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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Face to Face with Kaiserism, by James W.
+Gerard
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Face to Face with Kaiserism
+
+
+Author: James W. Gerard
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 3, 2007  [eBook #21991]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Irma Spehar, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 21991-h.htm or 21991-h.zip:
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+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/9/1/21991/21991-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM
+
+by
+
+JAMES W. GERARD
+
+Late Ambassador to the German Imperial Court,
+Author of "My Four Years in Germany"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+New York
+George H. Doran Company
+Copyright, 1918,
+by George H. Doran Company
+Copyright, 1918, by The Public Ledger Company
+Copyright, Canada, 1918, by The Public Ledger Company
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+COLONEL EDWARD M. HOUSE
+
+STATESMAN AND FRIEND
+
+THE AUTHOR
+
+DEDICATES THIS BOOK
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: PAPER MONEY USED IN PRISON CAMPS]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A PRISON CAMP MONEY CERTIFICATE
+ISSUED AT THE PRISON CAMP OF NEUHAMMER]
+
+[Illustration: PAPER MONEY ISSUED AGAINST PROPERTY IN GERMANY.
+REALLY A "GREENBACK" OR ALMOST FIAT MONEY]
+
+[Illustration: POSTAGE STAMPS ISSUED AT RUHLEBEN PRISON CAMP.
+USED BY PRISONERS WRITING TO EACH OTHER IN THE CAMP.]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION OF THE KAISER'S VISITING
+CARD]
+
+[Illustration: THE VISITING CARD OF THE CROWN PRINCE, REPRODUCED
+IN FACSIMILE]
+
+[Illustration: THE KAISER AND VON TREUTLER TAKEN IN THE NORWEGIAN
+TOWN OF ODDE IN 1910]
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+
+
+In some measure this book is a continuation of MY FOUR YEARS IN
+GERMANY, the narrative here being carried up to the time of my
+return home, with some observations on the situation I have found
+in the United States.
+
+What I want especially to impress upon the people of the United
+States is that we are at war because Germany invaded the United
+States--an invasion insidiously conceived and vigorously
+prosecuted for years before hostilities began;--that this war is
+our war;--that the sanctity of American freedom and of the
+American home depend upon what we do _NOW_.
+
+JAMES W. GERARD.
+
+NEW YORK,
+APRIL FIRST, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
+
+I     PERSONALITY OF THE KAISER AND SOMETHING OF THE KING BUSINESS   13
+
+II    WHO DOES THE KAISER'S THINKING AND WHO DECIDED ON THE BREAK
+      WITH AMERICA?                                                  32
+
+III   WHO SANK THE "LUSITANIA"?                                      42
+
+IV    THE KAISER AND "L�SE-MAJEST�"                                  49
+
+V     WHEN THE KAISER THOUGHT WE WERE BLUFFING                       55
+
+VI    THE INSIDE OF GERMAN DIPLOMACY                                 73
+
+VII   GERMANY'S PLAN TO ATTACK AMERICA                               84
+
+VIII  GERMANY'S EARLY PLOTS IN MEXICO                               111
+
+IX    THE KULTUR OF KAISERDOM--THE GERMAN SOUL                      129
+
+X     THE LITTLE KAISERS                                            143
+
+XI    ROYALTY'S RECREATION                                          148
+
+XII   THE ETERNAL FEMININE                                          157
+
+XIII  HOME LIFE AND "BRUTALITY" OF THE PEOPLE                       166
+
+XIV   AIMS OF THE AUTOCRACY                                         174
+
+XV    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY--THE KAISER'S VASSAL STATE                    196
+
+XVI   GERMAN INFLUENCE ON THE NORTHERN NEUTRALS                     217
+
+XVII  SWITZERLAND--ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL                          230
+
+XVIII A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE                                           237
+
+XIX   MY INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF SPAIN                           251
+
+XX    GERMAN SPIES AND THEIR METHODS                                263
+
+XXI   EN ROUTE HOME--KAISERISM IN AMERICA                           273
+
+XXII  THAT INTERVIEW WITH THE KAISER                                300
+
+XXIII THE FUTURE KAISER--THE CROWN PRINCE AND HIS BROTHERS          312
+
+XXIV  WHEN GERMANY WILL BREAK DOWN                                  323
+
+XXV   THE ERRORS OF EFFICIENT GERMANY                               340
+
+XXVI  PRESIDENT WILSON AND PEACE                                    346
+
+XXVII AFTER THE WAR, WHAT?                                          368
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+THE KAISER AND VON TREUTLER                               _Frontispiece_
+
+THE IRON CROSS                                                       36
+
+THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY STAFF, BERLIN                              50
+
+FACSIMILE OF AN ORDER ISSUED BY COMMANDER OF GERMAN PRISON CAMP
+OF DOEBERITZ                                                         78
+
+COVER OF PAMPHLET BY JOHN L. STODDARD                               104
+
+PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN COURTYARD OF EMBASSY, AUGUST, 1916              126
+
+EXAMPLE OF A COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OFFERED FOR SALE                   152
+
+VIEWS OF A TYPICAL HOLSTEIN COUNTRY HOME                            188
+
+MAIN STAIRWAY IN THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BERLIN                       210
+
+AMBASSADORS SHARP AND GERARD, PARIS, FEBRUARY, 1917                 240
+
+THE "INFANTA ISABELLA"                                              274
+
+PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AFTER BANQUET GIVEN AMBASSADOR GERARD ON JANUARY
+6TH, 1917                                                           304
+
+THE CROWN PRINCE AND CROWN PRINCESS                                 316
+
+REPRODUCTION OF ZEPPELIN POST CARD OF PATRIOTIC SENTIMENT           336
+
+ZEPPELIN POST CARD SOLD IN GERMANY                                  336
+
+
+
+
+FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PERSONALITY OF THE KAISER AND SOMETHING OF THE KING BUSINESS
+
+
+To the American mind the Kaiser is the personification of
+Germany. He is the arch enemy upon whom the world places the
+responsibility for this most terrible of all wars. I have sat
+face to face with him in the palace at Berlin where, as the
+personal representative and envoy of the President of the United
+States, I had the honor of expressing the viewpoint of a great
+nation. I have seen him in the field as the commanding general of
+mighty forces, but I also have seen him in the neutral countries
+through which I passed on my return home and in my own beloved
+land--in the evidence of intrigue and plotting which this
+militaristic monarch has begotten and which is to-day "the
+Thing," as President Wilson calls it, which has brought the
+American people face to face with kaiserism in the greatest
+conflict of all history.
+
+What manner of man is he? What is his character? How much was he
+responsible for what has happened--how much his General Staff?
+What of the Crown Prince and what of the neutral peoples and
+their rulers whom Germany has intimidated and would fain
+subjugate if it suited her purpose? These are the questions I
+shall attempt to answer out of my experiences in Germany and my
+contacts with the rulers of other countries in my journeys to and
+from Berlin and Washington.
+
+To illustrate the craft of the Kaiser, I believe I can perform no
+better service to Americans than to reveal an incident which has
+not hitherto been published. It occurred at the New Year's
+reception of 1914 when the Ambassadors of all the foreign
+countries represented at the German court, were ranged in a large
+room at the Palace. They stood about six feet apart in the order
+of their residence in Berlin. The Kaiser and his aides entered
+the room, and the Emperor spoke a few minutes to each envoy. He
+tarried longest with the Turkish Ambassador and myself, thereby
+arousing the curiosity of the other diplomats who suspected that
+the Kaiser did more than merely exchange the greetings of the
+season. He did.
+
+What the German Emperor said to me interests every American
+because it shows his subtlety of purpose. _The Kaiser talked at
+length to me about what he called Japan's designs on the United
+States. He warned me that Mexico was full of Japanese spies and
+an army of Japanese colonels._ He also spoke about France, saying
+that he had made every effort to make up with France, that he had
+extended his hand to that country but that the French had
+refused to meet his overtures, that he was through and would not
+try again to heal the breach between France and Germany!
+
+All this was in 1914, six months before the outbreak of the
+European War. Little did I know then what the purpose was back of
+that conversation, but it is clear now that the Emperor wished to
+have the government of the United States persuaded through me
+that he was really trying to keep Europe at peace and that the
+responsibility for what was going to happen would be on France.
+The German is so skilful at intrigue that he seeks even in
+advance of an expected offensive to lay the foundation for
+self-justification.
+
+But the reference to Japan and alleged hostility against us on
+the part of fanciful hordes of Japanese in Mexico made me wonder
+at the time. There were many evidences subsequent to that New
+Year's Day reception of an attempt to alienate us from Japan. As
+a climax to it all, as a clarification of what the Emperor had in
+mind, came the famous Zimmermann note, the instructions to the
+German Minister in Mexico to align both Japan and Mexico against
+us when we entered the war against Germany!
+
+Plotting and intriguing for power and mastery! Such is the
+business of absolute rulers.
+
+I believe that had the old Austrian Kaiser lived a little while
+longer, the prolongation of his life would have been most
+disastrous both for Austria and Hungary. I believe after the
+death of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo and after a year of war the
+German Emperor and autocracy were brooding over a plan according
+to which, on the death of Francis Joseph, the successor should be
+allowed to rule only as King or Grand-Duke of Austria, the title
+of Emperor of Austria to disappear and German Princes to be
+placed upon the thrones of Hungary and of a new kingdom of
+Bohemia. These and the king or grand-duke of Austria were to be
+subject-monarchs under the German Kaiser, who was thus to revive
+an empire, if not greater, at least more powerful, than the
+empires of Charlemagne and of Charles the Fifth. Many public
+utterances of the German Kaiser show that trend of mind.
+
+Emperor William deliberately wrote and published, for instance,
+such a statement as this: "From childhood I have been influenced
+by five men, Alexander the Great, Julius C�sar, Theodoric II,
+Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a
+dream of world empire. They failed. I have dreamed a dream of
+German world empire and my mailed fist shall succeed."
+
+Could any declaration of a life's ambition be more explicit? It
+seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man
+loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged
+animal or ambition drives him always on--he is never content with
+any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million,
+when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and
+desire, presses on insatiably with the first million in his
+pocket, more restless, more dissatisfied, than the hungry
+farmer's boy who first carries his ambitions to the great city.
+
+When these zealous, scheming men gain the power of kingship, they
+usually bring disaster to their country. Their subjects find no
+compensation in the personal ambitions which hurry a nation into
+the miseries of war. Better Charles II, dallying with his
+ringletted mistresses, than an Alexander the Great; better Henry
+the Fourth of France, the "ever-green gallant," than Frederick
+the Great, bathing his people in blood. "Happy nations have no
+history."
+
+William the Second, the present German Emperor, might well be
+called the Restless Emperor. He is never satisfied to remain more
+than a few days in any place or in any occupation. He commands
+his armies in person. He has won distinction as a writer and a
+public speaker. He is an excellent shot. He has composed music,
+written verses, superintended the production of a ballet, painted
+a picture; the beautiful Byzantine chapel in the Castle of Posen
+shows his genius for architecture; and, clothed in a clergyman's
+surplice, he has preached a sermon in Jerusalem. What ruler in
+all history has exhibited such extraordinary versatility?
+
+In my conversations with the Emperor I have been struck by his
+knowledge of other countries, lands which he had never visited.
+He was familiar not only with their manners, customs, industries
+and public men, but with their commercial problems. Through his
+conversation one can see the keen eye of the Hanseatic trader
+looking with eager envy on the trade of a rival merchant. The
+Emperor, incidentally, while instinctively commercial, has an
+inborn contempt, if not for the law, at least for lawyers. In
+October, 1915, for instance, he remarked to me, "This is a
+lawyers' war, Asquith and Lloyd George in England, Poincar� and
+Briand in France."
+
+In appearance and conversation Emperor William is very manly. His
+voice is strong, with a ring in it. He is a good rider. Following
+the German custom, he puts on his nightshirt every afternoon
+after lunch and sleeps for two hours--for the German is more
+devoted to the siesta than the Spaniard or Mexican. The hours of
+the Berlin Foreign Office, for example, were from eleven to one
+and from four to eight. After a heavy lunch at one o'clock all
+the officials took a nap for an hour or two. Also, the hours of
+the bank where I did business were from ten to one and from four
+till six. This meant that after six o'clock the clerks had to sit
+until perhaps eight making up the books for the day.
+
+In 1916, the Olympic games were to have taken place at Berlin,
+and in September, 1913, before sailing for Germany, I attended a
+luncheon at the New York Athletic Club, given by President Page,
+with the members of the German Commission who had come to America
+to study athletics and to see what could be done in Germany so
+that the Germans could make a good showing at the games in their
+own city.
+
+After my arrival in Germany one of the members of this commission
+told me that it was impossible, he believed, to organise the
+Germans as athletes until German meal and business hours had been
+changed. He said that with us in America young men leaving
+business at four-thirty, five or five-thirty, had time in which
+to exercise before their evening meal, but that in Germany the
+young men ate so much at the midday meal that they required their
+siesta after it, and that they did not leave their offices until
+so late in the evening that exercise and practice were impossible.
+
+On the Emperor's table his wine glasses or rather cups are of
+silver. Possibly this is because he has been forbidden by his
+physician to drink wine. The Germans maintain the old-fashioned
+custom of drinking healths at meals. Some one far down the table
+will lift his glass, look at you and smile. You are then expected
+to lift your glass and drink with him and then both bow and smile
+over the glasses. As the Emperor must reciprocate with every one
+present, his champagne and wine are put in silver cups in order
+that those drinking wine with him do not see that he consumes no
+appreciable quantity of alcoholic liquor on the occasion of each
+health drinking. Some people in America may have often wished for
+a similar device.
+
+The Emperor is out of uniform only on rare occasions.
+Occasionally, when in a foreign country, he has appeared in
+civilian dress, as shown in the accompanying photograph, taken in
+1910 at the small town of Odde in Norway, where he had landed
+from his yacht. He appears to much better advantage in uniform
+than in civilian attire. Although uniformed while at sea as an
+Admiral, his favourite uniform is really that of the Hussars. In
+this picture he is accompanied by Baron von Treutler, Prussian
+Minister to Bavaria and Foreign Office representative with the
+Kaiser. Von Treutler is a German of the world. I met him at the
+Great General Headquarters, at the end of April, 1916, when the
+submarine question was being discussed. He came to dinner several
+times at the Chancellor's house, undoubtedly reporting back what
+was said to the Emperor, and I believe that his voice was against
+the resumption of ruthless submarine warfare and in favour of
+peace with America. Shortly after this period he fell into
+disfavour and went back to occupy his post of Minister in Munich.
+
+In conversation, the Emperor reminds one very much of Roosevelt,
+talking with the same energy, the same violence of gesture and of
+voice so characteristic of our great ex-President. When the
+Emperor talks all his attention is given to you and all his
+mental energy is concentrated on the conversation. In this
+violence of manner and voice he seems not at all German. The
+average German is neither exuberant nor soft-spoken.
+
+His favourite among his ancestors is William of Orange. Once he
+attended a fancy-dress ball in costume and make-up copied from
+the well-known picture of that Prince. The Emperor is strongly
+built and is about five feet nine inches tall. He sits well on
+his horse and walks, too, with head erect and shoulders thrown
+back--a picture of military precision.
