enemies would be.  Of the eleven
enemies of Germany to-day only Roumania and the United States were not
included.  If the Director of the Post and Telegraph knew what to
expect, it is certain that the Imperial Government knew.  This
announcement shows that Germany expected war with nine different
nations, but at the time it was posted on the bulletin board of the
Haupttelegraphenamt, neither Italy, Japan, Belgium nor Portugal had
declared war.  Italy did not declare war until nearly a year and a half
afterwards, Portugal nearly two years afterward and Japan not until
December, 1914.

This document throws an interesting light upon the preparations Germany
made for a world war.

The White, Yellow, Grey and Blue Books, which all of the belligerents
published after the beginning of the war, dealt only with the attempts
of these nations to prevent the war.  None of the nations has as yet
published white books to show how it prepared for war, and still, every
nation in Europe had been expecting and preparing for a European
conflagration.  Winston Churchill, when he was First Lord of the
Admiralty, stated at the beginning of the war that England's fleet was
mobilised.  France had contributed millions of francs to fortify the
Russian border in Poland, although Germany had made most of the guns.
Belgium had what the Kaiser called, "a contemptible little army" but
the soldiers knew how to fight when the invaders came.  Germany had new
42 cm. guns and a network of railroads which operated like shuttles
between the Russian and French and Belgian frontiers.  Ever since 1870
Europe had been talking war.  Children were brought up and educated
into the belief that some day war would come.  Most people considered
it inevitable, although not every one wanted it.

During the exciting days of August, 1914, I was calling at the
belligerent embassies and legations in Washington.  Neither M.
Jusserand, the French Ambassador, nor Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, the
British Ambassador, nor Count von Bernstorff, the Kaiser's
representative, were in Washington then.  But it was not many weeks
until all three had hastened to this country from Europe.  Almost the
first act of the belligerents was to send their envoys to Washington.

As I met these men I was in a sense an agent of public opinion who
called each day to report the opinions of the belligerents to the
readers of American newspapers.  One day at the British Embassy I was
given copies of the White Book and of many other documents which Great
Britain had issued to show how she tried to avoid the war.  In
conversations later with Ambassador von Bernstorff, I was given the
German viewpoint.

The thing which impressed me at the time was the desire of these
officials to get their opinions before the American people.  But why
did these ambassadors want the standpoints of their governments
understood over here?  Why was the United States singled out of all
other neutrals?  If all the belligerents really wanted to avoid war,
why did they not begin twenty years before, to prevent it, instead of,
to prepare for it?

All the powers issued their official documents for one primary
purpose--to win public opinion.  First, it was necessary for each
country to convince its own people that their country was being
attacked and that their leaders had done everything possible to avoid
war.  Even in Europe people would not fight without a reason.  The
German Government told the people that unless the army was mobilised
immediately Russia would invade and seize East Prussia.  England,
France and Belgium explained to their people that Germany was out to
conquer the world by way of Belgium and France.  But White Books were
not circulated alone in Europe; they were sent by the hundreds of
thousands into the United States and translated into every known
language so that the people of the whole world could read them.

Then the word battles between the Allies and the Central Powers began
in the United States.  While the soldiers fought on the battlefields of
Belgium, France, East Prussia and Poland, an equally bitter struggle
was carried on in the United States.  In Europe the object was to stop
the invaders.  In America the goal was public opinion.

It was not until several months after the beginning of the war that Sir
Edward Grey and Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg began to discuss what
the two countries had done before the war, to avoid it.  The only thing
either nation could refer to was the 1912 Conference between Lord
Haldane and the Chancellor.  This was the only real attempt made by the
two leading belligerents to come to an understanding to avoid
inevitable bloodshed.  Discussions of these conferences were soon
hushed up in Europe because of the bitterness of the people against
each other.  The Hymn of Hate had stirred the German people and the
Zeppelin raids were beginning to sow the seeds of determination in the
hearts of the British.  It was too late to talk about why the war was
not prevented.  So each set of belligerents had to rely upon the
official documents at the beginning of the war to show what was done to
avoid it.

These White Books were written to win public opinion.  But why were the
people _suddenly_ taken into the confidence of their governments?  Why
had the governments of England, France, Germany and Russia not been so
frank before 1914?  Why had they all been interested in making the
people speculate as to what would come, and how it would come about?
Why were all the nations encouraging suspicion?  Why did they always
question the motives, as well as the acts, of each other?  Is it
possible that the world progressed faster than the governments and that
the governments suddenly realised that public opinion was the biggest
factor in the world?  Each one knew that a war could not be waged
without public support and each one knew that the sympathy of the
outside world depended more upon public opinion than upon business or
military relations.


II

How America Was Shocked by the War

Previous to July, 1914, the American people had thought very little
about a European war.  While the war parties and financiers of Europe
had been preparing a long time for the conflict, people over here had
been thinking about peace.  Americans discussed more of the
possibilities of international peace and arbitration than war.
Europeans lived through nothing except an expectancy of war.  Even the
people knew who the enemies might be.  The German government, as the
announcement of the Post and Telegraph Director shows, knew nine of its
possible enemies before war had been declared.  So it was but natural,
when the first reports reached the United States saying that the
greatest powers of Europe were engaged in a death struggle, that people
were shocked and horrified.  And it was but natural for thousands of
them to besiege President Wilson with requests for him to offer his
services as a mediator.

The war came, too, during the holiday season in Europe.  Over 90,000
Americans were in the war zones.  The State Department was flooded with
telegrams.  Senators and Congressmen were urged to use their influence
to get money to stranded Americans to help them home.  The 235 U.S.
diplomatic and consular representatives were asked to locate Americans
and see to their comfort and safety.  Not until Americans realised how
closely they were related to Europe could they picture themselves as
having a direct interest in the war.  Then the stock market began to
tumble.  The New York Stock Exchange was closed.  South America asked
New York for credit and supplies, and neutral Europe, as well as China
in the Far East, looked to the United States to keep the war within
bounds.  Uncle Sam became the Atlas of the world and nearly every
belligerent requested this government to take over its diplomatic and
consular interests in enemy countries.  Diplomacy, commerce, finance
and shipping suddenly became dependent upon this country.  Not only the
belligerents but the neutrals sought the leadership of a nation which
could look after all the interests, except those of purely military and
naval operations.  The eyes of the world centred upon Washington.
President Wilson, as the official head of the government, was signalled
out as the one man to help them in their suffering and to listen to
their appeals.  The belligerent governments addressed their protests
and their notes to Wilson.  Belgium sent a special commission to gain
the President's ear.  The peace friends throughout the world, even
those in the belligerent countries, looked to Wilson for guidance and
help.

In August, 1914, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, the President's wife, was
dangerously ill.  I was at the White House every day to report the
developments there for the United Press.  On the evening of the 5th of
August Secretary Tumulty called the correspondents and told them that
the President, who was deeply distressed by the war, and who was
suffering personally because of his wife's illness, had written at his
wife's bedside the following message:


"As official head of one of the powers signatory to The Hague
Convention, I feel it to be my privilege and my duty, under Article III
of that Convention, to say to you in the spirit of most earnest
friendship that I should welcome an opportunity to act in the interests
of European peace, either now or at any other time that might be
thought more suitable, as an occasion to serve you and all concerned in
a way that would afford me lasting cause for gratitude and happiness.

         "(Signed) WOODROW WILSON."


The President's Secretary cabled this to the Emperors of Germany and
Austria-Hungary; the King of England, the Czar of Russia and the
President of France.  The President's brief note touched the chord of
sympathy of the whole world; but it was too late then to stop the war.
European statesmen had been preparing for a conflict.  With the public
support which each nation had, each government wanted to fight until
there was a victory.

One of the first things which seemed to appeal to President Wilson was
the fact that not only public opinion of Europe, but of America, sought
a spokesman.  Unlike Roosevelt, who led public opinion, unlike Taft,
who disregarded it, Wilson took the attitude that the greatest force in
the world was public opinion.  He believed public opinion was greater
than the presidency.  He felt that he was the man the American people
had chosen to interpret and express their opinion.  Wilson's policy was
to permit public opinion to rule America.  Those of us who spent two
years in Germany could see this very clearly.

The President announced the plank for his international policy when he
spoke at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, at
Washington, shortly after the war began.

[Illustration: First page of the author's passport.]

"_The opinion of the world is the mistress of the world_," he said,
"and the processes of international law are the slow processes by which
opinion works its will.  What impresses me is the constant thought that
that is the tribunal at the bar of which we all sit.  I would call your
attention, incidentally, to the circumstance that it does not observe
the ordinary rules of evidence; which has sometimes suggested to me
that the ordinary rules of evidence had shown some signs of growing
antique.  Everything, rumour included, is heard in this court, and the
standard of judgment is not so much the character of the testimony as
the character of the witness.  The motives are disclosed, the purposes
are conjectured and that opinion is finally accepted which seems to be,
not the best founded in law, perhaps, but the best founded in integrity
of character and of morals.  That is the process which is slowly
working its will upon the world; and what we should be watchful of is
not so much jealous interests as sound principles of action.  The
disinterested course is not alone the biggest course to pursue; but it
is in the long run the most profitable course to pursue.  If you can
establish your character you can establish your credit.

"Understand me, gentlemen, I am not venturing in this presence to
impeach the law.  For the present, by the force of circumstances, I am
in part the embodiment of the law and it would be very awkward to
disavow myself.  But I do wish to make this intimation, that in this
time of world change, in this time when we are going to find out just
how, in what particulars, and to what extent the real facts of human
life and the real moral judgments of mankind prevail, it is worth while
looking inside our municipal law and seeing whether the judgments of
the law are made square with the moral judgments of mankind.  For I
believe that we are custodians of the spirit of righteousness, of the
spirit of equal handed justice, of the spirit of hope which believes in
the perfectibility of the law with the perfectibility of human life
itself.

"Public life, like private life, would be very dull and dry if it were
not for this belief in the essential beauty of the human spirit and the
belief that the human spirit should be translated into action and into
ordinance.  Not entire.  You cannot go any faster than you can advance
the average moral judgment of the mass, but you can go at least as fast
as that, and you can see to it that you do not lag behind the average
moral judgments of the mass.  I have in my life dealt with all sorts
and conditions of men, and I have found that the flame of moral
judgment burns just as bright in the man of humble life and limited
experience as in the scholar and man of affairs.  And I would like his
voice always to be heard, not as a witness, not as speaking in his own
case, but as if he were the voice of men in general, in our courts of
justice, as well as the voice of the lawyers, remembering what the law
has been.  My hope is that, being stirred to the depths by the
extraordinary circumstances of the time in which we live, we may
recover from those steps something of a renewal of that vision of the
law with which men may be supposed to have started out in the old days
of the oracles, who commune with the intimations of divinity."

Before this war, very few nations paid any attention to public opinion.
France was probably the beginner.  Some twenty years before 1914,
France began to extend her civilisation to Russia, Italy, the Balkans
and Syria.  In Roumania, today, one hears almost as much French as
Roumanian spoken.  Ninety per cent of the lawyers in Bucharest were
educated in Paris.  Most of the doctors in Roumania studied in France.
France spread her influence by education.

The very fact that the belligerents tried to mobilise public opinion in
the United States in their favour shows that 1914 was a milestone in
international affairs.  This was the first time any foreign power ever
attempted to fight for the good will--the public opinion--of this
nation.  The governments themselves realised the value of public
opinion in their own boundaries, but when the war began they realised
that it was a power inside the realms of their neighbours, too.

When differences of opinion developed between the United States and the
belligerents the first thing President Wilson did was to publish all
the documents and papers in the possession of the American government
relating to the controversy.  The publicity which the President gave
the diplomatic correspondence between this government and Great Britain
over the search and seizure of vessels emphasised in Washington this
tendency in our foreign relations.  At the beginning of England's
seizure of American merchantmen carrying cargoes to neutral European
countries, the State Department lodged individual protests, but no heed
was paid to them by the London officials.  Then the United States made
public the negotiations seeking to accomplish by publicity what a
previous exchange of diplomatic notes failed to do.

Discussing this action of the President in an editorial on "Diplomacy
in the Dark," the New York _World_ said:


"President Wilson's protest to the British Government is a clear,
temperate, courteous assertion of the trade rights of neutral countries
in time of war.  It represents not only the established policy of the
United States but the established policy of Great Britain.  It voices
the opinion of practically all the American people, and there are few
Englishmen, even in time of war, who will take issue with the
principles upheld by the President.  Yet a serious misunderstanding was
risked because it is the habit of diplomacy to operate in the dark.

"Fortunately, President Wilson by making the note public prevented the
original misunderstanding from spreading.  But the lesson ought not to
stop there.  Our State Department, as Mr. Wickersham recently pointed
out in a letter to the _World_, has never had a settled policy of
publicity in regard to our diplomatic affairs.  No Blue Books or White
Books are ever issued.  What information the country obtains must be
pried out of the Department.  This has been our diplomatic policy for
more than a century, and it is a policy that if continued will some day
end disastrously."


Speaking in Atlanta in 1912, President Wilson stated that this
government would never gain another foot of territory by conquest.
This dispelled whatever apprehension there was that the United States
might seek to annex Mexico.  Later, in asking Congress to repeal the
Panama Tolls Act of 1912, the President said the good will of Europe
was a more valuable asset than commercial advantages gained by
discriminatory legislation.

Thus at the outset of President Wilson's first administration, foreign
powers were given to understand that Mr. Wilson believed in the power
of public opinion; that he favoured publicity as a means of
accomplishing what could not be done by confidential negotiations; that
he did not believe in annexation and that he was ready at any time to
help end the war.


III

Before the Blockade

President Wilson's policy during the first six months of the war was
one of impartiality and neutrality.  The first diplomatic
representative in Washington to question the sincerity of the executive
was Dr. Constantine Dumba, the exiled Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, who
was sent to the United States because he was not a noble, and,
therefore, better able to understand and interpret American ways!  He
asked me one day whether I thought Wilson was neutral.  He said he had
been told the President was pro-English.  He believed, he said, that
everything the President had done so far showed he sympathised with the
Entente.  While we were talking I recalled what the President's
stenographer, Charles L. Swem, said one day when we were going to New
York with the President.

"I am present at every conference the President holds," he stated.  "I
take all his dictation.  I think he is the most neutral man in America.
I have never heard him express an opinion one way or the other, and if
he had I would surely know of it."

I told Dr. Dumba this story, which interested him, and he made no
comments.

As I was at the White House nearly every day I had an opportunity to
learn what the President would say to callers and friends, although I
was seldom privileged to use the information.  Even now I do not recall
a single statement which ever gave me the impression that the President
sided with one group of belligerents.

The President's sincerity and firm desire for neutrality was emphasised
in his appeal to "My Countrymen."

"The people of the United States," he said, "are drawn from many
nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war.  It is natural and
inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and
desire among them with regard to the issues and circumstances of the
conflict.  Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the
momentous struggle.  It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to
allay it.  Those responsible for exciting it will assume a heavy
responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people
of the United States, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to
the government should unite them as Americans all, bound in honour and
affection to think first of her and her interests, may be divided in
camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war
itself in impulse and opinion, if not in action.

"My thought is of America.  I am speaking, I feel sure, the earnest
wish and purpose of every thoughtful American that this great country
of ours, which is of course the first in our thoughts and in our
hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar trial a nation fit
beyond others to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the
dignity of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a
nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in
her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is
honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the
world."

Many Americans believed even early in the war that the United States
should have protested against the invasion of Belgium.  Others thought
the government should prohibit the shipments of war supplies to the
belligerents.  America _was_ divided by the great issues in Europe, but
the great majority of Americans believed with the President, that the
best service Uncle Sam could render would be to help bring about peace.

Until February, 1915, when the von Tirpitz submarine blockade of
England was proclaimed, only American interests, not American lives,
had been drawn into the war.  But when the German Admiralty announced
that neutral as well as belligerent ships in British waters would be
sunk without warning, there was a new and unexpected obstacle to
neutrality.  The high seas were as much American as British.  The
oceans were no nation's property and they could not justly be used as
battlegrounds for ruthless warfare by either belligerent.

Germany, therefore, was the first to challenge American neutrality.
Germany was the first to threaten American lives.  Germany, which was
the first to show contempt for Wilson, forced the President, as well as
the people, to alter policies and adapt American neutrality to a new
and grave danger.




CHAPTER II

"PIRATES SINK ANOTHER NEUTRAL SHIP"

On February 4th, 1915, the _Reichsanzeiger_, the official newspaper of
Germany, published an announcement declaring that from the 18th of
February "all the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland as well
as the entire English channel are hereby declared to be a war area.
All ships of the enemy mercantile marine found in these waters will be
destroyed and it will not always be possible to avoid danger to the
crews and passengers thereon.

"_Neutral shipping is also in danger in the war area_, as owing to the
secret order issued by the British Admiralty January 31st, 1915,
regarding the misuse of neutral flags, and the chances of naval
warfare, it can happen that attacks directed against enemy ships may
damage neutral vessels.

"The shipping route around the north of The Shetlands in the east of
the North Sea and over a distance of thirty miles along the coast of
The Netherlands will not be dangerous."

Although the announcement was signed by Admiral von Pohl, Chief of the
Admiralty Staff, the real author of the blockade was Grand Admiral von
Tirpitz.  In explanation of the announcement the Teutonic-Allied,
neutral and hostile powers were sent a memorandum which contained the
following paragraph:


"The German Government announces its intention in good time so that
hostile _as well as neutral_ ships can take necessary precautions
accordingly.  Germany expects that the neutral powers will show the
same consideration for Germany's vital interests as for those of
England, and will aid in keeping their citizens and property from this
area.  This is the more to be expected, as it must be to the interests
of the neutral powers to see this destructive war end as soon as
possible."


On February 12th the American Ambassador, James W. Gerard, handed
Secretary of State von Jagow a note in which the United States said:


"This Government views these possibilities with such grave concern that
it feels it to be its privilege, and indeed its duty in the
circumstances, to request the Imperial German Government to consider
before action is taken the critical situation in respect of the
relations between this country and Germany which might arise were the
German naval officers, in carrying out the policy foreshadowed in the
Admiralty's proclamation, to destroy any merchant vessel of the United
States or cause the death of American citizens.

"It is of course unnecessary to remind the German Government that the
sole right of a belligerent in dealing with neutral vessels on the high
seas is limited to visit and search, unless a blockade is proclaimed
and effectively maintained, which the Government of the United States
does not understand to be proposed in this case.  To declare and
exercise the right to attack and destroy any vessel entering a
prescribed area of the high seas without first accurately determining
its belligerent nationality and the contraband character of its cargo,
would be an act so unprecedented in naval warfare that this Government
is reluctant to believe that the Imperial German Government in this
case contemplates it as possible."


I sailed from New York February 13th, 1915, on the first American
passenger liner to run the von Tirpitz blockade.  On February 20th we
passed Queenstown and entered the Irish Sea at night.  Although it was
moonlight and we could see for miles about us, every light on the ship,
except the green and red port and starboard lanterns, was extinguished.
As we sailed across the Irish Sea, silently and cautiously as a muskrat
swims on a moonlight night, we received a wireless message that a
submarine, operating off the mouth of the Mersey River, had sunk an
English freighter.  The captain was asked by the British Admiralty to
stop the engines and await orders.  Within an hour a patrol boat
approached and escorted us until the pilot came aboard early the next
morning.  No one aboard ship slept.  Few expected to reach Liverpool
alive, but the next afternoon we were safe in one of the numerous snug
wharves of that great port.

A few days later I arrived in London.  As I walked through Fleet street
newsboys were hurrying from the press rooms carrying orange-coloured
placards with the words in big black type: "Pirates Sink Another
Neutral Ship."

Until the middle of March I remained in London, where the wildest
rumours were afloat about the dangers off the coast of England, and
where every one was excited and expectant over the reports that Germany
was starving.  I was urged by friends and physicians not to go to
Germany because it was universally believed in Great Britain that the
war would be over in a very short time.  On the 15th of March I crossed
from Tilbury to Rotterdam.  At Tilbury I saw pontoon bridges across the
Thames, patrol boats and submarine chasers rushing back and forth
watching for U-boats, which might attempt to come up the river.  I
boarded the _Batavia IV_ late at night and left Gravesend at daylight
the next morning for Holland.  Every one was on deck looking for
submarines and mines.  The channel that day was as smooth as a small
lake, but the terrible expectation that submarines might sight the
Dutch ship made every passenger feel that the submarine war was as real
as it was horrible.

On the 17th of March, arriving at the little German border town of
Bentheim, I met for the first time the people who were already branded
as "Huns and Barbarians" by the British and French.  Officers and
people, however, were not what they had been pictured to be.  Neither
was Germany starving.  The officials and inspectors were courteous and
patient and permitted me to take into Germany not only British
newspapers, but placards which pictured the Germans as pirates.  Two
days later, while walking down Unter den Linden, poor old women, who
were already taking the places of newsboys, sold German extras with
streaming headlines: "British Ships Sunk.  Submarine War Successful."
In front of the _Lokal Anzeiger_ building stood a large crowd reading
the bulletins about the progress of the von Tirpitz blockade.

For luncheon that day I had the choice of as many foods as I had had in
London.  The only thing missing was white bread, for Germany, at the
beginning of the war, permitted only Kriegsbrot (war bread) to be baked.

All Berlin streets were crowded and busy.  Military automobiles,
auto-trucks, big moving vans, private automobiles, taxi-cabs and
carriages hurried hither and thither.  Soldiers and officers, seemingly
by the thousands, were parading up and down.  Stores were busy.  Berlin
appeared to be as normal as any other capital.  Even the confidence of
Germany in victory impressed me so that in one of my first despatches I
said:


"Germany to-day is more confident than ever that all efforts of her
enemies to crush her must prove in vain.  With a threefold offensive,
in Flanders, in Galicia and in northwest Russia, being successfully
prosecuted, there was a spirit of enthusiasm displayed here in both
military and civilian circles that exceeded even the stirring days
immediately following the outbreak of the war.

"Flags are flying everywhere to-day; the Imperial standards of Germany
and Austria predominate, although there is a goodly showing of the
Turkish Crescent.  Bands are playing as regiment after regiment passes
through the city to entrain for the front.  Through Wilhelmstrasse the
soldiers moved, their hats and guns decorated with fragrant flowers and
with mothers, sisters and sweethearts clinging to and encouraging them."


A few weeks before I arrived the Germans were excited over the shipment
of arms and ammunitions from the United States to the Allies, but by
the time I was in Berlin the situation seemed to have changed.  On
April 4th I telegraphed the following despatch which appeared in the
_Evening Sun_, New York:


"The spirit of animosity towards Americans which swept Germany a few
weeks ago seems to have disappeared.  The 1,400 Americans in Berlin and
those in the smaller cities of Germany have little cause to complain of
discourteous treatment.  Americans just arriving in Berlin in
particular comment upon the friendliness of their reception.  The
Germans have been especially courteous, they declare, on learning of
their nationality.  Feeling against the United States for permitting
arms to be shipped to the Allies still exists, but I have not found
this feeling extensive among the Germans.  Two American doctors
studying in German clinics declare that the wounded soldiers always
talk about 'Amerikanische keugel' (American bullets), but it is my
observation that the persons most outspoken against the sale of
ammunition to the Allies by American manufacturers are the American
residents of Berlin."


Two weeks later the situation had changed considerably.  On the 24th I
telegraphed: "Despite the bitter criticism of the United States by
German newspapers for refusing to end the traffic in munitions, it is
semi-officially explained that this does not represent the real views
of the German Government.  The censor has been instructed to permit the
newspapers to express themselves frankly on this subject and on
Secretary Bryan's reply to the von Bernstorff note, but it has been
emphasised that their views reflect popular opinion and the editorial
side of the matter and not the Government.

"The _Lokal Anzeiger_, following up its attack of yesterday, to-day
says:

"'The answer of the United States is no surprise to Germany and
naturally it fails to convince Germany that a flourishing trade in
munitions of war is in accord with strict neutrality.  The German
argument was based upon the practice of international law, but the
American reply was based upon the commercial advantages enjoyed by the
ammunition shippers.'"

April 24th was von Tirpitz day.  It was the anniversary of the entrance
of the Grand Admiral in the German Navy fifty years before, and the
eighteenth anniversary of his debut in the cabinet, a record for a
German Minister of Marine.  There was tremendous rejoicing throughout
the country, and the Admiral, who spent his Prussian birthday at the
Navy Department, was overwhelmed with congratulations.  Headed by the
Kaiser, telegrams came from every official in Germany.  The press paid
high tribute to his blockade, declaring that it was due to him alone
that England was so terror-stricken by submarines.

I was not in Germany very long until I was impressed by the remarkable
control the Government had on public opinion by censorship of the
press.  People believe, without exception, everything they read in the
newspapers.  And I soon discovered that the censor was so accustomed to
dealing with German editors that he applied the same standards to the
foreign correspondents.  A reporter could telegraph not what he
observed and heard, but what the censors desired American readers to
hear and know about Germany.

[Illustration: A Berlin "Extra"]

I was in St. Quentin, France (which the Germans on their 1917
withdrawal set on fire) at the headquarters of General von Below, when
news came May 8th that the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed.  I read the
bulletins as they arrived.  I heard the comments of the Germans who
were waging war in an enemy country.  I listened as they spoke of the
loss of American and other women and children.  I was amazed when I
heard them say that a woman had no more right on the _Lusitania_ than
she would have on an ammunition wagon on the Somme.  The day before I
was in the first line trenches on the German front which crossed the
road running from Peronne to Albert.  At that time this battlefield,
which a year and a half later was destined to be the scene of the
greatest slaughter in history, was as quiet and beautiful as this
picturesque country of northern France was in peace times.  Only a few
trenches and barbed wire entanglements marred the scene.

On May 9th I left St. Quentin for Brussels.  Here I was permitted by
the General Government to send a despatch reflecting the views of the
German army in France about the sinking of the _Lusitania_.  I wrote
what I thought was a fair article.  I told how the bulletin was posted
in front of the Hotel de Ville; how the officers and soldiers marching
to and away from the front stopped, read, smiled and congratulated each
other because the Navy was at last helping the Army "win the war."
There were no expressions of regret over the loss of life.  These
officers and soldiers had seen so many dead, soldiers and civilians,
men and women, in Belgium and France that neither death nor murder
shocked them.

The telegram was approved by the military censor and forwarded to
Berlin.  I stayed in Belgium two days longer, went to Louvain and Liége
and reached Berlin May 12th.  The next day I learned at the Foreign
Office that my despatch was stopped because it conflicted with the
opinions which the German Government was sending officially by wireless
to Washington and to the American newspapers.  I felt that this was
unfair, but I was subject to the censorship and had no appeal.

I did not forget this incident because it showed a striking difference
of opinion between the army, which was fighting for Germany, and the
Foreign Office, which was explaining and excusing what the Army and
Navy did.  The Army always justified the events in Belgium, but the
Foreign Office did not.  And this was the first incident which made me
feel that even in Germany, which was supposed to be united, there were
differences of opinion.

In September, 1915, while the German army was moving against Russia
like a surging sea, I was invited to go to the front near Vilna.
During the intervening months I had observed and recorded as much as
possible the growing indignation in Germany because the United States
permitted the shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies.  In June I
had had an interview with Secretary of State von Jagow, in which he
protested against the attitude of the United States Government and said
that America was not acting as neutral as Germany did during the
Spanish-American war.  He cited page 168 of Andrew D. White's book in
which Ambassador White said he persuaded Germany not to permit a German
ship laden with ammunition and consigned for Spain to sail.  I thought
that if Germany had adopted such an attitude toward America, that in
justice to Germany Washington should adopt the same position.  After
von Jagow gave me the facts in possession of the Foreign Office and
after he had loaned me Mr. White's book, I looked up the data.  I found
to my astonishment that Mr. White reported to the State Department that
a ship of ammunition sailed from Hamburg, and that he had not
protested, although the Naval Attaché had requested him to do so.  The
statements of von Jagow and Mr. White's in his autobiography did not
agree with the facts.  Germany did send ammunition to Spain, but
Wilhelmstrasse was using Mr. White's book as proof that the Krupp
interests did not supply our enemy in 1898.  The latter part of
September I entered Kovno, the important Russian fortress, eight days
after the army captured it.  I was escorted, together with other
foreign correspondents, from one fort to another and shown what the 42
cm. guns had destroyed.  I saw 400 machine guns which were captured and
1,300 pieces of heavy artillery.  The night before, at a dinner party,
the officers had argued against the United States because of the
shipment of supplies to Russia.  They said that if the United States
had not aided Russia, that country would not have been able to resist
the invaders.  I did not know the facts, but I accepted their
statements.  When I was shown the machine guns, I examined them and
discovered that every one of the 400 was made at Essen or Magdeburg,
Germany.  Of the 1,300 pieces of artillery every cannon was made in
Germany except a few English ship guns.  Kovno was fortified by
_German_ artillery, not American.

A few days later I entered Vilna; this time I was moving with the
advance column.  At dinner that night with General von Weber, the
commander of the city, the subject of American arms and ammunition was
again brought up.  The General said they had captured from the Russians
an American machine gun.  He added that they were bringing it in from
Smorgon to show the Americans.  When it reached us the stamp, written
in English, showed that it was manufactured by Vickers Limited,
England.  Being unable to read English, the officer who reported the
capture thought the gun was made in the United States.

In Roumania last December I followed General von Falkenhayn's armies to
the forts of Bucharest.  On Thanksgiving Day I crossed by automobile
the Schurduck Pass.  The Roumanians had defended, or attempted to
defend, this road by mounting armoured guns on the crest of one of the
mountain ranges in the Transylvanian Alps.  I examined a whole position
here and found all turrets were made in Germany.

I did not doubt that the shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies
had been a great aid to them.  (I was told in Paris, later, on my way
to the United States that if it had not been for the American
ammunition factories France would have been defeated long ago.)  But
when Germany argued that the United States was not neutral in
permitting these shipments to leave American ports, Germany was
forgetting what her own arms and munition factories had done _for
Germany's enemies_.  When the Krupp works sold Russia the defences for
Kovno, the German Government knew these weapons would be used against
Germany some day, because no nation except Germany could attack Russia
by way of that city.  When Krupps sold war supplies to Roumania, the
German Government knew that if Roumania joined the Allies these
supplies would be used against German soldiers.  But the Government was
careful not to report these facts in German newspapers.  And, although
Secretary of State von Jagow acknowledged to Ambassador Gerard that
there was nothing in international law to justify a change in
Washington's position, von Jagow's statements were not permitted to be
published in Germany.

To understand Germany's resentment over Mr. Wilson's interference with
the submarine warfare, three things must be taken into consideration.

1. The Allies' charge that all Germans are "Huns and Barbarians."

2. The battle of the Marne and the shipment of arms and ammunition from
the United States.

3. The intrigue and widening breach between the Army and Navy and the
Foreign Office.


I

One weapon the Allies used against Germany, which was more effective
than all others, was the press.  When the English and French indicted
the Germans as "Barbarians and Huns," as "pirates," and "uncivilised"
Europeans, it cut the Germans to the quick; it affected men and women
so terribly that Germans feared these attacks more than they did the
combined military might of their enemies.  This is readily understood
when one realises that before the war the thing the Germans prided
themselves on was their commerce and their civilisation,--their Kultur.
Before the war, the world was told by every German what the nation had
done for the poor; what strides the scientists had made in research
work and what progress the business men had made in extending their
commerce at the expense of competitors.

While some government officials foresaw the disaster which would come
to Germany if this national vanity was paraded before the whole world,
their advice and counsel were ignored.  Consul General Kiliani, the
Chief German official in Australia before the war, told me he had
reported repeatedly to the Foreign Office that German business men were
injuring their own opportunities by bragging so much of what they had
done, and what they would do.  He said if it continued the whole world
would be leagued against Germany; that public opinion would be so
strong against German goods that they would lose their markets.
Germany made the whole world fear her commercial might by this foolish
bragging.

So when the war broke out and Germans were attacked for being
uncivilised in Belgium, for breaking treaties and for disregarding the
opinion of the world, it was but natural that German vanity should
resent it.  Germans feared nothing but God and public opinion.  They
had such exalted faith in their army they believed they could gain by
Might what they had lost in prestige throughout the world.  This is one
of the reasons the German people arose like one man when war was
declared.  They wished and were ready to show the world that they were
the greatest people ever created.


II

The German explanation of why they lost the battle of the Marne is
interesting, not alone because of the explanation of the defeat, but
because it shows why the shipment of arms and ammunition from the
United States was such a poisonous pill to the army.  Shortly after my
arrival in Berlin Dr. Alfred Zimmermann, then Under Secretary of State,
said the greatest scandal in Germany after the war would be the
investigation of the reasons for the shortage of ammunition in
September, 1914.  He did not deny that Germany was prepared for a great
war.  He must have known at the time what the Director of the Post and
Telegraph knew on the 2nd of August, 1914, when he wrote Announcement
No. 3.  The German Army must have known the same thing and if it had
prepared for war, as every German admits it had, then preparations were
made to fight nine nations.  But there was one thing which Germany
failed to take into consideration, Zimmermann said, and that was the
shipment of supplies from the United States.  Then, he added, there
were two reasons why the battle of the Marne was lost: one, because
there was not sufficient ammunition; and, two, because the reserves
were needed to stop the Russian invasion of East Prussia.  I asked him
whether Germany did not have enormous stores of ammunition on hand when
the war began.  He said there was sufficient ammunition for a short
campaign, but that the Ministry of War had not mobilised sufficient
ammunition factories to keep up the supplies.  He said this was the
reason for the downfall of General von Herringen, who was Minister of
War at the beginning of hostilities.

After General von Kluck was wounded and returned to his villa in
Wilmersdorf, a suburb of Berlin, I took a walk with him in his garden
and discussed the Marne.  He confirmed what Zimmermann stated about the
shortage of ammunition and added that he had to give up his reserves to
General von Hindenburg, who had been ordered by the Kaiser to drive the
Russians from East Prussia.


III

At the very beginning of the war, although no intimations were
permitted to reach the outside world, there was a bitter controversy
between the Foreign Office, as headed by the Chancellor von
Bethmann-Hollweg; the Navy Department, headed by Grand Admiral von
Tirpitz, and General von Moltke, Chief of the General Staff.  The
Chancellor delayed mobilisation of the German Army three days.  For
this he never has and never will be forgiven by the military
authorities.  During those stirring days of July and August, when
General von Moltke, von Tirpitz, von Falkenhayn, Krupps and the Rhine
Valley Industrial leaders were clamouring for war and for an invasion
of Belgium, the Kaiser was being urged by the Chancellor and the
Foreign Office to heed the proposals of Sir Edward Grey for a Peace
Conference.  But the Kaiser, who was more of a soldier than a
statesman, sided with his military friends.  The war was on, not only
between Germany and the Entente, but between the Foreign Office and the
Army and Navy.  This internal fight which began in July, 1914, became
Germany's bitterest struggle and from time to time the odds went from
one side to another.  The Army accused the diplomats of blundering in
starting the war.  The Foreign Office replied that it was the lust for
power and victory which poisoned the military leaders which caused the
war.  Belgium was invaded against the counsel of the Foreign Office.
But when the Chancellor was confronted with the actual invasion and the
violation of the treaty, he was compelled by force of circumstance, by
his position and responsibility to the Kaiser to make his famous speech
in the Reichstag in which he declared: "Emergency knows no law."