+
+A friend of mine who was present at Kiel with his yacht, in 1910,
+tells me that when all the yachts and warships had been assembled
+along the long narrow waterway which constitutes that harbour,
+with the crews lined up on deck or manning the yards, with bands
+crashing and banners floating, the _Hohenzollern_ slowly steamed
+into the harbour and passed lazily and majestically through the
+waiting ships. Alone on the upper bridge stood the Monarch,
+attired in full military uniform, with white coat and tight
+breeches, high top boots, shining silver breastplate and silver
+helmet, surmounted by an eagle, the dress of the Prussian Guard
+Regiment so dear to those who portray romantic and kingly r�les
+upon the stage, a figure on whom all eyes were fixed, as splendid
+as that of Lohengrin, drawn by his fairy swan, coming to rescue
+the unjustly accused Princess. And, alas, the Germans like all
+this pomp and splendour. It appeals to something in the German
+heart and seems to create a feeling of affection and humility in
+the German breast.
+
+When I talked at length one day with President Wilson on my visit
+to America in October, 1916, he remarked, half to himself, in
+surprise at my tale of war, "Why does all this horror come on the
+world? What causes it?" "Mr. President," I answered, "it is the
+king business."
+
+I did not mean nominal kings as harmless as those of Spain and
+England. I was thinking of the powerful monarchs. A German
+republic would never have embarked on this war; a German Congress
+would have thought twice before sending their own sons to death
+in a deliberate effort to enslave other peoples. In a free
+Germany teachers, ministers and professors would not have taught
+the necessity of war. What German merchant in a free Germany
+would have thought that all the trade of the East, all the riches
+of Bagdad and Cairo and Mosul could compensate him for the death
+of his first-born or restore the blind eyes to the youngest son
+who now crouches, cowering, over the fire, awaiting death? For
+there was no trade necessity for this war. I know of no place in
+the world where German merchants were not free to trade. The
+disclosures of war have shown how German commerce had penetrated
+every land, to an extent unknown to the best informed. If the
+German merchants wanted this war in order to gain a German
+monopoly of the world's trade, then they are rightly suffering
+from the results of overweening covetousness.
+
+Experts in insanity say that the Roman Emperors as soon as they
+attained the rule of the world were made mad by the possession of
+that stupendous power. The sceptre of Emperor William is mighty.
+No more autocratic influence proceeds from any other monarch or
+ruler. But you will say how about our President in time of war?
+Great power can safely be given to a president. Our presidents
+have all risen from the ranks. Usually they have gone through the
+school of hard knocks. And there are ways of keeping them abreast
+of the people.
+
+It is told that hidden from public view, crouched down in the
+chariot in which the successful Roman pro-consul or general drove
+triumphantly through the crowded streets of Rome, was a slave
+celebrated for his impertinence, whose duty it was to make the
+one honoured feel that, after all, he was nothing more than an
+ordinary mortal blessed with a certain amount of good luck.
+Probably as the chariot passed by the forum the slave would say,
+after a thunderous burst of applause from the populace: "Do not
+take that applause too seriously. That is the T. Quintus Cassius
+Association whose chief received a hundred sesterces from your
+brother-in-law yesterday, on account, with a promise of a hundred
+more in case the Association's cheers seemed loud and sincere."
+
+So in America the press, serious and comic, takes the place of
+the humble slave and throws enough cold water on the head of any
+temporarily successful American to reduce it to normal proportions.
+Besides, the President knows that some day he must return to the
+ranks, live again with his neighbours, seek out the threads of a
+lost law practice or eke out a livelihood on the Chautauqua
+circuit in the discomfort of tiny hotels, travelling in upper
+berths instead of private cars and eating on lunch stools in small
+stations instead of in the sumptuous surroundings of presidential
+luxury. These are sobering prospects.
+
+Kings, on the other hand, come to look on their subjects as toys.
+A post-card popular in Austria and Germany showed the old
+Emperor, Francis Joseph, seated at a table with a little
+great-grand-nephew on his knee, teaching the child to move toy
+soldiers about on the boards; and it is unfortunately true that
+the same youngster--should the system of the Central Empires be
+perpetuated--will be able to move his subjects across the map of
+Europe just as he did the toy soldiers on his great-grand-uncle's
+table. He will be able to tear men from their work and their
+homes, to seize great scientists, great chemists, great
+inventors--men who may be on the eve of discoveries or remedies
+destined to rid the human race of the scourge of cancer or the
+white plague--and send them to death in the marshes of Macedonia
+or the fastnesses of the Carpathians because some fellow-king or
+emperor has deceived or outwitted him.
+
+In a monarchy all subjects seem the personal property of the
+monarch and all expressions of power become personal. This
+extends throughout all countries ruled by royalty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, for example, a member of the royal family dies, even in
+another country, it must be lamented by the court circle of other
+lands. Here is the official notice sent to all diplomats and
+members of the Imperial German Court on the occasion of the death
+of the Queen of Sweden.
+
+     "The Court goes into mourning to-day for Her
+     Majesty the Queen-Mother of Sweden for three weeks
+     up to and including the 19th of January, 1914.
+
+     "Ladies wear black silk dresses, for the first
+     fourteen days, including January 12th, with black
+     hair ornaments, black gloves, black fans and
+     black jewelry; the last eight days with white hair
+     ornaments, grey gloves, white fans and pearls.
+
+     "Gentlemen wear the whole time a black band on the
+     left sleeve. Civilians wear with the embroidered
+     coat, during the first fourteen days, including
+     January 12th, on occasions of Grand Gala, black
+     buckles and swords with black sheathes. During the
+     last eight days bright buckles; on occasions of
+     'Half Gala' gold or silver embroidered trousers of
+     the color of the uniform and in the one as in the
+     other case gold or silver embroidered hat with
+     white plume; with the 'small' uniform, however,
+     black trousers (or knee-breeches, black silk
+     stockings, shoes with black bows and the
+     'three-cornered' hat with black plume). During the
+     first fourteen days gentlemen wear black woolen
+     vests and black gloves, in the last eight days
+     black silk vests and grey gloves.
+
+"Berlin, December 30, 1913.
+
+"The Ober-Ceremonienmeister.
+"GRAF A. EULENBURG.
+
+     "By command of His Majesty the Emperor, mourning
+     will be suspended for New Year's Day and the 17th
+     and 18th of January."
+
+So, it is apparent what a close corporation all the royal
+families make and the peoples are simply viewed as the personal
+property of the ruling princes. In his telegram which the German
+Kaiser wrote to President Wilson on August tenth, observe that
+all is personal. The Kaiser says, "I telegraphed to His Majesty
+the King, _personally_, but that if, etc., I would employ _my_
+troops elsewhere.... His Majesty answered that he thought _my_
+offer...." He speaks of the King of the Belgians "having refused
+_my_ petition for a free passage." He refers to "_my_ Ambassador
+in London."
+
+This telegram shows, on the other hand, another thing,--the great
+ability of the Kaiser. Undoubtedly he knew why I was coming to
+see him--to present the offer of mediation of President
+Wilson--but from our conversation I do not think that he had even
+in his mind prepared the answer, which sets forth his position in
+entering the war.
+
+He said, "Wait a moment, I shall write something for the
+President." Then taking the telegraph blanks lying on the table,
+he wrote rapidly and fluently. It was a message in a foreign
+language, and, whatever we may think of its content, at any rate
+it is clear, concise, consecutive and forceful.
+
+The personal touch runs through that extraordinary series of
+telegrams in the famous "Willy-Nicky" correspondence between
+Kaiser Wilhelm and the last of the Romanoffs, discovered in
+Petrograd by Herman Bernstein. These reveal, moreover, the
+surpassing craft of the German Kaiser. He was the master schemer.
+Touting for German trade, always for his advantage, he twists the
+poor half-wit of the Winter Palace like a piece of straw.
+
+Emperor William was not satisfied with a quiet life as patron of
+trade. As he studied the portraits of his ancestors, he felt that
+they gazed at him with reproachful eyes, demanded that he add, as
+did they, to the domains of the Hohenzollerns, that he return
+from war in triumph at the head of a victorious army with the
+keys of fallen cities borne before him in conquering march.
+
+One-tenth of Frederick the Great's people fell, but to the
+poverty-stricken peasant woman of Prussia, lamenting her husband
+and dead sons, did it matter that the rich province of Silesia
+had been added to the Prussian Crown? What was it to that broken
+mother whether the Silesian peasants acknowledged the Prussian
+King or the Austrian Empress? Despots both. And what countless
+serfs fell in the wars between the King and the Empress! I once
+asked von Jagow when this war would end. He answered, "An old
+history of the Seven Years' War concludes, 'The King and the
+Empress were tired of war, so they made peace.' That is how this
+war will end." Will it? Will it end in a draw, to be resumed when
+some king feels the war fever on him? No, this war must end
+despots, and with them all wars!
+
+It is all such a matter of personal whim. For instance before
+Bulgaria entered the war on the side of Germany, even the best
+informed Germans predicted that King Ferdinand would never join
+Germany because of an incident which occurred in the Royal Palace
+of Berlin. This is how it happened:
+
+It is the custom for one monarch to make his pals in the King
+business officers of his army or navy. Thus the German Emperor
+was General Field Marshal and Proprietor of the 34th "William the
+first, German Emperor and King of Prussia" Infantry, and of the
+7th "William the Second, German Emperor and King of Prussia"
+Hussars, in the Austro-Hungarian Army; Chief of the "King
+Frederick William III St. Petersburg Life Guards," the 85th
+"Viburg" Infantry and the 13th "Narva" Hussars, and the "Grodno"
+Hussars of the Guard, in the Russian Army; Field Marshal in British Army;
+Hon. Admiral of the British Fleet and Colonel-in-Chief 1st Dragoons;
+General in the Swedish Army and Flag Admiral of the Fleet; Hon.
+Admiral of the Norwegian and Danish Fleets; Admiral of the
+Russian Fleet; Hon. Captain-General in the Spanish Army and Hon.
+Colonel of the 11th "Naumancia" Spanish Dragoons; and Hon.
+Admiral of the Greek Fleet.
+
+The King of Bulgaria was Chief of the 4th Thuringia Infantry
+Regiment No. 72, in the Prussian Army. As per custom, on a visit
+to Berlin he donned his uniform of the Thuringian Infantry. He
+had put on a little weight, and military unmentionables, be it
+known, are notoriously tight. So as he leaned far out of the
+Palace window to admire the passing troops, he presented a mark
+so tempting that the Emperor, in jovial mood, was impelled to
+administer a resounding spank on the sacred seat of the Czar of
+all the Balkans. Instead of taking the slap in the same jovial
+spirit in which it was given the Czar Ferdinand, a little jealous
+of the self-assumed title of Czar, became furiously angry--so
+angry that even the old diplomats of the Metternich school
+believed for a time that he never would forgive the whack and
+even might refuse to join Germany. But Czar Ferdinand, believing
+in the military power of Germany, cast his already war-worn
+people in the war against the Allies, much to the regret of many
+Bulgarian statesmen who, having been educated at Robert College,
+near Constantinople, a college founded and maintained by
+Americans, and having imbibed somewhat of the American spirit
+there, were not over-pleased to think of themselves arrayed
+against the United States of America.
+
+But there is no monarch in all Europe who is more wily than Czar
+Ferdinand. At a great feast in Bulgaria at which Emperor William
+was present, Czar Ferdinand toasted the Emperor in Latin and
+alluded to him as "_Miles Gloriosus_"--which all present took to
+mean "glorious soldier"; but the exact Latin meaning of
+"gloriosus" is "glorious" in its first meaning and "boastful" in
+its second, a meaning well known in Berlin where, at the "Little
+Theatre," in a series of plays of all ages, the "_Miles
+Gloriosus_" of Plautus had just been presented--a boastful,
+conceited soldier, the "_Miles Gloriosus_," the chief character
+of the comedy.
+
+Nothing illustrates more vividly the belief of the royal families
+of the Central Empires in their God-given right to rule the plain
+people than those few words of Maximilian written before his
+ill-fated expedition to Mexico. Speaking of the Palace at
+Caserta, near Naples, he wrote, "The monumental stairway is
+worthy of Majesty. What can be finer than to imagine the
+sovereign placed at its head, resplendent in the midst of these
+marble pillars,--to fancy this monarch, like a God, graciously
+permitting the approach of human beings. The crowd surges upward.
+The King vouchsafes a gracious glance, but from a very lofty
+elevation. All powerful, imperial, he makes one step towards them
+with a smile of infinite condescension. Could Charles V, could
+Maria Theresa appear thus at the head of this ascending stair,
+who would not bow their heads before that majestic, God-given
+power?"
+
+What was the condition of the people under Maria Theresa, whom
+Maximilian spoke of as possessing a power that, according to him,
+was so God-given no one could fail to bow the head before her
+majestic presence? The peasants, under her rule, were practically
+slaves, as they could not leave the lord's lands nor even marry
+without his permission, nor could they bring their children up to
+any profession other than that of labourer. In other words, the
+children of the slave must remain slaves.
+
+Poor Maximilian! He was a brother of the late Emperor Francis
+Joseph and a member of that Kaiserbund and royal system which,
+while America was busy with domestic difficulties between the
+North and South, sought to wrest from Mexico her liberty. I
+wonder if the Mexicans have forgotten the incident and its
+implications.
+
+But one-man power always fails in the end. No man, king or
+president, whatever he may himself think, has a brain all
+powerful and all knowing. There is wisdom in counsel. Too much of
+some favourite dish may lead to indigestion and that to bad
+judgment at a critical time and disaster. Napoleon III, just
+before 1870, was suffering from a wasting disease and so allowed
+himself to be ruled by the beautiful, narrow, fascinating,
+foolish Spanish Empress whom he gave to the French in a moment of
+passion because, as she said to him, "The way to her room lay
+through the church door." Colonel Stoffel, the French Military
+Attach� to the Berlin Embassy, wrote confidentially report after
+report to the Emperor telling him of the immense military
+strength of Prussia and of her readiness for immediate war. But
+most of these reports were afterwards found unopened in the desk
+of the doting, sick and fallen Emperor.
+
+For, after all, however divine the King, Emperor or Kaiser may
+consider himself, he is but a vulnerable human being--and no
+accident of birth should give even a small number of people on
+this earth into the hands of a single mortal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHO DOES THE KAISER'S THINKING AND WHO DECIDED ON THE BREAK WITH
+AMERICA?
+
+
+Because the German Emperor possesses talents of no mean order,
+because of his fiery energy, because of the charm of his
+conversation and personality, his ambitions for world conquest
+are most dangerous to the peace of the world.
+
+Certainly of all the ruling houses of the world, the
+Hohenzollerns have shown themselves the most able, and of the six
+sons of the Kaiser there is not one who is unable or unworthy
+from the autocratic standpoint to carry on the traditions of the
+house. They are all young men who in any field of human endeavour
+are more than a match for men of their age, and by reason of
+these qualities, so rare in kings and princes, it has been easy
+to arouse a great feeling of devotion for the royal house of
+Prussia among all classes in Germany, with the possible exception
+of the Social Democrats. The other kings and princes of Germany
+have been overshadowed, mere puppets in the king business, by the
+surpassing talents of the Hohenzollerns, and so the task of those
+who, in Germany and out, hope for that evolution towards
+liberalism or even democracy which alone can make the nations of
+the world feel safe in making peace with Germany, is beset with
+numerous difficulties.
+
+Before the war the Emperor turned much of his enterprising talent
+into peaceful channels, into the development of commercial and
+industrial Germany. No one has a greater respect for wealth and
+commercial success than the Emperor. He would have made a
+wonderful success as a man of business. He ought to be the
+richest person in the Empire, but the militaristic system which
+he fostered gave that distinction to another. For the richest
+person in Germany before the war was Frau Krupp-Bohlen, daughter
+of the late manufacturer of cannon. She inherited control of the
+factories and the greater part of the fortune of her father and
+was rated at about $75,000,000. It was a contest between Prince
+Henckel-Donnersmarck and the Emperor for second place, each being
+reputed to possess about sixty to sixty-five million dollars.
+Most of the Emperor's wealth is in landed estates, and of these
+he has, I believe, about sixty scattered through the Empire. The
+Emperor is credited with being a large stockholder in both the
+Krupp works and the Hamburg-American Line. What a sensation it
+would make in this country were the President to become a large
+stockholder in Bethlehem Steel or the Winchester Arms Company!
+
+The earnings of the Krupp's factory since the War have been
+immense and doubtless the fortune of the Krupp heiress since then
+has more than doubled. The subscriptions to war loans and war
+charities, thrown by Frau Krupp-Bohlen and the Krupp directors
+as sops to public opinion, are mere nothings to the fat earnings
+made by that renowned factory in this war.
+
+And what a sensation, too, would be caused in America if the
+Bethlehem Steel Company or the United States Steel Corporation
+were to purchase newspapers or take over The Associated Press in
+order to control public opinion! Yet the German nation stands by,
+apathetic, propagandised to a standstill, stuffed and fed by news
+handed them by the Krupps and the alliance of six great
+industrial iron and steel companies of western Germany.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A question which interests every inhabitant of the world to-day
+is, where does the ultimate power reside in Germany?
+
+Where is the force which controls the country? The Reichstag, of
+course, has no real power; the twenty-five ruling princes of
+Germany, voting in the Bundesrat through their representatives,
+control the Reichstag, and the Chancellor is not responsible to
+either but only to the Emperor.
+
+Consider, for a moment, the personality of von Bethmann-Hollweg,
+Chancellor of the Empire for eight or nine years. He lacked both
+determination and decision. Lovable, good, kind, respected, the
+Chancellor, to a surprising degree, was minus that quality which
+we call "punch." He never led, but followed. He sought always to
+find out first which side of the question seemed likely to
+win,--where the majority would stand. Usually he poised himself
+on middle ground. He could not have been the ultimate power in
+the State.
+
+I have a feeling that the Kaiser himself always felt in some
+vague way that his luck lay with America, and I imagine that he
+himself was against anything that might lead to a break with this
+country. What, then, was the mysterious power which changed, for
+instance, the policy of the German Empire towards America and
+ordered unrestricted submarine war at the risk of bringing
+against the Empire a rich and powerful nation of over a hundred
+million population?
+
+The Foreign Office did not have this decision. Its members, made
+up of men who had travelled in other countries, who knew the
+latent power of America, did not advise this step--with the
+exception, however, of Zimmermann, who, carried away by his
+sudden elevation, and by the glamour of personal contact with the
+Emperor, the Princes and the military chiefs, yielded to the
+arguments of military expediency.
+
+The one force in Germany which ultimately decides every great
+question, except the fate of its own head, is the Great General
+Staff.
+
+On one side of the K�nigs-Platz, in Berlin, stands the great
+building of the Reichstag, floridly decorated, glittering with
+gold, surrounded by statues and filled, during the sessions of
+the Reichstag, with a crowd of representatives who do not
+represent and who, like monkeys in a cage, jibber and debate
+questions which they have no power to decide. Across the square
+and covering the entire block in a building that resembles in
+external appearance a jail, built of dark red brick without
+ornament or display, is the home of the Great General Staff. This
+institution has its own spies, its own secret service, its own
+newspaper censors. Here the picked officers of the German army,
+the inheritors of the power of von Moltke, work industriously.
+Apart from the people of Germany, they wield the supreme power of
+the State and when the Staff decides a matter of foreign policy
+or even an internal measure, that decision is final.
+
+The peculiar relations of the Emperor to the Great General Staff
+make it possible for him to dismiss in disgrace a head of the
+Staff who has failed. But at all times the Kaiser is more or less
+controlled in his action by the Staff as a whole and at a time
+when the chief of the Great General Staff is successful, the
+latter, even on questions of foreign policy, claims the right
+then to make a decision which the Emperor may find it difficult
+to disregard. This is because in an autocratic government, as in
+any other, personality counts for much. Von Tirpitz controlled
+all departments of the navy, although only at the head of one.
+The Ludendorff-Hindenburg combination, especially if backed by
+Mackensen, can bend the will of the Emperor.
+
+[Illustration: THE IRON CROSS. IN THE EXPECTATION OF A SHORT WAR
+THOUSANDS OF THESE CROSSES WERE DISTRIBUTED IN THE FIRST MONTHS
+OF THE WAR AND THE PRECEDENT THUS ESTABLISHED HAS LED TO THE
+GIVING OF PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THESE DECORATIONS]
+
+Yet while the head of the Great General Staff may fall, the
+system always remains. An unknown, mysterious power it is,
+unchanging, and relentless, a power that watches over the German
+army with unseen eyes. It seeks always additions to its own ranks
+from those young officers who have distinguished themselves by
+their talents in the profession of arms. What does it mean to
+them?
+
+It is January twenty-seventh, the birthday of the Kaiser in a
+German garrison town. The officers of the regiment are assembled
+in the mess-hall, the regimental band plays the national air of
+Prussia, "Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz" (Hail, thou, in the
+conqueror's wreath). (The music is familiar to us because we sing
+it to the words of "America." The British sing the air to the
+words of "God Save the King." This music was originally written
+for Louis XIV.) The health of the Emperor is proposed and drunk
+with "Hurrahs" and again "Hurrahs," and then comes a telegram
+from Berlin announcing the promotions and decorations granted to
+some of the officers of the regiment: the most envied of all is
+that younger officer, perhaps the student among them, who
+receives the laconic despatch telling him that he is detailed to
+the Great General Staff!
+
+Then commences for the young officer a life of almost monastic
+devotion. No amusements, no social obligations or entertainments
+must interfere in the slightest with his earnest work in that
+plain building of mystery which so calmly, and with such mock
+modesty, faces the garish home of the Reichstag on the K�nigs-Platz,
+in Berlin.
+
+Who decided on the break with America? It was not the Chancellor,
+notoriously opposed; it was not the Foreign Office, nor the
+Reichstag, nor the Princes of Germany who decided to brave the
+consequences of a rupture with the United States on the submarine
+question. It was not the Emperor; but a personality of great
+power of persuasion. It was Ludendorff, Quartermaster General,
+chief aid and brains to Hindenburg, Chief of the Great General
+Staff, who decided upon this step.
+
+Unquestionably a party in the navy, undoubtedly von Tirpitz
+himself, backed by the navy and by many naval officers and the
+Naval League, advocated the policy and promised all Germany peace
+within three months after it was adopted; unquestionably public
+opinion made by the Krupps and the League of Six (the great iron
+and steel companies), desiring annexation of the coal and iron
+lands of France, demanded this as a quick road to peace. But it
+was the deciding vote of the Great General Staff that finally
+embarked the German nation on this dangerous course.
+
+I do not think the Emperor himself, unless backed by the whole
+public opinion of Germany, would dare to withstand the Great
+General Staff which he himself creates. They are so much his
+devotees that they would overrule him in what they consider his
+interest.
+
+Whatever thinking the Emperor does nowadays is more or less on
+his own account. There is to-day no shining favourite who has his
+ear to the exclusion of others. The last known favourite was
+Prince Max Egon von F�rstenberg, a man now about fifty-four years
+old, tall, handsome, possessed at one time of great wealth and a
+commanding position in Austria as well as Germany, with the
+privilege of citizenship in both countries. The Prince in his
+capacity as Grand Marshal accompanied the Emperor, walking in
+his train as the latter entered the White Hall at a great ball
+early in the winter of 1914. The Emperor was stopping at the
+Prince's palace in southern Germany at Donnaueschingen when the
+affair at Zabern and the cutting down of the lame shoemaker there
+shook the political and military foundations of the German
+Empire. Prince Max together with Prince Hohenlohe, Duke of Ugest,
+embarked, however, on a career of vast speculation in an
+association known as the Princes' Trust. They built, for
+instance, the great Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, and a hotel of the
+same name in Hamburg, and an enormous combined beer restaurant,
+theatre and moving picture hall on the Nollendorff Platz in
+Berlin. They organised banks, and the name of the princely house
+of F�rstenberg appeared as an advertisement for light beer. They
+even, through their interest in a department store on the east
+end of the Leipziger Strasse, sold pins and stockings and ribbons
+to the working classes of Berlin. As this top-heavy structure of
+foolish business enterprise tumbled, the favour of Prince Max at
+the Imperial Court fell with it. For the Emperor never brooks
+failure.
+
+During the present war Von Gontard, related by marriage, I
+believe, to brewer Busch in St. Louis; von Treutler, who
+represented the Foreign Office; von Falkenhayn, for a while head
+of the Great General Staff and Minister of War, and the Prince of
+Pless, and von Plessen with several minor adjutants, have
+constituted the principal figures in the surroundings of the
+Emperor. Falkenhayn fell because of his failure in the attack of
+Verdun, ordered by him or for which he was the responsible
+commander. Von Treutler probably told the truth; he was against
+the breaking of the submarine pledges to America; and Prince
+Pless, who remains still in favour, never took a decided stand on
+any of these questions. Prince Pless, as Prince Max was, is rich.
+His fortune before the war, represented mostly by great landed
+estates in Silesia, mines, etc., amounted approximately to thirty
+million dollars. His wife is an Englishwoman, once celebrated as
+one of the great beauties of London, daughter of Colonel and Mrs.
+Cornwallis-West, and sister of the Duchess of Westminster and
+Cornwallis-West, formerly married to Lady Randolph Churchill, and
+now the husband of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the well-known actress.
+And therefore the position of Princess Pless has not been
+enviable during this war.
+
+Emperor William does not, like many kings and dictators, confine
+himself in his search for general information regarding men and
+conditions to the reports of a few persons. He always has been
+accessible, seeking even to meet strangers, not merely his own
+people but foreigners, thus escaping the penalty of those rulers
+who shut themselves up and who have all their information and
+thoughts coloured for them by the preferences and desires of
+prejudiced counsellors.
+
+The chiefs of the army are always in close touch with the Kaiser,
+but he is consulted on army commands and promotions much less
+than on civil and even naval promotions.
+
+Always with him is the head of the Civil Cabinet, who advises
+with the Emperor on all appointments and promotions on the civil
+side of the Government, helping even to make and unmake
+Ambassadors and Chancellors. Admiral von Mueller, head of the
+Marine Cabinet, is constantly in the Emperor's company. He is a
+shrewd, capable, reasonable man; for a long time Admiral von
+Mueller was against taking the chance of war with America and
+perhaps, even to the end, persisted in this course. After the
+fall of von Tirpitz, von Mueller acquired more real power. But in
+a sense it is incorrect to speak of the forced retirement of von
+Tirpitz as a "fall," because from his retirement he was able to
+carry on such a campaign in favour of "ruthless" submarine war
+that the mass of the people, Reichstag deputies, the General Staff,
+and all came over to his point of view and von Bethmann-Hollweg,
+who had brought about his dismissal, was forced officially to adopt
+the policy first sponsored by this skilful old sea-dog and politician.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHO SANK THE "LUSITANIA"?
+
+
+Who is responsible for the sinking of the _Lusitania_, for the
+deliberate murder which has always remained deep in the
+consciousness of every American, and which at the outset turned
+this great nation against Germany?
+
+In the first place there was no mistake--no question of orders
+exceeded or disobeyed. Count von Bernstorff frankly, boldly,
+defiantly, and impudently advertised to the world, with the
+authority of the German Government, that the attempt to sink the
+_Lusitania_ would be made. The Foreign Office, no doubt,
+acquainted him with the new policy. Von Tirpitz, then actual head
+of the Navy Department and virtual head of the whole navy, openly
+showed his approval of the act, and threw all his influence in
+favor of a continuation of ruthless tactics. But a question which
+involved a breach of international law, a possible break with a
+friendly power, could not be decided by even the Foreign Office
+and Navy together.
+
+The Great General Staff claims a hand in the decision of all
+questions of foreign policy which even remotely affect the
+conduct of the war. Similarly it was the duty of the Foreign
+Office to point out the possible consequences under the rules of
+international law; but when the question of submarine warfare was
+to be determined, the consultation was usually at the Great
+General Headquarters. At these meetings von Tirpitz or the navy
+presented their views and the Great General Staff sat with the
+Emperor in council, although it was reported in Charleville at
+the time of the settlement of May, 1916, that Falkenhayn,
+speaking in favour of submarine war, had been rebuked by the
+Emperor, and told to stick to military affairs.
+
+All the evidence points to the Emperor himself as the responsible
+head who at this time ordered or permitted this form of murder.
+The orders were given at a time when the Emperor dominated the
+General Staff, not in one of those periods, as outlined in a
+previous chapter when the General Staff, as at present, dominated
+the Emperor. When I saw the Kaiser in October, 1915, he said that
+he would not have sunk the _Lusitania_, that no gentleman would
+have killed so many women and children. Yet he never disapproved
+the order. Other boats were sunk thereafter in the same manner
+and only by chance was the loss of life smaller when the _Arabic_
+was torpedoed. It is argued that, had the Emperor considered
+beforehand how many non-combatants would be killed, he would not
+have given the order to sink that particular boat. But what a
+lame excuse! A man is responsible for the natural and logical
+results of his own acts. It may be too that Charles IX, when he
+ordered, perhaps reluctantly, the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
+did not know that so many would be killed, but there can be no
+Pilate-washing-of-the-hands,--Emperor William was responsible. He
+must bear the blame before the world.
+
+Blood-shed in honorable war is soon forgotten; but the cowardly
+stroke by which the Kaiser sought to terrorise America, by which
+he sent to a struggling death of agony in the sea, the peaceful
+men and women and children passengers of the _Lusitania_, may
+ever remain a cold boundary line between Germany and America
+unless the German people utter a condemnation of the tragedy that
+rings true and repentant.
+
+We want to live at peace with the world when this war is over, to
+be able to grasp once more the hands of those now our enemies,
+but how can any American clasp in friendship the hand of Germans
+who approve this and the many other outrages that have turned the
+conscience of the world against Germany?
+
+To Americans in Berlin, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ came like
+a lightning stroke. No Bernstorff warnings had prepared us. I
+believed I would be recalled immediately. In making preparations
+to leave, I sent a secretary to see the head of one of the
+largest banks in Germany, a personal friend, to ask him, in case
+we should leave, to take for safe-keeping into his bank our
+silver, pictures, etc. He said to my secretary, "Tell Judge
+Gerard that I will take care of his valuables for him, but tell
+him also, that if the _Mauretania_ comes out to-morrow we shall
+sink her, too."
+
+That was the attitude of a majority of the business men of
+Germany. German casualties at that time had been great so that
+the mere loss of human life did not appal as would have been the
+case in a country unused to the daily posting of long lists of
+dead and wounded. Consequently the one feeling of Germany was of
+rejoicing, believing indeed that victory was near, that the
+"damned Yankees" would be so scared that they would not dare
+travel on British ships, that the submarine war would be a great
+success, that France and England deprived of food, steel and
+supplies from America soon would be compelled to sue for peace,
+especially since the strategically clever, if unlawful, invasion
+of France by way of Belgium had driven the French from the best
+coal and iron districts of their country.