But when the allied fleet swept German ships from the high seas and
isolated a nation which had considered its international commerce one
of its greatest assets, considerable animosity developed between the
Army and Navy.  The Army accused the Navy of stagnation.  Von Tirpitz,
who had based his whole naval policy upon a great navy, especially upon
battleship and cruiser units, was confronted by his military friends
with the charge that he was not prepared.  As early as 1908 von Tirpitz
had opposed the construction of submarines.  Speaking in the Reichstag
when naval appropriations were debated, he said Germany should rely
upon a battleship fleet and not upon submarines.  But when he saw his
great inactive Navy in German waters, he switched to the submarine idea
of a blockade of England.  In February, 1915, he announced his
submarine blockade of England with the consent of the Kaiser, but
without the approval of the Foreign Office.

By this time the cry, "Gott strafe England," had become the most
popular battle shout in Germany.  The von Tirpitz blockade announcement
made this battlecry real.  It made him the national hero.  The German
press, which at that time was under three different censors, turned its
entire support over night to the von Tirpitz plan.  The Navy
Department, which even then was not only anti-British but
anti-American, wanted to sink every ship on the high seas.  When the
United States lodged its protests on February 12th the German Navy
wanted to ignore it.  The Foreign Office was inclined to listen to
President Wilson's arguments.  Even the people, while they were
enthusiastic for a submarine war, did not want to estrange America if
they could prevent it.  The von Tirpitz press bureau, which knew that
public opposition to its plan could be overcome by raising the cry that
America was not neutral in aiding the Allies with supplies, launched an
anti-American campaign.  It came to a climax one night when Ambassador
Gerard was attending a theatre party.  As he entered the box he was
recognised by a group of Germans who shouted insulting remarks because
he spoke English.  Then some one else remarked that America was not
neutral by shipping arms and ammunition.

The Foreign Office apologised the next day but the Navy did not.  And,
instead of listening to the advice of Secretary of State von Jagow, the
Navy sent columns of inspired articles to the newspapers attacking
President Wilson and telling the German people that the United States
had joined the Entente in spirit if not in action.




CHAPTER III

THE GULF BETWEEN KIEL AND BERLIN

At the beginning of the war, even the Socialist Party in the Reichstag
voted the Government credits.  The press and the people unanimously
supported the Government because there was a very terrorising fear that
Russia was about to invade Germany and that England and France were
leagued together to crush the Fatherland.  Until the question of the
submarine warfare came up, the division of opinion which had already
developed between the Army and Navy clique and the Foreign Office was
not general among the people.  Although the army had not taken Paris, a
great part of Belgium and eight provinces of Northern France were
occupied and the Russians had been driven from East Prussia.  The
German people believed they were successful.  The army was satisfied
with what it had done and had great plans for the future.  Food and
economic conditions had changed very little as compared to the changes
which were to take place before 1917.  Supplies were flowing into
Germany from all neutral European countries.  Even England and Russia
were selling goods to Germany indirectly through neutral countries.
Considerable English merchandise, as well as American products, came in
by way of Holland because English business men were making money by the
transaction and because the English Government had not yet discovered
leaks in the blockade.  Two-thirds of the butter supply in Berlin was
coming from Russia.  Denmark was sending copper.  Norway was sending
fish and valuable oils.  Sweden was sending horses and cattle.  Italy
was sending fruit.  Spanish sardines and olives were reaching German
merchants.  There was no reason to be dissatisfied with the way the war
was going.  And, besides, the German people hated their enemies so that
the leaders could count upon continued support for almost an indefinite
period.  The cry of "Hun and Barbarian" was answered with the battle
cry "Gott strafe England."

The latter part of April on my first trip to the front I dined at Great
Headquarters (Grosse Haupt Quartier) in Charleville, France, with Major
Nicolai, Chief of the Intelligence Department of the General Staff.
The next day, in company with other correspondents, we were guests of
General von Moehl and his staff at Peronne.  From Peronne we went to
the Somme front to St. Quentin, to Namur and Brussels.  The soldiers
were enthusiastic and happy.  There was plenty of food and considerable
optimism.  But the confidence in victory was never so great as it was
immediately after the sinking of the _Lusitania_.  That marked the
crisis in the future trend of the war.

Up to this time the people had heard very little about the fight
between the Navy and the Foreign Office.  But gradually rumours spread.
While there was previously no outlet for public opinion, the
_Lusitania_ issue was debated more extensively and with more vigour
than the White Books which were published to explain the causes of the
war.

With the universal feeling of self confidence, it was but natural that
the people should side with the Navy in demanding an unrestricted
submarine warfare.  When Admiral von Bachmann gave the order to First
Naval Lieutenant Otto Steinbrink to sink the Lusitania, he knew the
Navy was ready to defy the United States or any other country which
might object.  He knew, too, that von Tirpitz was very close to the
Kaiser and could count upon the Kaiser's support in whatever he did.
The Navy believed the torpedoing of the Lusitania would so frighten and
terrorise the world that neutral shipping would become timid and enemy
peoples would be impressed by Germany's might on the seas.  Ambassador
von Bernstorff had been ordered by the Foreign Office to put notices in
the American papers warning Americans off these ships.  The Chancellor
and Secretary von Jagow knew there was no way to stop the Admiralty,
and they wanted to avoid, if possible, the loss of American lives.

The storm of indignation which encircled the globe when reports were
printed that over a thousand people lost their lives on the Lusitania,
found a sympathetic echo in the Berlin Foreign Office.  "Another navy
blunder," the officials said--confidentially.  Foreign Office officials
tried to conceal their distress because the officials knew the only
thing they could do now was to make preparation for an apology and try
to excuse in the best possible way what the navy had done.  On the 17th
of May like a thunderbolt from a clear sky came President Wilson's
first Lusitania note.


"Recalling the humane and enlightened attitude hitherto assumed by the
Imperial German Government in matters of international life,
particularly with regard to the freedom of the seas; having learned to
recognise German views and German influence in the field of
international obligations as always engaged upon the side of justice
and humanity;" the note read, "and having understood the instructions
of the Imperial German Government to its naval commanders to be upon
the same plane of human action as those prescribed by the naval codes
of other nations, the government of the United States is loath to
believe--it cannot now bring itself to believe--that these acts so
absolutely contrary to the rules and practices and spirit of modern
warfare could have the countenance or sanction of that great
government. . . .  Manifestly submarines cannot be used against
merchantmen as the last few weeks have shown without an inevitable
violation of many sacred principles of justice and humanity.  American
citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their ships and
in travelling wherever their legitimate business calls them upon the
high seas, and exercise those rights in what should be a well justified
confidence that their lives will not be endangered by acts done in
clear violation of universally acknowledged international obligations
and certainly in the confidence that their own government will sustain
them in the exercise of their rights."


And then the note which Mr. Gerard handed von Jagow concluded with
these words:


"It (The United States) confidently expects therefore that the Imperial
German Government will disavow the acts of which the United States
complains, that they will make reparation as far as reparation is
possible for injuries which are without measure, and that they will
take immediate steps to prevent the recurrence of anything so obviously
subversive of the principles of warfare, for which the Imperial German
Government in the past so wisely and so firmly contended.  The
Government and people of the United States look to the Imperial German
Government for just, prompt and enlightened action in this vital
matter. . . .  Expressions of regret and offers of reparation in the
case of neutral ships sunk by mistake, while they may satisfy
international obligations if no loss of life results, cannot justify or
excuse a practice, the natural necessary effect of which is to subject
neutral nations or neutral persons to new and immeasurable risks.  The
Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United
States to omit any word, or any act, necessary to the performance of
its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its
citizens, and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment."


Never in history had a neutral nation indicted another as the United
States did Germany in its first _Lusitania_ note without immediately
going to war.  Because the Foreign Office feared the reaction it might
have upon the people, the newspapers were not permitted to publish the
text until the press bureaus of the Navy and the Foreign Office had
mobilised the editorial writers and planned a publicity campaign to
follow the note's publication.  But the Navy and Foreign Office could
not agree on what should be done.  The Navy wanted to ignore Wilson.
Naval officers laughed at President Wilson's impertinence and, when the
Foreign Office sent to the Admiralty for all data in possession of the
Navy Department regarding the sinking of the _Lusitania_ the Navy
refused to acknowledge the request.

During this time I was in constant touch with the Foreign Office and
the American Embassy.  Frequently I went to the Navy Department but was
always told they had nothing to say.  When it appeared, however, that
there might he a break in diplomatic relations over the Lusitania the
Kaiser called the Chancellor to Great Headquarters for a conference.
Meanwhile Germany delayed her reply to the American note because the
Navy and Foreign Office were still at loggerheads.  On the 31st of May
von Jagow permitted me to quote him in an interview saying:


"America can hardly expect us to give up any means at our disposal to
fight our enemy.  It is a principle with us to defend ourselves in
every possible way.  I am sure that Americans will be reasonable enough
to believe that our two countries cannot discuss the _Lusitania_ matter
_until both have the same basis of facts_."


The American people were demanding an answer from Germany and because
the two branches of the Government could not agree on what should be
said von Jagow had to do something to gain time.  Germany, therefore,
submitted in her reply of the 28th of May certain facts about the
_Lusitania_ for the consideration of the American Government saying
that Germany reserved final statements of its position with regard "to
the demands made in connection with the sinking of the _Lusitania_
until a reply was received from the American Government."  After the
note was despatched the chasm between the Navy and Foreign Office was
wider than ever.  Ambassador Gerard, who went to the Foreign Office
daily, to try to convince the officials that they were antagonising the
whole world by their attitude on the _Lusitania_ question, returned to
the Embassy one day after a conference with Zimmermann and began to
prepare a scrap book of cartoons and clippings from American
newspapers.  Two secretaries were put to work pasting the comments,
interviews, editorials and cartoons reflecting American opinion in the
scrap book.  Although the German Foreign Office had a big press
department its efforts were devoted more to furnishing the outside
world with German views than with collecting outside opinions for the
information of the German Government.  Believing that this information
would be of immeasurable benefit to the German diplomats in sounding
the depths of public sentiment in America, Gerard delivered the book to
von Jagow personally.

In the meantime numerous conferences were held at Great Headquarters.
Financiers, business men and diplomats who wanted to keep peace with
America sided with the Foreign Office.  Every anti-American influence
in the Central Powers joined forces with the Navy.  The _Lusitania_
note was printed and the public discussion which resulted was greater
than that which followed the first declarations of war in August, 1914.
The people, who before had accepted everything their Government said,
began to think for themselves.  One heard almost as much criticism as
praise of the _Lusitania_ incident.  For the first time the quarrel,
which had been nourished between the Foreign Office and the Admiralty,
became nation-wide and forces throughout Germany lined up with one side
or the other.  But the Navy Department was the cleverer of the two.
The press bureau sent out inspired stories that the submarines were
causing England a loss of a million dollars a week.  They said that
every week the Admiralty was launching two U-boats.  It was stated that
reliable reports to Admiral von Tirpitz proved the high toll taken by
the submarines in two weeks had struck terror to the hearts of English
ship-owners.  The newspapers printed under great headlines: "Toll of
Our Tireless U-Boats," the names and tonnage of ships lost.  The press
bureau pointed to the rise in food prices in Great Britain and France.
The public was made to feel a personal pride in submarine exploits.
And at the same time the Navy editorial writers brought up the old
issue of American arms and ammunition to further embitter the people.

Thus the first note which President Wilson wrote in the _Lusitania_
case not only brought the quarrel between the Navy and Foreign Office
to a climax but it gave the German people the first opportunity they
had had seriously to discuss questions of policy and right.

In the Rhine Valley, where the ammunition interests dominated every
phase of life, the Navy found its staunchest supporters.  In
educational circles, in shipping centres, such as Hamburg and Bremen,
in the financial districts of Frankfort and Berlin, the Foreign Office
received its support.  Press and Reichstag were divided.  Supporting
the Foreign Office were the _Lokal Anzeiger_, the _Berliner Tageblatt_,
the _Cologne Gazette_, the _Frankforter Zeitung_, the _Hamburger
Fremdemblatt_, and the _Vorwärts_.

The Navy had the support of Count Reventlow, Naval Critic of the
_Deutsche Tageszeitung_, the _Täglische Rundscha_, the _Vossische
Zeitung_, the _Morgen Post_, the _B. Z. Am Mittag_, the _Münchener
Neueste Nachrichten_, the _Rheinische Westfälische Zeitung_, and the
leading Catholic organ, the _Koelnische Volks-Zeitung_.

Government officials were also divided.  Chancellor von
Bethmann-Hollweg led the party which demanded an agreement with the
United States.  He was supported by von Jagow, Zimmermann, Dr. Karl
Helfferich, Secretary of the Treasury; Dr. Solf, the Colonial Minister;
Dr. Siegfried Heckscher, Vice Chairman of the Reichstag Committee on
Foreign Relations; and Philip Scheidemann, leader of the majority of
the Socialists in the Reichstag.

The opposition was led by Grand Admiral von Tirpitz.  He was supported
by General von Falkenhayn, Field Marshal von Mackensen and all army
generals; Admirals von Pohl and von Bachmann; Major Bassermann, leader
of the National Liberal Party in the Reichstag; Dr. Gustav Stressemann,
member of the Reichstag and Director of the North German Lloyd
Steamship Company; and von Heydebrand, the so-called "Uncrowned King of
Prussia," because of his control of the Prussian Diet.

With these forces against each other the internal fight continued more
bitter than ever.  President Wilson kept insisting upon definite
promises from Germany but the Admiralty still had the upper hand.
There was nothing for the Foreign Office to do except to make the best
possible excuses and depend upon Wilson's patience to give them time to
get into the saddle.  The Navy Department, however, was so confident
that it had the Kaiser's support in everything it did, that one of the
submarines was instructed to sink the _Arabic_.

President Wilson's note in the _Arabic_ case again brought the
submarine dispute within Germany to a head.  Conferences were again
held at Great Headquarters.  The Chancellor, von Jagow, Helfferich, von
Tirpitz and other leaders were summoned by the Kaiser.  On the 28th of
August I succeeded in sending by courier to The Hague the following
despatch:


"With the support of the Kaiser, the German Chancellor, Dr. von
Bethmann-Hollweg, is expected to win the fight he is now making for a
modification of Germany's submarine warfare that will forever settle
the difficulties with America over the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and
the _Arabic_.  Both the Chancellor and von Jagow are most anxious to
end at once and for all time the controversies with Washington desiring
America's friendship."  (Published in the Chicago _Tribune_, August
29th, 1915.)


"The Marine Department, headed by von Tirpitz, creator of the submarine
policy, will oppose any disavowal of the action of German's submarines.
But the Kaiser is expected to approve the steps the Chancellor and
Foreign Secretary contemplate taking, swinging the balance in favour of
von Bethmann-Hollweg's contention that ships in the future must be
warned before they are torpedoed."


One day I went to the Foreign Office and told one of the officials I
believed that if the American people knew what a difficult time the
Foreign Office was having in trying to win out over the Admiralty that
public opinion in the United States might be mobilised to help the
Foreign Office against the Admiralty.  I took with me a brief despatch
which I asked him to pass.  He censored it with the understanding that
I would never disclose his name in case the despatch was read in
Germany.

A few days later the Manchester, England, _Guardian_ arrived containing
my article, headed as follows:


  HOLLWEG'S CHANGE OF TUNE

  Respect for Scraps of Paper

  LAW AT SEA

  Insists on Warning by Submarines

  TIRPITZ PARTY BEATEN

  Kaiser Expected to Approve New Policy

  "New York, Sunday.

"Cables from Mr. Carl W. Ackerman, Berlin correspondent of the United
Press published here, indicate that the real crisis following the
_Arabic_ is in Germany, not America.  He writes:

"The Berlin Foreign Office is unalterably opposed to submarine
activity, such as evidenced by the _Arabic_ affair, and it was on the
initiative of this Government department that immediate steps were
taken with Mr. Gerard the American Ambassador.  The nature of these
negotiations is still unknown to the German public.

"It is stated on the highest authority that Herr von Jagow, Secretary
of Foreign Affairs, and Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg are unanimous
in their anxiety to settle American difficulties once and for all,
retaining the friendship of the United States in any event.

"The Kaiser is expected to approve the course suggested by the Imperial
Chancellor, despite open opposition to any disavowal of submarine
activities which constantly emanates from the German Admiralty.

"The Chancellor is extremely desirous of placing Germany on record as
an observer of international law as regards sea warfare, and in this
case will win his demand that submarines in the future shall thoroughly
warn enemy ships before firing their torpedoes or shells.

"There is considerable discussion in official circles as to whether the
Chancellor's steps create a precedent, but it is agreed that it will
probably close all complications with America, including the
_Lusitania_ case, which remained unsettled following President Wilson's
last note to Germany.

"Thus if the United States approves the present attitude of the
Chancellor this step will aid in clearing the entire situation and will
materially strengthen the policy of von Bethmann-Hollweg and von Jagow,
which is a deep desire for peace with America."


After this despatch was printed I was called to the home of Fran von
Schroeder, the American-born wife of one of the Intelligence Office of
the General Staff.  Captain Vanselow, Chief of the Admiralty
Intelligence Department, was there and had brought with him the
Manchester _Guardian_.  He asked me where I got the information and who
had passed the despatch.  He said the Navy was up in arms and had
issued orders to the General Telegraph Office that, inasmuch as Germany
was under martial law, no telegrams were to be passed containing the
words submarines, navy, admiralty or marine or any officers of the Navy
without having them referred to the Admiralty for a second censoring.
This order practically nullified the censorship powers of the Foreign
Office.  I saw that the Navy Department was again in the saddle and
that the efforts of the Chancellor to maintain peace might not be
successful after all.  But the conferences at Great Headquarters lasted
longer than any one expected.  The first news we received of what had
taken place was that Secretary von Jagow had informed the Kaiser he
would resign before he would do anything which might cause trouble with
the United States.

Germany was split wide open by the submarine issue.  For a while it
looked as if the only possible adjustment would be either for von
Tirpitz to go and his policies with him, or for von Jagow and the
Chancellor to go with the corresponding danger of a rupture with
America.  But von Tirpitz would not resign.  He left Great Headquarters
for Berlin and intimated to his friends that he was going to run the
Navy to suit himself.  But the Chancellor who had the support of the
big shipping interests and the financiers, saw a possible means of
checkmating von Tirpitz by forcing Admiral von Pohl to resign as Chief
of the Admiralty Staff.  They finally persuaded the Kaiser to accept
his resignation and appoint Admiral von Holtzendorff as his successor.
Von Holtzendorff's brother was a director of the Hamburg-American Line
and an intimate friend of A. Ballin, the General Director of the
company.  The Chancellor believed that by having a friend of his as
Chief of the Admiralty Staff, no orders would be issued to submarine
commanders contrary to the wishes of the Chancellor, because according
to the rules of the German Navy Department the Chief of the Admiralty
Staff must approve all naval plans and sign all orders to fleet
commanders.

Throughout this time the one thing which frightened the Foreign Office
was the fear that President Wilson might break off diplomatic relations
before the Foreign Office had an opportunity to settle the differences
with the United States.  For this reason Ambassador Gerard was kept
advised by Wilhelmstrasse of the internal developments in Germany and
asked to report them fully but confidentially to Wilson.  So, during
this crisis when Americans were demanding a break with Germany because
of Germany's continued defiance of President Wilson's notes, the
American Government knew that if the Foreign Office was given more time
it had a good chance of succeeding in cleaning house.  A rupture at
that time would have destroyed all the efforts of the Foreign Office to
keep the German military machine within bounds.  It would have
over-thrown von Jagow and von Bethmann-Hollweg and put in von Tirpitz
as Chancellor and von Heydebrand, the reactionary leader of the
Prussian Diet, as Secretary of State.  At that time, all the democratic
forces of Germany were lined up with the Foreign Office.  The people
who blushed for Belgium, the financiers who were losing money, the
shipping interests whose tonnage was locked in belligerent or neutral
harbours, the Socialists and people who were anxious and praying for
peace, were looking to the Foreign Office and to Washington to avoid a
break.




CHAPTER IV

THE HATE CAMPAIGN AGAINST AMERICA

While Germany was professing her friendship for the United States in
every note written following the sinking of the _Lusitania_, the
government was secretly preparing the nation for a break in diplomatic
relations, or for war, in the event of a rupture.  German officials
realised that unless the people were made to suspect Mr. Wilson and his
motives, unless they were made to resent the shipment of arms and
ammunition to the Allies, there would be a division in public opinion
and the government would not be able to count upon the united support
of the people.  Because the government does the thinking for the people
it has to tell them what to think before they have reached the point of
debating an issue themselves.  A war with America or a break in
diplomatic relations in 1915 would not have been an easy matter to
explain, if the people had not been encouraged to hate Wilson.  So
while Germany maintained a propaganda bureau in America to interpret
Germany and to maintain good relations, she started in Germany an
extensive propaganda against Wilson, the American press, the United
States Ambassador and Americans in general.

This step was not necessary in the army because among army officers the
bitterness and hatred of the United States were deeper and more
extensive than the hatred of any other belligerent.  It was hardly ever
possible for the American correspondents to go to the front without
being insulted.  Even the American military attaches, when they went to
the front, had to submit to the insults of army officers.  After the
sinking of the _Arabic_ the six military observers attached to the
American Embassy were invited by the General Staff to go to Russia to
study the military operations of Field Marshal von Mackensen.  They
were escorted by Baron von Maltzahn, former attache of the German
Embassy in Paris.  At Lodz, one of the largest cities in Poland, they
were taken to headquarters.  Von Maltzahn, who knew Mackensen
personally, called at the Field Marshal's offices, reported that he had
escorted six American army officers under orders of the General Staff,
whom he desired to present to the Commander-in-Chief.  Von Mackensen
replied that he did not care to meet the Americans and told von
Maltzahn that the best thing he could do would be to escort the
observers back to Berlin.

As soon as the military attaches reached Berlin and reported this to
Washington they were recalled.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

  BLOOD-TRAFFICKERS

  Cowards, who kill three thousand miles away,
  See the long lines of shrouded forms increase!
  Yours is this work, disguise it as you may;
  But for your greed the world were now at peace.

  Month after month your countless chimneys roar,--
  Slaughter your object, and your motive gain;
  Look at your money,--it is wet with gore
  Nothing can cleanse it from the loathsome stain.

  You, who prolong this hideous hell on earth,
  Making a by-word of your native land,
  Stripped of your wealth, how paltry is your worth!
  See how men shrink from contact with your hand!

  There is pollution in your blood-smeared gold,
  There is corruption in your pact with Death,
  There is dishonor in the lie, oft-told,
  Of your "Humanity"!  'Tis empty breath.

  What shall it profit you to heap on high,
  Makers of orphans! a few millions more,
  When you must face them--those you caused to die,
  And God demands of you to pay your score?

  He is not mocked; His vengeance doth not sleep;
  His cup of wrath He lets you slowly fill;
  What you have sown, that also shall you reap;
  God's law is adamant,--"Thou shalt not kill"!

  Think not to plead:--"I did not act alone,"
  "Custom allows it," and "My dead were few";
  Each hath his quota; yonder are your own!
  See how their fleshless fingers point at you, at you!

  You, to whose vaults this wholesale murder yields
  Mere needless increments of ghoulish gain,
  Count up your corpses on these blood-soaked fields!
  Hear . . . till your death . . . your victims' moans of pain!

  Then, when at night you, sleepless, fear to pray,
  Watch the thick, crimson stream draw near your bed,
  And shriek with horror, till the dawn of day
  Shall find you raving at your heaps of dead!

  JOHN L. STODDARD.


  The League of Truth
  Head Offices for Germany:
  Berlin W
  40 Potsdamer Str.

  July 4th, 1916.      Printed by Barthe & Co., Berlin W.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

But this was not the only time von Mackensen, or other army officers,
showed their contempt for the United States.  After the fall of Warsaw
a group of American correspondents were asked to go to the headquarters
of General von Besseler, afterward named Governor General of Poland.
The general received them in the gardens of the Polish castle which he
had seized as his headquarters; shook hands with the Dutch, Danish,
Swedish, Swiss and South American newspaper men, and then, before
turning on his heels to go back to his Polish palace, turned to the
Americans and said:

"As for you gentlemen, the best thing you can do is to tell your
country to stop shipping arms and ammunition."

During General Brusiloff's offensive I was invited together with other
correspondents to go to the Wohlynian battlefields to see how the
Germans had reorganised the Austrian front.  In a little town near the
Stochod River we were invited to dinner by Colonel von Luck.  I sat
opposite the colonel, who was in charge of the reorganisation here.
Throughout the meal he made so many insulting remarks that the officer
who was our escort had to change the trend of the conversation.  Before
he did so the colonel said:

"Tell me, do they insult you in Berlin like this?"

I replied that I seldom encountered such antagonism in Berlin; that it
was chiefly the army which was anti-American.

"Well, that's the difference between the diplomats and the army.  If
the army was running the government we would probably have had war with
America a long time ago," he concluded, smiling sarcastically.

Shortly after the sinking of the _Lusitania_ the naval propaganda
bureau had bronze medals cast and placed on sale at souvenir shops
throughout Germany.  Ambassador Gerard received one day, in exchanging
some money, a fifty mark bill, with the words stamped in purple ink
across the face:

"God punish England and America."  For some weeks this rubber stamp was
used very effectively.

The Navy Department realised, too, that another way to attack America
and especially Americans in Berlin, was to arouse the suspicion that
every one who spoke English was an enemy.  The result was that most
Americans had to be exceedingly careful not to talk aloud in public
places.  The American correspondents were even warned at the General
Staff not to speak English at the front.  Some of the correspondents
who did not speak German were not taken to the battle areas because the
Foreign Office desired to avoid insults.

The year and a half between the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the
severance of diplomatic relations was a period of terror for most
Americans in Germany.  Only those who were so sympathetic with Germany
that they were anti-American found it pleasant to live there.  One day
one of the American girls employed in the confidential file room of the
American Embassy was slapped in the face until she cried, by a German
in civilian clothes, because she was speaking English in the subway.
At another time the wife of a prominent American business man was spit
upon and chased out of a public bus because she was speaking English.
Then a group of women chased her down the street.  Another American
woman was stabbed by a soldier when she was walking on Friedrichstrasse
with a friend because she was speaking English.  When the State
Department instructed Ambassador Gerard to bring the matter to the
attention of the Foreign Office and to demand an apology Wilhelmstrasse
referred the matter to the General Staff for investigation.  The
soldier was arrested and secretly examined.  After many weeks had
elapsed the Foreign Office explained that the man who had stabbed the
woman was really not a soldier but a red cross worker.  It was
explained that he had been wounded and was not responsible for what he
did.  The testimony of the woman, however, and of other witnesses,
showed that the man at the time he attacked the American was dressed in
a soldier's uniform, which is grey, and which could not he mistaken for
the black uniform of a red cross worker.

It was often said in Berlin, "Germany hates England, fights France,
fears Russia but loathes America."  No one, not even American
officials, questioned it.

The hate campaign was bearing fruit.

In January, 1916, there appeared in Berlin a publication called _Light
and Truth_.  It was a twelve-page circular in English and German
attacking President Wilson and the United States.  Copies were sent by
mail to all Americans and to hundreds of thousands of Germans.  It was
edited and distributed by "The League of Truth."  It was the most
sensational document printed in Germany since the beginning of the war
against a power with which Germany was supposed to be at peace.  Page 6
contained two illustrations under the legend:

    WILSON AND HIS PRESS IS NOT AMERICA


Underneath was this paragraph:


"An American Demonstration--On the 27th of January, the birthday of the
German Emperor, an immense laurel wreath decorated with the German and
American flags was placed by Americans at the foot of the monument to
Frederick the Great (in Berlin).  The American flag was enshrouded in
black crape.  Frederick the Great was the first to recognise the
independence of the young Republic, after it had won its freedom from
the yoke of England, at the price of its very heart's blood through
years of struggle.  His successor, Wilhelm II, receives the gratitude
of America in the form of hypocritical phrases and war supplies to his
mortal enemy."

[Illustration: First page of the magazine "Light and Truth"]

One photograph was of the wreath itself.  The other showed a group of
thirty-six people, mostly boys, standing in front of the statue after
the wreath had been placed.

When Ambassador Gerard learned about the "demonstration" he went to the
statue and from there immediately to the Foreign Office, where he saw
Secretary of State von Jagow.  Gerard demanded instantaneous removal of
the wreath.  Von Jagow promised an "investigation."  Gerard meanwhile
began a personal investigation of the _League of Truth_, which had
purchased and placed the insult there.

Days, weeks, even months passed.  Von Jagow still refused to have the
wreath removed.  Finally Gerard went to the Foreign Office and told von
Jagow that unless it was taken away that day he would get it himself
and send it by courier to Washington.  That evening Gerard walked to
the statue.  The wreath had disappeared.

Week by week the league continued its propaganda.  Gerard continued his
investigation.

July 4, 1916, another circular was scattered broadcast.  On page 1 was
a large black cross.  Pages 2 and 3, the inside, contained a reprint of
the "Declaration of Independence," with the imprint across the face of
a bloody hand.  Enclosed in a heavy black border on page 4 were nine
verses by John L. Stoddard, the lecturer, entitled "Blood-Traffickers."
(Printed in the beginning of this chapter.)

The league made an especial appeal to the "German-Americans."  Germany,
as was pointed out in a previous article, counts upon some
German-Americans as her allies.  One day Ambassador Gerard received a
circular entitled "An Appeal to All Friends of Truth."  The same was
sent in German and English to a mailing list of many hundred thousands.
Excerpts from this read:


"If any one is called upon to raise his voice in foreign lands for the
cause of truth, it is the foreigner who was able to witness the
unanimous rising of the German people at the outbreak of war, and their
attitude during its continuance.  _This applies especially to the
German-American_.

"_As a citizen of two continents, in proportion as his character has
remained true to German principles, he finds both here and there the
right word to say. . . ._

"Numberless millions of men are forced to look upon a loathsome
spectacle.  _It is that of certain individuals in America; to whom a
great nation has temporarily intrusted its weal and woe_, supporting a
few multi-millionaires and their dependents, setting at
naught--unpunished--the revered document of the Fourth of July, 1776,
and daring to _barter away the birthright of the white race_. . . .  We
want to see whether the united voices of Germans and foreigners have
not more weight than the hired writers of editorials in the newspapers;
and whether the words of men who are independent will not render it
impossible for a subsidised press to continue its destructive work."

Gerard's investigation showed that a group of German-Americans in
Berlin were financing the _League of Truth_; that a man named William
F. Marten, who posed as an American, was the head, and that the editors
and writers of the publication _Light and Truth_ were being assisted by
the Foreign Office Press Bureau and protected by the General Staff.  An
American dentist in Berlin, Dr. Charles Mueller, was chairman of the
league.  Mrs. Annie Neumann-Hofer, the American-born wife of
Neumann-Hofer, of the Reichstag, was secretary.  Gerard reported other
names to the State Department, and asked authority to take away the
passports of Americans who were assisting the German government in this
propaganda.

The "league" heard about the Ambassador's efforts, and announced that a
"Big Bertha" issue would be published exposing Gerard.  For several
months the propagandists worked to collect data.  One day Gerard
decided to go to the league's offices and look at the people who were
directing it.  In the course of his remarks the Ambassador said that if
the Foreign Office didn't do something to suppress the league
immediately, he would burn down the place.  The next day Marten and his
co-workers went to the Royal Administration of the Superior Court,
No. 1, in Berlin, and through his attorney lodged a criminal charge of
"threat of arson" against the Ambassador.

The next day Germany was flooded with letters from "The League of
Truth," saying:


"The undersigned committee of the League of Truth to their deepest
regret felt compelled to inform the members that Ambassador Gerard had
become involved in a criminal charge involving threat of arson. . . .
All American citizens are now asked whether an Ambassador who acts so
undignified at the moment of a formal threat of a wholly unnecessary
war, is to be considered worthy further to represent a country like the
United States."


Were it not for the fact that at this time President Wilson was trying
to impress upon Germany the seriousness of her continued disregard of
American and neutral lives on the high seas, the whole thing would have
been too absurd to notice.  But Germany wanted to create the impression
among her people that President Wilson was not speaking for America,
and that the Ambassador was too insignificant to notice.

After this incident Gerard called upon von Jagow again and demanded the
immediate suppression of the third number of _Light and Truth_.  Before
von Jagow consented Mrs. Neumann-Hofer turned upon her former
propagandists and confessed.  I believe her confession is in the State
Department, but this is what she told me:


"Marten is a German and has never been called to the army because the
General Staff has delegated him to direct this anti-American
propaganda.  [We were talking at the Embassy the day before the
Ambassador left.]  Marten is supported by some very high officials.  He
has letters of congratulations from the Chancellor, General von
Falkenhayn, Count Zeppelin and others for one of his propaganda books
entitled 'German Barbarians.'  I think the Crown Prince is one of his
backers, but I have never been able to prove it."


On July 4th, 1915, the League of Truth issued what it called "A New
Declaration of Independence."  This was circulated in German and
English throughout the country.  It was as follows:

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

A NEW DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Seven score years have elapsed since those great words were forged that
welded us into a nation upon many fiery battlefields.

In that day the strong voices of strong men rang across the world,
their molten words flamed with light and their arms broke the visible
chains of an intolerable bondage.

But now in the red reflex of the glare cast from the battlefields of
Europe, the invisible manacles that have been cunningly laid upon our
freedom have become shamefully apparent.  They rattle in the ears of
the world.

Our liberty has vanished once again.  Yet our ancient enemy remains
enthroned in high places within our land and in insolent ships before
our gates.  We have not only become Colonials once again, but
subjects,--for true subjects are known by the measure of their willing
subjection.

We Americans in the heart of this heroic nation now struggling for all
that we ourselves hold dear, but against odds such as we were never
forced to face, perceive this truth with a disheartening but unclouded
vision.

Far from home we would to-day celebrate, as usual, the birthday of our
land.  But with heavy hearts we see that this would now seem like a
hollow mockery of something solemn and immemorial.  It were more in
keeping with reality that we burnt incense upon the altars of the
British Baal.

Independence Day without Independence!  The liberty of the seas denied
us for the peaceful Commerce of our entire land and granted us only for
the murderous trafficking of a few men!

Independence Day has dawned for us in alien yet friendly land.  It has
brought to us at least the independence of our minds.