+
+I do recall that one Imperial Minister, a reasonable individual
+whose name I think it best not to mention, expressed in private
+his sorrow, not only for the deed itself, but for the mistaken
+policy which he saw, even then, would completely turn in the end
+the sympathies of America to the Entente Allies. And there were
+others,--among the intellectuals, and, especially, among the
+merchants of Hamburg and Frankfort who had travelled in the outer
+world both on pleasure and business, who realised what a profound
+effect the drowning of innocent men, women and children would
+have on our peace-loving people.
+
+Many of these men said to me, "The sinking of the _Lusitania_ is
+the greatest German defeat of all the war. Its consequences will
+be far-reaching; its impression, deep and lasting."
+
+The Teutonic Knights, from whom the ruling class of Prussia is
+descended, kept the Slavic population in subjection by a reign of
+physical terror. This class believes that to rule one must
+terrorise. The Kaiser himself referring to the widespread
+indignation caused by German outrages of the present war, has
+said: "The German sword will command respect."
+
+Terrorism--"Schrecklichkeit"--has always formed a part, not only
+of German military inclination, but of German military policy. I
+often said to Germans of the Government, "Are you yourselves
+subject to being terrorised? If another nation murdered or
+outraged your women, your children, would it cause you to cringe
+in submission or would you fight to the last? If you would fight
+yourselves, what is there in the history of America which makes
+you think that Americans will submit to mere frightfulness; in
+what particular do you think Americans are so different from
+Germans?" But they shrugged their shoulders.
+
+I have heard that in parts of Germany school children were given
+a holiday to celebrate the sinking of the _Lusitania_. I was busy
+with preparations, too anxious about the future to devote much
+time to the study of the psychology of the Germans in other parts
+of Germany at this moment, but with the exception of the one
+Cabinet Minister aforementioned, and expressions of regret from
+certain merchants and intellectuals, it cannot be denied that a
+great wave of exultation swept over Germany. It was felt that
+this was a master stroke, that victory was appreciably nearer and
+that no power on earth could withstand the brute force of the
+Empire.
+
+Mingled with this was a deep hate of all things American
+inculcated by the Berlin Government. And we must understand,
+therefore, that no trick and no evasion, no brutality will be
+untried by Germany in this war. It was against the rules of war
+to use poison gas, but first the newspapers of Germany were
+carefully filled with official statements saying the British and
+French had used this unfair means. Coincidentally with these
+reports the German army was trying by this dastardly innovation
+to break the British lines. It was not a new procedure. Months
+before the _Lusitania_ crime, the newspapers and people had been
+poisoned with official statements inflaming the people against
+America, particularly for our commerce with the Entente in war
+supplies.
+
+It was the right, guaranteed by a treaty to which Germany was a
+signatory, of our private individuals to sell munitions and
+supplies, but as Prince von Buelow once remarked on December
+13th, 1900, in the Reichstag, "I feel no embarrassment in saying
+here, publicly, that for Germany, right can never be a determining
+consideration."
+
+Indeed the tame professors were let loose and many of them rushed
+into government-paid print to prove that, according to law, the
+murders of the _Lusitania_ were justified. A German chemist
+friend of mine told me that the chemists of Germany were called
+on, after poison gas had been met by British and French, to
+devise some new and deadly chemical. Flame throwers soon appeared
+together with more insidious gases. And it is only because of the
+vigilance of other nations that German spies have not succeeded
+in sowing the microbes of pestilence in countries arrayed against
+lawless Germany.
+
+Remember there is nothing that Kaiserism is not capable of trying
+in the hope of victory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE KAISER AND "L�SE-MAJEST�"
+
+
+The talents and ability and agreeable personality of the German
+Emperor must not blind us to the fact that he is the centre of
+the system which has brought the world to a despair and misery
+such as it never has known since the dawn of history. We must
+remember that all his utterances disclose the soul of the
+conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a
+conspicuous place in the gallery of human events; envious, too,
+of the great names of the past, his ears so tuned for admiration
+and applause that they fail to hear the great, long drawn wail of
+agony that echoes around the world. His eyes are so blinded with
+the sheen of his own glory that they do not see the mutilated
+corpses, the crime, the pestilence, the hunger, the incalculable
+sorrow that sweeps the earth from the jungles of Africa to the
+frozen plains of the North, from Siberia to Saskatchewan, from
+Texas to Trieste, from Alaska to Afghanistan--everywhere he has
+brought the dark angel of mourning to millions upon millions of
+desolate homes.
+
+Do you remember that picture of the Conquerors, C�sar and
+Alexander, Attila and Napoleon, Charlemagne and Cambyses, astride
+their horses or in chariots in the centre of the picture, dark,
+gloomy, menacing? On each side of them, lining a vast plain that
+fades in the distance, lie the dead--stiff, cold, grey,
+reproachful;--yet all the victims of those conquerors, as well as
+all their battalions do not equal the countless number that have
+already drenched a forgiving earth with their dying blood in this
+war:--victims all of the vain-glorious ambition of a single
+mortal--the German Kaiser.
+
+But the despot who sends his subjects to die, as Frederick the
+Great said, "in order to be talked about" is not indigenous to
+any one particular country. Like conditions produce like results.
+The career of Louis XIV, the "Sun King," for instance, whose wars
+and extravagances sowed the seeds of the French Revolution, is
+epitomised in two phrases uttered by him: "I am the State" and "I
+almost had to wait."
+
+After the French Revolution, another despot, the first Napoleon,
+not only sought the conquest of the world, but made his ex-waiter
+and ex-groom marshals and his washerwomen duchesses ape the
+manners and customs of the old r�gime. Despotism has been
+characteristic of many generations but the world had thought
+itself rid of the worst offenders.
+
+Royalty still lives to torture and retard civilisation. Its
+methods of perpetuation are unchanged from the middle ages. What
+is l�se-majest� but a survival of feudalism, a kind of slavery to
+inviolable tradition--the immunity of the monarch and his family
+from that criticism and freedom of discussion which is the
+essence of democracy?
+
+[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY STAFF, BERLIN: MR.
+GERARD IN THE CENTER]
+
+To commit l�se-majest�, to speak slightingly of royalty in
+Germany, is a very serious offence.
+
+I have taken the following examples of decisions in l�se-majest�
+cases not from the records of the lower courts, the decisions of
+which may be reversed, but from the records of the Imperial
+Supreme Court at Leipzig, the highest court in the land.
+
+For instance: The defendant, a speaker at a meeting consisting
+chiefly of sympathisers with the socialist cause, made the
+following statement in reference to a speech of the Kaiser:
+
+"Under the protection of the highest power of the State the
+gauntlet has been flung before the (socialist) Party, the
+gauntlet which means a combat for life and death. Well, then, so
+far as the insult concerns our Party, we are so far above it,
+that the mudslinging--no matter from what direction it may
+come--cannot touch us."
+
+The defence pointed out that the defendant "had considered each
+word carefully before he had made the speech, and that in doing
+so, wanted to avoid any possibility of l�se-majest�."
+
+The Supreme Court held that although the defendant carefully
+selected his words and tried to evade prosecution, he must be
+adjudged guilty, because his audience could not have misunderstood
+the insinuation. The sentence was affirmed.
+
+Dangerous as it is to say anything that can be construed as
+derogatory of the authority, of the Kaiser it is equally
+dangerous to attack the dead members of the Royal House.
+
+The editor of the _Volkswacht_ had published in his paper an
+article entitled "The German Characteristics of the Hohenzollerns"
+which the Lower Court interpreted to be a reply to a statement of
+the Kaiser, which had referred to a group of people considered
+unworthy by him to be called "Germans." Without doubt the editor
+was alluding to the Kaiser's speech, made at Koenigsberg to the
+newly enlisted army recruits, in which he called the socialists
+"vaterlandslose Gesellen," i.e., scoundrels without any country.
+The writer, however, discussed "the conduct of the Elector
+Joachim of Brandenburg and of his brother Albrecht, Elector of
+Mainz, before and during the election of Emperor Charles V."
+
+The defence claimed that the defendant could not be held guilty
+of l�se-majest� against the Kaiser since the defendant "criticised
+the Kaiser's ancestors and not the Kaiser himself." But the Court
+held that it was the intent of the defendant to discredit the
+"House of the Hohenzollerns, and that the Kaiser by implication,
+being the living head of the Hohenzollern family, was thereby
+insulted." The Court further states that the defendant's article
+could not be regarded as a scientific or historical contribution
+since the _Volkswacht's_ subscribers, consisting chiefly of
+workingmen, had neither any understanding of nor interest in
+dynastic intrigues of the sixteenth century.
+
+Even those Americans who have expressed themselves freely about
+the Kaiser will, after the war is over, be compelled to take
+their "cures" in some country other than Germany, for in one
+case it was held that an American citizen was rightfully
+convicted in Baden of l�se-majest� because of statements made by
+him in Switzerland.
+
+The Court held that the judgment of the Lower Court must be
+sustained, since the German Imperial Laws have precedence over
+any treaties engaged in by the Grand Duchy of Baden and the
+United States and "that the fact that the defendant had become a
+citizen of the United States does not exempt him from prosecution
+in the German Imperial Courts."
+
+In another case a newspaper editor criticised a speech delivered
+by the Kaiser before the Reichstag on December 6th, 1898. The
+defendant did not refer to the person of the emperor himself, but
+simply attacked and ridiculed the propositions and proposals made
+by His Imperial Majesty. The defence pointed out that the
+Kaiser's speech was not an act of the Kaiser's own personal will,
+but only an act of government for which the Imperial Chancellor
+should be responsible, and that the defendant was not conscious
+of the fact that the criticism contained in his article could be
+an insult to the person of the Kaiser.
+
+It was held, however, by the Court that a criticism of the
+Kaiser's speech at the opening of the Reichstag is _always_ to be
+regarded as a criticism of the Kaiser's person, and that the plea
+that the Imperial Chancellor should be responsible for acts of
+government of this sort is not sustained.
+
+In other words it is, in Germany, a crime to criticise or
+ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred lips of the
+Kaiser.
+
+If the Kaiser announces that two and two make five, jail awaits
+the subject who dares to ridicule that novel arithmetical
+proposition.
+
+It is because of these convictions for l�se-majest� that the
+Berliners, when discussing the Emperor at their favourite table
+or "Stammtisch" in the beer halls and caf�s, always refer to him
+as "Lehmann."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WHEN THE KAISER THOUGHT WE WERE BLUFFING
+
+
+_An Unpublished Diary_
+
+Kaiserdom is an institution with which the American people are
+really unacquainted--a complex institution the parallel of which
+does not exist elsewhere. How it sought to play double with the
+United States is in a general way familiar to Americans, but I
+think the record of what happened in the eighteen months
+preceding our break with Germany will illustrate exactly the
+currents and cross-currents of official opinion which led the
+United States to be scrupulously cautious in its course before
+entering the war. As I talked with the Emperor or the Chancellor
+or the Foreign Minister, I jotted down from time to time notes of
+their conversation as well as brief summaries of the information
+available to me from other sources. Naturally I cabled to the
+Department of State the most significant news, but much of this
+was not published because our Government was proceeding
+cautiously and did not wish to be embarrassed by publicity of its
+negotiations. There is every reason now, however, why the facts
+should be known. I am reproducing here the diary I kept from
+June, 1915, to the end of January, 1917, when unrestricted
+submarine warfare was resumed and our break with Germany came. I
+did not have the idea then of ever publishing my memoranda, so my
+comments were written without restraint. They show, I am sure,
+what the general trend of sentiment was in Germany for and
+against submarine warfare and disclose, too, that while the
+Emperor was often in the background and seemingly not the most
+powerful factor in the situation, it was his system that
+dominated Germany, his spirit that bred the lust for military
+gain at whatever cost--even the respect of the whole civilised
+world. Here are the notes as I penned them at the time:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_June, 1915._ Lincoln never passed through a crisis greater than
+that with which the President is contending. He is fighting,
+first, for humanity and some decency in war, and, second,
+determining whether a European Emperor shall or shall not dictate
+the political attitude of certain of our citizens.
+
+It is regrettable to be compelled to think that the German nation
+knows no treaty or law except the limit of its own desires.
+
+We are still awaiting the second _Lusitania_ note and I fear that
+Germany will never consent to abandon its present hideous method
+of submarine war. It is extraordinary to hear Germans of all
+classes extoll mere brute force as the only rule of international
+life. It is a warning to us to create and increase our fleet and
+coast defences.
+
+The Germans not only do not fear war with us, but state frankly
+they do not believe we dare to declare it, call us cowardly
+bluffers and say our notes are worse than waste paper. Breaking
+diplomatic relations means nothing.
+
+Von Wiegand, the newspaper correspondent, is just back from
+Przemysl and says the Russians were defeated by woful lack of
+artillery and ammunition. Their power for offence is broken for
+many months. From the West I hear the French are rather
+discouraged.
+
+Germany has ample food and gets all copper, etc., necessary for
+war purposes through Sweden in exchange for potash and other
+commodities.
+
+An officer of the war ministry, who comes to see me about
+prisoners, etc., told me last night that because the French have
+kept several hundred Germans as prisoners in Dahomey and other
+places in Africa, fifteen thousand French prisoners will be sent
+to work in the unhealthy swamps of Holstein. I have cabled the
+State Department often about this Dahomey business, transmitting
+the request of Germany that these prisoners be sent to Europe.
+Germans cannot be beaten on reprisals.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two or three German-Americans have attacked the President,
+Secretary Bryan and our Government, some publicly. I have ordered
+their passports taken away and hope to be sustained. To permit
+them to continue poisoning the atmosphere would be taken as a
+sign of weakness here. No one who abuses his own country, its
+government or its Chief is entitled to protection from that
+country.
+
+We have the visiting of British prisoners in good shape now, that
+prohibition put on our visiting and inspecting the camps was
+abolished in March by the "treaty" I arranged between England and
+Germany. It was not until March twenty-ninth that we finally got
+passes to visit camps under the "treaty." The prisoners say they
+are badly treated when they are first captured, but we know only
+of their treatment in the camps.
+
+I do not believe all the atrocity stories; but one of our
+servants in this house came back from the East front recently and
+said the orders were to kill all Cossacks. Our washerwoman
+reports that her son was ordered to shoot a woman in Belgium and
+I myself have heard an officer calmly describe the shooting of a
+seven-year-old Belgian girl child, the excuse being that she had
+tried to fire at an officer.
+
+If the _Lusitania_ business settles down, I hope the suggestion
+made to me by the authorities here and cabled to the State
+Department, will be carried into effect. This was that each
+American and Spanish Ambassador, having charge of prisoners in
+belligerent countries, should meet in Switzerland and discuss the
+whole prison situation. Each Ambassador would be accompanied by
+representatives of whatever authorities deal with prisoners (here
+the War Ministry) in the country to which he is accredited. To
+prevent unseemly discussions the actual talking would be done by
+the Ambassadors (coached by those representatives). In addition
+to doing away with many misunderstandings and helping the
+prisoners, there are great possibilities in such a meeting. We
+could all give each other useful "tips" on the caring for
+prisoners, inspections, camps, package delivery, mail, etc.
+
+There is plenty of food in Germany now and enough raw materials
+to carry on the war. Raw materials for peaceful industries are
+needed.
+
+A suggestion--why not start a great government chemical school or
+give protection for a certain number of years to dyestuffs,
+medicine, chemical, and cyanide material? All these industries
+are run here by the trustiest trusts that ever trusted, and by
+their methods keep American manufacturers from starting the
+business. A Congressman represents one of the best firms, hence
+his statements that it is impossible to start such manufactures
+in America. Our annual tribute to these trusts is enormous. One
+dyestuff company here employs over five hundred chemists. Only
+big or protected business can compete. This war has shown that we
+should not be dependent on other countries for so many manufactures.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gifts from America within the last week have been refused in
+Saxony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I fear that Germany will not give up its present method of
+submarine war. Each month new and more powerful submarines are
+added.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps it is worth a war to have it decided that the United
+States of America is not to be run from Berlin.
+
+Germans in authority feel that our "New Freedom" is against their
+ideas and ideals. They hate President Wilson because he embodies
+peace and learning rather than war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In regard to prisoners, Mr. Harte reports prisoners in Russia and
+Siberia better treated than was reported.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I hear for the first time of growing dissatisfaction among the
+plain people, especially at the great rise in food prices.
+Germany is getting everything she wants, however, through Sweden,
+including copper, lard, etc. Von Tirpitz and his Press Bureau
+were too much for the Chancellor; the latter is not a good
+fighter. Zimmermann, if left to himself, would, of course, have
+stopped this submarine murder.
+
+I hope the President never gives in on the embargo on arms; if he
+ever gives in on that, we might as well hoist the German Eagle on
+the Capitol.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_July, 1915._ I think that the firm tone of the President's note
+(of June 9, 1915) will make the Germans climb down. There seems a
+general disposition to be pleased with the note and an expectation
+that matters can be arranged. The great danger is that the
+Germans may again get the idea that we do not dare to declare
+war. In such case they will again become difficult to handle.
+
+Zimmermann and von Jagow are both quite pleased with the tone of
+the note.
+
+They both talk now of keeping Belgium, the excuse being that the
+Belgians hate the Germans so that if Belgium again became
+independent it would be only an English outpost. Meyer Gerhard,
+Bernstorff's special envoy, has arrived and has broken into print
+over the sentiment in America. I am afraid he makes it too
+peaceful, and, therefore, the Germans will be encouraged to
+despise America.
+
+While the authorities here think the idea of freedom of the seas
+good, they think the idea of freedom of land too vague. They want
+to know exactly what it means and say the seas should be free
+because they belong to no one, but that land is the private
+property of various nations. They compare the situation to a city
+street, where every one is interested in keeping the streets free
+but would resent a proposal that private houses also should be
+made common meeting ground if not common property. Unfortunately
+for Germany and the world, the German armies are winning and this
+will be considered a complete vindication of the military and
+caste system and everything which now exists. As Cleveland said,
+we are confronted by a condition, not a theory. _Germany, unless
+beaten, will never directly or indirectly agree to any freedom of
+land or disarmament proposal._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor probably will see me soon. He has been rabid on the
+export of arms from the United States to the Allies, but like all
+Germans, when they see we cannot be scared into a change of
+policy, he is making a nice recovery.
+
+Was told by a friend at the Foreign Office that the German note
+would contain a proposition that regular passenger ships should
+not be torpedoed without notice, but must carry no cargo other
+than passengers' baggage. Have heard Marine Department rather
+opposes this, but may favor proposition as to ships inspected and
+certified to carry no arms or ammunition. No note until after
+July fourth, they say at Foreign Office, on tip from Washington.
+(Note--German note was delivered to me July 8, 1915.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Chancellor and von Jagow have been in Vienna, probably over
+Balkan question. The situation there hinges on Bulgaria. Germany
+wants a direct strip of territory for itself or Austria to
+Constantinople. Thirteen million pounds in gold sent recently by
+Germany to Turkey to keep the boys in line. Principal Socialist
+paper, the _Vorwaerts_, has been suppressed because it spoke of
+peace; reason given is that this kind of talk would encourage
+enemies of Germany.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans are becoming more strict, even women now entering
+Germany must strip to the skin and take down their back hair. The
+wife of Hearst's correspondent here had to submit to this the
+other day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first, newspaper correspondents had to promise they would not
+go to enemy territory, next that they would not go to neutral
+territory (after one correspondent went to Denmark and sent out
+dispatches about the movement against annexing Belgium). Now the
+correspondents must promise not to go home. This is to keep
+secret the internal conditions. The women stormed a butter shop
+here the other day and our Consul reports, in Chemnitz, quite a
+serious food riot. The military were called out and the fire
+department turned hose on the crowd.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Austria, I hear men up to fifty-five are being called to the
+colours and even the infirm taken for the army. There are said to
+be seven German and five Austrian army corps invading Servia. The
+losses of the invaders are reported to be heavy. To date, the
+German dead in this war number about seven hundred thousand.
+People who offered private hospitals at the beginning of the war
+and who were told these were not needed, have been requested to
+open them. I was told the remaining civil population of Vouziers,
+France (in German hands), had been removed to make room for
+German wounded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The note of July 21, 1915, in which the President said he would
+regard the sinking of ships without warning as "deliberately
+unfriendly," is received with hostility by press and Government.
+Of course, the party of frightfulness has conquered those of
+milder views, owing largely to the aggressive newspaper campaign
+conducted by von Tirpitz, Reventlow and Company. The Germans
+generally are, at present, in rather a waiting attitude, perhaps
+anxious to see what our attitude toward England will be--but this
+will not affect their submarine policy. The Foreign Office now
+claims, I hear, that I am hostile to Germany, but that claim was
+to be expected. Of course, I had no more to do with the American
+note than they did, but it is impossible to convince them of
+that, so I shall not try.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Germany has the Balkan situation well in hand. Roumania can do
+nothing in the face of recent Russian defeats and has just
+consented to allow grain to be exported to Austria and Germany,
+but has, I think, not yet consented to allow the passage of
+ammunition to Turkey. The pressure, however, is great. If not
+successful, perhaps German troops will invade Servia so as to get
+a passage through to Turkey.
+
+A minister from one of the Balkan States told me the situation of
+Roumania, Greece and Bulgaria was about the same, each state can
+last in war only about three months, so all are trying to gauge
+three months before the end and then come in on the winning side.
+
+The Bulgarian Minister of the Public Debt got in here by mistake
+the other day, insisting he had an appointment; he _had_ an
+appointment with the Treasurer, Helfferich, whose office is
+nearby. This shows, perhaps, that Bulgaria is getting money here.
+
+Also the Germans are sending back to Russia, Russians of
+revolutionary tendencies, who were prisoners here, with money
+and passports in order that they may stir up trouble at home.
+
+The Germans are making a great effort to take Warsaw, even old
+Landsturm men are in the fighting line; I think they will get it,
+and then they hope to turn two million men and strike a great
+blow in France--thus they expect to end the war by October.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I notice now a slight reaction from annexation toward giving up
+all or part of Belgium; but I must say I hear very little of
+popular dissatisfaction with the war. Everything seems to be
+going smoothly; but they are scraping the bottom of the box on
+getting men for the army.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not pleasant to be hated by so many millions. The Germans
+naturally make me the object of their concentrated hate. I
+received an anonymous letter in which the kindly writer rejoices
+that so many Americans were drowned in the Chicago disaster. This
+shows the state of mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor is at the front, "Somewhere in Galicia." They keep
+him very much in the background, I think, with the idea of
+disabusing the popular mind of the idea that this is "his war."
+After all, accidents may happen, and even after a victorious war
+there may be a day of reckoning. The Chancellor went to the front
+yesterday, probably to see the Emperor about the American
+question.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_August, 1915._ I had a conversation last week of one hour and a
+half with the Chancellor. He sent for me because I had written
+him to take no more trouble about my seeing the Emperor. He
+explained, of course, first that he did not know I wanted to see
+the Emperor, and second that it was impossible to see the
+Emperor. They keep the Emperor well surrounded. _Now_ I do not
+want to see him. He is hot against Americans and the matters I
+wanted to talk of are all settled--one way. I cabled an
+interesting report on the Emperor's conversation re America.
+
+The Chancellor is still wrong in his head; says it was necessary
+to invade Belgium, break all international laws, etc. I think,
+however, that he was personally against the fierce Dernburg
+propaganda in America. I judge that von Tirpitz, through his
+press bureau, has egged on the people so that this submarine war
+will continue. _An official confessed to me that they had tried
+to get England to interfere, together with them, in Mexico, and
+Germans "Gott strafe" the Monroe Doctrine in their daily prayers
+of hate._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Warsaw, as I predicted officially, long ago, will soon fall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No great news--we are simply waiting for the inevitable submarine
+"accident."
+
+Unless there is a change of sentiment in the Government I think
+the submarine commanders will be careful.
+
+The Chancellor talked rather freely but again said it was
+impossible to leave Belgium to become an outpost of the English,
+but possibly with Germans in possession of the forts, the
+railways and with commercial rights in Antwerp it might be
+arranged.
+
+There is a faction here led by deputy Bassermann, Stresemann,
+Fahrmann, etc., who are attacking the Chancellor. They represent
+great industrials who want to annex Belgium, Northern France,
+Poland and anything else that can be had, for their own ultimate
+advantage. A man named Hirsch is hired by the Krupp firm to
+"accelerate" this work. Krupps also pay the expenses of the
+"Oversea Service" which is feeding news to America.
+
+A paper against annexation of Belgium has been signed, I am told,
+by Dernburg, Prince Hatzfeld and others, and will be presented to
+the Chancellor to-day. I believe many are to sign it; but of
+those who have signed are Hatzfeld, who is one of the three big
+Dukes of Prussia; Prince Henckel-Donnersmarck, who is the second
+richest subject in Germany--(85 years old, he was in 1870 first
+Governor of Lorraine)--von Harrach, who is a man of great
+ability, highly respected, as is also Professor Delbr�ck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Reichstag meets in a few days. The Socialists are holding
+daily caucuses, but have not yet decided on any party action.
+Undoubtedly they will vote for the new ten milliard loan, with
+Liebknecht and a few others dissenting. Probably a split will
+also develop in the National Liberal Party; Bassermann and others
+have been attacking the Chancellor, but I think other members
+will dissent. It is quite probable that there will be a
+discussion about the _object_ of the war, and permission will be
+asked for public discussion, the Socialists perhaps claiming that
+they have consented to a defensive war only, and that now that
+the war is on enemy territory peace should be at least discussed.
+There may also be talk about the annexation of Belgium and food
+prices. The Socialists are greatly incensed at those who are
+holding food for high prices.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Personally, I think that Germany now wants peace but does not
+want to say so openly.
+
+A relative of a Field Marshal told me to-day that Germany's
+killed to date were 600,000 and 200,000 crippled for life.
+
+I must say that the plain people still seem perfectly tame and
+ready to continue the war. However, there may also be a protest
+in the Reichstag about the treatment by non-commissioned officers
+of Landsturm men who have never served but who now, in the
+process of scraping the box, are called to the colors.
+
+The Germans hope by a great movement to capture a great part of
+the Russian army; probably they will fail. They also entertain
+hopes that in such case Sweden will enter Finland and two Balkan
+States declare for them. Balkan Ministers here tell me the defeat
+of Russia makes it impossible for Roumania to enter, but they
+fear an invasion by the Germans. All diplomatic work is now
+centred in the Balkans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Successes in Russia have made the people here very cocky. Hence,
+probably, the torpedoing of the _Arabic_. Also great hope of
+Bulgaria coming in with Germany; there is no more dissatisfaction
+heard over the war. I have as yet received nothing from
+Washington regarding the _Arabic_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have just spent four half days at Ruhleben, where civilian
+Britishers are interned, so as to give every prisoner a chance to
+speak to me personally.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is much talk of creating an independent Poland. The
+Reichstag session has developed no opposition.
+
+A fac-simile of that infernal advertisement[A] of the Cleveland
+Automatic Tool Company in the _American Machinist_ was laid on
+the desk of every member of the Reichstag; and the papers are
+full of accounts of great deliveries of war munitions by America,
+possibly preparing people for a break. If Bulgaria comes in,
+Germany will undoubtedly take a strip in Servia and keep a road
+to Constantinople and the East. The new Turkish Ambassador has
+just arrived. The old one was not friendly to Enver Bey and so
+was bounced; he remains here, however, as he fears if he went to
+Turkey he would get some "special" coffee. The hate for Americans
+grows daily.
+
+[Footnote A: This was an advertisement in an American newspaper
+about machines for the manufacture of particularly deadly shells
+and was much used in Germany to show how America was helping the
+Entente.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All rumours are that in the recent council at Posen the
+Chancellor, advocating concessions in submarine war, won out over
+von Tirpitz. But von Tirpitz will die hard, and there will be
+trouble yet, as the Navy will be very angry if the present
+methods are abandoned. Members of the Reichstag have telegraphed
+backing up the Chancellor; but it is hard for any civilian idea
+to prevail against Army or Navy.
+
+Probably the Admiralty will say that the submarine which
+torpedoed the _Arabic_ was lost, in order to avoid disgracing an
+officer.
+
+If the _Arabic_ question is not complicated with the _Lusitania_
+a solution will be easier. The common people have been aroused by
+von Tirpitz's press bureau and it will be simpler for the
+Chancellor to "back track," taking as an example a case like the
+_Arabic_ when the ship was going West and carried no ammunition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The defeat of the Russians is undoubtedly crushing. Is England
+waking up too late? There will be a big offensive soon against
+the West lines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have heard nothing up to to-day from the State Department re
+the _Arabic_, except one cable asking me to request a report.
+
+A correspondent has just been in and says that the General Staff
+people threaten to expel him because he went to Copenhagen and
+sent out news about the petition to the Chancellor not to annex
+Belgium. The Foreign Office had no objection; this shows how the
+line is forming between the Chancellor and the Military. All
+correspondents to-day say the Germans are trying to dragoon them
+into sending only news which the General Staff wants sent, and
+the Military have added their censorship to that of the Foreign
+Office.
+
+An official told me that Bernstorff, while not exactly exceeding
+his instructions in his "_Arabic_ Note" (of Sept. 1, 1915), had
+put the matter in a manner they did not approve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Orders have now, apparently, been given to all German officials
+to say that the war will last a long time--at least a year and a
+half.
+
+It is expected that Persia will come in under German leadership
+and attack India.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our Military Attach�, Colonel Kuhn, was finally presented to the
+Kaiser and had a pleasant chat with him. Colonel Kuhn says all
+fighting on the West is with artillery and hand grenades. Rifles
+are thrown aside.
+
+Germans have spies "piking off" our Embassies in Paris, London
+and Petrograd.
+
+Great airship attacks on London may be expected. In one of the
+recent attacks nine thousand eight hundred bombs (fire and
+explosive) were dropped. I get this from good authority.
+
+Foreign Office quite elated over their Balkan triumph.
+Personally, I think it was one of the most effective bits of
+German "diplomacy" in the history of the Empire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE INSIDE OF GERMAN DIPLOMACY
+
+
+_The Diary Continued_
+
+_October, 1915._ There is a tendency here to say Bernstorff went
+too far. But this is all for the public, von Jagow told a
+correspondent so to-day; but, of course, he did not know about
+the note of Austria to Servia either! The Marine people are
+positively raging. The paper which Reventlow writes for, the
+_Tages Zeitung_, was suppressed yesterday; I hear on account of
+an article on this _Arabic_ settlement, but I am not yet sure.