Free from the abominations of the most dastardly campaign of falsehood
that ever disgraced those who began and those who believe it, we have
stripped ourselves of the rags of many perilous illusions.  We see
America as a whole, and we see it with a fatal and terrible clarity.

We see that once again our liberties of thought, of speech, of
intercourse, of trade, are threatened, nay, already seized by the one
ancient enemy that can never be our friend.

With humiliation we behold our principles, our sense of justice trodden
underfoot.  We see the wild straining of the felon arms that would drag
our land into the abyss of the giant Conspiracy and Crime.

We see the foul alliance of gold, murderous iron and debauched paper to
which we have been sold.

We know that our pretenses and ambitions as heralds of peace are
monstrous, so long as we profit through war and human agony.

We see these rivers of blood that have their source in our mills of
slaughter.

The Day of Independence has dawned.

It is a solemn and momentous hour for America,

It is a day on which our people must speak with clear and inexorable
voice, or sit silent in shame.

It is the great hour in which we dare not celebrate our first
Declaration of Independence, because the time has come when we must
proclaim a new one over the corpse of that which has perished.

Berlin, July 4th, 1915.

AN ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA DOCUMENT

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

The League of Truth, however, was but one branch of the intricate
propaganda system.  While it was financed almost entirely by
German-Americans living in Germany who retained their American
passports to keep themselves, or their children, out of the army, all
publications for this bureau were approved by the Foreign Office
censors.  Germans, connected with the organisation, were under
direction of the General Staff or Navy.

In order to have the propaganda really successful some seeds of
discontent had to be sown in the United States, in South America and
Mexico as well as in Spain and other European neutral countries.  For
this outside propaganda, money and an organisation were needed.  The
Krupp ammunition interests supplied the money and the Foreign Office
the organisation.

For nearly two years the American press regularly printed despatches
from the Overseas News Agency.   Some believed they were "official."
This was only half true.  The Krupps had been financing this news
association.  The government had given its support and the two wireless
towers at Sayville, Long Island, and Tuckerton, N. J., were used as
"footholds" on American soil.  These stations were just as much a part
of the Krupp works as the factories at Essen or the shipyards of Kiel.
They were to disseminate the Krupp-fed, Krupp-owned, Krupp-controlled
news, of the Overseas News Agency.

When the Overseas despatches first reached the United States the
newspapers printed them in a spirit of fairness.  They gave the other
side, and in the beginning they were more or less accurate.  But when
international relations between the two countries became critical the
news began to be distorted in Berlin.  At each crisis, as at the time
of the sinking of the _Arabic_, the _Ancona_, the _Sussex_ and other
ships, the German censorship prevented the American correspondents from
sending the news as they gathered it in Germany and substituted "news"
which the Krupp interests and the Imperial Foreign Office desired the
American people to believe.  December, 1916, when the German General
Staff began to plan for an unrestricted submarine warfare, especial use
was made of the "Overseas News Agency" to work up sentiment here
against President Wilson.  Desperate efforts were made to keep the
United States from breaking diplomatic relations.  In December and
January last records of the news despatches in the American newspapers
from Berlin show that the Overseas agency was more active than all
American correspondents in Berlin.  Secretary of State Zimmermann,
Under-secretaries von dem Busche and von Stumm gave frequent interviews
to the so-called "representatives of the Overseas News Agency."  It was
all part of a specific Krupp plan, supported by the Hamburg-American
and the North German Lloyd steamship companies, to divide opinion in
the United States so that President Wilson would not be supported if he
broke diplomatic relations.

Germany, as I have pointed out, has been conducting a two-faced
propaganda.  While working in the United States through her agents and
reservists to create the impression that Germany was friendly, the
Government laboured to prepare the German people for war.  The policy
was to make the American people believe Germany would never do anything
to bring the United States into the war, but to convince the German
public that America was not neutral and that President Wilson was
scheming against the German race.  Germany was Janus-headed.  Head
No. 1 said:


"America, you are a great nation.  We want your friendship and
neutrality.  We have close business and blood relations, and these
should not be broken.  Germany is not the barbaric nation her enemies
picture her."


Head No. 2, turned toward the German people, said:


"Germans, President Wilson is anti-German.  He wants to prevent us from
starting an unlimited submarine war.  America has never been neutral,
because Washington permits the ammunition factories to supply the
Allies.  These factories are killing your relatives.  We have millions
of German-Americans who will support us.  It will not be long until
Mexico will declare war on the United States, and our reservists will
fight for Mexico.  Don't be afraid if Wilson breaks diplomatic
relations."


The German press invasion of America began at the beginning of the war.
Dr. Dernburg was the first envoy.  He was sent to New York by the same
Foreign Office officials and the same Krupp interests which control the
Overseas agency.  Having failed here, he returned to Berlin.  There was
only one thing to save German propaganda in America.  That was to
mobolise the Sayville and Tuckerton wireless stations, and Germany did
it immediately.

At the beginning of the war, when the British censors refused the
American correspondents in Germany the right of telegraphing to the
United States via England, the Berlin Government granted permission to
the United Press, The Associated Press and the _Chicago Daily News_ to
send wireless news via Sayville.  At first this news was edited by the
correspondents of these associations and newspapers in Berlin.  Later,
when the individual correspondents began to demand more space on the
wireless, the news sent jointly to these papers was cut down.  This
unofficial league of American papers was called the "War-Union."  The
news which this union sent was German, but it was written by trained
American writers.  When the Government saw the value of this service to
the United States it began to send wireless news of its own.  Then the
Krupp interests appeared, and the Overseas News Agency was organised.
At that moment the Krupp invasion of the United States began and
contributed 800,000 marks annually to this branch of propaganda alone.

Dr. Hammann, for ten years chief of the Berlin Foreign Office
propaganda department, was selected as president of the Overseas News
Agency.  The Krupp interests, which had been subscribing 400,000 marks
annually to this agency, subscribed the same amount to the reorganised
company.  Then, believing that another agency could be organised,
subscribed 400,000 marks more to the Transocean News Agency.  Because
there was so much bitterness and rivalry between the officials of the
two concerns, the Government stepped in and informed the Overseas News
Agency that it could send only "political news," while the Trans-ocean
was authorised to send "economic and social news" via Sayville and
Tuckerton.

This news, however, was not solely for the United States.  Krupp's eyes
were on Mexico and South America, so agents were appointed in
Washington and New York to send the Krupp-bred wireless news from New
York by cable to South America and Mexico.  Obviously the same news
which was sent to the United States could not be telegraphed to Mexico
and South America, because Germany had a different policy toward these
countries.  The United States was on record against an unlimited
submarine warfare.  Mexico and South America were not.  Brazil, which
has a big German population, was considered an un-annexed German
colony.  News to Brazil, therefore, had to be coloured differently than
news to New York.  Some of the colouring was done in Berlin; some in
New York by Krupp's agents here.  As a result of Germany's anti-United
States propaganda in South America and Mexico, these countries did not
follow President Wilson when he broke diplomatic relations with Berlin.
While public sentiment might have been against Germany, it was, to a
certain degree, antagonistic to the United States.

Obviously, Germany had to have friends in this country to assist her,
or what was being done would be traced too directly to the German
Government.  So Germany financed willing German-Americans in their
propaganda schemes.  And because no German could cross the ocean except
with a falsified neutral passport, Germany had to depend upon
German-Americans with American passports to bring information over.
These German-Americans, co-operating with some of the Americans in
Berlin, kept informing the Foreign Office, the army and navy as well as
influential Reichstag members that the real power behind the government
over here was not the press and public opinion but the nine million
Americans who were directly or indirectly related to Germany.  During
this time the Government felt so sure that it could rely upon the
so-called German-Americans that the Government considered them as a
German asset whenever there was a submarine crisis.

When Henry Morgenthau, former American Ambassador to Turkey, passed
through Berlin, en route to the United States, he conferred with
Zimmermann, who was then Under Secretary of State.  During the course
of one of their conversations Zimmermann said the United States would
never go to war with Germany, "because the German-Americans would
revolt."  That was one of Zimmermann's hobbies.  Zimmermann told other
American officials and foreign correspondents that President Wilson
would not be able to bring the United States to the brink of war,
because the "German-Americans were too powerful."

But Zimmermann was not making these statements upon his own authority.
He was being kept minutely advised about conditions here through the
German spy system and by German-American envoys, who came to Berlin to
report on progress the German-Americans were making here in politics
and in Congress.

Zimmermann was so "dead sure" he was right in expecting a large portion
of Americans to be disloyal that one time during a conversation with
Ambassador Gerard he said that he believed Wilson was only bluffing in
his submarine notes.  When Zimmermann was Under Secretary of State I
used to see him very often.  His conversation would contain questions
like these:

"Well, how is your English President?  Why doesn't your President do
something against England?"

Zimmermann was always in close touch with the work of Captains von
Papen and Boy-Ed when they were in this country.  He was one of the
chief supports of the little group of intriguers in Berlin who directed
German propaganda here.  Zimmermann was the man who kept Baron Mumm von
Schwarzenstein, former Ambassador to Tokyo, in the Foreign Office in
Berlin as chief of foreign propaganda and intrigue in America and
China.  Mumm had been here as Minister Extra-ordinary several years ago
and knew how Germany's methods could be used to the best purpose,
namely, to divide American sentiment.  Then, when Zimmermann succeeded
Jagow he ousted Mumm because Mumm had become unpopular with higher
Government authorities.

One day in Berlin, just before the recall of the former German military
and naval attaches in Washington, I asked Zimmermann whether Germany
sanctioned what these men had been doing.  He replied that Germany
approved everything they had done "because they had done nothing more
than try to keep America out of the war; to prevent American goods
reaching the Allies and to persuade Germans and those of German descent
not to work in ammunition factories."  The same week I overheard in a
Berlin cafe two reserve naval officers discuss plans for destroying
Allied ships sailing from American ports.  One of these men was an
escaped officer of an interned liner at Newport News.  He had escaped
to Germany by way of Italy.  That afternoon when I saw Ambassador
Gerard I told him of the conversation of these two men, and also what
Zimmermann had said.  The Ambassador had just received instructions
from Washington about Boy-Ed and von Papen.

Gerard was furious.

"Go tell Zimmermann," he said, "for God's sake to leave America alone.
If he keeps this up he'll drag us into the war.  The United States
won't stand this sort of thing indefinitely."

That evening I went back to the Foreign Office and saw Zimmermann for a
few minutes.  I asked him why it was that Germany, which was at peace
with the United States, was doing everything within her power to make
war.

"Why, Germany is not doing anything to make you go to war," he replied.
"Your President seems to want war.  Germany is not responsible for what
the German-Americans are doing.  They are your citizens, not ours.
Germany must not be held responsible for what those people do."

Had it not been for the fact that the American Government was fully
advised about Zimmermann's intrigues in the United States this remark
might be accepted on its face.  The United States knew that Germany was
having direct negotiations with German-Americans in the United States.
Men came to Germany with letters of introduction from leading
German-Americans here, with the expressed purpose of trying to get
Germany to stop its propaganda here.  What they did do was to assure
Germany that the German-Americans would never permit the United States
to be drawn into the war.  Because of their high recommendations from
Germans here some of them had audiences with the Kaiser.

Germany had been supporting financially some Americans, as the State
Department has proof of checks which have been given to American
citizens for propaganda and spy work.

I know personally of one instance where General Director Heinicken, of
the North German-Lloyd, gave an American in Berlin $1,000 for his
reports on American conditions.  The name cannot be mentioned because
there are no records to prove the transaction, although the man
receiving this money came to me and asked me to transmit $250 to his
mother through the United Press office.  I refused.

When Zimmermann began to realise that Germany's threatening propaganda
in the United States and Germany's plots against American property were
not succeeding in frightening the United States away from war, he began
to look forward to the event of war.  He saw, as most Germans did, that
it would be a long time before the United States could get forces to
Europe in a sufficient number to have a decisive effect upon the war.
He began to plan with the General Staff and the Navy to league Mexico
against America for two purposes.  One, Germany figured that a war with
Mexico would keep the United States army and navy busy over here.
Further, Zimmermann often said to callers that if the United States
went to war with Mexico it would not be possible for American factories
to send so much ammunition and so many supplies to the Allies.

German eyes turned to Mexico.  As soon as President Wilson recognised
Carranza as President, Germany followed with a formal recognition.
Zubaran Capmany, who had been Mexican representative in Washington, was
sent to Berlin as Carranza's Minister.  Immediately upon his arrival
Zimmermann began negotiations with him.  Reports of the negotiations
were sent to Washington.  The State Department was warned that unless
the United States solved the "Mexican problem" immediately Germany
would prepare to attack us through Mexico.  German reservists were
tipped off to be ready to go to Mexico upon a moment's notice.  Count
von Bernstorff and the German Consuls in the United States were
instructed, and Bernstorff, who was acting as the general director of
German interests in North and South America, was told to inform the
German officials in the Latin-American countries.  At the same time
German financial interests began to purchase banks, farms and mines in
Mexico.




CHAPTER V

THE DOWNFALL OF VON TIRPITZ AND VON FALKENHAYN

After the sinking of the _Arabic_ the German Foreign Office intimated
to the United States Government and to the American correspondents that
methods of submarine warfare would be altered and that ships would be
warned before they were torpedoed.  But when the Navy heard that the
Foreign Office was inclined to listen to Mr. Wilson's protests it made
no attempt to conceal its opposition.  Gottlieb von Jagow, the
Secretary of State, although he was an intimate friend of the Kaiser
and an officer in the German Army, was at heart a pacifist.  Every time
an opportunity presented itself he tried to mobilise the peace forces
of the world to make peace.  From time to time, the German financiers
and propaganda leaders in the United States, as well as influential
Germans in the neutral European countries, sent out peace "feelers."
Von Jagow realised that the sooner peace was made, the better it would
be for Germany and the easier it would be for the Foreign Office to
defeat the military party at home.  He saw that the more victories the
army had and the more victories it could announce to the people the
more lustful the General Staff would be for a war of exhaustion.  Army
leaders have always had more confidence in their ability to defeat the
world than the Foreign Office.  The army looked at the map of Europe
and saw so many hundred thousand square miles of territory under
occupation.  The Foreign Office saw Germany in its relation to the
world.  Von Jagow knew that every new square mile of territory gained
was being paid for, not only by the cost of German blood, but by the
more terrible cost of public opinion and German influence abroad.  But
Germany was under martial law and the Foreign Office had nothing to say
about military plans.  The Foreign Office also had little to say about
naval warfare.  The Navy was building submarines as fast as it could
and the number of ships lost encouraged the people to believe that the
more intensified the submarine war became, the quicker the war would
end in Germany's favour.  So the Navy kept sinking ships and relying
upon the Foreign Office to make excuses and keep America out of the war.

The repeated violations of the pledges made by the Foreign Office to
the United States aroused American public opinion to white heat, and
justly so, because the people here did not understand that the real
submarine crisis was not between President Wilson and Berlin but
between Admiral von Tirpitz and Secretary von Jagow and their
followers.  President Wilson was at the limit of his patience with
Germany and the German people, who were becoming impatient over the
long drawn out proceedings, began to accept the inspired thinking of
the Navy and to believe that Wilson was working for the defeat of
Germany by interfering with submarine activities.

On February 22nd, 1916, in one of my despatches I said: "The patient
attitude toward America displayed during the _Lusitania_ negotiations,
it is plain to-day, no longer exists because of the popular feeling
that America has already hindered so many of Germany's plans."  At that
time it appeared to observers in Berlin that unless President Wilson
could show more patience than the German Government the next submarine
accident would bring about a break in relations.  Commenting on this
despatch the _Indianapolis News_ the next day said:


"In this country the people feel that all the patience has been shown
by their government.  We believe that history will sustain that view.
Almost ten months ago more than 100 American citizens were deliberately
done to death by the German Government, for it is understood that the
submarine commander acted under instructions, and that Germany refuses
to disavow on the ground that the murderous act was the act of the
German Government.  Yet, after all this time, the _Lusitania_ case is
still unsettled.  The administration has, with marvellous
self-restraint, recognised that public opinion in Germany was not
normal, and for that reason it has done everything in its power to
smooth the way to a settlement by making it as easy as possible for the
Imperial Government to meet our just demands.  Indeed, the President
has gone so far as to expose himself to severe criticism at home.  We
believe that he would have been sustained if he had, immediately after
the sinking of the _Lusitania_, broken off diplomatic relations.

"But he has stood out against public opinion in his own country, waited
ten months for an answer, and done everything that he could in honour
due to soften the feeling here.  Yet just on the eve of a settlement
that would have been unsatisfactory to many of our people, Germany
announced the policy that we had condemned as illegal, and that plainly
is illegal.  The trouble in Berlin is an utter inability to see
anything wrong in the attack on the _Lusitania_, or to appreciate the
sense of horror that was stirred in this country by it.  The idea seems
to be that the policy of frightfulness could be extended to the high
seas without in any way shocking the American people.  Nothing has come
from Berlin that indicates any feeling of guilt on the part of the
German people or their Government.

"In the United States, on the contrary, the act is regarded as one of
the blackest crimes of history.  And yet, in spite of that feeling, we
have waited patiently for ten months in the hope that the German
Government would do justice, and clear its name of reproach.  Yet now
we are told that it is Germany that has shown a 'patient attitude,' the
implication or insinuation being that our long suffering administration
has been unreasonable and impatient.  That will not be the verdict of
history, as it is not the verdict of our own people.  We have made
every allowance for the conditions existing in Germany, and have
resolutely refused to take advantage of her distress.  We doubt whether
there is any other government in the world that would have shown the
patience and moderation, under like provocation, that have been shown
by the American Government in these _Lusitania_ negotiations."


I sent the editorial to von Jagow, who returned it the next day with
the brief comment on one of his calling cards: "With many thanks."

About this time Count Reventlow and the other naval writers began to
refer to everything President Wilson did as a "bluff."  When Col. E. M.
House came to Berlin early in 1916, he tried to impress the officials
with the fact that Mr. Wilson was not only not bluffing, but that the
American people would support him in whatever he did in dealing with
the German Government.  Mr. Gerard tried too to impress the Foreign
Office but because he could only deal with that branch of the
Government, he could not change the Navy's impression, which was that
Wilson would never take a definite stand against Germany.  On the 8th
of February, the _London Times_ printed the following despatch which I
had sent to the United States:


"Mr. Gerard has been accused of not being forceful enough in dealing
with the Berlin Foreign Office.  In Berlin he has been criticised for
just the opposite.  It has been stated frequently that he was too
aggressive.  The Ambassador's position was that he must carry out Mr.
Wilson's ideas.  So he tried for days and weeks to impress officials
with the seriousness of the situation.  At the critical point in the
negotiations various unofficial diplomats began to arrive and they
seriously interfered with negotiations.  One of these was a politician
who through his credentials from Mr. Bryan met many high officials, and
informed them that President Wilson was writing his notes for 'home
consumption.'  Mr. Gerard, however, appealed to Washington to know what
was meant by the moves of this American with authority from Mr. Bryan.
This was the beginning of the reason for Secretary Bryan's resigning.

"Secretary Bryan had informed also former Ambassador Dumba that the
United States would never take any position against Germany even though
it was hinted so in the _Lusitania_ note.  Dumba telegraphed this to
Vienna and Berlin was informed immediately.  Because of Mr. Gerard's
personal friendship and personal association with Secretary of State
von Jagow and Under Secretary of State Zimmermann, he was acquainted
with Secretary Bryan's move.   He telegraphed to President Wilson and
the result was the resignation of Mr. Bryan."

In December, the _Ancona_ was torpedoed and it was officially explained
that the act was that of an Austrian submarine commander.  Wilson's
note to Vienna brought about a near rupture between Austria-Hungary and
Germany because Austria and Hungary at that time were much opposed to
Germany's submarine methods.  Although the submarines operating in the
Mediterranean were flying the Austrian flag, they were German
submarines, and members of the crews were German.  Throughout the life
of the Emperor Franz Josef the Dual Monarchy was ruled, not from
Vienna, but from Budapest by Count Stefan Tisza, the Hungarian Premier.
I was in Budapest at the time and one evening saw Count Tisza at his
palace, which stands on the rocky cliff opposite the main part of
Budapest, and which overlooks the valley of the Danube for many miles.
Tisza, as well as all Hungarians, is pro-American before he is
pro-German.

"To think of trouble between Austria-Hungary and the United States is
sheer nonsense," he said in his quiet but forceful manner.  "I must
confess, however, that we were greatly surprised to get the American
note.  It is far from our intention to get into any quarrel with
America.  Perhaps I should not say quarrel, because I know it would not
be that, but of course matters do not depend upon us entirely.  There
is no reason for any trouble over the _Ancona_ question.  It must be
settled satisfactorily," he said emphatically, "not only from the
standpoint of the United States, but from our standpoint."

The _Ancona_ crisis brought the Foreign Office new and unexpected
support.  Hungary was opposed to a dispute with America.  In the first
place, Hungarians are more of a liberty loving people than the Germans,
and public opinion in Hungary rules the country.  While there is a
strong Government press, which is loyal to the Tisza party, there is an
equally powerful opposition press which follows the leadership of Count
Albert Apponyi and Count Julius Andrassy, the two most popular men in
Hungarian public life.  Apponyi told me on one occasion that while the
Government was controlled by Tisza a great majority of the people sided
with the opposition.  He added that the constant antagonism of the
Liberals and Democrats kept the Government within bounds.

Hungarians resented the stain upon their honour of the _Ancona_
incident and they were on the verge of compelling Berlin to assume
responsibility for the sinking and adjust the matter.  But Berlin
feared that if the _Ancona_ crime was accredited to the real murderers
it would bring about another, and perhaps a fatal crisis with the
United States.  So Vienna assumed responsibility and promised to punish
the submarine commander who torpedoed the ship.

This opposition from Hungary embittered the German Navy but it was
helpless.  The growing fear of the effects which President Wilson's
notes were having upon Americans and upon the outside neutral world
caused opposition to von Tirpitz to gain more force.  In desperation
von Tirpitz and his followers extended the anti-American propaganda and
began personal attacks upon von Bethmann-Hollweg.

Bitterness between these two men became so great that neither of them
would go to the Great Headquarters to confer with the Kaiser if the
other was there.  The personal opposition reached the point where the
Kaiser could not keep both men in his cabinet.  Von Tirpitz, who
thought he was the hero of the German people because of the submarine
policy, believed he had so much power that he could shake the hold
which the Kaiser had upon the people and frighten the Emperor into the
belief that unless he supported him against the Chancellor and the
United States, the people would overthrow the Hohenzollern dynasty.
But von Tirpitz had made a good many personal enemies especially among
financiers and business men.  So the Kaiser, instead of ousting the
Chancellor, asked von Tirpitz to resign and appointed Admiral von
Capelle, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy and a friend of the
Chancellor, as von Tirpitz' successor.  Admiral von Mueller, Chief of
the Naval Cabinet, who was always at Great Headquarters as the Kaiser's
personal adviser on naval affairs, was opposed to von Tirpitz and
exposed him at the Great Headquarters conferences by saying that von
Tirpitz had falsified the Navy's figures as to the number of submarines
available for a blockade of England.  Von Capelle supported von Mueller
and when the friends of von Tirpitz in the Reichstag demanded an
explanation for the ousting of their idol, both the Chancellor and von
Capelle explained that Germany could not continue submarine warfare
which von Tirpitz had started, because of the lack of the necessary
submarines.

This was the first big victory of the Foreign Office.  The democratic
forces in Germany which had been fighting von Tirpitz for over a year
were jubilant.  Every one in Germany who realised that not until the
hold of the military party upon the Kaiser and the Government was
dislodged, would the Government be able to make peace now breathed
sighs of relief and began to make plans for the adjustment of all
differences with the United States and for a peace without annexation.
Von Tirpitz had had the support of all the forces in Germany which
looked forward to the annexation of Belgium and the richest portions of
Northern France.  Von Tirpitz was supported by the men who wanted the
eastern border of Germany extended far into Poland and Lithuania.

Even Americans were delighted.  Washington for the first time began to
see that eleven months of patience was bearing fruit.  But this period
of exaltation was not destined to last very long.  While the Chancellor
had cleaned house in the Navy Department at Berlin he had overlooked
Kiel.  There were admirals and officers in charge there who were making
preparations for the Navy.  They were the men who talked to the
submarine commanders before they started out on their lawless sea
voyages.

On March 24th the whole world was shocked by another U-boat crime.  The
_Sussex_, a French channel steamer, plying between Folkstone and
Dieppe, was torpedoed without warning and Americans were among the
passengers killed and wounded.  When the news reached Berlin, not only
the Chancellor and the Foreign Office were shocked and horrified, but
the American Embassy began to doubt whether the Chancellor really meant
what he said when he informed Gerard confidentially that now that von
Tirpitz was gone there would be no new danger from the submarines.
Even the new Admiralty administration was loathe to believe that a
German submarine was responsible.

By April 5th it was apparent to every one in Berlin that there would be
another submarine crisis with the United States and that the
reactionary forces in Germany would attempt again to overthrow the
Chancellor.  Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, who had been doing everything
possible to get some one to propose peace, decided to address the
Reichstag again on Germany's peace aims.  It was announced in the
newspapers only a few days beforehand.  The demand for tickets of
admission was so great that early in the morning on the day scheduled
for the address such dense crowds surrounded the Reichstag building
that the police had to make passages so the military automobiles could
reach the building to bring the officials there.

The Chamber itself was crowded to the rafters.  On the floor of the
House practically every member was in his seat.  On the rostrum were
several hundred army and naval officers, all members of the cabinet,
prominent business men and financiers.  Every one awaited the entrance
of the Chancellor with great expectations.  The National Liberals, who
had been clamouring for the annexation of Belgium, the conservatives,
who wanted a stronger war policy against England, the Socialists, who
wanted real guarantees for the German people for the future and a peace
without annexation, sat quietly in their seats anxiously awaiting the
Chancellor's remarks which were expected to satisfy all wants.

The Chancellor entered the chamber from the rear of the rostrum and
proceeded to his desk in the front platform row, facing the House and
galleries.  After a few preliminary remarks by President Kaempf, the
Chancellor arose.  To the Chancellor's left, near the rear of the hall
among his Socialist colleagues, sat a nervous, determined and defiant
radical.  He was dressed in the uniform of a common soldier.  Although
he had been at the front several months and in the firing line, he had
not received the iron cross of the second class which practically every
soldier who had seen service had been decorated with.  His clothes were
soiled, trousers stuffed into the top of heavy military boots.  His
thick, curly hair was rumpled.  At this session of the Reichstag the
Chancellor was to have his first encounter with Dr. Karl Liebknecht,
the Socialist radical, who in his soldier's uniform was ready to
challenge anything the Chancellor said.

The Chancellor began his address, as he began all others, by referring
to the strong military position of the German army.  He led up,
gradually, to the subject of peace.  When the Chancellor said: "We
could have gotten what we wanted by peaceful work.  Our enemies chose
war."  Liebknecht interjected in his sharp, shrill voice, "_You_ chose
the war!"  There was great excitement and hissing; the President called
for order.  Members shouted: "Throw him out!"  But Liebknecht sat there
more determined than ever.

The Chancellor continued for a few minutes until he reached the
discussion of the establishment of a Flemish nation in Belgium, when
Liebknecht again interrupted, but the Chancellor continued: "Gentlemen,
we want neighbours who will not again unite against us in order to
strangle us, but such that we can work with them and they with us to
our mutual advantage."  A storm of applause greeted this remark.
Liebknecht was again on his feet and shouted, "Then you will fall upon
them!"

"The Europe which will arise from this, the most gigantic of all
crises, will in many respects not resemble the old one," continued von
Bethmann-Hollweg.  "The blood which has been shed will never come back;
the wealth which has been wasted will come back but only slowly.  In
any case, it must become, for all living in it, a Europe of peaceful
labour.  The peace which shall end this war must be a lasting one and
not containing the germ of a fresh war, but establishing a final and
peaceful order of things in European affairs."

Before the applause had gotten a good start the fiery private in the
Socialists' rank was again on his feet, this time shouting, "Liberate
the German people first!"

Throughout the Chancellor's speech there was not one reference to the
Sussex.  The Chancellor was anxious if he could to turn the world's
attention from the Sussex to the larger question of peace, but the
world was not so inclined.  On the 18th of April I asked Admiral von
Holtzendorff, Chief of the Admiralty Staff, for his opinion about the
_Sussex_.  Two days later he approved the interview, in which I quoted
him as saying:


"We did not sink the _Sussex_.  I am as convinced of that as of
anything which has happened in this war.  If you read the definite
instructions, the exact orders each submarine commander has you would
understand that the torpedoing of the _Sussex_ was impossible.  Many of
our submarines have returned from rounding up British vessels.  They
sighted scores of passenger ships going between England and America but
not one of these was touched.

"We have definitely agreed to warn the crews and passengers of
passenger liners.  We have lived up to that promise in every way.  We
are not out to torpedo without warning neutral ships bound for England.
Our submarines have respected every one of them so far, and they have
met scores in the North Sea, the Channel and the Atlantic."


On the same day that Ambassador Gerard handed von Jagow Secretary
Lansing's note, Under Secretary of State Zimmermann approved the von
Holtzendorff interview.  Zimmermann could not make himself believe that
a German submarine was responsible and the Government had decided to
disavow all responsibility.  But such convincing reports began to
arrive from the United States and from neutral European countries which
proved beyond a doubt that a German submarine was responsible, that the
Government had to again bring up the submarine issue at Great
Headquarters.  When the von Holtzendorff interview was published in the
United States it caused a sensation because if Germany maintained the
attitude which the Chief of the Admiralty Staff had taken with the
approval of the Foreign Office, a break in diplomatic relations could
not be avoided.  Secretary Lansing telegraphed Ambassador Gerard to
inquire at the Foreign Office whether the statements of von
Holtzendorff represented the opinions of the German Government.  Gerard
called me to the Embassy but before I arrived Dr. Heckscher, of the
Reichstag Foreign Relations Committee, came.  Gerard called me in in
Heckscher's presence to ask if I knew that the von Holtzendorff
interview would bring about a break in diplomatic relations unless it
was immediately disavowed.  He told Dr. Heckscher to inform Zimmermann
that if the Chief of the Admiralty Staff was going to direct Germany's
foreign policies he would ask his government to accredit him to the
naval authorities and not to the Foreign Office.  Heckscher would not
believe my statement that Zimmermann had approved the interview and
assured Gerard that within a very short time the Foreign Office would
disavow von Holtzendorff's statements.  When he arrived at the Foreign
Office, however, Zimmermann not only refused to disavow the Admiral's
statement but informed Heckscher that he had the same opinions.

President Wilson was at the end of his patience.  Probably he began to
doubt whether he could rely upon the reports of Ambassador Gerard that
there was a chance of the democratic forces in Germany coming out ahead
of the military caste.  Wilson showed his attitude plainly in the
_Sussex_ note when he said:


"The Government of the United States has been very patient.  At every
stage of this distressing experience of tragedy after tragedy it has
sought to be governed by the most thoughtful considerations of the
extraordinary circumstances of an unprecedented war and to be guided by
sentiments of very genuine friendship for the people and the Government
of Germany.  It has accepted the successive explanations and assurances
of the Imperial Government as of course given in entire sincerity and
good faith, and has hoped even against hope that it would prove to be
possible for the Imperial Government so to order and control the acts
of its naval commanders as to square its policy with the recognised
principles of humanity as embodied in the law of nations.  It has made
every allowance for unprecedented conditions and has been willing to
wait until the facts became unmistakable and were susceptible of only
one interpretation.  It now owes it to a just regard, for its own
rights to say to the Imperial Government that that time has come.  It
has become painfully evident to it that the position which it took at
the very outset is inevitable, namely that the use of submarines for
the destruction of enemy commerce is of necessity, because of the very
character of the vessels employed and the very methods, of attack which
their employment of course involves, utterly incompatible with the
principles of humanity, the long established and incontrovertible
rights of neutrals and the sacred immunities of non-combatants.

"If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to prosecute
relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by
the use of submarines without regard to what the Government of the
United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of
international law and the universally recognised dictates of humanity,
the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion
that there is but one course it can pursue.  Unless the Imperial
Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of
its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight
carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no
choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Government
altogether.  This action the Government of the United States
contemplates with the greatest reluctance but feels constrained to take
in behalf of humanity and the rights of neutral nations."


After von Jagow read the note the Foreign Office Telegraph Bureau sent
it to Great Headquarters, which at this time was still located in
Charleville, France, for the information of the Kaiser and General von
Falkenhayn.  It was evident to every one in Berlin that again, not only
the submarine issue was to be debated at Great Headquarters, but that
the Kaiser was to be forced again to decide between the Chancellor and
his democratic supporters and von Falkenhayn and the military party.
Before the Conference convened General Headquarters sent inquiries to
five government departments, the Foreign Office, the Navy, the Ministry
of War, the Treasury, and Interior.  The Ministers at the head of these
departments were asked to state whether in their opinion the
controversy with America should be adjusted, or whether the submarine
warfare should be continued.  Dr. Karl Helfferich, the Vice Chancellor
and Minister of Interior, Secretary of State von Jagow, and Count von
Roedern, Minister of Finance, replied to adjust the difficulty.  The
Army and Navy said in effect: "If you can adjust it without stopping
the submarine warfare and without breaking with the United States do
so."

The latter part of April the Kaiser summoned all of his ministers and
his leading generals to the French chateau which he used as his
headquarters in Charleville.  This city is one of the most picturesque
cities in the occupied districts of northern France.  It is located on
the banks of the Meuse and contains many historic, old ruins.  At one
end of the town is a large stone castle, surrounded by a moat.  This
was made the headquarters of the General Staff after the Germans
invaded this section of France.  Near the railroad station there was a
public park.  Facing it was a French chateau, a beautiful, comfortable
home.  This was the Kaiser's residence.  All streets leading in this
direction were barricaded and guarded by sentries.  No one could pass
without a special written permit from the Chief of the General Staff.
Von Falkenhayn had his home nearby in another of the beautiful chateaux
there.  The chief of every department of the General Staff lived in
princely fashion in houses which in peace time were homes for
distinguished Frenchmen.  There were left in Charleville scarcely a
hundred French citizens, because obviously French people, who were
enemies of Germany, could not he permitted to go back and forth in the
city which was the centre of German militarism.

When the ministers arrived at the Kaiser's headquarters, His Majesty
asked each one to make a complete report on the submarine war as it
affected his department.  Dr. Helfferich was asked to go into the
question of German finance and the relation of America to it.  Dr.
Solf, the Colonial Minister, who had been a very good friend of
Ambassador Gerard, discussed the question of the submarine warfare from
the stand-point of its relation to Germany's position as a world power.
Admiral von Capelle placed before the Kaiser the figures of the number
of ships sunk, their tonnage, the number of submarines operating, the
number under construction and the number lost.  General von Falkenhayn
reported on the military situation and discussed the hypothetical
question as to what effect American intervention would have upon the
European war theatres.