+
+There is talk now of marching to Egypt.
+
+More and more men are being called to colours. But Germany seems
+to be able to take care of all fronts. The Emperor is now in the
+West. The Foreign Office leads the rejoicing over the Entente's
+invasion of Greece and the violation of its neutrality and says
+that talk about Belgium is now shown to be _cant_.
+
+Weather is rotten and we shall have a melancholy winter. Feel the
+war more--deaths and prices. Six hundred and eighty thousand
+killed to October first, and many crippled. Food way up, but they
+cannot starve Germany out.
+
+Suppression of the _Tages Zeitung_ means that the Chancellor has
+at last exhibited some backbone and will fight von Tirpitz. The
+answer of Germany depends on the outcome of this fight. It is
+possible that von Falkenhayn and the army party may sustain the
+Chancellor as against von Tirpitz. It is quite likely that a sort
+of safe conduct will be offered in the note for ships especially
+engaged in passenger trade. Much stress will be laid on English
+orders to merchant ships to ram submarines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Kaiser is at Pless, a castle of Prince of Pless, in Silesia,
+near Breslau, where he moved after the attempt of French fliers
+to bombard him at Charleville on the West Front. The Germans
+probably will have Lemberg in a few days. This may prevent
+Roumania coming in. There is talk here of an attempted revolution
+in Moscow. There is said to be jealousy of Hindenburg and on
+account of this, Mackensen was put forward to be the hero of the
+Galician Campaign. Captain Enochs, one of our observers in
+Austria, was forced out of Austria because of German pressure and
+our other military observers will follow soon.
+
+Many commercial magnates have arrived in town to argue with the
+government against war with America; but some are in favor of the
+continuance of bitter submarine war, notably one who sees his
+Bagdad railway menaced by possible English success in the
+Dardanelles.
+
+
+_November, 1915._ A man who saw Tisza tells me the Serbs inquired
+if they could get peace and retain their territories. They were
+answered, "No."
+
+It is said that Italy has also felt out for peace, but was
+answered that she must deal with Austria alone--and Austria says
+that she will not include Italy in any general peace but will
+wallop her alone after general peace is made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am working hard to get British prisoners properly clothed.
+Winter is already here. Efforts to starve Germany will not
+succeed. We shall be on meat and butter cards, but that is only a
+precaution. The people still are well in hand. Constant rumours
+of peace keep them hopeful. Men over forty-five not yet called.
+They seem to have plenty of troops. The military are careless of
+the public opinion of neutrals; they say they are winning and do
+not need good opinion. I am really afraid of war against us after
+this war--if Germany wins. We had snow, ice, and cold weather at
+the end of October.
+
+There have been uneasy movements among the people in Leipzig, a
+great industrial centre, and the _Volkzeitung_, a Socialist paper
+there, has been put under permanent preventive censorship.
+
+All these movements start with the question of the price of food.
+
+The Prussian Junkers, however, are really benefited by the war.
+They get, even with a high "stop price," three times as much as
+formerly for their agricultural products and pay only a small
+sum, sixty pfennig daily, for the prisoners of war who now work
+their fields. They may, in addition, have to pay the keep of the
+prisoners, but that is very small. Camp commanders are allowed
+sixty-six pfennig per head per diem.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is much talk of peace. The shares of the Hamburg-American
+Line and the shares of the Hamburg-South American Line have risen
+enormously in price from fifty-six to one hundred and forty in
+one case. This may be caused by an advantageous sale of some
+shares of the Holland-American Line or by promise of a subsidy,
+or by hopes of peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no question but that every man under forty-five that can
+drag a rifle has been drafted for the army, with the possible
+exception of men working in railways, munitions, etc.
+
+Yesterday I noticed many women working on the roadbed of the
+railway.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The new Peruvian Minister is named von der Heyde; his father was
+a German.
+
+The Greek Minister still thinks Greece will stay out of the war.
+His father is one of the cabinet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans are very glad to get rid of Brand Whitlock. For some
+time they have been looking for an excuse to expel him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dyestuff and other chemical manufacturers are getting quite
+scared about possible American competition. I hope the Democrats
+will give protection to these new industries and will also enact
+some "anti-dumping" legislation.
+
+The German cities are adding to the general weight of debt by
+incurring large debts for war purposes, such as relief of
+soldiers' families, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The former Turkish Ambassador, who is against the Young Turks, is
+living here. He is afraid to go back and also the Germans are
+keeping him in stock in case the Young Turks go out of power, and
+possibly to stir up trouble in Egypt, as his wife is a daughter
+of one of the Khedives.
+
+There are lots of suspicious looking Spaniards about, possibly
+cooking up an attack on Gibraltar.
+
+Any German peace talk includes payment of a large subsidy by
+England, Russia, and France; Italy to be left to Austria to
+finish.
+
+The export of gold has now been formally forbidden.
+
+There is no doubt whatever that the population in the conquered
+portion of Poland has been for a long time in need of food.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our Military Attach�, Colonel Kuhn, just back from Servia, says
+the Germans have, literally, stacks of ammunition and had begun
+preparing last spring for the present attack, even little
+mountain wagons and new harness being all ready. Only about six
+German corps are there.
+
+The hate against Americans here is deep-seated and bitter. Hans
+Winterfeldt, a prominent German banker, with American citizenship,
+just came in to tell me that at the annual meeting to-day of the
+great Allegemeine Electricit�ts Gesellschaft a fight was started
+against him because of his American citizenship, and he was not,
+therefore, re-elected a director. He thinks of resigning from all
+banks, etc., and returning to America.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_December, 1915._ Red Cross Doctor Schmidt just in from Servia
+says Belgrade was completely plundered.
+
+Having lots of difficulty getting the Germans to give the English
+prisoners clothes.
+
+Hate of Americans worse than ever.
+
+Germans are not resentful when I fight to get things for English
+prisoners; they only say they hope our Ambassadors are doing the
+same for Germans.
+
+Much disappointment at Dr. Snoddy's mission not yet being
+permitted to work in Russia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Last Tuesday night I ran into quite a peace demonstration, called
+by placards the night of the Peace Interpretation in the
+Reichstag. Soon disbanded by the police with many arrests. One
+man told me that they were tired of a silly war and days without
+meat. There has been nothing in the papers about these demonstrations;
+of course, each arrest makes an anarchist for life.
+
+It is hard to get butter. The women storm the butter shops and
+market.
+
+In a new building (where the Consulate is) they are taking off
+the _copper_ roof.
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF AN ORDER ISSUED BY COMMANDER OF
+GERMAN PRISON CAMP OF DOEBERITZ. MANY CAMP COMMANDERS, WITHOUT
+AUTHORITY, UNDERTOOK TO MAKE PRISONERS SUFFER FOR ALLEGED AND
+UNPROVED MISDEEDS OF THE BRITISH. I HAD GREAT TROUBLE IN WATCHING
+FOR ORDERS OF THIS CHARACTER AND SECURING THEIR ANNULMENT:
+
+     ORDER.
+
+     The unheard-of and rough treatment, which,
+     according to reliable information, has been
+     accorded to civilian prisoners, and particularly
+     German women and children who remain in England,
+     has caused the withdrawal of all privileges
+     formerly granted to English Prisoners of War. On
+     this account, permission for all kinds of
+     amusements and games has been cancelled.
+
+     The time for bathing has been limited to 10
+     minutes.
+
+     The English Prisoners of War, Mc Lachlan, was shot
+     dead early on the 7th. August, whilst attempting
+     to escape.
+
+     The English Prisoner of War, Orton, has been
+     summoned to a Military Trial owing to resistance
+     agairest to Authority.
+
+Alberti
+
+Oberst und Kommandant
+des Gefangenenlagers D�beritz.]
+
+Of a sudden--peace talk. The Chancellor is waiting to address the
+Reichstag, waiting to get the sentiment of the members who are
+all in Berlin, and then swim with it. Many members, who are not
+Socialists, favour peace, and the Chancellor will be forced to
+make some sort of a declaration on why they are fighting and for
+what.
+
+A Reichstag member told me the Reichstag will say and do things
+it did not dream of doing six months ago. There are many quiet
+meetings of members going on.
+
+Hindenburg is out with an interview saying it is not yet time for
+peace. This is a Government measure to stamp out peace talk among
+the Reichstag members.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Am having a hard fight to get the British prisoners properly
+clothed for the winter. Of course, the Germans have rather a
+difficult time with so many prisoners, but that is no excuse if
+men die of cold. The weather is and has been bitterly cold.
+
+Saw von Jagow lately, but only on business and commercial
+questions. Zimmermann lunched here to-day. Roeder, of the
+_World_, is here making a study of German industrial conditions.
+I introduced him to Gutmann, of the Dresdner Bank; Rathenau, head
+of the Allegemeine Electricit�ts Gesellschaft; Dr. Solf, Colonial
+Minister, and others. I think his report will be very sound and
+worth reading.
+
+There is no question but that there is a deep-seated hatred of
+America here, _which must be reckoned with sooner or later_.
+
+I don't expect things to be easy, but I wish to goodness all
+Americans would stay at home.
+
+Greek Minister still thinks Greece will remain neutral.
+
+Probably greatest need of Germany is lubricating oil for
+machines, etc. Germans claim to have a copper mine in Servia. I
+never heard of one there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Ohnesorg, U.�S.�N., and Osborne back from inspecting camps.
+They report bad conditions; they were not allowed (contrary to
+our "treaty") to talk out of hearing of camp officers to the
+prisoners in Lemburg Camp. These prisoners are 2,000 Irish, and
+the reason, of course, for the refusal of the usual permission is
+that the Germans, through the notorious Sir Roger Casement, have
+been trying to seduce the Irish, and do not want the soldier
+prisoners to tell us about it. I have learned, through other
+sources, that the Germans seduced about 30 Irish. I told von
+Jagow what I had learned and asked what the Germans had done with
+these victims--whether they were in the German army or not. He
+said, "No, most of them had been sent to Ireland to raise hell
+there." I suppose they were landed from submarines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think the German press has received orders to step softly on
+the von Papen-Boy-ed recall. The greatest danger now lies in
+Austria, and over the _Ancona_ note. There is a large body of
+manufacturers, ship-owners, etc., here who at the last moment
+declare themselves against war with the U.�S.�A. and use their
+influence to that end, but in Austria no such interests exist to
+help toward peace. However, pressure from Germany may be brought
+to bear.
+
+I think Germany will not send successors to von Papen and Boy-ed
+even with safe conduct; whether they will ask the recall of our
+attach�s is another question not yet decided.
+
+An official tells me confidentially that Rintelen was sent to
+America to buy up the product of the Dupont Powder Company, and
+that if he did anything else he exceeded his instructions.
+
+Shop people in Berlin with whom I have talked are getting sick of
+the war.
+
+I hear rumours that Germany is trying, through its Minister in
+China, to come to an understanding with Japan and Russia.
+
+The banks are sending circulars to all safe-deposit box holders,
+trying to get them to give up their gold.
+
+An American clergyman has just told me the German church body has
+refused to receive an American Church deputation and has written
+a very bitter letter.
+
+An official has told me that no new Military Attach� will be sent
+to America. The naval people have not yet decided.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am very glad to hear Colonel House is coming over. There are
+many things I want to tell the President but which I do not dare
+to commit to paper.
+
+A newspaperman supposed to be of the _New York_ ---- had an
+interview with Zimmermann the other day, and Zimmermann sent some
+messages by him to the President. I do not know what the
+messages are. We all suffer much from amateur diplomats.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Anthony Czarnecki, a very intelligent Chicagoan, an American of
+Polish descent, is here representing Victor Lawson and the
+_Chicago Daily News_. He informs me that the Spy Nest is
+contemplating an attack on the Administration because of the
+taking away of Archibald's and others' passports.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My impression is that the Austrians, owing to pressure from here,
+will eventually give in on the _Ancona_ business. I think the
+present a good time to force the settlement of the _Lusitania_
+question.
+
+     NOTE. I do not suppose that any Ambassador ever
+     suffered as much from amateur "super Ambassadors"
+     as I did.
+
+     The German Foreign Office, trying to be modern and
+     up-to-date at times, paid more attention to the
+     tales of pro-German American correspondents than
+     they did to the utterances of President Wilson.
+
+     Of course, the Germans succeeded in taking many of
+     those correspondents in their camp. In the Hotel
+     ---- in Berlin an agent of the German Government
+     who possessed American citizenship was always
+     ready to arrange trips to the front or to make an
+     advance of money to an American correspondent who
+     would promise to be "good."
+
+     Some received cash, some were paid in interviews
+     with prominent officials, some received both,
+     before all was continually dangled the blue
+     ribbon--the hope of an interview with the
+     Kaiser--and some, thank God, were real Americans
+     and refused all the offered temptations--news or
+     money.
+
+     An American gentleman who lived for a time at this
+     hotel has given me a written statement which
+     throws a light on the activities of certain of
+     these gentry and which I may some day use. In this
+     he states how one of these gentlemen claimed that
+     the Imperial Chancellor always sent for him to
+     consult him on his attitude towards America and
+     that he had advised him to make a bold front and
+     bluff. Hence, perhaps the note of January
+     thirty-first which suddenly announced the ruthless
+     submarine war.
+
+     I have proof that one of this traitorous gang went
+     about Berlin personating me. What scheme he was
+     cooking up I do not know.
+
+     Zimmermann was particularly weak in being advised
+     by one of these shady individuals.
+
+I think the German Government will allow Ford or any of his
+angels to come here, but the Peace Ark seems pretty well wrecked.
+
+Provincial and small newspapers are much more bitter against
+America than the larger ones.
+
+Von Jagow told me the other day that he thought the feeling here
+against America was so bitter that, eventually, war would be
+inevitable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Received following anonymous letter:
+
+     "I am enabled to-day to give your Excellency news
+     of the utmost importance, Germany is at the end of
+     its forces and the Imperial Government is inclined
+     to make peace cost what may! One of the most
+     prominent and influential members of the Reichstag
+     has assured me, that the general conviction of the
+     parliament is dominated by the absolute necessity,
+     to pull back and to strive for peace as soon as
+     possible. The financial aspect given by Dr.
+     Helfferich is disastrous, the military situation,
+     taken in the whole, unsatisfactory and the
+     confidential information, given by Herr von Jagow
+     in the committee with regard to the Egyptian
+     expedition, discouraging if not hopeless. The
+     Government and particularly Herr von Bethmann wish
+     for peace, but believe themselves restrained by
+     public opinion and by the fear of the
+     Pan-Germanists. It's now the psychological moment
+     for intervention by the United States and there
+     can be no doubt, that it should and will be
+     exercised in favour of humanity, culture and
+     freedom, in favour of the prevalence of the
+     Anglo-Saxon race and the future development of the
+     new world against Prussian barbarity, Imperial
+     despotism and Teutonic slavery!
+
+22. XII. 1915.
+OLD GENTLEMAN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+GERMANY'S PLAN TO ATTACK AMERICA
+
+
+_The Diary Continued_
+
+_January, 1916._ Many of the intelligent rich are expressing the
+fear that after this war the Socialist high price system,
+governmental seizure of food, control of raw materials, etc.,
+will be continued and also that the owners of large landed
+estates will be compelled to subdivide them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are getting vague and conflicting reports in the newspapers
+here about the sinking of the _Persia_. There seems to be no end
+to this business. Perhaps it is best to have the inevitable _come
+now_. The hate of America has grown to such an extent under
+careful Government stimulus that I am quite sure we will be the
+first attacked after the war. Therefore, if it is to come, it had
+better come now when we would start with a certain fleet in
+command of the seas, making it impossible for agitators,
+dynamiters, and spies to be sent to Mexico and South America and
+into the U.�S.�A. through Canada and Mexico. From the highest to
+the lowest I get intimations that at the first chance America
+will be attacked.