While the conferences were going on, Dr. Heckscher and Under Secretary
Zimmermann, who at that time were anxious to avoid a break with the
United States, sounded Ambassador Gerard as to whether he would be
willing to go to Great Headquarters to confer with the Kaiser.  The
Foreign Office at the same time suggested the matter to the General
Staff and within a few hours Mr. Gerard was invited to go to
Charleville.  Before the ambassador arrived the Kaiser called all of
his ministers together for a joint session and asked them to make a
brief summary of their arguments.  This was not a peace meeting.  Not
only opponents of submarine warfare but its advocates mobilised all
their forces in a final attempt to win the Kaiser's approval.  His
Majesty, at this time, was inclined towards peace with America and was
very much impressed by the arguments which the Chancellor and Dr.
Helfferich presented.  But, at this meeting, while Helfferich was
talking and pointing to the moral effect which the ruthless torpedoing
of ships was having upon neutral countries, von Falkenhayn interrupted
with the succinct statement:

"Neutrals?  Damn the neutrals!  Win the war!  Our task is to win.  If
we win we will have the neutrals with us; if we lose we lose."

"Falkenhayn, when you are versed in foreign affairs I'll ask you to
speak," interrupted the Kaiser.  "Proceed, Dr. Helfferich."

Gentleman that he is, von Falkenhayn accepted the Imperial rebuke, but
not long afterward his resignation was submitted.

As a result of these conferences and the arguments advanced by
Ambassador Gerard, Secretary von Jagow on May 4th handed the Ambassador
the German note in reply to President Wilson's _Sussex_ ultimatum.  In
this communication Germany said:


"Fully conscious of its strength, the German Government has twice in
the course of the past few months expressed itself before all the world
as prepared to conclude a peace safeguarding the vital interests of
Germany.  In doing so, it gave expression to the fact that it was not
its fault if peace was further withheld from the peoples of Europe.
With a correspondingly greater claim of justification, the German
Government may proclaim its unwillingness before mankind and history to
undertake the responsibility, after twenty-one months of war, to allow
the controversy that has arisen over the submarine question to take a
turn which might seriously affect the maintenance of peace between
these two nations.

"The German Government guided by this idea notifies the Government of
the United States _that instructions have been issued to German naval
commanders that the precepts of the general international fundamental
principles be observed as regards stopping, searching and destruction
of merchant vessels within the war zone and that such vessels shall not
be sunk without warning and without saving human life unless the ship
attempts to escape or offers resistance_."


At the beginning of the war it was a group of military leaders
consisting of General von Moltke, General von Falkenhayn, General von
Mackensen, General von Herringen, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, and a few
of the Prussian military clique, which prevailed upon the Kaiser to go
to war after the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne and
his wife.  The Allies proclaimed in their publications, in the press
and in Parliaments that they were fighting to destroy and overthrow the
military party in Germany which could make war without public consent.
Millions of Allied soldiers were mobilised and fighting in almost a
complete ring surrounding Germany, Austria Hungary, Bulgaria and
Turkey.  They had been fighting since August, 1914, for twenty-one
months, and still their fighting had not shattered or weakened the hold
which the military party had upon the people and the Kaiser.  Von
Tirpitz and von Falkenhayn, who, shortly after the war began, became
the ringleaders of Germany's organised Might, had fallen not _before
the armed foes on the battlefield but before an unarmed nation with a
president whose only weapon was public opinion_.  First, von Tirpitz
fell because he was ready to defy the United States.  Then came the
downfall of von Falkenhayn, because he was prepared to damn the United
States and all neutrals.  Surely a nation and a government after
thirteen months of patience and hope had a right to believe that after
all public opinion was a weapon which was sometimes more effective than
any other.  Mr. Wilson and the State Department were justified in
feeling that their policy toward Germany was after all successful not
alone because it had solved the vexing submarine issue, but because it
had aided the forces of democracy in Germany.  Because, with the
downfall of von Falkenhayn and von Tirpitz, there was only one
recognised authority in Germany.  That was the Chancellor and the
Foreign Office, supported almost unanimously by the Socialists and by
the Liberal forces which were at work to reform the German Government.

But this was in May, 1916, scarcely eight months before the Kaiser
_changed his mind and again decided to support the people who were
clamouring for a ruthless, murderous, defiant war against the whole
world_, if the world was "foolish" enough to join in.




CHAPTER VI

THE PERIOD OF NEW ORIENTATION

Dr. Karl Liebknecht, after he had challenged the Chancellor on the 4th
of April, became the object of attack by the military authorities.  The
Chancellor, although he is the real Minister of Foreign Affairs, is,
also, a Major General in the Army and for a private like Liebknecht to
talk to a Major General as he did in the Reichstag was contrary to all
rules and precedents in the Prussian Army.  The army was ready to send
Liebknecht to the firing squad and it was only a short time until they
had an opportunity to arrest him.  Liebknecht started riots in some of
the ammunition factories and one night at Potsdamer Platz, dressed in
civilian clothes, he shouted, "Down with the Government," and started
to address the passers-by.  He was seized immediately by government
detectives, who were always following him, and taken to the police
station.  His home was searched and when the trial began the papers,
found there, were placed before the military tribunal as evidence that
he was plotting against the Government.  The trial was secret, and
police blockaded all streets a quarter of a mile away from the court
where he was tried.  Throughout the proceedings which lasted a week the
newspapers were permitted to print only the information distributed by
the Wolff Telegraph Bureau.  But public sympathy for Liebknecht was so
great that mounted police were kept in every part of the city day and
night to break up crowds which might assemble.  Behind closed doors,
without an opportunity to consult his friends, with only an attorney
appointed by the Government to defend him, Liebknecht was sentenced to
two years' hard labour.  His only crime was that he had dared to speak
in the Reichstag the opinions of some of the more radical socialists.

Liebknecht's imprisonment was a lesson to other Socialist agitators.
The day after his sentencing was announced there were strikes in nearly
every ammunition factory in and around Berlin.  Even at Spandau, next
to Essen the largest ammunition manufacturing city in Germany, several
thousand workmen left their benches as a protest, but the German people
have such terrible fear of the police and of their own military
organisation that they strike only a day and return the next to forget
about previous events.

If there were no other instances in Germany to indicate that there was
the nucleus for a democracy this would seem to be one.  One might say,
too, that if such leaders as Liebknecht could be assisted, the movement
for more freedom might have more success.

It was very difficult for the German public to accept the German reply
to President Wilson's _Sussex_ note.  The people were bitter against
the United States.  They hated Wilson.  They feared him.  And the idea
of the German Government bending its knee to a man they hated was
enough cause for loud protests.  This feeling among the people found
plenty of outlets.  The submarine advocates, who always had their ears
to the ground, saw that they could take advantage of this public
feeling at the expense of the Chancellor and the Foreign Office.
Prince von Buelow, the former Chancellor, who had been spending most of
his time in Switzerland after his failure to keep Italy out of the war,
had written a book entitled "Deutsche Politik," which was intended to
be an indictment of von Bethmann-Hollweg's international policies.  Von
Buelow returned to Berlin at the psychological moment and began to
mobilise the forces against the Chancellor.

[Illustration: Gott strafe England.]

After the _Sussex_ dispute was ended the Socialist organ _Vorwaerts_,
supported by Philip Scheidemann, leader of the majority of the
Socialists, demanded that the Government take some steps toward peace.
But the General Staff was so busy preparing for the expected Allied
offensive that it had no time to think about peace or about internal
questions.  When von Falkenhayn resigned and von Hindenburg arrived at
Great Headquarters to succeed him the two generals met for the first
time in many months.  (There was bitter feeling between the two.)  Von
Falkenhayn, as he turned the office over to his successor, said:

"Has Your Excellency the courage to take over this position now?"

"I have always had the courage, Your Excellency," replied von
Hindenburg, "but not the soldiers."

In the Reichstag there has been only one real democratic party.  That
is the Socialist.  The National Liberal Party, which has posed as a
reform organisation, is in reality nothing more than the party
controlled by the ammunition and war industries.  When these interests
heard that submarine warfare was to be so restricted as to be
practically negligible, they began to sow seeds of discontent among the
ammunition makers.  These interests began to plan for the time when the
submarine warfare would again be discussed.  Their first scheme was to
try to overthrow the Chancellor.  If they were not successful then they
intended to take advantage of the democratic movement which was
spreading in Germany to compel the Government to consent to the
creation of a Reichstag Committee on Foreign Affairs to consult with
the Foreign Office when all questions of international policy,
including submarine warfare, was up for discussion.  Their first policy
was tried early in July.  Seizing that clause in the German note which
said that Germany would hold herself free to change her promises in the
_Sussex_ case if the United States was not successful against England,
the Navy began to threaten the United States with renewed submarine
warfare unless President Wilson acted against Great Britain.

Reporting some of these events on June 12th, the _Evening Ledger_ of
Philadelphia printed the following despatch which I sent:


"BERLIN, July 12.--The overthrow of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg,
champion of a conciliatory policy toward the United States, and the
unloosing of German submarines within three months, was predicted by
von Tirpitz supporters here to-day unless President Wilson acts against
the British blockade.

"Members of the Conservative party and those favouring annexation of
territory conquered by Germany joined in the forecast.  They said the
opinion of America will be disregarded.

"A private source, close to the Foreign Office, made this statement
regarding the attempt to unseat Bethmann-Hollweg at a time when the war
is approaching a crisis:

"'Unless America does something against England within the next three
months there will be a bitter fight against the Chancellor.  One cannot
tell whether he will be able to hold his own against such opposition.
The future of German-American relations depends upon America.'

"Despite this political drive against the man who stood out against a
break with the United States in the _Lusitania_ crisis, Americans here
believe Bethmann-Hollweg will again emerge triumphant.  They feel
certain that if the Chancellor appealed to the public for a decision he
would be supported.

"The fight to oust the Chancellor has now grown to such proportions
that it overshadows in interest the Allied offensive.  The attacks on
the Chancellor have gradually grown bolder since the appearance of
Prince Buelow's book 'Deutsche Politik,' because this book is believed
to be the opening of Buelow's campaign to oust the Chancellor and step
back into the position he occupied until succeeded by Bethmann-Hollweg
in 1909.

"The movement has grown more forceful since the German answer to
President Wilson's ultimatum was sent.  The Conservatives accepted the
German note as containing a conditional clause, and they have been
waiting to see what steps the United States would take against England.

"Within the past few days I have discussed the situation with leaders
of several parties in the Reichstag.  A National Liberal member of the
Reichstag, who was formerly a supporter of von Tirpitz, and the von
Tirpitz submarine policies, said he thought Buelow's success showed
that opposition to America was not dead.

"'Who is going to be your next President--Wilson or Hughes?' he asked,
and then, without waiting for an answer, continued:

"'If it is Hughes he can be no worse than Wilson.  The worst he can do
is to declare war on Germany and certainly that would be preferable to
the present American neutrality.

"'If this should happen every one in our navy would shout and throw up
his hat, for it would mean unlimited sea war against England.  Our
present navy is held in a net of notes.

"'What do you think the United States could do?  You could not raise an
army to help the Allies.  You could confiscate our ships in American
ports, but if you tried to use them to carry supplies and munitions to
the Allies we would sink them.

"'Carrying on an unlimited submarine war, we could sink 600,000 tons of
shipping monthly, destroy the entire merchant fleets of the leading
powers, paralyse England and win the war.  Then we would start all
over, build merchantmen faster than any nation, and regain our position
as a leading commercial power.'

"Friends of the Chancellor still hope that President Wilson will take a
strong stand against England, thereby greatly strengthening
Bethmann-Hollweg's position.  At present the campaign against the
Chancellor is closely connected with internal policies of the
Conservatives and the big land owners.  The latter are fighting
Bethmann-Hollweg because he promised the people, on behalf of the
Kaiser, the enactment of franchise reforms after the war."


Commenting on this despatch, the New York _World_ said:


"Not long ago it was the fashion among the opponents of the
Administration to jeer loudly at the impotent writing of notes.  And
even among the supporters of the Administration there grew an uneasy
feeling that we had had notes _ad nauseam_.

"Yet these plodding and undramatic notes arouse in Germany a feeling
very different from one of ridicule.  The resentful respect for our
notes is there admirably summed up by a member of the Reichstag who to
the correspondent of the United Press exclaimed bitterly: 'Our present
navy is held in a net of notes.'

"Nets may not be so spectacular as knuckle-dusters, but they are
slightly more civilised and generally more efficient."


The National Liberal Reichstag member who was quoted was Dr. Gustav
Stressemann.  Stressemann is one of the worst reactionaries in Germany
but he likes to pose as a progressive.  He was one of the first men to
suggest that the Reichstag form a committee on foreign relations to
consult with and have equal power of decision with the Foreign Office.

For a great many months the Socialist deputies of the Prussian Diet
have been demanding election reforms.  Their demands were so insistent
that over a year ago the Chancellor, when he read the Kaiser's address
from the throne room in the residence palace in Berlin to the deputies,
promised election reforms in Prussia--after the war.  But during last
summer the Socialists began to demand immediate election reforms.  To
further embarrass the Chancellor and the Government, the National
Liberals made the same demands, knowing all the time that if the
Government ever attempted it, they could swing the Reichstag majority
against the proposal by technicalities.

Throughout the summer months the Government could not hush up the
incessant discussion of war aims.  More than one newspaper was
suppressed for demanding peace or for demanding a statement of the
Government's position in regard to Belgium and Northern France.  The
peace movement within Germany grew by leaps and bounds.  The Socialists
demanded immediate action by the Government.  The Conservatives, the
National Liberals and the Catholic party wanted peace but only the kind
of a peace which Germany could force upon the Entente.  The Chancellor
and other German leaders tried again throughout the summer and fall to
get the outside world interested in peace but at this time the English
and French attacks on the Somme were engaging the attention and the
resources of the whole world.

Before these conflicting movements within Germany can be understood one
must know something of the organisation of Germany in war time.

When the military leaders of Germany saw that the possibility of
capturing Paris or of destroying London was small and that a German
victory, which would fasten Teutonic peace terms on the rest of the
world, was almost impossible, they turned their eyes to
Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, the Balkans and Turkey.  Friederich Naumann,
member of the Progressive Party of the Reichstag, wrote a book on
"Central Europe," describing a great nation stretching from the North
Sea to Bagdad, including Germany, all of Austria-Hungary, parts of
Serbia and Roumania and Turkey, with Berlin as the Capital.  It was
toward this goal which the Kaiser turned the forces of Germany at his
command.  If Germany could not rule the world, if Germany could not
conquer the nine nations which the Director of the Post and Telegraph
had lined up on the 2nd of August, 1914, then Germany could at least
conquer the Dual Monarchy, the Balkans and, Turkey, and even under
these circumstances come out of the war a greater nation than she
entered it.  But to accomplish this purpose one thing had to be
assured.  That was the control of the armies and navies and the foreign
policies of these governments.  The old Kaiser Franz Josef was a man
who guarded everything he had as jealously as a baby guards his toys.
At one time when it was suggested to the aged monarch that Germany and
Austria-Hungary could establish a great kingdom of Poland as a buffer
nation, if he would only give up Galicia as one of the states of this
kingdom, he replied in his childish fashion:

"What, those Prussians want to take another pearl out of my crown?"

In June the Austro-Hungarian General Staff conducted an offensive
against Italy in the Trentino with more success than the Germans had
anticipated.  But the Austrians had not calculated upon Russia.  In
July General Brusiloff attacked the Austrian forces in the
neighbourhood of Lusk, succeeded in persuading or bribing a Bohemian
army corps to desert and started through the Austrian positions like a
flood over sloping land.  Brusiloff not only took several hundred
thousand prisoners.  He not only broke clear through the Austrian lines
but he thoroughly demoralised and destroyed the Austrian army as a unit
in the world war.  Von Hindenburg, who had been made Chief of the
German General Staff, was compelled to send thousands of troops to the
Wohlynian battlefields to stop the Russian invasion.  But von
Hindenburg did not look with any degree of satisfaction upon the
possibility of such a thing happening again and informed the Kaiser
that he would continue as Chief of the General Staff only upon
condition that he be made chief of all armies allied to Germany.  At a
Conference at Great Headquarters at Pless, in Silicia, where offices
were moved from France as soon as the Field Marshal took charge,
Hindenburg was made the leader of all the armed forces in Central
Europe.  Thus by one stroke, really by the aid of Russia, Germany
succeeded in conquering Austria-Hungary and in taking away from her
command all of the forces, naval and military, which she had.  At the
same time the Bulgarian and Turkish armies were placed at the disposal
of von Hindenburg.  So far so good for the Prussians.

But there were still some independent forces left within the Central
Powers.  Hungary was not content to do the bidding of Prussia.
Hungarians were not ready to live under orders from Berlin.  Even as
late as a few months ago when the German Minister of the Interior
called a conference in Berlin to mobilise all the food within the
Central Powers, the Hungarians refused to join a scheme which would rob
them of food they had jealously guarded and saved since the beginning
of the war.

In the Dual Monarchy there are many freedom loving people who are
longing for a deliverer.  Hungary at one time feared Russia but only
because of the Czar.  The real and most powerful democratic force among
the Teutonic allies is located there in Budapest.  I know of no city
outside of the United States where the people have such love of freedom
and where public opinion plays such a big role.  Budapest, even in war
times, is one of the most delightful cities in Europe and Hungary, even
as late as last December, was not contaminated by Prussian ideas.  I
saw Russian prisoners of war walking through the streets and mingling
with the Hungarian soldiers and people.  American Consul General Coffin
informed me that there were seven thousand Allied subjects in Budapest
who were undisturbed.  English and French are much more popular than
Germans.  One day on my first visit in Budapest I asked a policeman in
front of the Hotel Ritz in German, "Where is the Reichstag?"  He shook
his head and went on about his business regulating the traffic at the
street corner.  Then I asked him half in English and half in French
where the Parliament was.

With a broad smile he said: "Ah, Monsieur, voila, this street your
right, vis a vis."  Not a word of German would he speak.

After the Allied offensive began on the Somme the old friends of von
Tirpitz, assisted by Prince von Buelow, started an offensive against
the Chancellor, with renewed vigour.  This time they were determined to
oust him at all costs.  They sent emissaries to the Rhine Valley, which
is dominated by the Krupp ammunition factories.  These emissaries began
by attacking the Chancellor's attitude towards the United States.  They
pointed out that Germany could not possibly win the war unless she
defeated England, and it was easy for any German to see that the only
way England could be attacked was from the seas; that as long as
England had her fleet or her merchant ships she could continue the war
and continue to supply the Allies.  It was pointed out to the
ammunition makers, also, that they were already fighting the United
States; that the United States was sending such enormous supplies to
the Entente, that unless the submarines were used to stop these
supplies Germany would most certainly be defeated on land.  And, it was
explained that a defeat on land meant not only the defeat of the German
army but the defeat of the ammunition interests.

From April to December, 1916, was also the period of pamphleteering.
Every one who could write a pamphlet, or could publish one, did so.
The censorship had prohibited so many people and so many organisations
from expressing their views publicly that they chose this method of
circulating their ideas privately.  The pamphlets could be printed
secretly and distributed through the mails so as to avoid both the
censors and the Government.  So every one in Germany began to receive
documents and pamphlets about all the ails and complaints within
Germany.  About the only people who did not do this were the
Socialists.  The "Alt-Deutsch Verband," which was an organisation of
the great industrial leaders of Germany, had been bitterly attacked by
the Berlin _Tageblatt_ but when the directors wanted to publish their
reply the censors prohibited it.  So, the Alt-Deutsch Verband issued a
pamphlet and sent it broadcast throughout Germany.  In the meantime the
Chancellor and the Government realised that unless something was done
to combat these secret forces which were undermining the Government's
influence, that there would be an eruption in Germany which might
produce serious results.

Throughout this time the Socialist party was having troubles of its
own.  Liebknecht was in prison but there was a little group of radicals
who had not forgotten it.  They wanted the Socialist party as a whole
to do something to free Liebknecht.  The party had been split before
the advance of last summer so efforts were made to unite the two
factions.  At a well attended conference in the Reichstag building they
agreed to forget old differences and join forces in support of the
Government until winter, when it was hoped peace could be made.

The Socialist party at various times during the war has had a difficult
time in agreeing on government measures.  While the Socialists voted
unanimously for war credits at the beginning, a year afterward many of
them had changed their minds and had begun to wonder whether, after
all, they had not made a mistake.  This was the issue which brought
about the first split in the Socialists' ranks.  When it came time in
1916 to vote further credits to the Government the Socialists held a
caucus.  After three days of bitter wrangling the ranks split.  One
group headed by Scheidemann decided to support the Government and
another group with Herr Wolfgang Heine as the leader, decided to vote
against the war loans.

Scheidemann, who is the most capable and most powerful Socialist in
Germany, carried with him the majority of the delegates and was
supported by the greater part of public opinion.  Heine, however, had
the support of men like Dr. Haase and Eduard Bernstein who had
considerable influence with the public but who were not organisers or
men capable of aggressive action, like Scheidemann.  As far as
affecting the Government's plans were concerned the Socialist split did
not amount to much.  In Germany there is such a widespread fear of the
Government and the police that even the most radical Socialists
hesitate to oppose the Government.  In war time Germany is under
complete control of the military authorities and even the Reichstag,
which is supposed to be a legislative body, is in reality during war
times only a closed corporation which does the bidding of the
Government.  The attitude of the Reichstag on any question is not
determined at the party caucuses nor during sessions.  Important
decisions are always arrived at at Great Headquarters between the
Chancellor and the military leaders.  Then the Chancellor returns to
Berlin, summons the party leaders to his palace, explains what the
Government desires and, without asking the leaders for their support,
tells them _that_ is what _von Hindenburg_ expects.  They know there is
no choice left to them.  Scheidemann always attends these conferences
as the Socialist representative because the Chancellor has never
recognised the so-called Socialist Labour Party which is made up of
Socialist radicals who want peace and who have reached the point when
they can no longer support the Government.

One night at the invitation of an editor of one of Berlin's leading
newspapers, who is a Socialist radical, I attended a secret session of
the Socialist Labour Party.  At this meeting there were present three
members of the Reichstag, the President of one of Germany's leading
business organisations, two newspaper editors, one labour agitator who
had been travelling to industrial centres to mobilise the forces which
were opposed to a continuation of the war, and a rather well known
Socialist writer who had been inspiring some anti-Government pamphlets
which were printed in Switzerland and sent by mail to Germany.  One of
the business men present had had an audience of the Kaiser and he
reported what the monarch told him about the possibilities of peace.
The report was rather encouraging to the Socialists because the Kaiser
said he would make peace as soon as there was an opportunity.  But
these Socialists did not have much faith in the Kaiser's promises and
jokingly asked the business man if the Kaiser did not decorate him as a
result of the audience!

The real object of this meeting was to discuss means of acquainting the
German people with the American organisation entitled the League to
Enforce Peace.  An American business man, who was a charter member of
the American organisation, was there to explain the purposes of the
League.  The meeting decided upon the publication in as many German
newspapers as possible of explanatory articles.  The newspaper editor
present promised to prepare them and urged their publication in various
journals.  The first article appeared in _Die Welt Am Montag_, one of
the weekly newspapers of Berlin.  It was copied by a number of
progressive newspapers throughout the Empire but when the attention of
the military and naval authorities was called to this propaganda an
order was issued prohibiting any newspaper from making any reference to
the League to Enforce Peace.  The anti-American editorial writers were
inspired to write brief notices to the effect that the League was in
reality to be a League against Germany supported by England and the
United States.

Throughout the summer and fall there appeared in various newspapers,
including the influential _Frankfurter Zeitung_, inspired articles
about the possibilities of annexing the industrial centres and
important harbours of Belgium.  In Munich and Leipsic a book by Dr.
Schumacher, of Bonn University, was published, entitled, "Antwerp, Its
World Position and Importance for Germany's Economic Life."  Another
writer named Ulrich Bauschey wrote a number of newspaper and magazine
articles for the purpose of showing that Germany would need Antwerp
after this war in order to successfully compete with Holland, England
and France in world commerce.  He figured that the difference between
the cost of transportation from the Rhine Valley industrial cities to
Antwerp and the cost of transportation from the Rhine Valley to Hamburg
and Bremen would be great enough as to enable German products to be
sold in America for less money than products of Germany's enemies.

These articles brought up the old question of the "freedom of the
seas."  Obviously, if the Allies were to control the seas after the
war, as they had during the war, Germany could make no plans for the
re-establishment of her world commerce unless there were some
assurances that her merchant fleet would be as free on the high seas as
that of any other nation.  During the war Germany had talked a great
deal about the freedom of the seas.  When the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed
von Jagow said in an interview that Germany was fighting for the free
seas and that by attacking England's control, Germany was acting in the
interests of the whole world.  But Germany was really not sincere in
what she said about having the seas free.  What Germany really desired
was not freedom of the seas in peace time because the seas had been
free before the war.  What Germany wanted was free seas in war
time,--freedom for her own merchant ships to go from Germany to any
part of the world and return with everything except absolute
contraband.  Germany's object was to keep from building a navy great
enough to protect her merchant fleet in order that she might devote all
her energies to army organisation.  But the freedom of the seas was a
popular phrase.  Furthermore it explained to the German people why
their submarine warfare was not inhuman because it was really fighting
for the freedom of all nations on the high seas!

[Illustration: This is the photograph of von Hindenburg which very
German has in his home.]

While these public discussions were going on, the fight on the
Chancellor began to grow.  It was evident that when the Reichstag met
again in September that there would be bitter and perhaps a decisive
fight on von Bethmann-Hollweg.  The division in Germany became so
pronounced that people forgot for a time the old party lines and the
newspapers and party leaders spoke of the "Bethmann parties" and the
"von Tirpitz party."  Whether the submarine should be used ruthlessly
against all shipping was the issue which divided public sentiment.  The
same democratic forces which had been supporting the Chancellor in
other fights again lined up with the Foreign Office.  The reactionaries
supported Major Bassermann, who really led the fight against the
Chancellor.  During this period the Chancellor and the Foreign Office
saw that the longer the war lasted the stronger the von Tirpitz party
would become because the people were growing more desperate and were
enthused by the propaganda cry of the Navy, "Down with England."  The
Chancellor and the Foreign Office tried once more to get the world to
talk about peace.  After the presidential nominations in America the
press began to discuss the possibilities of American peace
intervention.  Every one believed that the campaign and elections in
America would have an important effect on the prospects of peace.
Theodore Wolff, editor of the Berlin _Tageblatt_, who was the
Chancellor's chief supporter in newspaper circles, began the
publication of a series of articles to explain that in the event of the
election of Charles E. Hughes, Germany would be able to count upon more
assistance from America and upon peace.  At the time the Allies were
pounding away at the Somme and every effort was being made to bring
about some kind of peace discussions when these battles were over.

On September 20th a convention of Socialists was held in Berlin for the
purpose of uniting the Socialist party in support of the Chancellor.
The whole country was watching the Socialist discussions because every
one felt that the Socialist party represented the real opinion of the
people.  After several days of discussion all factional differences
were patched up and the Socialists were ready to present a solid front
when the fight came in the Reichstag on September 28th.  On the 27th,
Berlin hotels began to buzz with excitement over the possibilities of
overthrowing the Chancellor.  The fight was led by the National
Liberals and Centre Party groups.  It was proposed by Dr. Coerting, an
industrial leader from Hannover, to move a vote of lack of confidence
in the Chancellor.  Coerting was supported by the big ammunition
interests and by the von Tirpitz crowd.  Before the Reichstag convened
the Chancellor went to Great Headquarters for a final conference with
the Kaiser and Field Marshal von Hindenburg.  Before he left it looked
as if the Chancellor would be overthrown.  But when he returned he
summoned the Reichstag leaders who were supporting him and several
editors of Liberal newspapers.  The Chancellor told them that von
Hindenburg would support him.  The next day editorials appeared in a
number of newspapers, saying that von Hindenburg and the Chancellor
were united in their ideas.  This was the most successful strategic
move the Chancellor had made, for the public had such great confidence
in von Hindenburg that when it was learned that he was opposed to von
Tirpitz the backbone of opposition to the Chancellor was broken.  On
the 28th as von Bethmann-Hollweg appeared in the Reichstag, instead of
facing a hostile and belligerent assembly, he faced members who were
ready to support him in anything he did.  The Chancellor, however,
realised that he could take some of the thunder out of the opposition
by making a strong statement against England.  "Down with England," the
popular cry, was the keynote of the Chancellor's remarks.  In this one
speech he succeeded in uniting for a time at least public sentiment and
the political parties in support of the Government.

A few days afterward I saw Major Bassermann at his office in the
Reichstag and asked him whether the campaign for an unlimited submarine
warfare would be resumed after the action of the Reichstag in
expressing confidence in the Chancellor.  He said:

"That must be decided by the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Marine and
the General Staff.  England is our chief enemy and we must recognise
this and defeat her."

With his hands in his pocket, his face looking down, he paced his
office and began a bitter denunciation of the neutrality of the United
States.  I asked him whether he favoured the submarine warfare even if
it brought about a break with the United States.

"We wish to live in peace and friendship with America," he began, "but
undoubtedly there is bitter feeling here because American supplies and
ammunition enable our enemies to continue the war.  If America should
succeed in forcing England to obey international law, restore freedom
of the seas and proceed with American energy against England's
brutalisation of neutrals, it would have a decisive influence on the
political situation between the two countries.  If America does not do
this then we must do it with our submarines."

In October I was invited by the Foreign Office to go with a group of
correspondents to Essen, Cologne and the Rhine Valley Industrial
centres.  In Essen I met Baron von Bodenhausen and other directors of
Krupps.  In Dusseldorf at the Industrie Klub I dined with the steel
magnates of Germany and at Homburg-on-the-Rhine I saw August Thyssen,
one of the richest men in Germany and the man who owns one-tenth of
Germany's coal and iron fields.  The most impressive thing about this
journey was what these men said about the necessity for unlimited
warfare.  Every man I met was opposed to the Chancellor.  They hated
him because he delayed mobilisation at the beginning of the war.  They
stated that they had urged the invasion of Belgium because if Belgium
had not been invaded immediately France could have seized the Rhine
Valley and made it impossible for Germany to manufacture war munitions
and thereby to fight a war.  They said they were in favour of an
unlimited, ruthless submarine warfare against England and all ships
going to the British Isles.  Their opinions were best represented in an
inspired editorial appearing in the _Rhieinische Westfälische Zeitung_,
in which it was stated:


"The war must be fought to a finish.  Either Germany or England must
win and the interests here on the Rhine are ready to fight until
Germany wins."


"Do you think Germany wants war with America?" I asked Thyssen.

"Never!" was his emphatic response.  "First, because we have enemies
enough, and, secondly, because in peace times, our relations with
America are always most friendly.  We want them to continue so after
the war."

Thyssen's remarks could be taken on their face value were it not for
the fact that the week before we arrived in these cities General
Ludendorf, von Hindenhurg's chief assistant and co-worker, was there to
get the industrial leaders to manufacture more ammunition.  Von
Falkenhayn had made many enemies in this section because he cut down
the ammunition manufacturing until these men were losing money.  So the
first thing von Hindenburg did was to double all orders for ammunition
and war supplies and to send Ludendorf to the industrial centres to
make peace with the men who were opposed to the Government.

Thus from May to November German politics went through a period of
transformation.  No one knew exactly what would happen,--there were so
many conflicting opinions.  Political parties, industrial leaders and
the press were so divided it was evident that something would have to
be done or the German political organisation would strike a rock and go
to pieces.  The Socialists were still demanding election reforms during
the war.  The National Liberals were intriguing for a Reichstag
Committee to have equal authority with the Foreign Office in dealing
with all matters of international affairs.  The landowners, who were
losing money because the Government was confiscating so much food, were
not only criticising von Bethmann-Hollweg but holding back as much food
as they could for higher prices.  The industrial leaders, who had been
losing money because von Falkenhayn had decreased ammunition orders,
were only partially satisfied by von Hindenburg's step because they
realised that unless the war was intensified the Government would not
need such supplies indefinitely.  They saw, too, that the attitude of
President Wilson had so injured what little standing they still had in
the neutral world that unless Germany won the war in a decisive way,
their world connections would disappear forever and they would be
forced to begin all over after the war.  Faced by this predicament,
they demanded a ruthless submarine warfare against all shipping in
order that not only England but every other power should suffer,
because the more ships and property of the enemies destroyed the more
their chances with the rest of the world would be equalised when the
war was over.  Food conditions were becoming worse, the people were
becoming more dissatisfied; losses on the battlefields were touching
nearly every family.  Depression was growing.  Every one felt that
something had to be done and done immediately.

The press referred to these months of turmoil as a period of "new
orientation."  It was a time of readjustment which did not reach a
climax until December twelfth when the Chancellor proposed peace
conferences to the Allies.




     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

     WHAT YOU CANNOT EAT OR DRINK

     FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE COMPLETELY EXHAUSTED IN GERMANY

  1. Rice.                     12. Nuts.
  2. Coffee.                   13. Candy (a very limited
  3. Tea.                          number of persons can buy
  4. Cocoa.                        one-quarter of a pound
  5. Chocolate.                    about once a week).
  6. Olive oil.                14. Malted milk.
  7. Cream.                    15. Beer made of either
  8. Fruit flavorings.             malt or hops.
  9. Canned soups or           16. Caviar.
     soup cubes.               17. Ice cream.
 10. Syrups.                   18. Macaroni.
 11. Dried vegetables,
     beans, peas, etc.


     WHAT YOU MAY EAT

     FOOD OBTAINABLE ONLY BY CARDS

  1. Bread, 1,900 grams per week per person.
  2. Meat, 250 grams (1/2 pound) per week per head.
  3. Eggs, 1 per person every two weeks.
  4. Butter, 90 grams per week per person.
  5. Milk, 1 quart daily only for children under ten
     and invalids.
  6. Potatoes, formerly 9 pounds per week; lately
     in many parts of Germany no potatoes were available.
  7. Sugar, formerly 2 pounds per month, now 4 pounds,
     but this will not continue long.
  8. Marmalade, or jam, 1/4 of a pound every month.
  9. Noodles, 1/2 pound per person a month.
 10. Sardines, or canned fish, small box per month.
 11. Saccharine (a coal tar product substitute for sugar),
     about 25 small tablets a month.
 12. Oatmeal, 1/2 of a pound per month for adults or 1 pound
     per month for children under twelve years.