+
+There is still a spirit of confidence in ultimate success, amply
+justified, it would seem, by the military situation.
+
+A lot of dyestuffs mysteriously left Germany recently in spite of
+the embargo, and got to Holland, billed to America, where it
+remains, awaiting a permit from the British. Perhaps the Germans
+are getting worried about the possible building-up of the
+industry at home. The profits of the German dyestuff "trust" are
+certainly great enough to tempt the trust to do anything to keep
+the monopoly. Hardly a company pays less than 24 per cent.
+dividends.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Kaiser is still laid up with a boil on his neck.
+
+I am waiting the arrival of Colonel House, who, I suppose, will
+be here in ten days or so.
+
+S.�S. McClure of the good ship _Nutty_ (Proprietor Ford), Herman
+Bernstein and Inez Milholland Boissevain, likewise of the crew,
+have been here. Their stories are most amusing. Apparently, now,
+the nuttiest have voted to remain a permanent committee at The
+Hague; salary (five thousand suggested) to each to be paid by
+Ford--with washing and expenses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Reichstag, sitting in "Budget Commission," is getting quite
+worked up over the censorship and the Socialists are demanding
+the freedom of the press.
+
+Yesterday one member said he thought it would do the U.�S.�A.
+good if they knew what the Germans really thought of Americans.
+
+The spy system here is very complete and even the President and
+Cabinet at home in America are surrounded. Heydebrand, leader of
+the Conservative Party, called the uncrowned King of Prussia,
+said yesterday in the Prussian Chamber that "America was among
+the worst enemies of Germany." I am convinced that Germany, as
+now advised, either will attack America or land in South America,
+if successful in this war. Falkenhayn, Chief of the General
+Staff, said, referring to America, "It is hard to stop a
+victorious army."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have just returned from three days in Munich. I visited two
+prison camps and the American Red Cross Hospital in Munich and
+conferred with Archdeacon Nies (of the American Episcopal
+Church), who is permitted to visit Bavarian prison camps, talk to
+prisoners, and hold services in English. These Bavarian camps are
+under Bavarian, not Prussian, rule.
+
+Munich seems lively and contented. I saw great quantities of
+soldiers there and at Ingolstadt.
+
+I expect Colonel House about the 26th, and shall be very glad to
+see him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Morgenthau was here for a day. I took him to see von Jagow, where
+we talked for an hour. Later, through some Germans, he met
+Zimmermann, who asked him if he did not think the German-Americans
+in America would rise in rebellion if trouble came between
+Germany and America.
+
+Von Jagow was very explicit in saying that Germany had made no
+agreement with us about submarine commanders. He said distinctly
+that Germany reserved the right to change these orders at any
+time. On the general question, he again said that the submarine
+was a new weapon and that the rules of international law must be
+changed, apparently claiming the right for Germany to change
+these rules at will and without the consent of any other power
+involved.
+
+Morgenthau sailed Sunday, the sixth, from Copenhagen. The
+newspapers to-day and last night print articles to the effect
+that the negotiations are taking a more favourable course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_February, 1916._ I dined last night at von Jagow's. He said I
+would get a note to-day which would accept all Bernstorff's
+propositions except, as he put it, one word, viz.: Germany will
+acknowledge liability for the loss of American lives by the
+sinking of the _Lusitania_, but will not acknowledge that the act
+of sinking was illegal. He said that international law had to be
+changed, that the submarine was a new weapon, and that, anyway,
+if a break came with America, that they had a lot of new
+submarines here and would make an effective submarine blockade of
+England. To-day a cipher from the German Foreign Office came in
+to be forwarded to the State Department for Bernstorff, so I
+suppose this is what he referred to. Probably the Germans are in
+earnest on this proposition. It is now squarely up to the
+American people to decide.
+
+Of course, I am very much disturbed at the turn of affairs, but I
+am doing nothing except repeating to Lansing what is said to me,
+and trying to convince the Germans that we are in earnest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was very glad to see Colonel House in Berlin, for many reasons,
+and, especially, that the President may get his view of the
+situation here. He had long talks with the Chancellor, von Jagow,
+and Zimmermann, and also met Dr. Solf, the Colonial Minister; von
+Gwinner, head of the Deutsche Bank; Gutmann, of the Dresdner
+Bank; and Dr. Rathenau, head of the Allegemeine Electricit�ts
+Gesellschaft and many corporations, who is now engaged with the
+General Staff in providing raw materials for Germany.
+
+I think the Germans are getting short of copper and nickel,
+especially the latter. Copper lightning rods of churches have
+been taken and an effort was made to take the brass reading desk
+in the American Church and the fittings in the Japanese Embassy.
+
+I think from underground rumours that the Germans and the
+propagandists will endeavour to embroil us with Japan.
+
+Baroness von Schroeder, a von Tirpitz spy, stated the other day
+that Japan would send a note to the United States of America
+making demands on the U.�S. in regard to the Japanese immigration
+question.
+
+There was a well-defined report that Germany would issue a
+manifesto stating that enemy merchant ships would be fired on
+without notice and this because of orders alleged to have been
+found on British ships ordering merchant ships to fire on
+submarines at sight.
+
+The Chancellor told me he was ready for peace but that all his
+emissaries had met with a cold reception in the Allied countries
+of France, England and Russia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fight against the Chancellor has been started in the home of
+the Junkers--the Prussian Chamber. The powerful liberal papers
+are jumping hard on the disturbers and the Chancellor hit back
+quite hard. These Junkers are demanding unlimited submarine war
+and are stirred up by von Tirpitz. It is one of their last kicks
+as soon a real suffrage will have to be introduced in Prussia.
+The Chancellor foreshadowed this in opening this Prussian
+Chamber; hence the tears!
+
+The visit of Colonel House here was undoubtedly, from this end, a
+success; and I am glad that he can give the President a fresh and
+impartial view.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+March first we go on a milk and butter card regime. I have put
+the Polish question (food) up to Zimmermann, and asked informally
+whether proper guarantees against the direct or indirect taking
+of food and money from Poland will be stopped, if relief is sent;
+no answer yet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In spite of what I was told by certain exalted personages last
+autumn, I think that if the war continues much longer the
+President will be welcomed as a mediator. In fact, there are a
+number of cartoons and articles appearing in the newspapers
+which, in tone, are against the President because he does not
+insist on peace.
+
+I think that we may soon look for a very strong German attack on
+the West Front, an endeavour to break through before the time
+when the French and English are contemplating their offensive,
+which is probably some time in March.
+
+At or about the same time there will probably be great Zeppelin
+attacks on London and on other English centres. It is reported
+that in their next offensive the Germans will use a more deadly
+form of poison gas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had the grippe, went to Partenkirchen for a few days, but the
+first night in country air since July, 1914, was too much for me
+and filled me with such energy that I tried skiing, fell down and
+broke my collar-bone, came to Berlin and can sit at my desk, but
+am very uncomfortable.
+
+I think Germany was about to offer to sink no merchant ships
+without notice and putting crews, etc., in safety, if England
+would disarm merchant ships, but now, since the President's
+letter to Stone, both the Chancellor and von Jagow say they are
+convinced that America has a secret understanding with England
+and that nothing can be arranged.
+
+Captain Persius points out in to-day's _Tageblatt_ that it is not
+submarines alone that are now, without notice, going to sink
+armed merchant ships, but cruisers, etc., will take a hand.
+
+It is reported that the Kaiser went to Wilhelmshafen to warn
+submarine commanders to be careful and that submarines will hunt
+in pairs, one standing ready to torpedo while the other warns.
+The German losses at Verdun are small as artillery fire
+annihilated enemy first. I think an attack will be made now in
+another part of the front.
+
+Germany has forbidden the _import_ of many articles of luxury;
+this is to keep exchange more normal and keep gold in the
+country. This probably will continue after the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some newspaper men just in from Verdun report the Germans saving
+men--losses small--going at it with artillery, probably over
+1,000 guns, and making a slow and almost irresistible push. Some
+military attach�s think there may be a strong attack somewhere
+else on the front.
+
+This Verdun attack was undoubtedly made to keep Roumania out.
+
+I think the food question here is getting very serious, but
+before they are starved out they will starve six million
+Belgians, eleven million Russians and Poles and two million
+prisoners; so that, after all, this starvation business is not
+practical.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a Grand Council of War last week at Charleville to
+determine whether von Tirpitz's proposition, to start an
+unlimited submarine blockade of England, should be started or
+not--i.e., sink all ships, enemy and neutral, at sight.
+Falkenhayn was for this, the Chancellor against, and von Tirpitz
+lost. The decision, of course, was made by the Emperor.
+
+Great advertising efforts are being made on the question of the
+Fourth War Loan. It will, of course, be announced as successful.
+
+There are undoubtedly two submarine parties in Germany and there
+may be an unlimited blockade of England.
+
+I think Germany, as at present advised, is willing, if merchant
+ships are disarmed, to agree to sink no boats whatever without
+warning and without putting passengers and crew in safety. The
+Admiralty approves of this.
+
+One of the American correspondents publishes an article in the
+_Lokal Anzeiger_ on America, in which he makes some statements no
+loyal American should make just now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "illness" of von Tirpitz is announced. I think it means his
+resignation, and have just cabled, although it is possible that
+his resignation may never be publicly announced. For one thing,
+the Kaiser and army people began to think it was a bad innovation
+to have any officer or official appealing to cheap newspapers and
+the "man in the street" in a conflict with superior authority.
+
+I heard that at Charleville conference both the Chancellor and
+von Jagow said they would resign if von Tirpitz's policy of
+unlimited submarine war on England was adopted.
+
+The food question is becoming really acute--the village people
+are about starving in some sections and are not as well off as
+the people in the big towns; it is the policy to keep the people
+in the cities as content as possible in order to prevent riots,
+demonstrations, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some Germans have asked me if the sending of a German "Colonel
+House" to America would be agreeable to the President. Probably
+the Envoy would be Solf, and he could talk informally to the
+President and prominent people. If sent he would require a safe
+conduct from England and France.
+
+I hear the submarines now are mostly engaged in mine laying, at
+the mouth of the Thames.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Events are beginning to march. At first von Tirpitz's "illness"
+was announced, then came his resignation. Yesterday was his
+birthday and a demonstration was expected; there were many police
+out, but I could see no demonstrators. The row may come in the
+Reichstag.
+
+There are two sources of danger; first, a failure at Verdun and
+the new food regulations may make people ready to accept
+Tirpitz's guarantee that if he is allowed his way the war can be
+won and ended. He has a large following already who favour this
+plan; second, there are some Reichstag members and others who
+think the Tirpitz people can never be reconciled unless there is
+a new Chancellor.
+
+The Chancellor sent for me Friday. I think the Chancellor wants
+to keep peace with America and also wishes to make a general
+peace. He talked, or rather I talked, a little about terms. He
+still wants to hang on to Belgium, but I think will give most of
+it up; but is fixed for an indemnity from France. The loss of
+life here is affecting every one, the Chancellor is a very good
+man, and I think honestly desires an honourable peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Potatoes are restricted from to-day, 10 pounds per head in 12
+days, not much, bacon and lard practically not to be had, butter
+only in small quantities and meat out of reach of the poor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I told the Chancellor I thought a great source of danger to the
+good relations of Germany and U.�S.�A. was in Mexico, that if we
+had trouble there, had to raise a large army and rouse the
+military spirit at home, the President might find it hard to hold
+the people. This struck him as a new view, as most Germans think
+that Mexican troubles are to their advantage, and I am sure
+Villa's attacks are "made in Germany."
+
+I shall not come home; both the Chancellor and von Jagow have
+begged me not to go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I sent a cable about the possible stirring up of our coloured
+people by propagandists. I notice that there are great fires in
+many cities of the South.
+
+It is reported that Prussian State Railways were given the banks
+as additional security for the last loan, but I do not see how
+this could be, as the railways are Prussian and the Loan
+Imperial.
+
+Several South American diplomats here think that in case of war
+between U.�S. and Germany public opinion in their countries will
+demand the seizure of the German ships and possible war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_April, 1916._ I am just off to the Reichstag where the
+Chancellor is to speak. I have no news here and none from
+America, but it seems to me five boats sunk almost at once will
+rather strain things at home. Here they do not want war with
+America. Perhaps von Tirpitz before leaving gave these submarine
+commanders these orders to sink at sight.
+
+I think the Germans will eventually encircle and take Verdun,
+mostly now for moral effect.
+
+Von Jagow will shortly give Conger (_Associated Press_) an
+interview disclaiming any intention on Germany's part of
+attacking America after the war. "A guilty conscience, etc.," and
+"Qui s'excuse, s'accuse."
+
+Every night fifty million Germans cry themselves to sleep because
+all Mexico has not risen against us.
+
+Part of Germany goes soon on meat ration. The food question is
+becoming acute, but they will last through here.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think that the Germans would now, in spite of previous
+statements by a high authority, welcome the intervention of the
+President looking toward peace. Colonel House is so relied on
+here that he would be doubly welcome as the bird with the olive
+branch.
+
+It looks more and more as if the issue of the campaign would be
+peace or war! On this issue the Germans at the last moment will
+have to side with the President.
+
+The recent sessions of the Reichstag have been lively. Liebknecht
+caused a row on several occasions. Once by interrupting the
+Chancellor to imply that the Germans were not free, next to deny
+that the Germans had _not_ wished the war, and another time by
+calling attention to the attempts of the Germans to induce
+Mohammedan and Irish prisoners of war to desert to the German
+arms, the Irish being attacked through Sir Roger Casement.
+Liebknecht finally enraged the Government by calling out that the
+loan subscription was a swindle.
+
+The German-American spies and traitors are hard at work at 48
+Potsdammer Strasse and also at the Oversea News Service, a
+concern paid for by Krupps. Mr. ----, in addition, gains money by
+getting permits for goods to go out of Germany, capitalising his
+"pull" as it were. Some of the money for their dirty work is
+given them by Roselius of Bremen, proprietor of the "Caffee Hag."
+----, a traitor, who also writes against the President, also
+works with the gang.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This cry in America that German babies have not sufficient milk
+is all rot. One of our doctors has reported on the subject. The
+cry is only raised to get a hole in the British blockade.
+
+The Germans are going at Verdun carefully, and an imitation of
+each French position or trench they wish to take--planned from
+airmen's and spies' reports--is constructed behind the German
+lines and the German soldiers practise taking it until they are
+judged letter perfect and are put to work to capture the
+original.
+
+It is said the Germans have developed a submarine periscope so
+small as to be almost invisible, which works up and down so that
+only at intervals, for a second or so, does it appear above the
+water. Also, it is said the wireless vibrations by means of
+copper plates at each end are transmitted through the boat, and
+every member of the crew learns the wireless code, and no matter
+where working can catch the vibrations.
+
+Note about the _Sussex_ and other four ships just in. I think
+Germany is now determined to keep peace with America as the plain
+people are convinced that otherwise the war will be lengthened--a
+contingency abhorrent to all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_May, 1916._ I delivered the last American note to von Jagow
+to-day. He said they probably would not answer, and then engaged
+me in gossipy conversation.