     WHAT YOU CAN EAT

     FOODS WHICH EVERY ONE WITH MONEY CAN BUY

  1. Geese, costing 8 to 10 marks per pound ($1.60 to
     $2 per pound).
  2. Wild game, rabbits, ducks, deer, etc.
  3. Smuggled meat, such as ham and bacon, for $2.50 per pound.
  4. Vegetables, carrots, spinach, onions, cabbage, beets.
  5. Apples, lemons, oranges.
  6. Bottled oil made from seeds and roots for cooking
     purposes, costing $5 per pound.
  7. Vinegar.
  8. Fresh fish.
  9. Fish sausage.
 10. Pickles.
 11. Duck, chicken and geese heads, feet and wings.
 12. Black crows.


     THE FOOD SITUATION AT A GLANCE

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *




CHAPTER VII

THE BUBBLING ECONOMIC VOLCANO

When I entered Germany in 1915 there was plenty of food everywhere and
prices were normal.  But a year later the situation had changed so that
the number of food cards--Germany's economic barometer--had increased
eight times.  March and April of 1916 were the worst months in the year
and a great many people had difficulty in getting enough food to eat.
There was growing dissatisfaction with the way the Government was
handling the food problem but the people's hope was centred upon the
next harvest.  In April and May the submarine issue and the American
crisis turned public attention from food to politics.  From July to
October the Somme battles kept the people's minds centred upon military
operations.  While the scarcity of food became greater the Government,
through inspired articles in the press, informed the people that the
harvest was so big that there would be no more food difficulties.

Germany began to pay serious attention to the food situation, when
early in the year, Adolph von Batocki, the president of East Prussia
and a big land owner, was made food dictator.  At the same time there
were organised various government food departments.  There was an
Imperial Bureau for collecting fats; another to take charge of the meat
supply; another to control the milk and another in charge of the
vegetables and fruit.  Germany became practically a socialistic state
and in this way the Government kept abreast of the growth of Socialism
among the people.  The most important step the Government took was to
organise the Zentral Einkaufgesellschaft, popularly known as the "Z. E.
G."  The first object of this organisation was to purchase food in
neutral countries.  Previously German merchants had been going to
Holland, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries to buy supplies.
These merchants had been bidding against each other in order to get
products for their concerns.  In this way food was made much more
expensive than it would have been had one purchaser gone outside of
Germany.  So the Government prohibited all firms from buying food
abroad.  Travelling agents of the "Z. E. G." went to these countries
and bought all of the supplies available at a fixed price.  Then these
resold to German dealers at cost.

Such drastic measures were necessitated by the public demand that every
one share alike.  The Government found it extremely difficult to
control the food.  Farmers and rich landowners insisted upon
slaughtering their own pigs for their own use.  They insisted upon
eating the eggs their chickens laid, or, upon sending them through the
mail to friends at high prices, thereby evading the egg card
regulations.  But the Government stepped in and farmers were prohibited
from killing their own cattle and from sending foods to friends and
special customers.  Farmers had to sell everything to the "Z. E. G."
That was another result of State Socialism.

The optimistic statements of Herr von Batocki about the food outlook
led the people to believe that by fall conditions would be greatly
improved but instead of becoming more plentiful food supplies became
more and more organised until all food was upon an absolute ration
basis.

"Although the crops were good this year, there will be so much
organisation that food will spoil," said practically every German.
Batocki's method of confiscating food did cause a great deal to spoil
and the public blamed him any time anything disappeared from the
market.  One day a carload of plums was shipped from Werder, the big
fruit district near Berlin, to the capital.  The "Z. E. G." confiscated
it but did not sell the goods immediately to the merchants and the
plums spoiled.  Before this was found out, a crowd of women surrounded
the train one day, which was standing on a side track, broke into a car
and found most of the plums in such rotten condition they could not be
used.  So they painted on the sides of the car: "This is the kind of
plum jam the 'Z. E. G.' makes."

There was a growing scarcity of all other supplies, too.  The armies
demanded every possible labouring man and woman so even the canning
factories had to close and food which formerly was canned had to be
eaten while fresh or it spoiled.  Even the private German family, which
was accustomed to canning food, had to forego this practice because of
a lack of tin cans, jars and rubber bands.

The food depots are by far the most successful undertaking of the
Government.  In Cologne and Berlin alone close to 500,000 poor are
being fed daily by municipal kitchens.  Last October I went through the
Cologne food department with the director.  The city has rented a
number of large vacant factory buildings and made them into kitchens.
Municipal buyers go through the country to buy meat and vegetables.
This is shipped to Cologne, and in these kitchens it is prepared by
women workers, under the direction of volunteers.

A stew is cooked each day and sold for 42 pfennigs (about eight cents)
a quart.  The people must give up their potato, fat and meat cards to
obtain it.  In Berlin and all other large cities, the same system is
used.  In one kitchen in Berlin, at the main market hall, 80,000 quarts
a day are prepared.

In Cologne this food is distributed through the city streets by
municipal wagons, and the people get it almost boiling hot, ready to
eat.  Were it not for these food depots there would be many thousands
of people who would starve because they could not buy and cook such
nourishing food for the price the city asks.  These food kitchens have
been in use now almost a year, and, while the poor are obtaining food
here, they are becoming very tired of the supply, because they must eat
stews every day.  They can have nothing fried or roasted.

In addition to these kitchens the Government has opened throughout
Germany "mittlestand kueche," a restaurant for the middle classes.
Here government employees, with small wages, the poor who do not keep
house and others with little means can obtain a meal for 10 cents,
consisting of a stew and a dessert.  But it is very difficult for
people to live on this food.  Most every one who is compelled by
circumstances to eat here is losing weight and feels under-nourished
all the time.

A few months ago, after one of my secretaries had been called to the
army; I employed another.  He had been earning only $7 a week and had
to support his wife.  On this money they ate at the middle class cafes.
In six months he had lost twenty pounds.

Because the food is so scarce and because it lacks real nourishment
people eat all the time.  It used to be said before the war that the
Germans were the biggest eaters in Europe--that they ate seven meals a
day.  The blockade has not made them less eaters, for they eat every
few hours all day long now, but because the food lacks fats and sugars,
they need more food.

Restaurants are doing big business because after one has eaten a "meal"
at any leading Berlin hotel at 1 o'clock in the afternoon one is hungry
by 3 o'clock and ready for another "meal."

Last winter the Socialists of Munich, who saw that the rich were having
plenty of food and that the poor were existing as best they could in
food kitchens, wrote Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg and demanded the
immediate confiscation of all food in Germany, even that in private
residences.

The Socialists' demand was, as are most others, thrown into the waste
basket because men like the Chancellor, President Batocki, of the Food
Department, wealthy bankers, statesmen and army generals have country
estates where they have stored food for an indefinite period.  They
know that no matter how hard the blockade pinches the people it won't
starve them.

When the Chancellor invites people to his palace he has real coffee,
white bread, plenty of potatoes, cake and meat.  Being a government
official he can get what he wants from the food department.  So can
other officials.  Therefore, they were willing to disregard the demand
of the Bavarian Socialists.

But the Socialists, although they don't get publicity when they start
something, don't give up until they accomplish what they set out to do.
First, they enlisted the Berlin Socialists, and the report went around
to people that the rich were going to Copenhagen and bringing back food
while the poor starved.  So the Government had to prohibit all food
from coming into Germany by way of Denmark unless it was imported by
the Government.

That was the first success of the Bavarian Socialists.  Now they have
had another.  Batocki is reported as having announced that all food
supplies will be confiscated.  The Socialists are responsible.

Excepting the very wealthy and those who have stored quantities of food
for the "siege," every German is undernourished.  A great many people
are starving.  The head physician of the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria
Hospital, in Berlin, stated that 80,000 children died in Berlin in 1916
from lack of food.  The _Lokal-Anzeiger_ printed the item and the
Foreign Office censor prohibited me from sending it to New York.

But starvation under the blockade is a slow process, and it has not yet
reached the army.  When I was on the Somme battlefields last November
and in Rumania in December the soldiers were not only well fed, but
they had luxuries which their families at home did not have.  Two years
ago there was so much food at home the women sent food boxes to the
front.  To-day the soldiers not only send but carry quantities of food
from the front to their homes.  The army has more than the people.

It is almost impossible to say whether Germany, as a nation, can be
starved into submission.  Everything depends upon the next harvest, the
length of the war and future military operations.  The German
Government, I think, can make the people hold out until the coming
harvest, unless there is a big military defeat.  In their present
undernourished condition the public could not face a defeat.  If the
war ends this year Germany will not be so starved that she will accept
any peace terms.  But if the war continues another year or two Germany
will have to give up.

I entered Germany at the beginning of the Allied blockade when one
could purchase any kind and any quantity of food in Germany.  Two years
later, when I left, there were at least eighteen foodstuffs which could
not be purchased anywhere, and there were twelve kinds of food which
could be obtained only by government cards.  That is what the Allied
blockade did to the food supplies.  It made Germany look like a grocery
store after a closing out sale.

Suppose in the United States you wanted the simplest breakfast--coffee
and bread and butter.  Suppose you wanted a light luncheon of eggs or a
sandwich, tea and fruit.  Suppose for dinner you wanted a plain menu of
soup, meat, vegetables and dessert.  At any grocery or lunch counter
you could get not only these plain foods, but anything else you wanted.

Not so in Germany!  For breakfast you cannot have pure coffee, and you
can have only a very small quantity of butter with your butter card.
Hotels serve a coffee substitute, but most people prefer nothing.  For
luncheon you may have an egg, but only one day during two weeks.
Hotels still serve a weak, highly colored tea and apples or oranges.
For dinner you may have soup without any meat or fat in it.  Soups are
just a mixture of water and vegetables.  Two days a week you can get a
small piece of meat with a meat card.  Other days you can eat boiled
fish.

People who keep house, of course, have more food, because as a rule
they have been storing supplies.  Take the Christian Scientists as an
instance.  Members of this Church have organised a semi-official club.
Members buy all the extra food possible.  Then they divide and store
away what they want for the "siege"--the time when food will be scarcer
than it is to-day.

Two women practitioners in Berlin, who live together, bought thirty
pounds of butter from an American who had brought it in from
Copenhagen.  They canned it and planned to make this butter last one
year.  Until a few weeks ago people with money could go to Switzerland,
Holland and Denmark and bring back food with them, either with or
without permission.  Some wealthy citizens who import machinery and
other things from outside neutral countries have their agents smuggle
food at the same time.

While the Dutch, Danish and Swiss governments try to stop smuggling;
there is always some going through.  The rich have the money to bribe
border officers and inspectors.  When I was in Düsseldorf, last
October, I met the owner of a number of canal boats, who shipped coal
and iron products from the Rhine Valley to Denmark.  He told me his
canal barges brought back food from Copenhagen every trip and that the
border authorities were not very careful in making an investigation of
his boats.

In Düsseldorf, too, as well as in Cologne, business men spoke about the
food they got from Belgium.  They did not get great quantities, of
course, but the leakage was enough to enable them to live better than
those who had to depend upon the food in Germany.

When the food supplies began to decrease the Government instituted the
card system of distribution.  Bread cards had been very successful, so
the authorities figured that meat, butter, potato and other cards would
be equally so.  But their calculations were wrong.

When potato cards were issued each person was given nine pounds a week.
But the potato harvest was a big failure.  The supply was so much less
than the estimates that seed potatoes had to be used to keep the people
satisfied.  Even then the supply was short; and the quantity to be sold
on potato cards was cut to three pounds a week.  Then transportation
difficulties arose, and potatoes spoiled before they reached Berlin,
Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipsic and other large cities.

The same thing happened when the Government confiscated the fruit crop
last year.

One day I was asked on the telephone whether I wanted to buy an
11-pound ham.  I asked to have it sent to my office immediately.  When
it came the price was $2.50 a pound.  I sent the meat back and told the
man I would not pay such a price.

"That's all right," he replied.  "Dr. Stein and a dozen other people
will pay me that price.  I sent it to you because I wanted to help you
out."

Dr. Ludwig Stein, one of the editors of the _Vossiche Zeitung_, paid
the price and ordered all he could get for the same money.

When I left Berlin the Government had issued an order prohibiting the
sale of all canned vegetables and fruit.  It was explained that this
food would be sold when the present supplies of other foods were
exhausted.  There were in Berlin many thousand cans, but no one can say
how long such food will last.

When Americans ask, "How long can Germany hold out?" I reply, "As long
as the German Government can satisfy the vanity and stimulate the
nerves of the people, and as long as the people permit the Government
to do the nation's thinking."

How long a time that will be no one can say.  It was formerly believed
that whenever a nation reached the limit which Germany has reached it
would crumple up.  But Germany fails to crumple.  Instead of breaking
up, she fights harder and more desperately.  Why can she do this?  The
answer is simple: Because the German people believe in their Government
and the Government knows that as long as it can convince the people
that it is winning the war the people will fight.

Germany is to-day in the position of a man on the verge of a nervous
breakdown; in the position of a man who is under-nourished, who is
depressed, who is weighed down by colossal burdens, who is brooding
over the loss of friends and relatives, but of a man who feels that his
future health and happiness depend upon his ability to hold out until
the crisis passes.

If a physician were called in to prescribe for such a patient his first
act would in all probability be to stimulate this man's hope, to make
him believe that if he would only "hold out" he would pass the crisis
successfully.  But no physician could say that his patient could stand
it for one week, a month or a year more.  The doctor would have to
gamble upon that man's nerves.  He would have to stimulate him daily,
perhaps hourly.

So it is with the German nation.  The country is on the verge of a
nervous breakdown.  Men and women, business men and generals, long ago
lost their patience.  They are under-nourished.  They are depressed,
distressed, suffering and anxious for peace.  It is as true of the
Hamburg-American Line directors as it is true of the officers at the
front.

There have been more cases of nervous breakdowns among the people
during the last year than at any time in Germany's history.  There have
been so many suicides that the newspapers are forbidden to publish
them.  There have been so many losses on the battlefields that every
family has been affected not once, but two, three and four times.
Dance halls have been closed.  Cafes and hotels must stop serving meals
by 11 o'clock.  Theatres are presenting the most sullen plays.  Rumours
spread like prairie fires.  One day Hindenburg is dead.  Two days later
he is alive again.

But the Kaiser has studied this war psychology.  He and his ministers
know that one thing keeps the German people fighting--their hope of
ultimate victory; their belief that they have won already.  The Kaiser
knows, too, that if the public mind is stimulated from day to day by
new victories, by reports of many prisoners, of new territory gained,
of enemy ships torpedoed, or by promises of reforms after the war, the
public will continue fighting.

So the Kaiser gambles from day to day with his people's nerves.  For
two years he has done this, and for two years he has been supported by
a 12,000,000-man-power army and a larger army of workers and women at
home.  The Kaiser believes he can gamble for a long time yet with his
people.

Just as it is impossible for a physician to say how long his patient
can be stimulated without breaking down, so is it impossible for an
observer in Germany to say how long it will be before the break-up
comes in Germany.

Many times during the war Germany has been on the verge of a collapse.
President Wilson's ultimatum after the sinking of the Sussex in the
English Channel brought about one crisis.  Von Falkenhayn's defeat at
Verdun caused another.  The Somme battle brought on a third.  General
Brusiloff's offensive against the Austrians upset conditions throughout
the Central Powers.  Rumania's declaration of war made another crisis.
But Germany passed all of these successfully.

The ability of the German Government to convince the people that Wilson
was unneutral and wanted war caused them to accept Germany's note in
the _Sussex_ case.  The defeat at Verdun was explained as a tactical
success.  The Somme battles, with their terrible losses, failed to
bring a break-up because the Allies stopped attacking at the critical
moment.

Von Hindenburg as chief of the General Staff of Central Europe remedied
the mistakes of the Austrians during Brusiloff's attacks by
reorganising the Dual Monarchy's army.  The crisis which Rumania's
entrance on the Allies' side brought in Germany and Hungary was
forgotten after von Mackensen took Bucharest.

In each of these instances it will be noticed that the crisis was
successfully passed by "stimulation."  The German mind was made to
believe what the Kaiser willed.

But what about the future?  Is there a bottomless well of stimulation
in Germany?

Before these questions can be answered others must be asked: Why don't
the German people think for themselves?  Will they ever think for
themselves?

An incident which occurred in Berlin last December illustrates the fact
that the people are beginning to think.  After the Allies replied to
President Wilson's peace note the Kaiser issued an appeal to the German
people.  One morning it was printed on the first pages of all
newspapers in boldface type.  When I arrived at my office the janitor
handed me the morning papers and, pointing to the Kaiser's letter, said:

"I see the Kaiser has written US another letter.  You know he never
wrote to US in peace time."

There are evidences, too, that others are beginning to think.  The
Russian revolution is going to cause many Socialists to discuss the
future of Germany.  They have discussed it before, but always behind
closed doors and with lowered voices.  I attended one night a secret
meeting of three Socialist leaders of the Reichstag, an editor of a
Berlin paper and several business men.  What they said of the Kaiser
that night would, if it were published, send every man to the military
firing squad.  But these men didn't dare speak that way in public at
that time.  Perhaps the Russian revolt will give them more courage.

But the Government is not asleep to these changes.  The Kaiser believes
he can continue juggling public opinion, but he knows that from now on
it will be more difficult.  But he will not stop.  He will always hold
forth the vision of victory as the reward for German faithfulness.
Today, for instance, in the United States we hear very little about the
German submarine warfare.  It is the policy of the Allies not to
publish all losses immediately; first because the enemy must not be
given any important information if possible, and, secondly, because,
losses have a bad effect upon any people.

But the German people do not read what we do.  Their newspapers are
printing daily the ship losses of the Entente.  Submarines are
returning and making reports.  These reports are published and in a way
to give the people the impression that the submarine war is a success.
We get the opposite impression here, but we are not in a position
better to judge than the Germans, because we don't hear everything.

The important question, however, is: What are the German people being
told about submarine warfare?

Judging from past events, the Kaiser and his Navy are undoubtedly
magnifying every sinking for the purpose of stimulating the people into
believing that the victory they seek is getting nearer.  The Government
knows that the public favours ruthless torpedoing of all ships bound
for the enemy, so the Government is safe in concluding that the public
can be stimulated for some months more by reports of submarine victory.

Military operations in the West are probably not arousing the
discussion in Berlin that the plans against Russia are.  The Government
will see to it that the press points regularly to the possibilities of
a separate peace with Russia, or to the possibility of a Hindenburg
advance against England and France.

The people have childlike faith in von Hindenburg.  If Paul von
Hindenburg says a retreat is a victory the people will take his
judgment.  But all German leaders know that the time is coming when
they will have to show the German people a victory or take the
consequences themselves.

Hence it would not be surprising if, after present military operations
are concluded, either by an offensive against Russia or by an attack on
the Western line, the Chancellor again made peace proposals.  The
Socialists will force the Chancellor to do it sooner or later.  They
are the real power behind the throne, although they have not enough
spunk to try to oust the Kaiser and tell the people to do their own
thinking.

A big Allied military victory would, of course, change everything.
Defeat of the German army would mean defeat of von Hindenburg, the
German god.  It would put an end to the Kaiser's juggling with his
people's nerves.  But few people in Germany expect an Entente victory
this year, and they believe that if the Allies don't win this year they
never will win.

Germany is stronger militarily now than she has been and Germany will
be able for many months to keep many Entente armies occupied.  Before
the year is passed the Entente may need American troops as badly as
France needed English assistance last year.  General von Falkenhayn,
former chief of the German General Staff, told me about the same thing
last December, in Rumania.

"In war," he remarked, "nothing is certain except that everything is
uncertain, but one thing I know is certain: We will win the war."

_America's entrance, however, will have the decisive effect_.  The
Allies, especially the French, appreciate this.  As a high French
official remarked one day when Ambassador Gerard's party was in Paris:

"There have been two great moments in the war for France.  The first
was when England declared war to support us.  The second was the
breaking of diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany."

The Germans don't believe this.  As General von Stein, Prussian
Minister of War, said, Germany doesn't fear the United States.  He said
that, of course, for its effect upon the German people.  The people
must be made to believe this or they will not be able to hate America
in true German fashion.

America's participation, however, will upset Hindenburg's war plans.
American intervention can put a stop to the Kaiser's juggling with his
people's minds by helping the Allies defeat Germany.  Only a big
military defeat will shake the confidence of the Germans in the Kaiser,
Hindenburg and their organised might.  The people are beginning to
think now, but they will do a great deal more thinking if they are
beaten.

So the answer to the question: "How long can Germany hold out?" is
really answered by saying that Germany can keep on until she is
decisively defeated militarily.




CHAPTER VIII

THE PEACE DRIVE OF DECEMBER 12TH

I

Disturbed by internal political dissension and tormented by lack of
food the German ship of state was sailing troubled waters by November,
1916.  Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg's speech to the Reichstag on
September 28th satisfied no one.  After he had spoken the only thing
people could recall were his words:

"The mighty tasks which await us in all the domains of public, social,
economic, and political life need all the strength of the people for
their fulfilment.  It is a necessity of state which will triumph over
all obstacles to utilise to the utmost those forces which have been
forged in the fire and which clamour for work and creation.  _A free
path for all who are capable--that must be our watch-word_.  If we
carry it out freely, without prejudice, then our empire goes to a
healthy future."

The press interpreted this as meaning that the Chancellor might some
day change his mind about the advisability of a ruthless submarine
warfare.  Early in November when it appeared that the Allies would not
succeed in breaking through at the Somme peace forces were again
mobilised.  But when various neutral countries sounded Germany as to
possible terms they discovered that Germany was the self-appointed
"victor" and would consider only a peace which recognised Germany as
the dominant power in Europe.  The confidence of the army in the
victory was so great that the following article was printed in all the
German newspapers:

"FAITH IN VICTORY"

"Great Headquarters sends us the following:

"Since the beginning of the war, when enemies arose on all sides and
millions of troops proceeded from all directions--since then more than
two long years have brought no more eventful days than those of the
present.  The unity of the front--our enemies have prepared it for a
long time past with great care and proclaimed it in loud tones.  Again
and again our unexpected attacks have disturbed this boldly thought out
plan in its development, destroying its force, but now at last
something has been accomplished that realises at least part of the
intentions of our enemies and all their strength is being concentrated
for a simultaneous attack.  The victory which was withheld from them on
all the theatres of war is to be accomplished by an elaborate attack
against the defensive walls of our best blood.  The masses of iron
supplied them by half the world are poured on our gallant troops day
and night with the object of weakening their will and then the mass
attacks of white, yellow, brown and black come on.

"The world never experienced anything so monstrous and never have
armies kept up a resistance such as ours.

"Our enemies combine the hunger and lie campaign with that of arms,
both aimed at the head and heart of our home.  The hunger campaign they
will lose as the troublesome work of just an equal administration and
distribution of the necessities of life is almost complete.  And a
promising harvest has ripened on our broad fields.  From the first day
of the war, we alone of all the belligerent nations published the army
reports of all of our enemies in full, as our confidence in the
constancy of those at home is unlimited.  But our enemies have taken
advantage of this confidence and several times a day they send out war
reports to the world; the English since the beginning of their
offensive send a despatch every two hours.  Each of these publications
is two or three times as long as our daily report and all written in a
style which has nothing in common with military brevity and simplicity.
This is no longer the language of the soldier.  They are mere fantastic
hymns of victory and their parade of names and of conquered villages
and woods and stormed positions, and the number of captured guns, and
tens of thousands of prisoners is a mockery of the truth.

"Why is all this done?  Is it only intended to restore the wearying
confidence of their own armies and people and the tottering faith of
their allies?  Is it only intended to blind the eagerly observing eye
of the neutrals?  No, this flood of telegrams is intended to pass
through the channels which we ourselves have opened to our enemy, and
to dash against the heart of the German people, undermining and washing
away our steadfastness.

"But this despicable game will not succeed.  In the same manner as our
gallant troops in the field defy superior numbers, so the German people
at home will defy the enemies' legions of lies, and remember that the
German army reports cannot tell them and the world at large everything
at present, but they never publish a word the truth of which could not
be minutely sifted.  With proud confidence in the concise, but
absolutely reliable publications of our own army administration,
Germany will accept these legions of enemy reports at their own value,
as wicked concoctions, attempting to rob them of calm and confidence
which the soldier must feel supporting him, if he joyfully risks his
all for the protection of those at home.  Thus our enemies' legions of
lies will break against the wall of our iron faith.  Our warriors defy
the iron and fire--those at home will also defy the floods of printed
paper and remain unruffled.  The nation and army alike are one in their
will and faith in victory."

[Illustration: THE POPE TO PRESIDENT WILSON----"HOW CAN MY PEACE ANGEL
FLY, MR. PRESIDENT, WHEN YOU ALWAYS PUT SHELLS IN HER POCKETS?"]

This is a typical example of the kind of inspired stories which are
printed in the German newspapers from time to time to keep up the
confidence of the people.  This was particularly needed last fall
because the people were depressed and melancholy over the losses at the
Somme, and because there was so much criticism and dissatisfaction over
the Chancellor's attitude towards the submarine warfare and peace.
People, too, were suffering agonies in their homes because of the
inferior quality of the food,--the lack of necessary fats and sugar
which normal people need for regular nourishment.  The Socialists, who
are in closer touch with the people than any others, increased their
demands for peace while the National Liberals and the Conservatives,
who wanted a war of exhaustion against Great Britain, increased their
agitation for the submarine warfare.  The Chancellor was between two
tormentors.  Either he had to attempt to make peace to satisfy the
Socialists and the people, or he had to give in to the demands for
submarine warfare as outlined by the National Liberals.  One day
Scheidemann went to the Chancellor's palace, after he had visited all
the big centres of Germany, and said to von Bethmann-Hollweg:

"Unless you try to make peace at once the people will revolt and I
shall lead the revolution!"

At the same time the industrial leaders of the Rhine Valley and the
Army and Navy were serving notice on the Government that there could
not possibly be a German victory unless every weapon in Germany's
possession, which included of course the submarine, was used against
Germany's so-called chief foe--England.

Confronted by graver troubles within Germany than those from the
outside, the Chancellor went to Great Headquarters to report to the
Kaiser and to discuss with von Hindenburg and Ludendorf what should be
done to unite the German nation.

While the Army had been successful in Roumania and had given the people
renewed confidence, this was not great enough to carry the people
through another hard winter.

While Germany had made promises to the United States in May that no
ships would be sunk without warning, the submarines were not adhering
very closely to the written instructions.  The whole world was aroused
over Germany's repeated disregard of the rules and practice of sea
warfare.  President Wilson through Ambassador Gerard had sent nine
inquiries to the Foreign Office asking for a report from Germany on the
sinking of various ships not only contrary to international law but
contrary to Germany's pledges.  In an attempt to ward off many of the
neutral indictments of Germany's sea warfare the official North German
Gazette published an explanation containing the following:

"The activity of our submarines in the Atlantic Ocean and White Sea has
led the press of the entire world to producing articles as to the
waging of cruiser warfare by means of submarines.  In both cases it can
be accurately stated that there is no question of submarine warfare
here, but of cruiser warfare waged with the support of submarines and
the details reported hitherto as to the activities of our submarines do
not admit of any other explanation, in spite of the endeavours of the
British press to twist and misrepresent facts.  It is also strictly
correct to state that the cruiser warfare which is being waged by means
of submarines is in strict compliance with the German prize regulations
which correspond to the International Rules laid down and agreed to in
the Declaration of London which are not being any more complied with by
England.  The accusations and charges brought forward by the British
press and propaganda campaign in connection with ships sunk, can be
shown as futile, as our position is both militarily and from the
standpoint of international law irreproachable.  We do not sink neutral
ships per se, as was recently declared in a proclamation, but the
ammunition transports and other contraband wares conducive to the
prolongation of the war, and the rights of defensive measures as
regards this cannot be denied Germany any more than any other country.

"Based on this idea, it is clearly obvious that the real loss of the
destruction of tonnage must be attributed to the supplies sent to
England and not to the attitude displayed by Germany which has but
recourse to purely defensive measures.  If the attitude displayed by
England towards neutrals during the course of this war be considered,
the manner in which it forced compulsory supplies of contraband goods,
etc., it can be further recognised that England is responsible for the
losses in ships; as it is owing to England's attitude that the cause is
to be found. . . .

"Although England has hit and crippled legitimate trade to such an
extent, Germany does not wish to act in the same manner, but simply to
stop the shipments of contraband goods calculated to lengthen the war.
England evidently is being hard hit by our defensive submarine measures
and is therefore doing all in her power to incite public opinion
against the German methods of warfare and confuse opinion in neutral
countries. . . .

"Therefore it must again be recalled that it is:

"England, which has crippled neutral trade!

"England, which has rendered the freedom of the seas impossible!

"England, which has extended the risk of contraband wares in excess of
international agreements, and now raises a cry when the same weapons
are used against herself.

"England, which has compelled the neutrals to supply these shipments of
contraband goods calculated to lengthen the war!

"As the neutrals quietly acquiesced when there was a question of
abandoning trade with the Central Powers they have remedies in hand for
the losses of ships which affect them so deeply.  They need only
consider the fact that the German submarines on the high seas are able
to prevent war services to the enemy in the shipments of contraband
goods, in a manner that is both militarily and from the standpoint of
international law, irreproachable.  If they agree to desist from the
shipment of contraband goods and cease yielding to British pressure
then they will not have to complain of losses in ships and can retain
the same for peaceful aims."


This was aimed especially at America.  Naval critics did not permit the
opportunity to pass to call to the attention of the Government that
Germany's promises in the _Sussex_ case were only conditional and that,
therefore, they could be broken at any time.  The Chancellor was in a
most difficult situation; so was von Hindenburg and the Kaiser.  On
December 10th it was announced that the Reichstag would be called to a
special session on the twelfth and that the Chancellor would discuss
the international situation as it was affected by the Roumanian
campaign.

The meeting of December 12th was the best attended and most impressive
one of the Reichstag since August 4th, 1914.  Before the Chancellor
left his palace he called the representatives of the neutral nations
and handed them Germany's peace proposal.  The same day Germany sent to
every part of the globe through her wireless stations, Germany's note
to the Allies and the Chancellor's address.

The world was astonished and surprised at the German move but no one
knew whether it was to be taken seriously.  Great Britain instructed
her embassies and legations in neutral countries to attempt to find out
whether the Chancellor really desired to make peace or whether his
statements were to be interpreted as something to quiet internal
troubles.

During the days of discussion which followed I was in close touch with
the Foreign Office, the American Embassy and the General Staff.  The
first intimation I received that Germany did not expect the peace plan
to succeed was on December 14th at a meeting of the neutral
correspondents with Lieut. Col. von Haeften.  When von Hindenburg
became Chief of the General Staff he reorganised the press department
in Berlin and sent von Haeften from his personal staff to Berlin to
direct the press propaganda.  As a student of public opinion abroad von
Haeften was a genius and was extremely frank and honest with the
correspondents.

"We have proposed peace to our enemies," he said to the correspondents,
"because we feel that we have been victorious and because we believe
that no matter how long the war continues the Allies will not be able
to defeat us.  It will be interesting to see what effect our proposal
has upon Russia.  Reports which we have received, coming from
unquestionable sources, state that internal conditions in Russia are
desperate; that food is scarce; that the transportation system is so
demoralised and that it will be at least eight months before Russia can
do anything in a military way.  Russia wants peace and needs peace and
we shall see now whether she has enough influence upon England to
compel England to make peace.  We are prepared to go on with the war if
the Allies refuse our proposals.  If we do we shall not give an inch
without making the Allies pay such a dear cost that they will not be
able to continue."

The Foreign Office was not optimistic over the possibilities of
success; officials realised that the new Lloyd-George Cabinet meant a
stronger war policy by Great Britain, but they thought the peace
proposals might shake the British confidence in the new government and
cause the overthrow of Lloyd-George and the return of Asquith and
Viscount Edward Grey.

From all appearances in Berlin it was evident to every neutral diplomat
with whom I talked that while Germany was proclaiming to the whole
world her desire for peace she had in mind only the most drastic peace
terms as far as Belgium, certain sections of northern France, Poland
and the Balkans were concerned.  Neutrals observed that Germany was so
exalted over the Roumanian victory and the possibilities of that
campaign solving the food problem that she was not only ready to defy
the Allies but the neutral world unless the world was ready to bow to a
German victory.  There were some people in Germany who realised that
the sooner she made peace the better peace terms she could get but the
Government was not of this opinion.  The Allies, as was expected,
defiantly refused the Prussian olive branch which had been extended
like everything else from Germany with a string tied to it.  For the
purposes of the Kaiser and his Government the Allies' reply was exactly
what they wanted.

The German Government was in this position: If the Allies accepted
Germany's proposal it would enable the Government to unite all factions
in Germany by making a peace which would satisfy the political parties
as well as the people.  If the Allies refused, the German Government
calculated that the refusal would be so bitter that it would unite the
German people political organisations and enable the Government to
continue the war in any way it saw fit.

Nothing which had happened during the year so solidified the German
nation as the Allies' replies to Berlin and to President Wilson.  It
proved to the German people that their Government was waging a
defensive war because the Allies demanded annexation, compensation and
guarantees, all of which meant a change in the map of Europe from what
it was at the beginning of the war.  The interests which had been
demanding a submarine warfare saw their opportunity had come.  They
knew that as a result of the Allies' notes the public would sanction an
unrestricted sea warfare against the whole world if that was necessary.

From December 12th until after Christmas, discussions of peace filled
the German newspapers.  By January 1st all possibilities of peace had
disappeared.  The Government and the public realised that the war would
go on and that preparations would have to be made at once for the
biggest campaign in the history of the world in 1917.

Throughout the peace discussions one thing was evident to all
Americans.  Opposition to American intervention in any peace discussion
was so great that the United States would not be able to take any
leading part without being faced by the animosity of a great section of
Germany.  When it was stated in the press that Joseph O. Grew, the
American Charge d'Affaires, had received the German note and
transmitted it to his Government, public indignation was so great that
the Government had to inform all of the German newspapers to explain
that Germany had not asked the United States to make peace; that
Germany had in fact not asked any neutrals to make peace but had only
handed these neutrals the German note in order to get it officially
before the Allies.  At this time the defiant attitude of the whole
nation was well expressed in an editorial in the _Morgen Post_ saying:
"If Germany's hand is refused her fist will soon be felt with increased
force."

II

The Conferences at Pless

As early as September, 1916, Ambassador Gerard reported to the State
Department that the forces demanding an unrestricted submarine campaign
were gaining such strength in Germany that the Government would not be
able to maintain its position very long.  Gerard saw that not only the
political difficulties but the scarcity of food and the anti-American
campaign of hate were making such headway that unless peace were made
there would be nothing to prevent a rupture with the United States.
The latter part of December when Gerard returned from the United States
after conferences with President Wilson he began to study the submarine
situation.

He saw that only the most desperate resistance on the part of the
Chancellor would be able to stem the tide of hate and keep America out
of the war.  On January 7th the American Chamber of Commerce and Trade
in Berlin gave a dinner to Ambassador Gerard and invited the
Chancellor, Dr. Helfferich, Dr. Solf, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Zimmermann, prominent German bankers and business men, leading editors
and all others who a few months before during the _Sussex_ crisis had
combined in maintaining friendly relations.  At this banquet Gerard
made the statement, "As long as such men as Generals von Hindenburg and
Ludendorf, as long as Admirals von Capelle, von Holtzendorff and von
Mueller headed the Navy Department, and the Chancellor von
Bethmann-Hollweg directed the political affairs there would be no
trouble with the United States."  Gerard was severely criticised abroad
not only for this statement but for a further remark "That the
relations between Germany and the United States had never been better
than they were to-day."  Gerard saw before he had been in Berlin a week
that Germany was desperate, that conditions were getting worse and that
with no possibilities of peace Germany would probably renew the von
Tirpitz submarine warfare.  He chose desperate means himself at this
banquet to appeal to the democratic forces in Germany to side with the
Chancellor when the question of a ruthless submarine warfare again came
up.

The German Government, however, had planned its moves months in
advance.  Just as every great offensive on the battlefields is planned,
even to the finest details, six months before operations begin, so are
the big moves on the political chessboard of Europe.

There are very few men in public life in Germany who have the courage
of their convictions to resign if their policies are overruled.  Von
Jagow, who was Secretary of State from the beginning of the war until
December, 1916, was one of these "few."  Because von Jagow had to sign
all of the foolish, explanatory and excusing notes which the German
Government sent to the United States he was considered abroad as being
weak and incapable.  But when he realised early in November that the
Government was determined to renew the submarine warfare unless peace
was made von Jagow was the only man in German public life who would not
remain an official of the Government and bring about a break with
America.  Zimmermann, however, was a different type of official.
Zimmermann, like the Chancellor, is ambitious, bigoted, cold-blooded
and an intriguer of the first calibre.  As long as he was Under
Secretary of State he fought von Jagow and tried repeatedly to oust
him.  So it was not surprising to Americans when they heard that
Zimmermann had succeeded von Jagow.

The Gerard banquet, however, came too late.  The die was cast.  But the
world was not to learn of it for some weeks.

On the 27th of January, the Kaiser's birthday, the Chancellor, Field
Marshal von Hindenburg, First Quartermaster General Ludendorf, Admirals
von Capelle, von Holtzendorff and von Mueller and Secretary of State
Zimmermann were invited to Great Headquarters to attend the Kaiser's
birthday dinner.

Ever since von Hindenburg has been Chief of the General Staff the Grand
Chief Headquarters of the German Army have been located at Pless, on
the estate of the Prince of Pless in Silicia.  Previously, the Kaiser
had had his headquarters here, because it was said and popularly
believed that His Majesty was in love with the beautiful Princess of
Pless, an Englishwoman by birth.  When von Hindenburg took his
headquarters to the big castle there, the Princess was exiled and sent
to Parkenkirchen, one of the winter resorts of Bavaria.

On previous birthdays of the Emperor and when questions of great moment
were debated the civilian ministers of the Kaiser were always invited.
But on the Kaiser's birthday in 1917 only the military leaders were
asked.  Dr. Helfferich, Minister of Colonies Solf, German bankers and
business men as well as German shippers were not consulted.  Germany
was becoming so desperate that she was willing to defy not only her
enemies and neutral countries but her own financiers and business men.
Previously, when the submarine issue was debated the Kaiser wanted to
know what effect such a warfare would have upon German economic and
industrial life.  But this time he did not care.  He wanted to know the
naval and military arguments.

In August, 1914, when the Chancellor and a very small group of people
were appealing to His Majesty not to go to war, the Kaiser sided with
General von Moltke and Admiral von Tirpitz.  During the various
submarine crises with the United States it appeared that the Kaiser was
changing--that he was willing and ready to side with the forces of
democracy in his own country.  President Wilson and Ambassador Gerard
thought that after the downfall of von Tirpitz and von Falkenhayn the
Kaiser would join hands with the reform forces.  But in 1917 when the
final decision came the Kaiser cast his lot with his generals against
the United States and against democracy in Germany.  The Chancellor,
who had impressed neutral observers as being a real leader of democracy
in Germany, sided with the Kaiser.  Thus by one stroke the democratic
movement which was under way in Germany received a rude slap.  The man
the people had looked upon as a friend became an enemy.


III

The Break in Diplomatic Relations

On January 30th the German Government announced its blockade of all
Allied coasts and stated that all shipping within these waters, except
on special lanes, would be sunk without notice.  Germany challenged the
whole world to stay off of the ocean.  President Wilson broke
diplomatic relations immediately and ordered Ambassador Gerard to
return home.  Gerard called at the Foreign Office for his passports and
said that he desired to leave at once.  Zimmermann informed him that as
soon as the arrangements for a train could be made he could leave.
Zimmermann asked the Ambassador to submit a list of persons he desired
to accompany him.  The Ambassador's list was submitted the next day.
The Foreign Office sent it to the General Staff, but nearly a week
passed before Gerard was told he could depart and then he was
instructed that the American consuls could not accompany him, but would
have to take a special train leaving Munich a week or two later.
American correspondents, who expressed a desire to accompany the
Ambassador, were refused permission.  In the meantime reports arrived
that the United States had confiscated the German ships and Count
Montgelas, Chief of the American division of the Foreign Office,
informed Gerard the American correspondents would be held as hostages
if America did this.  Gerard replied that he would not leave until the
correspondents and all other Americans were permitted to leave over any
route they selected.  Practically all of the correspondents had handed
in their passports to the Foreign Office, but not until four hours
before the special train departed for Switzerland were the passports
returned.  When Gerard asked the Foreign Office whether his passports
were good to the United States the Foreign Office was silent and
neither would the General Staff guarantee the correspondents a safe
conduct through the German submarine zone.  So the only thing the
Ambassador could do was to select a route via Switzerland, France and
Spain, to Cuba and the United States.

The train which left Berlin on the night of February 10th carried the
happiest group of Americans which had been in Europe since the war
began.  Practically no one slept.  When the Swiss border was reached
the Stars and Stripes were hung from the car windows and Americans
breathed again in a free land.  They felt like prisoners escaping from
a penitentiary.  Most of them had been under surveillance or suspicion
for months.  Nearly every one had had personal experiences which proved
to them that the German people were like the Government--there was no
respect for public sentiment or moral obligation.  Some of the women
had upon previous occasions, when they crossed the German frontier,
submitted to the most inhuman indignities, but they remained in Germany
because their husbands were connected in some way with United States
government or semi-public service work.  They were delighted to escape
the land where everything is "verboten" except hatred and militarism.
The second day after Gerard's arrival in Berne, American Minister
Stoval gave a reception to the Ambassador and invited the Allied
diplomats.  From that evening on until he sailed from Coruña, Spain,
the Ambassador felt that he was among friends.  When the Americans
accompanying the Ambassador asked the French authorities in Switzerland
for permission to enter France the French replied:

"Of course you can go through France.  You are exiles and France
welcomes you."

After the Americans arrived in Paris they said they were not considered
exiles but guests.


     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

On the Kaiser's birthday services were held in all Protestant churches
in Germany.  The clergy was mobilised to encourage the people.  On
January 29th I sent the following despatch, after attending the
impressive services in the Berlin Cathedral:

"Where one year ago Dr. Dryander, the quiet white-haired man who is
court preacher, pleaded for an hour for peace in the services marking
the Kaiser's birthday, this year his sermon was a fiery defence of
Germany's cause and a militant plea for Germany to steel herself for
the decisive battle every one believes is coming.

"In this changed spirit he reflected the sentiment of the German
people.  His sermon of Saturday has evoked the deepest approval
everywhere.

"'We know,' be said, 'that before us is the decisive battle which can
be fought through only with the greatest sacrifices.  But in all cases
of the past God has helped us, and God will fight for us to-day,
through our leaders and our soldiers.  We neither willed nor wanted
this war--neither the Kaiser nor the people.  We hoped for peace as the
Kaiser extended his peace proposal, but with unheard of frivolity and
insults our enemies slapped the back of the Kaiser's extended hand of
peace.

"'To such enemies there is only one voice--that of the cannon.  We
continue the war with a clear conscience and with trust in God that he
will bring us victory.  God cannot--he will not--permit the German
people to go down.'"

"GOD WILL NOT PERMIT THE GERMAN PEOPLE TO GO DOWN"

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *




CHAPTER IX

THE BERNHARDI OF THE SEAS

After the break in diplomatic relations the slogan of German Militarism
became:

"Win or lose, we must end the war."

To many observers it seemed to be insanity coupled with desperation
which caused the Kaiser to defy the United States.  There was no doubt
that Germany was desperate, economically, morally and militarily.
While war had led German armies far into enemy territory, it had
destroyed German influence throughout the world; it had lost Germany's
colonies and Pacific possessions and it had turned the opinion of the
world against Germany.  But during the time Germany was trying to
impress the United States with its sincerity after the _Sussex_
incident the German Navy was building submarines.  It was not building
these ships to be used in cruiser warfare.  It was building them for
the future, when submarine war would be launched on a big scale,
perhaps on a bigger scale than it had ever before been conducted.

After the new blockade of the Allied Coast was proclaimed, effective
Feb. 1, 1917, some explanation had to be made to convince the public
that the submarine war would be successful and would bring the victory
which the people had been promised.  The public was never informed
directly what the arguments were which convinced the Kaiser that he
could win the war by using submarines.  But on the 9th of February
there appeared a small book written by Rear Admiral Hollweg entitled:
"Unser Recht auf den Ubootkrieg."  (Our Right in Submarine Warfare.)
The manuscript of this book was concluded on the 15th of January, which
shows that the data which it contained and the information and
arguments presented were those which the Admiralty placed before the
Kaiser on his birthday.  The points which Rear Admiral Hollweg makes in
his book are:

1. America's unfriendly neutrality justifies a disregard of the United
States;

2. The loss of merchant ships is bringing about a crisis in the
military and economic conditions of the Allies;

3. England, as the heart of the Entente, must be harmed before peace
can be made;

4. Submarines can and must end the war.

This book is for the German people a naval text book as General von
Bernhardi's book, "Germany and the Next War," was a military text book.
Bernhardi's task was to school Germany into the belief in the
unbeatableness of the German army.  Hollweg's book is to teach the
German people what their submarines will accomplish and to steal the
people for the plans her military leaders will propose and carry
through on this basis.

The keynote of Hollweg's arguments is taken from the words of the
German song: "Der Gott der Eisen wachsen Liesz," written by Ernst
Moritz Arndt.  Hollweg quotes this sentence on page 23:


"Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken, als ein Schrecken ohne Ende."

("Rather an end with Terror than Terror without End.")


In the chapter on "The Submarine War and Victory" the writer presents
the following table:

 Status of merchant ships in 1914:

                                        Sunk or
                                       Captured    Percentage

 England (Exclusive of
  colonies) ..........  19,256,766    2,977,820       15.5
 France ..............   2,319,438      376,360       16.2
 Russia ..............   1,053,818      146,168       13.8
 Italy ...............   1,668,296      314,290       18.8
 Belgium .............     352,124       32,971        9.3
 Japan ...............   1,708,386       37,391        0.22

 (Figures for Dec. 1916 estimated)
 The World Tonnage at beginning of war was....  49,089,553
 Added 1914-16 by new construction............   2,000,000
                                                ----------
                                                51,089,553

 Of this not useable are:

 Tonnage Germany ...  5,459,296
         Austria ...  1,055,719
         Turkey  ...    133,158

 In Germany and Turkey
 held enemy
 shipping ..........    200,000

 Ships in U. S. A...  2,352,764

 Locked in Baltic and
 Black Sea .........    700,000

 Destroyed enemy
 tonnage ...........  3,885,000
                     ----------
   Total             13,785,937

 Destroyed neutral
 tonnage (estimated)    900,000
                     ----------
                                   14,685,937

 Requisitioned by
 enemy countries for
 war purposes,
 transports, etc.

     England .......  9,000,000
     France ........  1,400,000
     Italy .........  1,100,000
     Russia ........    400,000
     Belgium .......    250,000
                     ----------
                                   12,150,000
                                   ----------
                                               26,835,937
                                               ----------
 Remaining for world freight transmission still
 useable at the beginning of 1917............  24,253,615 tons


To the Entente argument that Germany has not considered the speedy
construction of merchant ships during war time the author replies by
citing Lloyd's List of December 29, 1916, which gave the following
tonnage as having been completed in British wharves:

    1913 ..........  1,977,000 tons
    1914 ..........  1,722,000 tons
    1915 ..........    649,000 tons
    1916 ..........    582,000 tons


"These figures demonstrate that England, which is the leader of the
world as a freight carrier is being harmed the most."  Admiral Hollweg
cites these figures to show that ship construction has decreased in
England and that England cannot make good ship losses by new
construction.

On page 17 Rear Admiral Hollweg says:


"We are conducting to-day a war against enemy merchant vessels
different from the methods of former wars only in part by ordinary
warships.  The chief method is by submarines based upon the
fundamentals of international law as dictated by German prize court
regulations.  The German prize regulations were at the beginning of the
war based upon the fundamental principles of the London Declaration and
respected the modern endeavours of all civilised states to decrease the
terrors of war.  These regulations of sea laws were written to decrease
the effects of the unavoidable consequences of sea warfare upon
non-combatants and neutrals.  As far as there have been changes in the
regulations of the London Declaration during the war, especially as far
as changes in the contraband list have been extended, we Germans have
religiously followed the principle set by the English of, 'an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'"


On page 19 he states:


"Americans would under no circumstances, not even to-day, if they were
faced by a superior sea power in war, refuse to follow this method of
warfare by the ruthless use of pirate ships.  May our submarine
campaign be an example for them!  The clever cruiser journey of U-53
off the Atlantic Coast gave them clearly to understand what this method
was.  Legally they cannot complain of this warfare.  The other neutrals
cannot complain either against such sea warfare because they have ever
since the Middle Ages recognised the English method of sea warfare."


[Illustration: The New Weather Cape]


In the chapter entitled "The Opponent," on page 27 the author says:


"Before there is a discussion of our legal right to the submarine
warfare a brief review of the general policies of our opponents during
the war will be given.  This account shall serve the purpose of
fortifying the living feeling within us of our natural right and of our
duty to use all weapons ruthlessly.

"If we did not know before the publication of the Entente Note [The
Allies' peace reply to Germany] what we were up against, now we know.
The mask fell.  Now we have confirmation of the intentions to rob and
conquer us which, caused the individual entente nations to league
together and conduct the war.  The neutrals will now see the situation
more clearly.  For us it is war, literally to be or not to be a German
nation.  Never did such an appeal [The Entente Note] find such a
fruitful echo in German hearts. . . ."

     *     *     *     *     *

"I begin with England, our worst enemy."


On page 31 Admiral Hollweg speaks of the fact that at the beginning of
the war many Germans, especially those in banking and business circles,
felt that Germany was so indispensable to England in peace time that
England would not conduct a war to "knock out" Germany.  But Hollweg
says the situation has now changed.

On pages 122 to 126 he justifies the ruthless submarine warfare in the
following way:


"It is known that England and her allies declared at the beginning of
the war that they would adhere to the Declaration of London.  It is
just as well known that England and the Allies changed this declaration
through the Orders in Council and other lawless statements of authority
until the declaration was unrecognisable and worthless--especially the
spirit and purpose of the agreement were flatly pushed aside until
practically nothing more remains of the marine laws as codified in
1909.  The following collection of flagrant breaches of international
law will show who first broke marine laws during the war."


"Ten gross violations of marine law in war time by England.

"1. Violation of Article IV of the Maritime Declaration of April 16th,
1855.  Blockading of neutral harbours in violation of international law.

"2. Violation of Article II of the same declarations by the
confiscation of enemy property aboard neutral ships.  See Order in
Council, March 11th, 1915.

"3. Declaration of the North Sea as a war zone.  British Admiralty
Declaration, November 3, 1914.

"4. England regarded food as contraband since the beginning of the war.
The starvation war.  England confiscated neutral food en route to
neutral states whenever there was a possibility that it would reach the
enemy.  This violated the recognised fundamental principles of the
freedom of the seas.

"5. Attempt to prevent all communications between Germany and neutral
countries through the violation of international law and the seizing of
mail.

"6. Imprisonment of German reservists aboard neutral ships.

"7. a. Violation of Article I of The Hague Convention by the
confiscation of the German hospital ship _Ophelia_.  b. Murdering of
submarine crew upon command of British auxiliary cruiser _Baralong_.
c. Violation of Article XXIX, No. 1, of London Declaration by
preventing American Red Cross from sending supplies to the German Red
Cross.

"8. a. Destruction of German cruisers _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_ in
Spanish territorial waters by English cruiser _Highflyer_.  b.
Destruction of German cruiser _Dresden_ in Chinese waters by British
cruiser _Glasgow_.  c. Attack of British warships on German ship
_Paklas_ in Norwegian waters.

"9. England armed her merchant ships for attack.

"10. Use of neutral flags and signs by British merchantmen in violation
of Articles II and III of the Paris Declaration."


On page 134, after discussing the question of whether the English
blockade has been effective and arguing that England by seizing neutral
ships with food on the supposition that the food was going to Germany,
he says:


"We may conclude from these facts that we Germans can now consider
ourselves freed from the uncomfortable conditions of the London
Declaration and may conduct the war as our own interests prescribe.  We
have already partially done this in as much as we followed the English
example of extending the lists of war contraband.  This has been
inconvenient for the neutrals affected and they have protested against
it.  We may, however, consider that they will henceforth respect our
proposals just as they have in the past accepted English interests.
England demanded from them that they assist her because England was
fighting for the future of neutrals and of justice.  We will take this
principle also as basis for what we do and even await thereby that we
will compel England to grant us the kind of peace which can lay new
foundations for sea warfare and that for the future the military acts
of belligerents against neutrals will not be carried to the extremes
they have been for centuries because of England's superior sea power.
This new era of civilised warfare we bring under the term 'freedom of
the seas.'"


Hollweg's next justification of the unlimited submarine warfare is that
Secretary of State Lansing in a note to Count von Bernstorff at first
said merchant ships could not be armed and then changed his mind.

On page 160 Hollweg says: "And now in discussing the question of the
legal position of the submarine as a warship I cite here the statements
of the German authority on international law, Professor Dr. Niemeyer,
who said: 'There can be absolutely no question but that the submarine
is permitted.  It is a means of war similar to every other one.  The
frightfulness of the weapon was never a ground of condemnation.  This
is a war in which everything is permitted, which is not forbidden.'"

On page 175 in the chapter entitled "The Submarine War and Victory" the
author says:


"Every great deed carries with it a certain amount of risk.  After the
refusal of our peace proposal we have only the choice of victory with
the use of all of our strength and power, or, the submission to the
destructive conditions of our opponents."


He adds that his statements shall prove to the reader that Germany can
continue the hard relentless battle with the greatest possibility and
confidence of a final victory which will break the destructive
tendencies of the Entente and guarantee a peace which Germany needs for
her future existence.

On page 193 he declares: "All food prices in England have increased on
the average 80% in price, they are for example considerably higher in
England than in Germany.  A world wide crop failure in Canada and
Argentine made the importation of food for England more difficult.

"England earns in this war as opposed to other wars, nothing.  Part of
her industrial workers are under arms, the others are working in making
war munitions for her own use, not, however, for the export of valuable
wares."

Admiral Hollweg has a clever theory that the German fleet has played a
prominent role in the war, although most of the time it has been
hugging the coasts of the Fatherland.  He declares that the fleet has
had a "distance effect" upon the Allies' control of the high seas.  On
page 197 he says:


"What I mean in extreme by 'fernwirkung' [distance effect] I will show
here by an example.  The English and French attack on Constantinople
failed.  It can at least be doubted whether at that time when the
connection between Germany and Turkey was not established a strong
English naval unit would have brought the attack success.  The
necessity of not withdrawing the English battleships from the North Sea
prevented England from using a more powerful unit at Constantinople.
To this extent the German battle fleet was not without influence in the
victory for the defender of Constantinople.  That is 'distance effect.'"


On page 187 Hollweg declares: "England not only does not make money
to-day by war but she is losing.  The universal military service which
she was forced to introduce in order to hold the other Allies by the
tongue draws from her industry and thereby her commerce, 3,500,000
workmen.  Coal exportation has decreased.  During the eleven months
from January to November, 1916, 4,500,000 tons less coal was exported
than in 1915.  In order to produce enough coal for England herself the
nation was compelled by the munitions obligation law to put miners to
work."

On page 223 the author declares:


"That is, therefore, the great and important role which the submarines
in this war are playing.  They are serving also to pave the way in the
future for the 'freedom of the seas.'"


He adds that the submarines will cut the thread which holds the English
Damocles' sword over weak sea powers and that for eternity the
"gruesome hands" of English despotism will be driven from the seas.

[Illustration: CHART SHOWING TONNAGE OF SHIPS SUNK BY GERMAN SUBMARINES
FROM REAR ADMIRAL HOLLWEG'S BOOK]

Germany's submarine warfare which was introduced in February, 1915,
began by sinking less than 50,000 tons of ships per month.  By
November, 1915, the amount of tonnage destroyed per month was close to
200,000 tons.  By January, 1916, the tonnage of ships destroyed by
submarines had fallen to under 100,000 tons.  In April, 1916, as Grand
Admiral von Tirpitz' followers made one more effort to make the
submarine warfare successful, nearly 275,000 tons were being destroyed
a month.  But after the sinking of the _Sussex_ and the growing
possibilities of war with the United States the submarine warfare was
again held back and in July less than 125,000 tons of shipping were
destroyed.

At this time, however, the submarine campaign itself underwent a
change.  Previously most of the ships destroyed were sunk off the coast
of England, France or in the Mediterranean.  During the year and a half
of the submarine campaign the Allies' method of catching and destroying
submarines became so effective it was too costly to maintain submarine
warfare in belligerent waters.  The German Navy had tried all kinds of
schemes but none was very successful.  After the sinking of the
_Ancona_ the Admiralty planned for two submarines to work together, but
this was not as successful as it might have been.  During May, June and
July the submarine warfare was practically given up as the losses of
ships during those months will show.  There was a steep decline from a
quarter of a million tons in April to less than 140,000 tons in May,
about 125,000 tons in June and not much more than 100,000 tons in July.

During these three months the Navy was being bitterly criticised for
its inactivity.  But as the events six months later will show the
German navy simply used these months to prepare for a much stronger
submarine campaign which was to begin in August.  By this time it was
decided, however, not to risk a submarine campaign off the Allied
coasts but to operate in the Atlantic, off the coasts of Spain and
Norway.  This method of submarine warfare proved very successful and by
November, 1916, Germany was sinking over 425,000 tons of ships per
month.

During this swell in the success of the submarine campaign the U-53 was
despatched across the Atlantic to operate off the United States coasts.

U-53 was sent here for two purposes: First, it was to demonstrate to
the American people that, in event of war, submarines could work terror
off the Atlantic coast.  Second, it was to show the naval authorities
whether their plans for an attack on American shipping would be
practical.  U-53 failed to terrorise the United States, but it proved
to the Admiralty that excursions to American waters were feasible.

On February 1, when the Kaiser defied the United States by threatening
all neutral shipping in European waters, Germany had four hundred
undersea boats completed or in course of construction.  This included
big U-boats, like the U-53, with a cruising radius of five thousand
miles, and the smaller craft, with fifteen-day radius, for use against
England, as well as supply ships and mine layers.  But not all these
were ready for use against the Allies and the United States at that
time.  About one hundred were waiting for trained crews or were being
completed in German shipyards.

It was often said in Berlin that the greatest loss when a submarine
failed to return was the crew.  It required more time to train the men
than to build the submarine.  According to Germany's new method of
construction, a submarine can be built in fifteen days.  Parts are
stamped out in the factories and assembled at the wharves.  But it
takes from sixty to ninety days to educate the men and get them
accustomed to the seasick motion of the U-boats.  Besides, it requires
experienced officers to train the new men.

To meet this demand Germany began months ago to train men who could man
the newest submarines.  So a school was established--a School of
Submarine Murder--and for many months the man who torpedoed the
_Lusitania_ was made chief of the staff of educators.  It was a new
task for German kultur.

For the German people the lessons of the _Lusitania_ have been exactly
opposite those normal people would learn.  The horror of non-combatants
going down on a passenger liner, sunk without warning, was nothing to
be compared to the heroism of aiming the torpedo and running away.
Sixty-eight million Germans think their submarine officers and crews
are the greatest of the great.

When the Berlin Foreign Office announced, after the sinking of the
_Sussex_, that the ruthless torpedoing of ships would be stopped the
German statesmen meant this method would be discontinued until there
were sufficient submarines to defy the United States.  At once the
German navy, which has always been anti-American, began building
submarines night and day.  Every one in the Government knew the time
would come when Germany would have to break its _Sussex_ pledge.

The German navy early realised the need for trained men, so it
recalled, temporarily, for educational work the man who sank the
_Lusitania_.

"But, who sank the _Lusitania_?" you ask.

"The torpedo which sank the _Lusitania_ and killed over one hundred
Americans and hundreds of other noncombatants was fired by Oberleutnant
zur See (First Naval Lieutenant) Otto Steinbrink, commander of one of
the largest German submarines."

"Was he punished?" you ask.

"Kaiser Wilhelm decorated him with the highest military order, the Pour
le Merite!"

"Where is Steinbrink now?"

"On December 8, 1916, the German Admiralty announced that he had just
returned from a special trip, having torpedoed and mined twenty-two
ships on one voyage."

"What had he been doing?"

"For several months last summer he trained officers and crews in this
branch of warfare, which gained him international notoriety."

It is said that Steinbrink has trained more naval men than any other
submarine commander.  If this be true, is there any wonder that Germany
should be prepared to conduct a ruthless submarine warfare throughout
the world?  Is it surprising that American ships should be sunk,
American citizens murdered and the United States Government defied when
the German navy has been employing the man who murdered the passengers
of the _Lusitania_ as the chief instructor of submarine murderers?

The Krupp interests have played a leading role in the war, not only by
manufacturing billions of shells and cannon, and by financing
propaganda in the United States, but by building submarines.  At the
Krupp wharves at Kiel some of the best undersea craft are launched.
Other shipyards at Bremen, Hamburg and Danzig have been mobilised for
this work, too.  Just a few weeks before diplomatic relations were
broken a group of American doctors, who were investigating prison camp
conditions, went to Danzig.  Here they learned that the twelve wharves
there were building between 45 and 50 submarines annually.  These were
the smaller type for use in the English Channel.  At Hamburg the
Hamburg-American Line wharves were mobilised for submarine construction
also.  At the time diplomatic relations were severed observers in
Germany estimated that 250 submarines were being launched annually and
that preparations were being made greatly to increase this number.

Submarine warfare is a very exact and difficult science.  Besides the
skilled captain, competent first officers, wireless operators and
artillerymen, engineers are needed.  Each man, too, must be a "seadog."
Some of the smaller submarines toss like tubs when they reach the ocean
and only toughened seamen can stand the "wear and tear."  Hence the
weeks and months which are necessary to put the men in order before
they leave home for their first excursion in sea murder.

But Germany has learned a great deal during two years of hit-and-miss
submarine campaigns.  When von Tirpitz began, in 1915, he ordered his
men to work off the coasts of England.  Then so many submarines were
lost it became a dangerous and expensive military operation.  The
Allies began to use great steel nets, both as traps and as protection
to warships.  The German navy learned this within a very short time,
and the military engineers were ordered to perfect a torpedo which
would go through a steel net.  The first invention was a torpedo with
knives on the nose.  When the nose hit the net there was a minor
explosion.  The knives were sent through the net, permitting the
torpedo to continue on its way.  Then the Allies doubled the nets, and
two sets of knives were attached to the German torpedoes.  But
gradually the Allies employed nets as traps.  These were anchored or
dragged by fishing boats.  Some submarines have gotten inside, been
juggled around, but have escaped.  More, perhaps, have been lost this
way.

Then, when merchant ships began to carry armament, the periscopes were
shot away, so the navy invented a so-called "finger-periscope," a thin
rod pipe with a mirror at one end.  This rod could he shoved out from
the top of the submarine and used for observation purposes in case the
big periscope was destroyed.  From time to time there were other
inventions.  As the submarine fleet grew the means of communicating
with each other while submerged at sea were perfected.  Copper plates
were fastened fore and aft on the outside of submarines, and it was
made possible for wireless messages to be sent through the water at a
distance of fifty miles.

A submarine cannot aim at a ship without some object as a sight.  So
one submarine often acted as a "sight" for the submarine firing the
torpedo.  Submarines, which at first were unarmed, were later fitted
with armour plate and cannon were mounted on deck.  The biggest
submarines now carry 6-inch guns.

Like all methods of ruthless warfare the submarine campaign can be and
will be for a time successful.  Germany's submarine warfare today is
much more successful than the average person realises.  By December,
1916, for instance, the submarines were sinking a half million tons of
ships a month.  In January, 1917, over 600,000 tons were destroyed.  On
February nearly 800,000 tons were lost.  The destruction of ships means
a corresponding destruction of cargoes, of many hundreds of thousands
of tons.  When Germany decided the latter part of January to begin a
ruthless campaign German authorities calculated they could sink an
average of 600,000 tons per month and that in nine months nearly
6,000,000 tons of shipping could be sent to the bottom of the
ocean,--then the Allies would be robbed of the millions of tons of
goods which these ships could carry.

In any military campaign one of the biggest problems is the
transportation of troops and supplies.  Germany during this war has had
to depend upon her railroads; the Allies have depended upon ships.
Germany looked at her own military situation and saw that if the Allies
could destroy as many railroad cars as Germany expected to sink ships,
Germany would be broken up and unable to continue the war.  Germany
believed ships were to the Allies what railroad carriages are to
Germany.

The General Staff looked at the situation from other angles.  During
the winter there was a tremendous coal shortage in France and Italy.
There had been coal riots in Paris and Rome.  The Italian Government
was so in need of coal that it had to confiscate even private supplies.
The Grand Hotel in Rome, for instance, had to give up 300 tons which it
had in its coal bins.  In 1915 France had been importing 2,000,000 tons
of coal a month across the Channel from England.  Because of the
ordinary loss of tonnage the French coal imports dropped 400,000 tons
per month.  Germany calculated that if she could decrease England's
coal exports 400,000 tons a month by an ordinary submarine campaign
that she could double it by a ruthless campaign.

Germany was looking forward to the Allied offensive which was expected
this Spring.  Germany knew that the Allies would need troops and
ammunition.  She knew that to manufacture ammunition and war supplies
coal was needed.  Germany calculated that if the coal importations to
France could be cut down a million tons a month France would not be
able to manufacture the necessary ammunition for an offensive lasting
several months.

Germany knew that England and France were importing thousands of tons
of war supplies and food from the United States.  Judging from the
German newspapers which I read at this time every one in Germany had
the impression that the food situation in England and France was almost
as bad as in Germany.  Even Ambassador Gerard had somewhat the same
impression.  When he left Germany for Switzerland on his way to Spain,
he took two cases of eggs which he had purchased in Denmark.  One night
at a reception in Berne, one of the American women in the Gerard party
asked the French Ambassador whether France really had enough food!  If
the Americans coming from Germany had the impression that the Allies
were sorely in need of supplies one can see how general the impression
must have been throughout Germany.

When I was in Paris I was surprised to see so much food and to see such
a variety.  Paris appeared to be as normal in this respect as
Copenhagen or Rotterdam.  But I was told by American women who were
keeping house there that it was becoming more and more difficult to get
food.

After Congress declared war it became evident for the first time that
the Allies really did need war supplies and food from the United States
more than they needed anything else.  London and Paris officials
publicly stated that this was the kind of aid the Allies really needed.
It became evident, too, that the Allies not only needed the food but
that they needed ships to carry supplies across the Atlantic.  One of
the first things President Wilson did was to approve plans for the
construction of a fleet of 3,000 wooden ships practically to bridge the
Atlantic.

During the first three months of 1917 submarine warfare was a success
in that it so decreased the ship tonnage and the importations of the
Allies that they needed American co-operation and assistance.  _So the
United States really enters the war at the critical and decisive
stage_.  Germany believes she can continue to sink ships faster than
they can be built, but Germany did not calculate upon a fleet of wooden
bottom vessels being built in the United States to make up for the
losses.  Germany did not expect the United States to enter the war with
all the vigour and energy of the American people.  Germany calculated
upon internal troubles, upon opposition to the war and upon the
pacifists to have America make as many mistakes as England did during
the first two years of the war.  But the United States has learned and
profited by careful observation in Europe.  Just as England's
declaration of war on Germany in support of Belgium and France was a
surprise to Germany; just as the shipment of war supplies by American
firms to the Allies astonished Germany, so will the construction of
3,000 wooden vessels upset the calculations of the German General Staff.

While American financial assistance will be a great help to the Allies
that will not affect the German calculations because when the Kaiser
and his Generals decided on the 27th of January to damn all neutrals,
German financiers were not consulted.

Neither did the German General Staff count upon the Russian Revolution
going against them.  Germany had expected a revolution there, but
Germany bet upon the Czar and the Czar's German wife.  As Lieutenant
Colonel von Haeften, Chief Military Censor in Berlin, told the
correspondents, Germany calculated upon the internal troubles in Russia
aiding her.  But the Allies and the people won the Russian Revolution.
Germany's hopes that the Czar might again return to power or that the
people might overthrow their present democratic leaders will come to
naught now that America has declared war and thrown her tremendous and
unlimited moral influence behind the Allies and with the Russian people.

Rear Admiral Hollweg's calculations that 24,253,615 tons of shipping
remained for the world freight transmission at the beginning of 1917,
did not take into consideration confiscation by the United States of
nearly 2,500,000 tons of German and Austrian shipping in American
ports.  He did not expect the United States to build 3,000 new ships in
1917.  He did not expect the United States to purchase the ships under
construction in American wharves for neutral European countries.

The German submarine campaign, like all other German "successes," will
be temporary.  Every time the General Staff has counted upon "ultimate
victory" it has failed to take into consideration the determination of
the enemy.  Germany believed that the world could be "knocked out" by
big blows.  Germany thought when she destroyed and invaded Belgium and
northern France that these two countries would not be able to "come
back."  Germany thought when she took Warsaw and a great part of
western Russia that Russia would not he able to continue the war.
Germany figured that after the invasion of Roumania and Servia that
these two countries would not need to be considered seriously in the
future.  Germany believed that her submarine campaign would be
successful before the United States could come to the aid of the
Allies.  German hope of "ultimate victory" has been postponed ever
since September, 1914, when von Kluck failed to take Paris.  And
Germany's hopes for an "ultimate victory" this summer before the United
States can get into the war will be postponed so long that Germany will
make peace not on her own terms but upon the terms which the United
States of Democracy of the Whole World will dictate.

One day in Paris I met Admiral LeCaze, the Minister of Marine, in his
office in the Admiralty.  He discussed the submarine warfare from every
angle.  He said the Germans, when they figured upon so many tons of
shipping and of supplies destroyed by submarines, failed to take into
consideration the fact that over 100 ships were arriving daily at
French ports and that over 5,000,000 tons of goods were being brought
into France monthly.

When I explained to him what it appeared to me would be the object of
the German ruthless campaign he said:

"Germany cannot win the war by her submarine campaign or by any other
weapon.  That side will win which holds out one week, one day or one
hour longer than the other."

And this Admiral, who, dressed in civilian clothes, looked more like a
New York financier than a naval officer, leaned forward in his chair,
looked straight at me and concluded the interview by saying:

"The Allies will win."




CHAPTER X

THE OUTLAWED NATION

During the Somme battles several of the American correspondents in Berlin
were invited to go to the front near Peronne and were asked to luncheon
by the Bavarian General von Kirchhoff, who was in command against the
French.  When the correspondents reached his headquarters in a little
war-worn French village they were informed that the Kaiser had just
summoned the general to decorate him with the high German military order,
the Pour le Merite.  Luncheon was postponed until the general returned.
The correspondents watched him motor to the chateau where they were and
were surprised to see tears in his eyes as he stepped out of the
automobile and received the cordial greetings and congratulations of his
staff.  Von Kirchhoff, in a brief impromptu speech, paid a high tribute
to the German troops which were holding the French and said the
decoration was not his but his troops'.  And in a broken voice he
remarked that these soldiers were sacrificing their lives for the
Fatherland, but were called "Huns and Barbarians" for doing it.  There
was another long pause and the general broke down, cried and had to leave
his staff and guests.

These indictments of the Allies were more terrible to him than the war
itself.

General von Kirchhoff in this respect is typical of Germany.  Most
Germans, practically every German I knew, could not understand why the
Allies did not respect their enemies as the Germans said they respected
the Allies.

A few weeks later, in November, when I was on the Somme with another
group of correspondents, I was asked by nearly every officer I met why it
was that Germany was so hated throughout the world.  It was a question I
could not easily answer without, perhaps, hurting the feelings of the men
who wanted to know, or insulting them, which as a guest I did not desire
to do.

A few days later on the train from Cambrai to Berlin I was asked by a
group of officers to explain why the people in the United States,
especially, were so bitter.  To get the discussion under way the Captain
from the General Staff who had acted as our escort presented his
indictment of American neutrality and asked me to reply.

This feeling, this desire to know why Germany was regarded as an outlawed
nation, was not present in Germany early in 1915 when I arrived.  In
February, 1915, people were confident.  They were satisfied with the
progress of the war.  They knew the Allies hated them and they returned
the hate and did not care.  But between February, 1915, and November,
1916, a great change took place.  On my first trip to the front in April,
1915, I heard of no officers or men shedding tears because the Allies
hated them.

When I sailed from New York two years ago it seemed to me that sentiment
in the United States was about equally divided; that most people favoured
neutrality, even a majority of those who supported the Entente.  The
feeling of sympathy which so many thousands of Americans had for Germany
I could, at that time, readily understand, because I myself was
sympathetic.  I felt that Germany had not had a fighting chance with
public opinion in the United States.

[Illustration: AN ADVERTISEMENT IN THE BERLIN "DEUTSCHE TAGES-ZEITUNG"
FOR THE BOOK--"PRESIDENT BLUFF" MEANING PRESIDENT WILSON]

I could not believe that all the charges against Germany applied to the
German people.  Although it was difficult to understand what Germany had
done in Belgium, although it was evident and admitted by the Chancellor
that Germany violated the neutrality of that country, I could not believe
that a nation, which before the war had such a high standing in science
and commerce, could have plotted or desired such a tremendous war as
swept Europe in 1914.

When I arrived in Berlin on March 17, 1915, and met German officials and
people for the first time, I was impressed by their sincerity, their
honesty and their belief that the Government did not cause the war and
was fighting to defend the nation.  At the theatre I saw performances of
Shakespeare, which were among the best I had ever seen.  I marvelled at
the wonderful modern hospitals and at the efficiency and organisation of
the Government.  I marvelled at the expert ways in which prison camps
were administered.  I was surprised to find railroad trains clean and
punctual.  It seemed to me as if Germany was a nation which had reached
the height of perfection and that it was honestly and conscientiously
defending itself against the group of powers which desired its
destruction.

For over a year I entered enthusiastically into the work of interpreting
and presenting this Germany to the American people.  At this time there
was practically no food problem.  German banks and business men were
preparing for and expecting peace.  The Government was already making
plans for after the war when soldiers would return from the front.  A
Reichstag Committee had been appointed to study Germany's possible peace
time labour needs and to make arrangements for solving them.

But in the fall of 1915 the changes began.  The _Lusitania_ had been
destroyed in May and almost immediately the hate campaign against America
was started.  I saw the tendency to attack and belittle the United States
grow not only in the army, in the navy and in the press, but among the
people.  I saw that Germany was growing to deeply resent anything the
United States Government said against what the German Government did.
When this anti-American campaign was launched I observed a tendency on
the part of the Foreign Office to censor more strictly the telegrams
which the correspondents desired to send to the American newspapers.
Previously, the Foreign Office had been extremely frank and cordial and
permitted correspondents to send what they observed and heard, as long as
the despatches did not contain information which would aid the Allies in
their military or economic attacks on Germany.  As the hate articles
appeared in the newspapers the correspondents were not only prohibited
from sending them, but they were criticised by the Foreign Office for
writing anything which might cause the American people to be angered at
Germany.  One day I made a translation of a bitter article in the _B. Z.
am Mittag_ and submitted it to the Foreign Office censor.  He asked why I
paid so much attention to articles in this newspaper which he termed a
"Kaese-blatt"--literally "a cheese paper."  He said it had no influence
in Germany; that no one cared what it said.  This newspaper, however, was
the only noon-day edition in Berlin and was published by the largest
newspaper publishing house in Germany, Ullstein & Co.  At his request I
withdrew the telegram and forgot the incident.  Within a few days,
however, Count zu Reventlow, in the _Deutsche Tageszeitung_, and Georg
Bernhard, in the _Vossische Zeitung_, wrote sharp attacks on President
Wilson.  But I could not telegraph these.

Previous to the fall of 1915 not only the German Government but the
German people were charitable to the opinions of neutrals, especially
those who happened to be in Germany for business or professional reasons,
but, as the anti-American campaign and the cry that America was not
neutral by permitting supplies to be shipped to the Allies became more
extensive, the public became less charitable.  Previously a neutral in
Germany could be either pro-German, pro-Ally or neutral.  Now, however,
it was impossible to be neutral, especially if one were an American,
because the very statement that one was an American carried with it the
implication that one was anti-German.  The American colony itself became
divided.  There was the pro-American group and the pro-German government
group.  The former was centred at the American Embassy.  The latter was
inspired by the German-Americans who had lived in Germany most of their
lives and by other sympathetic Americans who came from the United States.
Meanwhile there were printed in German newspapers many leading articles
and interviews from the American press attacking President Wilson, and
any one sympathising with the President, even Ambassador Gerard, became
automatically "Deutschfeidlich."

As the submarine warfare became more and more a critical issue German
feeling towards the United States changed.  I found that men who were
openly professing their friendship for the United States were secretly
doing everything within their power to intimidate America.  The
Government began to feel as if the American factories which were
supplying the Allies were as much subject to attack as similar factories
in Allied countries.  I recall one time learning at the American Embassy
that a man named Wulf von Igel had asked Ambassador Gerard for a safe
conduct, on the ground that he was going to the United States to try and
have condensed milk shipped to Germany for the children.  Mr. Gerard
refused to ask Washington to grant this man a safe conduct.  I did not
learn until several months afterwards that Herr von Igel had been asked
to go to the United States by Under Secretary of State Zimmermann for one
of two purposes, either he was to purchase a controlling interest in the
Du Pont Powder Mills no matter what that cost, or he was to stir up
dissatisfaction in Mexico.  Zimmermann gave him a card of introduction to
Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador in Washington, and told him
that the German Embassy would supply him with all necessary funds.

Carrying out the German idea that it was right to harm or destroy
American property which was directly or indirectly aiding the Allies,
both Germany and Austria-Hungary published notices that their citizens in
the United States were not permitted to work in such factories.  And
plots which Captains Boy-Ed and von Papen instigated here were done with
the approval and encouragement of the German Government.  If any proof is
needed for this statement, in addition to that already published, it is
that both of these men upon their return to Germany were regarded as
heroes and given the most trusted positions.  Captain Boy-Ed was placed
at the head of the Intelligence Department of the Navy and Captain von
Papen was assigned to the Headquarters of the General Commanding the
operations on the Somme.

As the food situation in Germany became worse the disposition of the
people changed still more.  The Government had already pointed out in
numerous public statements that the United States was not neutral because
it overlooked the English blockade and thought only about the German
submarine war.  So as food difficulties developed the people blamed the
United States and held President Wilson personally responsible for the
growing shortages within Germany.  The people believed Mr. Wilson was
their greatest enemy and that he was the man most to be feared.  How
strong this feeling was not only among the people but in Government
circles was to be shown later when Germany announced her submarine
campaign.

As was pointed out in a previous chapter while Germany was arguing
against shipments of war munitions from the United States she was herself
responsible for the preparations which Russia and Roumania had made
against her, but this proof of deception on the part of the Government
was never explained to the German people.  Furthermore the people were
never told why the United States asked for the recall of Germany's two
attaches who were implicated in spy plots.  Nothing was ever published in
the German newspapers about Herr von Igel.  The newspapers always
published despatches which told of the destruction of ammunition
factories by plotters, but never about the charges against and arrests of
German reservists.  Just as the German Government has never permitted the
people to know that it prepared for a war against nine nations, as the
document I saw in the Chief Telegraph Office shows, so has it not
explained to the people the real motives and the real arguments which
President Wilson presented in his many submarine notes.  Whenever these
notes were published in the German newspapers the Government always
published an official explanation, or correspondents were inspired to
write the Government views, so the people could not think for themselves
or come to honest personal conclusions.

The effectiveness of Mr. Wilson's diplomacy against Germany was decreased
by some German-Americans, and the fact that the United States is to-day
at war with Germany is due to this blundering on the behalf of some of
those over-zealous citizens who, being so anxious to aid Germany, became
anti-Wilson and in the long run defeated what they set out to accomplish.
Had the German Government not been assured by some German-Americans that
they would never permit President Wilson to break diplomatic relations or
go to war, had these self-appointed envoys stayed away from Berlin, the
relations between the United States and Germany might to-day be different
than they are.  Because if Germany at the outset of the submarine
negotiations had been given the impression by a united America that the
President spoke for the country, Germany would undoubtedly have given up
all hope of a ruthless submarine warfare.

I think President Wilson and Mr. Gerard realised that the activities of
the German-Americans here were not only interfering with the diplomatic
negotiations but that the German-Americans were acting against their own
best interests if they really desired peace with Germany.

When some of the President's friends saw that the German people were
receiving such biased news from the United States and that Germany had no
opportunity of learning the real sentiment here, nor of sounding the
depth of American indignation over the _Lusitania_ they endeavoured to
get despatches from the United States to Germany to enlighten the people.
Mr. Roy W. Howard, President of the United Press, endeavoured several
times while I was in Berlin to get unadulterated American news in the
German newspapers, but the German Government was not overly anxious to
have such information published.  It was too busy encouraging the
anti-American sentiment for the purpose of frightening the United States.
It was difficult, too, for the United Press to get the necessary
co-operation in the United States for this news service.  After the
settlement of the _Sussex_ dispute the Democratic newspapers of Germany,
those which were supporting the Chancellor, were anxious to receive
reports from here, but the German Foreign Office would not encourage the
matter to the extent of using the wireless towers at Sayville and
Tuckerton as means of transmitting the news.

How zealously the Foreign Office censor guards what appears in the German
newspapers was shown about two weeks before diplomatic relations were
broken.  When the announcement was wirelessed to the United States that
Germany had adopted the von Tirpitz blockade policy the United Press sent
me a number of daily bulletins telling what the American Press,
Congressmen and the Government were thinking and saying about the new
order.  The first day these despatches reached me I sent them to several
of the leading newspapers only to be notified in less than an hour
afterward by the Foreign Office that I was to send no information to the
German newspapers without first sending it to the Foreign Office.  Two
days after the blockade order was published I received a telegram from
Mr. Howard saying that diplomatic relations would be broken, and giving
me a summary of the press comment.  I took this despatch to the Foreign
Office and asked permission to send it to the newspapers.  It was
refused.  Throughout this crisis which lasted until the 10th of February
the Foreign Office would not permit a single despatch coming direct from
America to be printed in the German newspapers.  The Foreign Office
preferred to have the newspapers publish what came by way of England and
France so that the Government could always explain that only English and
French news could reach Germany because the United States was not
interested in seeing that Germany obtained first hand information.

While Germany was arguing that the United States was responsible for her
desperate situation, economically, and while President Wilson was being
blamed for not breaking the Allied blockade, the German Foreign Office
was doing everything within its power to prevent German goods from being
shipped to the United States.  When, through the efforts of Ambassador
Gerard, numerous attempts were made to get German goods, including
medicines and dye-stuffs, to the United States, the German Government
replied that these could not leave the country unless an equal amount of
goods were sent to Germany.  Then, when the State Department arranged for
an equal amount of American goods to be shipped in exchange the German
Foreign Office said all these goods would have to be shipped to and from
German ports.  When the State Department listened to this demand and
American steamers were started on their way to Hamburg and Bremen the
German Navy was so busy sewing mines off these harbours to keep the
English fleet away that they failed to notify the American skippers where
the open channels were.  As a result so many American ships were sunk
trying to bring goods into German harbours that it became unprofitable
for American shippers to try to accommodate Germany.

About this time, also, the German Government began its policy of
discouraging American business in Germany.  Ambassador Gerard had had a
long wrangle with the Chancellor over a bill which was introduced in the
Reichstag shortly after the beginning of the war to purchase all foreign
oil properties "within the German Customs Union."  The bill was examined
by Mr. Gerard, who, for a number of years, was a Supreme Court Judge of
New York.  He discovered that the object of the bill was to put the
Standard Oil Company out of business by purchasing all of this company's
property except that located in Hamburg.  This was the joker.  Hamburg
was not in the German Customs Union and the bill provided for the
confiscation of all property not in this Union.

Mr. Gerard called upon the Chancellor and told him that the United States
Government could not permit such a bill to be passed without a vigorous
protest.  The Chancellor asked Mr. Gerard whether President Wilson and
Secretary of State Bryan would ever protect such a corporation as the
Standard Oil Company was supposed to be.  Mr. Gerard replied that the
very fact that these two officials were known in the public mind as
having no connection with this corporation would give them an opportunity
of defending its interests the same as the Government would defend the
interests of any other American.  The Chancellor seemed surprised at this
statement and Mr. Gerard continued about as follows:

"You know that Germany has already been discriminating against the
Standard Oil Company.  You know that the Prussian State Railways charge
this American corporation twice as much to ship oil from Hamburg to
Bremen as they charge the German oil interests to ship Roumanian oil from
the Austrian border to Berlin.  Now don't you think that's enough?"

The interview ended here.  And the bill was never brought up in the
Reichstag.

But this policy of the Government of intimidating and intriguing against
American interests was continued until diplomatic relations were broken.
In December, 1916, Adolph Barthmann, an American citizen, who owned the
largest shoe store in Berlin, desired to close his place of business and
go to the United States.  It was impossible for him to get American shoes
because of the Allied blockade and he had decided to discontinue business
until peace was made.

Throughout the war it has been necessary for all Americans, as well as
all other neutrals, to obtain permission from the police before they
could leave.  Barthmann went to Police Headquarters, and asked for
authority to go to the United States.  He was informed that his passport
would have to be examined by the General Staff and that he could call for
it within eight days.  At the appointed day Barthmann appeared at Police
Headquarters where he was informed by the Police Captain that upon orders
of the General Staff he would have to sign a paper and swear to the
statement that neither he nor the American firms he represented had sold,
or would sell, shoes to the Allies.  Barthmann was told that this
statement would have to be sworn to by another American resident of
Berlin and that unless this was done he would not be permitted to return
to Germany after the war.  Mr. Barthmann had to sign the document under
protest before his American passport was returned.

The facts in this as in the other instances which I have narrated, are in
the possession of the State Department at Washington.

When the German Government began to fear that the United States
might some day join the Allies if the submarine campaign was
renewed, it campaigned by threatening the United States with a
Russian-Japanese-German alliance after the war against England and the
United States.  These threats were not disguised.  Ambassador Gerard was
informed, indirectly and unofficially of course, by German financiers and
members of the Reichstag that Germany "would be forced" to make such an
alliance if the United States ever joined the Allies.  As was shown later
by the instructions of Secretary of State Zimmermann to the German
Minister in Mexico City, Germany has not only not given up that idea, but
Germany now looks forward to Mexico as the fourth member of the league.

As Germany became more and more suspicious of Americans in Germany, who
were not openly pro-German, she made them suffer when they crossed the
German frontier to go to neutral countries.  The German military
authorities, at border towns such as Warnemuende and Bentheim, took a
dislike to American women who were going to Holland or Denmark, and
especially to the wives of U. S. consular officials.  One time when I was
going from Berlin to Copenhagen I learned from the husband of one of the
women examined at the border what the authorities had done to her.  I saw
her before and after the ordeal and when I heard of what an atrocious
examination they had made I understood why she was in bed ten days
afterward and under the constant care of physicians.  Knowing what German
military officers and German women detectives had done in some of the
invaded countries, one does not need to know the details of these
insults.  It is sufficient to state that after the wives of several
American officials and other prominent American residents of Berlin had
been treated in this manner that the State Department wrote a vigorous
and defiant note to Germany stating that unless the practice was
immediately discontinued the United States would give up the oversight of
all German interests in Allied countries.  The ultimatum had the desired
effect.  The German Government replied that while the order of the
General Staff could not be changed it would be waived in practice.

No matter who the American is, who admired Germany, or, who respected
Germany, or, who sympathised with Germany as she was before, or, at the
beginning of the war, no American can support this Germany which I have
just described, against his own country.  The Germany of 1913, which was
admired and respected by the scientific, educational and business world;
the Germany of 1913 which had no poor, which took better care of its
workmen than any nation in the world; the nation, which was considered in
the advance of all countries in dealing with economic and industrial
problems, no longer exists.  The Germany which produced Bach, Beethoven,
Schiller, Goethe and other great musicians and poets has disappeared.
The musicians of to-day write hate songs.  The poets of to-day pen hate
verses.  The scientists of to-day plan diabolical instruments of death.
The educators teach suspicion of and disregard for everything which is
not German.  Business men have sided with the Government in a ruthless
submarine warfare in order to destroy property throughout the world so
that every nation will have to begin at the bottom with Germany when the
war is over.

The Germany of 1914 and 1915 which arose like one man to defend the
nation is not the Germany which to-day is down on the whole world and
which believes that its organised might can defend it against every and
all nations.  The Germany I saw in 1915, composed of sympathetic, calm,
charitable, patient people is to-day a Germany made up of nervous,
impatient, deceptive and suspicious people.

From the sinking of the _Lusitania_ to February, 1917, President Wilson
maintained diplomatic relations with Germany in order to aid the
democratic forces which were working in that country to throw out the
poison which forty years of army preparation had diffused throughout the
nation.  President Wilson believed that he could rely upon the Chancellor
as a leader of democracy against von Tirpitz and von Falkenhayn, as
leaders of German autocracy.  The Chancellor knew the President looked
upon him as the man to reform Germany.  But when the crisis came the
Chancellor was as weak as the Kaiser and both of them sanctioned and
defended what von Hindenburg and Ludendorf, the ammunition interests and
the navy, proposed.

If the United States were to disregard absolutely every argument which
the Allies have for fighting Germany there would still be so many
American indictments against the German Government that no American could
have a different opinion from that of President Wilson.

Germany sank the _Lusitania_ and killed over 100 Americans and never
apologised for it.

Germany sank the _Ancona_, killed more Americans and blamed Austria.

Germany sank the _Arabic_ and torpedoed the _Sussex_.

Germany promised after the sinking of the _Sussex_ to warn all merchant
ships before torpedoing them and then in practice threw the pledges to
the winds and ended by breaking all promises.

Germany started anti-American propaganda in Germany.

The German Government made the German people suspect and hate President
Wilson.

Germany supplied Russia and Roumania with arms and ammunition and
criticised America for permitting American business men to aid the Allies.

Germany plotted against American factories.

Germany tried to stir up a revolt in Mexico.

Germany tried to destroy American ammunition factories.

Germany blamed the United States for her food situation without
explaining to the people that one of the reasons the pork supply was
exhausted and there was no sugar was because Minister of the Interior
Delbrueck ordered the farmers to feed sugar to the pigs and then to
slaughter them in order to save the fodder.

Germany encouraged and financed German-Americans in their campaigns in
the United States.

Germany paid American writers for anti-American contributions to German
newspapers and for pro-German articles in the American press.

Germany prohibited American news associations from printing unbiased
American news in Germany.

Germany discriminated against and blacklisted American firms doing
business in Germany.

Germany prevented American correspondents from sending true despatches
from Berlin during every submarine crisis.

Germany insulted American women, even the wives of American consular
officials, when they crossed the German border.

Germany threatened the United States with a
Russian-Japanese-German-Mexican alliance against England and the United
States.

German generals insulted American military observers at the front and the
U. S. War Department had to recall them.

These are Uncle Sam's indictments of the Kaiser.

Germany has outlawed herself among all nations.




CHAPTER XI

THE UNITED STATES AT WAR

When the German Emperor in his New Year's message said that victory
would remain with Germany in 1917 he must have known that the submarine
war would be inaugurated to help bring this victory to Germany.  In
May, 1916, Admiral von Capelle explained to the Reichstag that the
reason the German blockade of England could not be maintained was
because Germany did not have sufficient submarines.  But by December
the Kaiser, who receives all the figures of the Navy, undoubtedly knew
that submarines were being built faster than any other type of ship and
that the Navy was making ready for the grand sea offensive in 1917.
Knowing this, as well as knowing that President Wilson would break
diplomatic relations if the submarine war was conducted ruthlessly
again, the Kaiser was a very confident ruler to write such a New Year's
order to the Army and Navy.  He must have felt sure that he could
defeat the United States.


     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

To My Army and My Navy!

Once more a war year lies behind us, replete with hard fighting and
sacrifices, rich in successes and victories.

Our enemies' hopes for the year 1916 have been blasted.  All their
assaults in the East and West were broken to pieces through your
bravery and devotion!

The latest triumphal march through Roumania has, by God's decree, again
pinned imperishable laurels to your standards.

The greatest naval battle of this war, the Skager Rak victory, and the
bold exploits of the U-boats have assured to My Navy glory and
admiration for all time.

You are victorious on all theatres of war, ashore as well as afloat!

With unshaken trust and proud confidence the grateful Fatherland
regards you.  The incomparable warlike spirit dwelling in your ranks,
your tenacious, untiring will to victory, your love for the Fatherland
are guaranties to Me that victory will remain with our colours in the
new year also.

God will be with us further!

Main Headquarters, Dec. 31, 1916.

                  WILHELM.


THE KAISER'S NEW YEAR ORDER TO THE ARMY AND NAVY


     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Ambassador Gerard warned the State Department in September that Germany
would start her submarine war before the Spring of 1917 so the United
States must have known several months before the official announcement
came.  But Washington probably was under the impression that the
Chancellor would not break his word.  Uncle Sam at that time trusted
von Bethmann-Hollweg.

[Illustration: SCHWAB TO MR. WILSON--"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, GREAT LITTLE
LEADER, THE WHOLE PLACE WILL BLOW UP IF YOU SMOKE HERE!"]

Diplomatic relations were broken on February 1st.  Ambassador Gerard
departed February 10th.  Upon his arrival in Switzerland several German
citizens, living in that country because they could not endure
conditions at home, asked the Ambassador upon his arrival in Washington
to urge President Wilson if he asked Congress to declare war to say
that the United States did not desire to go to war with the German
people but with the German Government.  One of these citizens was a
Prussian nobleman by birth but he had been one of the leaders of the
democratic forces in Germany and exiled himself in order to help the
Liberal movement among the people by working in Switzerland.  This
suggestion was followed by the President.  When he spoke to the joint
session of Congress on February 1st he declared the United States would
wage war against the Government and not against the people.  In this
historic address the President said:


"I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there
are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made
immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally
permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

"On the 3rd of February last I officially laid before you the
extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government, that on
and after the 1st day of February it was its purpose to put aside all
restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every
vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and
Ireland or the western coasts of Europe, or any of the ports controlled
by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.

"That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare
earlier in the war, but since April of last year the imperial
Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its under-sea
craft, in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger
boats should not be sunk, and that due warning would be given to all
other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no
resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their
crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their
open boats.  The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as
was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of
the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was
observed.

"The new policy has swept every restriction aside.  Vessels of every
kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their
destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom
without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on
board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of
belligerents.  Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the
sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were
provided with safe conduct through the prescribed areas by the German
Government itself, and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of
identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or
of principle.

"I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in
fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the
humane practices of civilised nations.  International law had its
origin in the attempt to set up some law, which would be respected and
observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where
lay the free highways of the world.  By painful stage after stage has
that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all
was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear
view at least of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded.

"This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the
plea of retaliation and necessity, and because it had no weapons which
it could use at sea except these, which it is impossible to employ as
it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of
humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to
underlie the intercourse of the world.

"I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and
serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of
the lives of non-combatants, men, women and children, engaged in
pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern
history, been deemed innocent and legitimate.  Property can be paid
for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.

"The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare against
mankind.  It is a war against all nations.  American ships have been
sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply
to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly
nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way.
There has been no discrimination.  The challenge is to all mankind.
Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.  The choice we
make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a
temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a
nation.  We must put excited feeling away.  Our motive will not be
revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the
nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we
are only a single champion.

"When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last I
thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms,
our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to
keep our people safe against unlawful violence.  But armed neutrality,
it now appears, is impracticable.

"Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German
submarines have been used, against merchant shipping, it is impossible
to defend ships against their attacks, as the law of nations has
assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or
cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea.  It is common
prudence in such circumstances--grim necessity, indeed--to endeavour to
destroy them before they have shown their own intention.  They must be
dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all.

"The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all
within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the
defence of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned
their right to defend.  The intimation is conveyed that the armed
guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as
beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be.

"Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances
and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is
likely to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically
certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the
effectiveness of belligerents.

"There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: We
will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred
rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated.  The
wrongs against which we now array ourselves are not common wrongs; they
cut to the very roots of human life.

"With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the
step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves,
but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I
advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial
German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the
Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the
status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it
take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough
state of defence, but also to exert all its power and employ all its
resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end
the war.

"What this will involve is clear.  It will involve the utmost
practicable co-operation in counsel and action with the governments now
at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those
governments of the most liberal financial credits in order that our
resources may, so far as possible, be added to theirs.

"It will involve the organisation and mobilisation of all the material
resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the
incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most
economical and efficient way possible.

"It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all
respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of
dealing with the enemy's submarines.  It will involve the immediate
addition to the armed forces of the United States, already provided for
by law in case of war, at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion,
be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service; and
also the authorisation of subsequent additional increments of equal
force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training.

"It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to
the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be
sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation.  I say
sustained so far as may be by equitable taxation because it seems to me
that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be
necessary entirely on money borrowed.  It is our duty, I most
respectfully urge, to protect our people so far as we may against the
very serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of
the inflation which would be produced by vast loans.

"In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be
accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of
interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the
equipment of our own military forces with the duty--for it will be a
very practical duty--of supplying the nations already at war with
Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our
assistance.  They are in the field, and we should help them in every
way to be effective there.

"I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive
departments of the Government, for the consideration of your committees
measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have
mentioned.  I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as
having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the
Government upon which the responsibility of conducting the war and
safeguarding the nation will most directly fall.

"While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be
very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and
our objects are.  My own thought has not been driven from its habitual
and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I
do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or
clouded by them.

"I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in mind when I
addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in
mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the
26th of February.  Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the
principles of peace and the justice in the life of the world as against
selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really free and
self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of
action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.

"Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the
world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to
that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments
backed by organised force which is controlled wholly by their will, not
by the will of their people.  We have seen the last of neutrality in
such circumstances.

"We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that
the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done
shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed
among the individual citizens of civilised states.

"We have no quarrel with the German people.  We have no feeling toward
them but one of sympathy and friendship.  It was not upon their impulse
that their government acted in entering this war.  It was not with
their previous knowledge or approval.

"It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the
old unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers
and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of
little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their
fellowmen as pawns and tools.

"Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or
set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of
affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make
conquest.  Such designs can be successfully worked only under cover and
where no one has the right to ask questions.

"Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may
be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the
light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded
confidences of a narrow and privileged class.  They are happily
impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full
information concerning all the nation's affairs.

"A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations.  No autocratic government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.

"It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion.  Intrigue
would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could
plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption
seated at its very heart.

"Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a
common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest
of their own.

"Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope
for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening
things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?

"Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact
democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the
intimate relationships of her people that spoke for their natural
instinct, their habitual attitude toward life.

"Autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as
it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in
fact Russian in origin, in character or purpose, and now it has been
shaken, and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all
their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for
freedom in the world, for justice and for peace.  Here is a fit partner
for a league of honour.

"One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian
autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very
outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities
and even our offices of government with spies, and set criminal
intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of council, our
peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.

"Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war
began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact
proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues, which have more
than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating
the industries of the country, have been carried on at the instigation,
with the support, and even under the personal direction, of official
agents of the imperial Government accredited to the Government of the
United States.

"Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have
sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them,
because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or
purpose of the German people toward us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant
of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a
government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing.  But
they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that
Government entertains no real friendship for us, and means to act
against our peace and security at its convenience.

"That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the
intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent
evidence.

"We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know
that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a
friend, and that in the presence of its organised power, always lying
in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured
security for the democratic governments of the world.

"We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to
liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to
check and nullify its pretensions and its power.  We are glad, now that
we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight
thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its
peoples, the German peoples included, for the rights of nations great
and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of
life and of obedience.

"The world must be made safe for democracy.  Its peace must be planted
upon the trusted foundations of political liberty.

"We have no selfish ends to serve.  We desire no conquest, no dominion.
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the
sacrifices we shall freely make.  We are but one of the champions of
the rights of mankind.  We shall be satisfied when those rights have
been as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation can make them.

"Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish objects,
seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all
free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as
belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio
the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

"I have said nothing of the governments allied with the imperial
Government of Germany, because they have not made war upon us or
challenged us to defend our right and our honour.  The Austro-Hungarian
Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indorsement and
acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now
without disguise by the imperial Government, and it has therefore not
been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the
ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the imperial and
royal Government of Austria-Hungary, but that Government has not
actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on
the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of
postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at
Vienna.  We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it
because there are no other means of defending our rights.

"It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents
in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus,
not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or
disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an
irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of
humanity and of right and is running amuck.

"We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people,
and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of
intimate relations of mutual advantage between us--however hard it may
be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from
our hearts.  We have borne with their present Government through all
these bitter months because of that friendship--exercising a patience
and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible.

"We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship
in our daily attitude and actions toward the millions of men and women
of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our
life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact
loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test.
They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had
never known any other fealty or allegiance.  They will be prompt to
stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a
different mind and purpose.

"If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand
of stern repression; but if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it
only here and there, and without countenance, except from a lawless and
malignant few.

"It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress,
which I have performed in thus addressing you.  There are, it may be,
many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us.  It is a fearful
thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most
terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilisation itself seeming to be
in the balance.

"But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the
things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy,
for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their
own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a
universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall
bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last
free.

"To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything
that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who
know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her
blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and
happiness and the peace which she has treasured.  God helping her, she
can do no other."


After this speech was printed in Germany, first in excerpts and then as
a whole in a few papers, there were three distinct reactions:

1. The Government press and the circles controlled by the Army
published violent articles against President Wilson and the United
States.

2. The democratic press led by the _Vorwaerts_ took advantage of
Wilson's statements to again demand election reforms.

3. Public feeling generally was so aroused that the official _North
German Gazette_ said at the end of a long editorial that the Kaiser
favoured a "people's kingdom of Hohenzollern."

The ammunition interests were among the first to express their
satisfaction with America as an enemy.  The _Rheinische Westfaelische
Zeitung_, their official graphophone, said:


"The real policy of America is now fully disclosed by the outbreak of
the war.  Now a flood of lies and insults, clothed in pious
phraseology, will descend on us.  This is a surprise only to those who
have been reluctant to admit that America was our enemy from the
beginning.  The voice of America does not sound differently from that
of any other enemy.  They are all tarred with the same brush--those
humanitarians and democrats who hurl the world into war and refuse
peace."


The _Lokal Anzeiger_, which is practically edited by the Foreign
Office, said President Wilson's attempt to inveigle the German people
into a revolt against the dynasty beats anything for sheer hypocrisy in
the records of the world.

"We must assume that President Wilson deliberately tells an untruth.
Not the German Government but the German race, hates this Anglo-Saxon
fanatic, who has stirred into flame the consuming hatred in America
while prating friendship and sympathy for the German people."

The _Lokal Anzeiger_ was right when it said the German people hated
America.  The _Lokal Anzeiger_ was one of the means the Government used
to make the German people hate the United States.

The _North German Gazette_, which prints only editorials dictated, or
authorised by, the Secretary of State, said:


"A certain phrase in President Wilson's speech must be especially
pointed out.  The President represents himself as the bearer of true
freedom to our people who are engaged in a severe struggle for their
existence and liberty.  What slave soul does he believe exists in the
German people when it thinks that it will allow its freedom to be meted
out to them from without?  The freedom which our enemies have in store
for us we know sufficiently.

"The German people, become clearsighted in war, and see in President
Wilson's word nothing but an attempt to loosen the bonds between the
people and princes of Germany so that we may become an easier prey for
our enemies.  We ourselves know that an important task remains to us to
consolidate our external power and our freedom at home."

But the mask fell from the face of Germany which she shows the outside
world, when the Kaiser issued his Easter proclamation promising
election reforms after the war.  Why did the Kaiser issue this
proclamation again at this time?  As early as January, 1916, he said
the same thing to the German people in his address from the throne to
the Prussian Diet.  Why did the Kaiser feel that it was necessary to
again call the attention of the people to the fact that he would be a
democrat when the war was over?  The Kaiser and the German army are
clever in dealing with the German people.  If the Kaiser makes a
mistake or does something that his army does not approve it can always
be remedied before the mistake becomes public.

Last Fall a young German soldier who had been in the United States as a
moving picture operator was called to the General Staff to take moving
pictures at the front for propaganda purposes.  One week he was ordered
to Belgium, to follow and photograph His Majesty.  At Ostend, the
famous Belgian summer resort, the Kaiser was walking along the beach
one day with Admiral von Schroeder, who is in command of the German
defences there.  The movie operator followed him.  The soldier had been
following the Kaiser several days so His Majesty recognised him,
ordered him to put up his camera and prepare to make a special film.
When the camera was ready His Majesty danced a jig, waved his sceptre
and then his helmet, smiled and shouted greetings to the camera
man--then went on along the beach.

When the photographer reached Berlin and showed the film to the censors
of the General Staff they were shocked by the section of the Kaiser at
Ostend.  They ordered it cut out of the film because they did not think
it advisable to show the German people how much their Emperor was
enjoying the war!

The Kaiser throughout his reign has posed as a peace man although he
has been first a soldier and then an executive.  So when the Big War
broke out the Kaiser had a chance to make real what had been play for
him for forty years.  Is it surprising then that he should urge the
people to go on with the war and promise them to reform the government
when the fighting was over?

The Kaiser's proclamation itself shows that the Kaiser is not through
fighting.


"Never before have the German people proved to be so firm as in this
war.  The knowledge that the Fatherland is fighting in bitter self
defence has exercised a wonderful reconciling power, and, despite all
sacrifices on the battlefield and severe privations at home, their
determination has remained imperturbable to stake their last for the
victorious issue."


Could any one except a soldier who was pleased with the progress of the
war have written such words?


"The national and social spirit have understood each other and become
united, and have given us steadfast strength.  Both of them realise
what was built up in long years of peace and amid many internal
struggles.  _This was certainly worth fighting for_," the Emperor's
order continued.  "Brightly before my eyes stand the achievements of
the entire nation in battle and distress.  The events of this struggle
for the existence of the empire introduce with high solemnity a new
time.

"It falls to you as the responsible Chancellor of the German Empire and
First Minister of my Government in Prussia to assist in obtaining the
fulfilment of the demands of this hour by right means and at the right
time, and in this spirit shape our political life in order to make room
for the free and joyful co-operation of all the members of our people.

"The principles which you have developed in this respect have, as you
know, my approval.

"I feel conscious of remaining thereby on the road which my
grandfather, the founder of the empire, as King of Prussia with
military organisation and as German Emperor with social reform,
typically fulfilled as his monarchial obligations, thereby creating
conditions by which the German people, in united and wrathful
perseverance, will overcome this sanguinary time.  _The maintenance_ of
the _fighting force_ as a real people's army and the promotion of the
social uplift of the people in all its classes was, from the beginning
of my reign, my aim.

"In this endeavour, while holding a just balance between the people and
the monarchy to serve the welfare of the whole, I am resolved to begin
building up our internal political, economic, and social life as soon
as the war situation permits.

"While millions of our fellow-countrymen are in the field, the conflict
of opinions behind the front, which is unavoidable in such a
far-reaching change of constitution, must be postponed in the highest
interests of the Fatherland until the time of the homecoming of our
warriors and when they themselves are able to join in the counsel and
the voting on the progress of the new order."


It was but natural that the Socialists should hail this declaration of
the Kaiser's at first with enthusiasm.

"Internal freedom in Prussia--that is a goal for which for more than
one hundred years the best heads and best forces in the nation have
worked.  Resurrection day of the third war year--will go down in
history as the day of the resurrection of old Prussia to a new
development," said the _Vorwaerts_.


"It has brought us a promise, to be sure; not the resurrection itself,
but a promise which is more hopeful and certain than all former
announcements together.  This proclamation can never be annulled and
lapse into dusty archives.

"This message promises us a thorough reform of the Prussian three class
electoral system in addition to a reform of the Prussian Upper House.
In the coming new orientation the Government is only one factor,
another is Parliament, the third and decisive factor is the people."

Other Berlin newspapers spoke in a similar vein but not one of them
pointed out to the public the fact that this concession by the Kaiser
was not made in such a definite form, _until the United States had
declared war_.  As the United States entered the war to aid the
democratic movement in Germany this concession by the Kaiser may be
considered our first victory.

As days go by it becomes more and more evident that the American
declaration of war is having an important influence upon internal
conditions in Germany just as the submarine notes had.  The German
people really did not begin to think during this war until President
Wilson challenged them in the notes which followed the torpedoing of
the _Lusitania_.  And now with the United States at war not only the
people but the Government have decided to do some thinking.

By April 12th when reports began to reach Germany of America's
determination to fight until there was a democracy in Germany the
democratic press began to give more serious consideration to Americans
alliance with the Allies.  Dr. Ludwig Haas, one of the Socialist
members of the Reichstag, in an article in the Berlin _Tageblatt_ made
the following significant statements.


"One man may be a hypocrite, but never a whole nation.  If the American
people accept this message [President Wilson's address before Congress]
without a protest, then a tremendous abyss separates the logic of
Germans from that of other nations.

"Woodrow Wilson is not so far wrong if he means the planning of war
might be prevented if the people asserted the right to know everything
about the foreign policies of their countries.  But the President seems
blind to the fact that a handful of men have made it their secret and
uncontrolled business to direct the fate of the European democracies.
With the press at one's command one can easily drive a poor people to a
mania of enthusiasm, when they will carry on their shoulders the
criminals who have led to the brink of disaster."


[Illustration: "THE NEW OLD PRESIDENT.  LONG LIVE AMERICA!  LONG LIVE
PEACE!  LONG LIVE THE AMMUNITION FACTORIES!"]


Dr. Haas was beginning to understand that the anti-American campaign in
Germany which the Navy started and the Foreign Office encouraged, had
had some effect.

Everything the United States does from now on will have a decisive
influence in the world war.  The Allies realise it and Washington knows
it.  Mr. Lloyd-George, the British Prime Minister, realised what a
decisive effect American ships would have, when he said at the banquet
of the American Luncheon Club in London:

"The road to victory, the guaranty of victory, the absolute assurance
of victory, has to be found in one word, 'ships,' and a second word,
'ships,' and a third word, 'ships.'"

But our financial economic and military aid to the Allies will not be
our greatest contribution towards victory.  The influence of President
Wilson's utterances, of our determination and of our value as a
friendly nation after the war will have a tremendous effect as time
goes on upon the German people.  As days and weeks pass, as the victory
which the German Government has promised the people becomes further and
further away, the people, who are now doing more thinking than they
ever have done since the beginning of the war, will some day realise
that in order to obtain peace, which they pray for and hope for, they
will have to reform their government _during the war_--not after the
war as the Kaiser plans.

Military pressure from the outside is going to help this democratic
movement in Germany succeed in spite of itself.  The New York World
editorial on April 14th, discussing Mr. Lloyd-George's statement that
"Prussia is not a democracy; Prussia is not a state; Prussia is an
army," said:


"It was the army and the arrogance actuating it which ordered
hostilities in the first place.  Because there was no democracy in
Prussia, the army had its way.  The democracies of Great Britain and
France, like the democracy of the United States, were reluctant to take
arms but were forced to it.  Russian democracy found its own
deliverance on the fighting-line.

"In the fact that Prussia is not a democracy or a state but an army we
may see a reason for many things usually regarded as inexplicable.  It
is Prussia the army which violates treaties.  It is Prussia the army
which disregards international law.  It is Prussia the army,
represented by the General Staff and the Admiralty, which sets at
naught the engagements of the Foreign Office.  It is Prussia the army
which has filled neutral countries with spies and lawbreakers, which
has placed frightfulness above humanity, and in a fury of egotism and
savagery has challenged the world.

"Under such a terrorism, as infamous at home as it is abroad, civil
government has perished.  There is no civil government in a Germany
dragooned by Prussia.  There is no law in Germany but military law.
There is no obligation in Germany except to the army.  It is not
Germany the democracy or Germany the state, it is Germany the army,
that is to be crushed for its own good no less than for that of
civilisation."

The United States entered the war at the psychological and critical
moment.  We enter it at the moment when our economic and financial
resources, and _our determination_ will have the decisive influence.
We enter at the moment when every one of our future acts will assist
and help the democratic movement in Germany succeed.




CHAPTER XII

PRESIDENT WILSON

The United States entered the war at a time when many Americans
believed the Allies were about to win it.  By May 1st, 1917, the
situation so changed in Europe that it was apparent to observers that
only by the most stupendous efforts of all the Allies could the German
Government be defeated.

At the very beginning of the war, when Teutonic militarism spread over
Europe, it was like a forest fire.  But two years of fighting have
checked it--as woodsmen check forest fires--by digging ditches and
preventing the flames from spreading.  Unlimited submarine warfare,
however, is something new.  It is militarism spreading to the high seas
and to the shores of neutrals.  It is Ruthlessism--the new German
menace, which is as real and dangerous for us and for South America as
for England and the Allies.  If we hold out until Ruthlessism spends
its fury, we will win.  But we must fight and fight desperately to hold
out.

Dr. Kaempf, President of the Reichstag, declared that President Wilson
would "bite marble" before the war was over.  And the success of
submarine warfare during April and the first part of May was such as to
arouse the whole world to the almost indefinite possibilities of this
means of fighting.  The real crisis of the war has not been reached.
We are approaching it.  The Allies have attempted for two years without
much success to curb the U-boat danger.  They have attempted to build
steel ships, also without success, so that the real burden of winning
the war in Europe falls upon American shoulders.

Fortunately for the United States we are not making the blunders at the
beginning of our intervention which some of the European nations have
been making since August, 1914.  America is awakened to the needs of
modern war as no other nation was, thanks to the splendid work which
the American newspapers and magazines have done during the war to
present clearly, fairly and accurately not only the great issues but
the problems of organisation and military tactics.  The people of the
United States are better informed about the war as a whole than are the
people in any European country.  American newspapers have not made the
mistakes which English and French journals made--of hating the enemy so
furiously as to think that nothing more than criticism and hate were
necessary to defeat him.  Not until this year could one of Great
Britain's statesmen declare: "You can damn the Germans until you are
blue in the face, but that will not beat them."


     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Professor Charles Gray Shaw, of New York University, stated before one
of his classes in philosophy that there was a new "will" typified in
certain of our citizens, notably in President Wilson.

"The new psychology," said Professor Shaw, "has discovered the new
will--the will that turns inward upon the brain instead of passing out
through hand or tongue.  Wilson has this new will; the White House
corroborates the results of the laboratory.  To Roosevelt, Wilson seems
weak and vacillating; but that is because T. R. knows nothing about the
new will.  T. R. has a primitive mind, but one of the most advanced
type.  In the T. R. brain, so to speak, will means set teeth, clenched
fist, hunting, and rough riding.

"Wilson may be regarded as either creating the new volition or as
having discovered it.  At any rate, Wilson possesses and uses the new
volition, and it remains to be seen whether the political world, at
home and abroad, is ready for it.  Here it is significant to observe
that the Germans, who are psychologists, recognize the fact that a new
and important function of the mind has been focused upon them.

"The Germans fear and respect the Wilson will of note writing more than
they would have dreaded the T. R. will with its teeth and fists."

As a psychologist Professor Shaw observed what we saw to be the effect
in Germany, of Mr. Wilson's will.

THE WILSON WILL

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

The United States enters the greatest war in history at the
psychological moment with a capable and determined president, a united
nation and almost unlimited resources in men, money and munitions.

There is a tremendous difference between the situation in the United
States and that in any other European country.  During the two years I
was in Europe I visited every nation at war except Serbia, Bulgaria and
Turkey.  I saw conditions in the neutral countries of Holland, Denmark,
Switzerland and Spain.  The one big thing which impressed me upon my
arrival in New York was that the United States, in contrast to all
these countries, has, as yet, not been touched by the war.  Americans
are not living under the strain and worry which hang like dreadful dull
clouds over every European power.  In Switzerland the economic worries
and the sufferings of the neighbouring belligerents have made the Swiss
people feel that they are in the centre of the war itself.  In France,
although Paris is gay, although people smile (they have almost
forgotten how to smile in Germany), although streets are crowded, and
stores busy, the atmosphere is earnest and serious.  Spain is torn by
internal troubles.  There is a great army of unemployed.  The submarine
war has destroyed many Spanish ships and interrupted Spanish trade with
belligerents.  Business houses are unable to obtain credit.  German
propaganda is sowing sedition and the King himself is uncertain about
the future.  But in the United States there is a gigantic display of
energy and potential power which makes this country appear to possess
sufficient force in itself to defeat Germany.  Berlin is drained and
dead in comparison.  Paris, while busy, is war-busy and every one and
everything seems to move and live because of the war.  In New York and
throughout the country there are young men by the hundreds of
thousands.  Germany and France have no young men outside the armies.
Here there are millions of automobiles and millions of people hurrying,
happy and contented, to and from their work.  In Germany there are no
automobiles which are not in the service of the Government and rubber
tires are so nearly exhausted that practically all automobiles have
iron wheels.

Some Americans have lived for many years with the idea that only
certain sections of the United States were related to Europe.  Many
people, especially those in the Middle West, have had the impression
that only the big shipping interests and exporters had direct interests
in affairs across the ocean.  But when Germany began to take American
lives on the high seas, when German submarines began to treat American
ships like all other belligerent vessels, it began to dawn upon people
here that this country was very closely connected to Europe by blood
ties as well as by business bonds.  It has taken the United States two
years to learn that Europe was not, after all, three thousand miles
away when it came to the vital moral issues of live international
policies.  Before Congress declared war I found many Americans
criticising President Wilson for not declaring war two years ago.
While I do not know what the situation was during my absence still the
impression which Americans abroad had, even American officials, was
that President Wilson would not have had the support of a united people
which he has to-day had he entered the war before all question of doubt
regarding the moral issues had disappeared.

[Illustration: THE AUTHOR'S CARD OF ADMISSION TO THE REICHSTAG ON APRIL
5TH, 1916.]

In the issue of April 14th of this year the _New Republic_, of New
York, in an editorial on "Who willed American participation?" cast an
interesting light upon the reasons for our intervention in the Great
War.


"Pacifist agitators who have been so courageously opposing, against
such heavy odds, American participation in the war have been the
victims of one natural but considerable mistake," says _The New
Republic_.  "They have insisted that the chief beneficiaries of
American participation would be the munition-makers, bankers and in
general the capitalist class, that the chief sufferers would be the
petty business men and the wage-earners.  They have consequently
considered the former classes to be conspiring in favour of war, and
now that war has come, they condemn it as the work of a small but
powerful group of profiteers.  Senator Norris had some such meaning in
his head when he asserted that a declaration of war would be equivalent
to stamping the dollar mark on the American flag.

"This explanation of the great decision is an absurd mistake, but the
pacifists have had some excuses for making it.  They have seen a great
democratic nation gradually forced into war, in spite of the manifest
indifference or reluctance of the majority of its population; and they
have rightly attributed the successful pressure to the ability of a
small but influential minority to impose its will on the rest of the
country.  But the numerically insignificant class whose influence has
been successfully exerted in favour of American participation does not
consist of the bankers and the capitalists.  Neither will they be the
chief beneficiaries of American participation.  The bankers and the
capitalists have favoured war, but they have favoured it without
realising the extent to which it would injure their own interests, and
their support has been one of the most formidable political obstacles
to American participation.  The effective and decisive work on behalf
of war has been accomplished by an entirely different class--a class
which must be comprehensively but loosely described as the
'intellectuals.'

"The American nation is entering this war under the influence of a
moral verdict reached, after the utmost deliberation by the more
thoughtful members of the community.  They gradually came to a decision
that the attack made by Germany on the international order was
sufficiently flagrant and dangerous to justify this country in
abandoning its cherished isolation and in using its resources to bring
about German defeat.  But these thoughtful people were always a small
minority.  They were able to impose their will upon a reluctant or
indifferent majority partly because the increasingly offensive nature
of German military and diplomatic policy made plausible opposition to
American participation very difficult, but still more because of the
overwhelming preponderance of pro-Ally conviction in the intellectual
life of the country.  If the several important professional and social
groups could have voted separately on the question of war and peace,
the list of college professors would probably have yielded the largest
majority in favour of war, except perhaps that contained in the Social
Register.  A fighting anti-German spirit was more general among
physicians, lawyers and clergymen than it was among business
men--except those with Wall Street and banking connections.  Finally,
it was not less general among writers on magazines and in the
newspapers.  They popularised what the college professors had been
thinking.  Owing to this consensus of influences opposition to pro-Ally
orthodoxy became intellectually somewhat disreputable, and when a final
decision had to be made this factor counted with unprecedented and
overwhelming force.  College professors headed by a President who had
himself been a college professor contributed more effectively to the
decision in favour of war than did the farmers, the business men or the
politicians.

"When one considers the obstacles to American entrance into the war,
the more remarkable and unprecedented does the final decision become.
Every other belligerent had something immediate and tangible to gain by
participating and to lose by not participating.  Either they were
invaded or were threatened with invasion.  Either they dreaded the loss
of prestige or territory or coveted some kind or degree of national
aggrandisement.  Even Australia and Canada, who had little or nothing
to gain from fighting, could not have refused to fight without severing
their connection with the British Empire, and behaving in a manner
which would have been considered treacherous by their fellow Britons.
But the American people were not forced into the war either by fears or
hopes or previously recognised obligations.  On the contrary, the
ponderable and tangible realities of the immediate situation counselled
neutrality.  They were revolted by the hideous brutality of the war and
its colossal waste.  Participation must be purchased with a similarly
colossal diversion of American energy from constructive to destructive
work, the imposition of a similarly heavy burden upon the future
production of American labour.  It implied the voluntary surrender of
many of those advantages which had tempted our ancestors to cross the
Atlantic and settle in the New World.  As against these certain costs
there were no equally tangible compensations.  The legal rights of
American citizens were, it is true, being violated, and the structure
of international law with which American security was traditionally
associated was being shivered, but the nation had weathered a similar
storm during the Napoleonic Wars and at that time participation in the
conflict had been wholly unprofitable.  By spending a small portion of
the money which will have to be spent in helping the Allies to beat
Germany, upon preparations exclusively for defence, the American nation
could have protected for the time being the inviolability of its own
territory and its necessary communications with the Panama Canal.  Many
considerations of national egotism counselled such a policy.  But
although the Hearst newspapers argued most persuasively on behalf of
this course it did not prevail.  The American nation allowed itself to
be captured by those upon whom the more remote and less tangible
reasons for participation acted with compelling authority.  For the
first time in history a wholly independent nation has entered a great
and costly war under the influence of ideas rather than immediate
interests and without any expectation of gains, except those which can
be shared with all liberal and inoffensive nations.

"The United States might have blundered into the war at any time during
the past two years, but to have entered, as it is now doing, at the
right time and in the clear interest of a purely international
programme required the exercise of an intellectualised and imaginative
leadership.  And in supplying the country with this leadership Mr.
Wilson was interpreting the ideas of thoughtful Americans who wished
their country to be fighting on the side of international right, but
not until the righteousness of the Allied cause was unequivocally
established.  It has taken some time to reach this assurance.  The war
originated in conflicting national ambitions among European Powers for
privileged economic and political positions in Africa and Asia, and if
it had continued to be a war of this kind there never could have been a
question of American intervention.  Germany, however, had been dreaming
of a more glorious goal than Bagdad and a mightier heritage than that
of Turkey.  She betrayed her dream by attacking France through Belgium
and by threatening the foundations of European order.  The crucifying
of Belgium established a strong presumption against Germany, but the
case was not complete.  There still remained the dubious origin of the
war.  There still remained a doubt whether the defeat of German
militarism might not mean a dangerous triumph of Russian autocracy.
Above all there remained a more serious doubt whether the United States
in aiding the Allies to beat Germany might not be contributing merely
to the establishment of a new and equally unstable and demoralising
Balance of Power in Europe.  It was well, consequently, to wait and see
whether the development of the war would not do away with some of the
ambiguities and misgivings, while at the same time to avoid doing
anything to embarrass the Allies.  The waiting policy has served.
Germany was driven by the logic of her original aggression to threaten
the security of all neutrals connected with the rest of the world by
maritime communications.  The Russian autocracy was overthrown, because
it betrayed its furtive kinship with the German autocracy.  Finally,
President Wilson used the waiting period for the education of American
public opinion.  His campaign speeches prophesied the abandonment of
American isolation in the interest of a League of Peace.  His note of
last December to the belligerents brought out the sinister secrecy of
German peace terms and the comparative frankness of that of the Allies.
His address to the Senate clearly enunciated the only programme on
behalf of which America could intervene in European affairs.  Never was
there a purer and more successful example of Fabian political strategy,
for Fabianism consists not merely in waiting but in preparing during
the meantime for the successful application of a plan to a confused and
dangerous situation.

"What Mr. Wilson did was to apply patience and brains to a complicated
and difficult but developing political situation.  He was distinguished
from his morally indignant pro-Allies fellow countrymen, who a few
months ago were abusing him for seeking to make a specifically American
contribution to the issues of the war, just as Lincoln was
distinguished from the abolitionists, not so much by difference in
purposes as by greater political wisdom and intelligence.  It is
because of his Fabianism, because he insisted upon waiting until he had
established a clear connection between American intervention and an
attempt to create a community of nations, that he can command and
secure for American intervention the full allegiance of the American
national conscience.  His achievement is a great personal triumph, but
it is more than that.  It is an illustration and a prophecy of the part
which intelligence and in general the 'intellectual' class have an
opportunity of playing in shaping American policy and in moulding
American life.  The intimate association between action and ideas,
characteristic of American political practice at its best, has been
vindicated once more.  The association was started at the foundation of
the Republic and was embodied in the work of the Fathers, but
particularly in that of Hamilton.  It was carried on during the period
of the Civil War and was embodied chiefly in the patient and
penetrating intelligence which Abraham Lincoln brought to his task.  It
has just been established in the region of foreign policy by Mr.
Wilson's discriminating effort to keep the United States out of the war
until it could go in as the instrument of an exclusively international
programme and with a fair prospect of getting its programme accepted.
In holding to this policy Mr. Wilson was interpreting with fidelity and
imagination the ideas and the aspirations of the more thoughtful
Americans.  His success should give them increasing confidence in the
contribution which they as men of intelligence are capable of making to
the fulfilment of the better American national purposes."


During 1915 and 1916 our diplomatic relations with Germany have been
expressed in one series of notes after another, and the burden of
affairs has been as much on the shoulders of Ambassador Gerard as on
those of any other one American, for he has been the official who has
had to transmit, interpret and fight for our policies in Berlin.  Mr.
Gerard had a difficult task because he, like President Wilson, was
constantly heckled and ridiculed by those pro-German Americans who were
more interested in discrediting the Administration than in maintaining
peace.  Of all the problems with which the Ambassador had to contend,
the German-American issue was the greatest, and those who believed that
it was centred in the United States are mistaken, for the capital of
German-America was _Berlin_.

"I have had a great deal of trouble in Germany from the American
correspondents when they went there," said Ambassador Gerard in an
address to the American Newspapers Publishers Association in New York
on April 26th.

"Most of them became super-Ambassadors and proceeded to inform the
German Government that they must not believe me--that they must not
believe the President--they must not believe the American people--but
believe these people, and to a great extent this war is due to the fact
that these pro-German Americans, a certain number of them, misinformed
the German Government as to the sentiments of this country."

James W. Gerard's diplomatic career in Germany was based upon
bluntness, frankness and a kind of "news instinct" which caused him to
regard his position as that of a reporter for the United States
Government.

Berlin thought him the most unusual Ambassador it had ever known.  It
never knew how to take him.  He did not behave as other diplomats did.
When he went to the Foreign Office it was always on business.  He did
not flatter and praise, bow and chat or speak to Excellencies in the
third person as European representatives usually do.  Gerard began at
the beginning of the war a policy of keeping the United States fully
informed regarding Germany.  He used to report daily the political
developments and the press comment, and the keen understanding which he
had of German methods was proved by his many forecasts of important
developments.  Last September he predicted, in a message to the State
Department, ruthless submarine warfare before Spring unless peace was
made.  He notified Washington last October to watch for German intrigue
in Mexico and said that unless we solved the problem there we might
have trouble throughout the war from Germans south of the Rio Grande.

[Illustration: AMBASSADOR GERARD ARRIVING IN PARIS]

During the submarine controversies, when reports reached Berlin that
the United States was divided and would not support President Wilson in
his submarine policy, Ambassador Gerard did everything he could to give
the opposite impression.  He tried his best to keep Germany from
driving the United States into the war.  That he did not succeed was
not the fault of _his_ efforts.  Germany was desperate and willing to
disregard all nations and all international obligations in an attempt
to win the war with U-boats.

Last Summer, during one of the crises over the sinking of a passenger
liner without warning, Mr. Gerard asked the Chancellor for an audience
with the Kaiser.  Von Bethmann-Hollweg said he would see if it could be
arranged.  The Ambassador waited two weeks.  Nothing was done.  From
his friends in Berlin he learned that the Navy was opposed to such a
conference and would not give its consent.  Mr. Gerard went to Herr von
Jagow who was then Secretary of State and again asked for an audience.
He waited another week.  Nothing happened and Mr. Gerard wrote the
following note to the Chancellor:


"Your Excellency,

"Three weeks ago I asked for an audience with His Majesty the Kaiser.

"A week ago I repeated the request.

"Please do not trouble yourself further.

"Respectfully,

"JAMES W. GERARD."


The Ambassador called the Embassy messenger and sent the note to the
Chancellor's palace.  Three hours later he was told that von
Bethmann-Hollweg had gone to Great Headquarters to arrange for the
meeting.

Sometimes in dealing with the Foreign Office the Ambassador used the
same rough-shod methods which made the Big Stick effective during the
Roosevelt Administration.  At one time, Alexander Cochran, of New York,
acted as special courier from the Embassy in London to Berlin.  At the
frontier he was arrested and imprisoned.  The Ambassador heard of it,
went to the Foreign Office and demanded Cochran's immediate release.
The Ambassador had obtained Mr. Cochran's passports, and showed them to
the Secretary of State.  When Herr von Jagow asked permission to retain
one of the passports so the matter could be investigated, the
Ambassador said:

"All right, but first let me tear Lansing's signature off the bottom,
or some one may use the passport for other purposes."

The Ambassador was not willing to take chances after it was learned and
proved by the State Department that Germany was using American
passports for spy purposes.

In one day alone, last fall, the American Embassy sent 92 notes to the
Foreign Office, some authorised by Washington and some unauthorised,
protesting against unlawful treatment of Americans, asking for reforms
in prison camps, transmitting money and letters about German affairs in
Entente countries, and other matters which were under discussion
between Berlin and Washington.  At one time an American woman
instructor in Roberts' College was arrested at Warnemuende and kept for
weeks from communicating with the Ambassador.  When he heard of it he
went to the Foreign Office daily, demanding her release, which he
finally secured.

Mr. Gerard's work in bettering conditions in prison camps, especially
at Ruhleben, will be long remembered.  When conditions were at their
worst he went out daily to keep himself informed, and then daily went
to the Foreign Office or wrote to the Ministry of War in an effort to
get better accommodations for the men.  One day he discovered eleven
prominent English civilians, former respected residents in Berlin,
living in a box stall similar to one which his riding horse had
occupied in peace times.  This so aroused the Ambassador that he
volunteered to furnish funds for the construction of a new barracks in
case the Government was not willing to do it.  But the Foreign Office
and the War Ministry and other officials shifted authority so often
that it was impossible to get changes made.  The Ambassador decided to
have his reports published in a drastic effort to gain relief for the
prisoners.  The State Department granted the necessary authority and
his descriptions of Ruhleben were published in the United States and
England, arousing such a world-wide storm of indignation that the
German Government changed the prison conditions and made Ruhleben fit
for men for the first time since the beginning of the war.

This activity of the Ambassador aroused a great deal of bitterness and
the Government decided to try to have him recalled.  The press
censorship instigated various newspapers to attack the Ambassador so
that Germany might be justified in asking for his recall, but the
attack failed for the simple reason that there was no evidence against
the Ambassador except that he had been too vigorous in insisting upon
livable prison camp conditions.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

I have pointed out in previous chapters some of the things which
President Wilson's notes accomplished in Germany during the war.
Suppose the Kaiser were to grant certain reforms, would this destroy
the possibilities of a free Germany, a democratic nation--a German
Republic!

The German people were given an opportunity to debate and think about
international issues while we maintained relations with Berlin, but as
I pointed out, the Kaiser and his associates are masters of German
psychology and during the next few months they may temporarily undo
what we accomplished during two years.  Americans must remember that at
the present time all the leading men of Germany are preaching to the
people the gospel of submarine success, and the anti-American campaign
there is being conducted unhindered and unchallenged.  The United
States and the Allies have pledged their national honour and existence
to defeat and discredit the Imperial German Government and nothing but
unfaltering determination, no matter what the Kaiser does, will bring
success.  Unless he is defeated, the Kaiser will not follow the Czar's
example.

In May of this year the German Government believed it was winning the
war.  Berlin believed it would decisively defeat our Allies before
Fall.  But even if the people of Germany again compel their Government
to propose peace and the Kaiser announces that he is in favour of such
drastic reforms as making his Ministry responsible to the Reichstag,
this (though it might please the German people) cannot, must not,
satisfy us.  Only a firm refusal of the Allies will accomplish what we
have set out to do--overthrow the present rulers and dictators of
Germany.  This must include not only the Kaiser but Field Marshal von
Hindenburg and the generals in control of the army, the Chancellor von
Bethmann-Hollweg, who did not keep his promises to the United States
and the naval leaders who have been intriguing and fighting for war
with America for over two years.  Only a decisive defeat of Germany
will make Germany a republic, and the task is stupendous enough to
challenge the best combined efforts of the United States and all the
Allies.

Prophecy is a dangerous pastime but it would not be fair to conclude
this book without pointing out some of the possibilities which can
develop from the policy which President Wilson pursued in dealing with
Germany before diplomatic relations were broken.

The chief effect of Mr. Wilson's policy is not going to be felt during
this war, but in the future.  At the beginning of his administration he
emphasised the fact that in a democracy public opinion was a bigger
factor than armies and navies.  If all Europe emerges from this war as
democratic as seems possible now one can see that Mr. Wilson has
already laid the foundation for future international relations between
free people and republican forms of governments.  This war has defeated
itself.  It is doubtful whether there ever will be another world war
because the opinion of all civilised people is mobilised against war.
After one has seen what war is like, one is against not only war itself
but the things which bring about war.  This great war was made possible
because Europe has been expecting and preparing for it ever since 1870
and because the governments of Europe did not take either the people or
their neighbours into their confidence.  President Wilson tried to show
while he was president that the people should be fully informed
regarding all steps taken by the Government.  In England where the
press has had such a tussle to keep from being curbed by an autocratic
censorship the world has learned new lessons in publicity.  The old
policy of keeping from the public unpleasant information has been
thrown overboard in Great Britain because it was found that it harmed
the very foundations of democracy.

[Illustration: A POST-CARD FROM GENERAL VON KLUCK.]

International relations in the future will, to a great extent, be
moulded along the lines of Mr. Wilson's policies during this war.
Diplomacy will be based upon a full discussion of all international
issues.  The object of diplomacy will be to reach an understanding to
_prevent_ wars, not to _avoid_ them at the eleventh hour.  Just as
enlightened society tries to _prevent_ murder so will civilised nations
in the future try to prevent wars.

Mr. Wilson expressed his faith in this new development in international
affairs by saying that "the opinion of the world is the mistress of the
world."

The important concern to-day is: How can this world opinion be moulded
into a world power?

Opinion cannot be codified like law because it is often the vanguard of
legislation.  Public opinion is the reaction of a thousand and one
incidents upon the public consciousness.  In the world to-day the most
important influence in the development of opinion is the daily press.
By a judicious interpretation of affairs the President of the United
States frequently may direct public opinion in certain channels while
his representatives to foreign governments, especially when there is
opportunity, as there is to-day, may help spread our ideas abroad.

World political leaders, if one may judge from events so far, foresee a
new era in international affairs.  Instead of a nation's foreign
policies being secret, instead of unpublished alliances and iron-bound
treaties, there may be the proclaiming of a nation's international
intentions, exactly as a political party in the United States pledges
its intentions in a political campaign.  Parties in Europe may demand a
statement of the foreign intentions of their governments.  If there was
this candidness between the governments and their citizens there would
he more frankness between the nations and their neighbours.  Public
opinion would then be the decisive force.  International steps of all
nations would then be decided upon only after the public was thoroughly
acquainted with their every phase.  A fully informed nation would be
considered safer and more peace-secure than a nation whose opinion was
based upon coloured official reports, "Ems" telegrams of 1870 and 1914
variety, and eleventh-hour appeals to passion, fear and God.

The opinion of the world may then be a stronger international force
than large individual armies and navies.  The opinion of the world may
be such a force that every nation will respect and fear it.  The
opinion of the world may be the mistress of the world and publicity
will be the new driving force in diplomacy to give opinion world power.

Germany's defeat will be the greatest event in history because it will
establish world democracy upon a firm foundation and because Germany
itself will emerge democratic.  The Chancellor has frequently stated
that the Germany which would come out of this war would be nothing like
the Germany which went into the war and the Kaiser has already promised
a "people's kingdom of Hohenzollern."  The Kaiser's government will be
reformed because world opinion insists upon it.  If the German people
do not yet see this, they will be outlawed until they are free.  They
will see it eventually, and when that day comes, peace will dawn in
Europe.




APPENDIX


  Cornell University,
    Ithaca, N.  Y.

DEAR SIR:

Returning to Ithaca, I find your letter with its question relating to
the temporary arrest of a vessel carrying munitions of war to Spain
shortly after the beginning of our war with that country.  The simple
facts are as follows: Receiving a message by wire from our American
Consul at Hamburg early during the war, to the effect that a Spanish
vessel supposed to carry munitions for Spain was just leaving Germany,
I asked the Foreign Office that the vessel be searched before leaving,
my purpose being not only to get such incidental information as
possible regarding the contraband concerned, but particulars as to the
nature of the vessel, whether it was so fitted that it could be used
with advantage by our adversaries against our merchant navy, as had
happened during our Civil War, when Great Britain let out of her ports
vessels fitted to prey upon our merchant ships.

The German Government was very courteous to us in the matter and it was
found that the Spanish ship concerned was not so fitted up and that the
contraband was of a very ordinary sort, such as could be obtained from
various nations.  The result was that the vessel, after a brief visit,
proceeded on her way, and our agents at Hamburg informed me later that
during the entire war vessels freely carried ammunition from German
ports both to Spain and to the United States, and that neither of the
belligerents made any remonstrance.  Of course, I was aware that under
the usages of nations I had, strictly speaking, no right to demand
seizure of the contraband concerned, but it seemed my duty at least to
secure the above information regarding it and the ship which carried it.

I remain, dear sir,

  Very respectfully yours,

    (_Signed_) ANDREW D. WHITE.





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