+
+These people want peace and will gladly accept the President as
+mediator.
+
+The Pope, they think, will want brokerage--a "Makler Lohn"--as
+they call it--concessions for the church, such as the return of
+the Jesuits, etc.
+
+If they get good and sick of war here, perhaps they may not feel
+like revenge after all--but there is an ever-present danger we
+must prepare for.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fact that I was given detailed instructions as to leaving,
+etc.--which they undoubtedly learned, with their wonderful spy
+system--helped the _Sussex_ settlement.
+
+The Chancellor and I became great friends as a result of my stay
+at the Hauptquartier. The League of Truth gang attacked me
+lately. The Government published a certificate in the _Official
+Gazette_ to the effect that I was their fair-haired boy,
+etc.--very nice of them. I really think they recognise that the
+propaganda was an awful failure and want to inaugurate the era of
+good feeling.
+
+I did not go to the front at the Hauptquartier as reported. I had
+enough to do in Charleville, but did witness the splendid relief
+work being done by the Americans who are feeding 2,200,000 of the
+population of Northern France. Twenty thousand of the inhabitants
+of Lille, Roubaix-Tourcoing, are being sent under circumstances
+of great barbarity to work in the fields in small villages. I
+spoke to the Chancellor and he promised to remedy this.
+
+Germans say they will take Verdun. A military treaty with Sweden
+is reported; a large Swedish Military Commission is now here,
+receiving much attention.
+
+While at Charleville, in connection with American work, I asked,
+at one village, to see the German Army stores so as to convince
+myself that the German Army was not using the stores from
+America. I saw that one-half the stores came from _Holland_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think the psychological moment is approaching when Colonel
+House should appear as the President's White Emissary of Peace.
+
+While the food question here is pressing, the harvest will be
+good, if present indications continue. Rye is the principal crop
+and this is harvested about July 12th. I think, however, Germany
+can last, and in very desperation may try a great offensive which
+may break the French lines and change the whole position. The
+people here, although tired of war, are well disciplined and will
+see this thing through without revolution.
+
+We are rather in calm after the last crisis. The Chancellor sent
+for me and said he hoped we would do something to England or
+propose a general peace, otherwise his position here will become,
+he thinks, rather hard. Delbr�ck, vice-chancellor, very hostile
+to America, is out--failure as Minister of Interior to organise
+food supply is the real reason.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yesterday I had a talk with the Chancellor. The occasion was the
+Polish Relief question which I shall now take up direct with
+Helfferich, who, as I predicted, is the new Minister of the
+Interior and Vice-Chancellor. He is a very business-like man and
+did much for the favourable settlement of our last crisis.
+
+The Chancellor seemed rather downcast yesterday, without apparent
+cause. He says that Germany from now on will have two months of
+hardship on the food question, but that after that things will
+be all right. The crops, as I have seen on my shooting place, are
+magnificent and the rye harvest will probably begin even before
+July 15th.
+
+Mrs. Gerard has just returned from a week in Budapest with her
+sister. The Hungarians are once more gay and confident. The
+Italians, their hereditary foes, are being driven back, and on
+the Russian front there seems to be a sort of tacit truce--no
+fighting and visiting in trenches, etc.--terms of great
+friendliness.
+
+(This was the beginning of the fraternisation which led, a year
+later, to the collapse of Russia.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the races here last Sunday there was an absolutely record
+crowd and more money bet than on any previous day in German
+racing history. The cheaper field and stands were so full of
+soldiers that the crowd seemed grey, which goes to show that the
+last man is not at the front.
+
+State Socialism makes advances over here. A proposition is now
+discussed to compel the young men who are earning large wages to
+save a part thereof.
+
+On the _Sussex_ question, I got a colleague to ask about the
+punishment of the Commander and to say at the Foreign Office,
+after he had once been refused any information, that I had heard
+that the people at large in America believed the Commander has
+received "Pour le M�rite." Von Jagow said that he was sure that
+this was not so, but that he did not know the name of the
+Commander, and that it was not "usual" to tell what punishment
+had been given. So that I suppose the matter will rest, unless I
+get orders to ask formally about the punishment.
+
+The German military people and ruling Junker class are furious at
+the settlement with America, and abuse America, the President and
+me indiscriminately.
+
+Anything the President says about peace is prominently placed in
+the newspapers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yesterday in a debate in the Reichstag over the censorship,
+member Stresemann, National Liberal (the party which now holds
+the balance of power), violently abused President Wilson and said
+he was not wanted as a peace-maker. All applauded except the
+Socialists--so I think the President had better say nothing more
+about peace for the present. What he has said has done much good
+and has pleased the Government here, if not the Reichstag.
+Although von Jagow is a Junker of Junkers, the Junkers are
+against him and claim he is too weak. He may be bounced.
+
+The crops are very fine.
+
+Undoubtedly we shall have another crisis when the extremists here
+demand a "reckless" U-boat war because we are doing nothing to
+England.
+
+Germany will last through on the food question.
+
+I have heard reports that the Turks are tired of German rule and
+almost ready to flop.
+
+I am to meet Prince Buelow, ex-Chancellor, to-morrow and may fish
+up something interesting.
+
+The Kaiser has gone to the front, probably Russian. Next war loan
+will be 12 milliards.
+
+Helfferich lunched here last Sunday. He speaks English fairly
+well. Zimmermann is laid up with the gout.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Reichstag debate yesterday, Stresemann, applauded by all
+except Socialists, said that Germany threw away Wilson as a
+peace-maker. However, the Government is pleased with President's
+peace talk, as it keeps the people from thinking of food and
+U-boat crises.
+
+U-boat question will come up again, when Pan-Germanists and
+Conservatives demand a reckless U-boat war because we have done
+nothing against England.
+
+Harden's paper has been confiscated again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_June, 1916._ I am sorry to lose Ruddock, who is sent to Belgium,
+but it is a good appointment, as his knowledge of German and
+relations here will help matters.
+
+The debates in the Reichstag have been quite interesting
+yesterday and the day before. The Chancellor, irritated by the
+anonymous attacks on him in pamphlets, etc., made a fine defence.
+In the course of the debate allusions were made to President
+Wilson and the U-boat question. The U-boat question may break
+loose again any day.
+
+I do not think that either Austria or Germany wishes President
+Wilson to lay down any peace conditions. There may possibly be a
+Congress after the Peace Congress, but meanwhile all parties
+here feel that America has nothing to do with peace conditions.
+America can bring the parties together, but that is all. The
+speech about the rights of small peoples has, I hear, made the
+Austrians furious, as Austria is made up of many nationalities
+and the Germans say that if the rights of small peoples and
+peoples choosing their own sovereignty is to be discussed, the
+Irish question, the Indian question and the Boer question, the
+Egyptian question and many others involving the Entente Allies
+must be discussed. I think that generally there is a big change
+in public opinion and the Germans are beginning to realise that
+the President is for peace with Germany.
+
+The Germans expect that by September preparations will be
+finished and that the Suez Canal will be cannonaded, bombed and
+mined so that it will dry up, and then the Indian-Afghan troubles
+will begin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_June, 1916._ The President's peace talks carried over the
+dangerous moment after the submarine submission. Von Jagow told
+me that because of debates in Reichstag the President must not
+think he is not welcome as mediator.
+
+Crops look well.
+
+The break on Austro-Russian front is reported to have been caused
+by wholesale desertions of Ruthenian troops to Russians.
+
+The editor of the _National Zeitung_, responsible for the fake
+interview with me, has been "fired" from that paper which has
+published a notice to that effect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grand Admiral von Koester made a speech implying that reckless
+submarine war should be taken up and England thus defeated. He is
+retired, but is head of the Navy League, a concern backed by the
+Government, possessing a million members and much political
+influence.
+
+Apropos of hyphenated Americans, a friend tells me that when he
+was secretary here some years ago, a certain Congressman tried
+for six years to get presented at Court, insisting that he be
+presented as a "German-American." The Kaiser turned him down,
+saying he knew no such thing as a "German-American," and the
+Congressman finally consented to be presented as an American.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The U-boat question will come up again, say in three months,
+unless we get in serious trouble in Mexico, when it will come up
+sooner.
+
+Edwin Emerson has been sent out of the country, I think to serve
+in the Turkish Army in some capacity, perhaps paymaster or some
+such job.
+
+The Foreign Office continues to protect these American
+mud-slingers--such as the "League of Truth" which is run by a
+German named Marten, posing as an American and a dentist
+(American citizen) named Mueller--these circulate a pamphlet
+entitled, "What Shall We Do With Wilson," etc., and are the gang
+who insulted the American flag by putting it wrapped in mourning
+on a wreath on the statue of Frederick the Great with a
+placard, "Wilson and his Press do not represent America."
+
+[Illustration: COVER OF THE PAMPHLET FEROCIOUSLY ABUSIVE OF
+PRESIDENT WILSON. ISSUED BY THE EX-TRAVEL LECTURER, JOHN L.
+STODDARD]
+
+What shall we do
+with Wilson?
+
+by
+
+John L. Stoddard.
+
+Meran. Tyrol 1916
+
+Printing-office F. Pleticha, Meran, Tyrol.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Letters, codes, etc., for Bernstorff and individuals are sent to
+America as follows: the letters are photographed on a reduced
+scale so that a letter a foot square appears as an inch and a
+half square. These little prints are put in the layers of a shoe
+heel of a travelling American or elsewhere, book cover, hat band,
+etc., and then rephotographed and enlarged in America. Also
+messengers travel steerage and put things in the mattress of a
+fellow passenger and go back to the ship after landing in New
+York and collect the stuff.
+
+A German friend, just returned from Austria, says the feeling
+there against America is very strong on account of the Dumba
+incident.
+
+Yesterday I was told by a German that the German army had
+aeroplanes which develop 300 H.�P., and would soon have some of
+1000 H.�P.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_July, 1916._ Every one in this Embassy is getting to the
+breaking point. Nerves do not last forever, and the strain of
+living in a hostile country is great. The Germans, too, are on
+edge. They are going to take away our privilege of speaking to
+prisoners alone; this because they think I learned of the
+shooting of the second Irishman at Limburg from prisoners. As a
+matter of fact I did not, but cannot, of course, say how I did
+learn.
+
+The Russian prisoners are being slowly starved, the French and
+English get packages from home.
+
+There are rumors that a Bavarian regiment which was ordered a
+second time to take a position, which the Prussians lost at
+Verdun, refused and was ordered to be decimated, and that then
+the Crown Prince of Bavaria threatened to march all the Bavarian
+troops home unless the order to decimate was rescinded. I do not
+believe the rumour, but its circulation and other events such as
+the refusal of the Bavarians lately to adopt a common postage
+stamp, shows there is a little irritation growing between Prussia
+and Bavaria. For years before the war the Bavarian Comic papers
+cartooned the Prussians, common and royal, but like every other
+movement nothing will result.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is much underground work for the resumption of reckless
+submarine war going on, all part of a campaign to upset the
+Chancellor. Von B�low, Ex-Chancellor, is working hard. He,
+however, since his row with the Emperor over the "Telegraph"
+interview, which he passed as correct, will never be accepted by
+His Majesty. Nevertheless, he is becoming a focal point for
+opposition.
+
+The Chancellor and his party are very timid about attacks. For
+instance, they will do nothing against Emerson, Mueller and that
+crew, which insults indiscriminately our flag, our President, the
+Chancellor, Zimmermann and me, because, as Zimmermann frankly
+told me, they are afraid of attacks. Mueller on the 4th of July
+hung out the American flag in mourning and circulated copies of
+the Declaration of Independence charged with a bloody hand and a
+black cross. I have filed in vain affidavits with the Foreign
+Office, by people who say he has threatened to shoot me at sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans seem to fear the Russian attacks more than the
+English and French. They claim to have the measure of the
+English, and not to fear their offensive.
+
+Dr. John R. Mott has been here. He made a great impression. I had
+him at lunch with the Chancellor, Zimmermann, and officials of
+the prisoner department and War Ministry.
+
+Mass feeding of the people has begun. They pay a few pfennigs per
+meal.
+
+I have heard rumours lately of actual dissatisfaction among
+soldiers at front and of many being transferred, but this unrest
+also will have no definite result.
+
+Constant rain lately will damage the harvest and rot the potatoes
+to some extent. Nevertheless, as I have often said, the Germans
+will last. Holland has allowed more food in lately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The long confinement will make many prisoners insane. Many old
+men at Ruhleben, living six in a horse's stall or in dim hay
+lofts, simply turn their faces to the wall and refuse even to
+complain.
+
+The statement in the American papers that our National Guard
+could not mobilise for Mexico because of lack of sleeping cars
+caused much ridicule here, where they go to the front in cattle
+cars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_July, 1916._ A committee called the National Committee for an
+Honourable Peace has been formed. Prince Wedel is at the head.
+Most of the people are friends of the Chancellor. One is an
+editor of the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ which is the Chancellor's
+organ. On August 1st, fifty speakers, of this Committee will
+begin to speak, probably the opposition will come into their
+meetings and try to speak or break up the meetings.
+
+The _Lokal Anzeiger_, also a government organ, prints an
+editorial to the effect that Germany may take up ruthless
+submarine war again. Great numbers of U-boats are being built and
+in September operations will be on a big scale, though the
+Chancellor will try to keep them to cruiser warfare.
+
+The prisoner question on all sides is growing acute. The Germans
+sent me a note to-day threatening stern reprisals if the alleged
+bad treatment of their prisoners in Russia does not stop.
+
+We can no longer talk to prisoners alone. Von Jagow told me that
+after the visit of Madam Sasenoff, or Samsenoff, to a Russian
+prisoners' camp, there was a riot, but the real reason is that
+the Germans have much to conceal. The prison food now is a
+starvation ration.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Alliance of the Six, really an organization fostered by big
+iron business in Westphalia, is very active for annexation. This
+wants to get the French iron mines and coal, and so control the
+iron business of the Continent and perhaps Europe.
+
+A man from Syria passed through here recently and gave me most
+interesting accounts of the state of affairs there. The Turks are
+oppressing the Arabians and the revolt of the Grand Sheriff of
+Mecca may have great effects in this war. This man says that the
+English are building two railroads from Suez into the desert and
+the Germo-Turks are building toward the canal from the North. For
+the Canal attack there are, at present, principally Austrian
+troops assembled. The Turks are beginning to take Greeks from the
+Coast cities into the interior of Asia Minor and are oppressing
+the Syrian Arabian cities, such as Beirut, where thousands are
+dying of starvation. At the Islahje-Aleppo R.�R., 30 Turkish
+soldiers a day die from cholera. The Germans, by their precautions,
+escape. He passed 147 German auto trucks in the Cilician
+mountains bound for Bagdad. Also saw the British prisoners from
+Kut el Amara, who are dying of dysentery, being compelled to walk
+in the hot sun from Kut. He thinks the English and the Grand
+Sheriff will transfer the title of head of the religion from the
+Sultan at Constantinople to either the Sultan of Egypt or some
+new Sultan to be established as an Arabian Sultan, perhaps at
+Bagdad if the Russians and English take it, or at Mecca, and he
+considers this movement of Arabians against Turks may assume
+great proportions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is still talk here of a resumption of reckless submarine
+war which question is complicated and involved in the eternal
+efforts of the Conservatives to get the Chancellor out.
+
+The recognition of the "merchant submarine" has made a very good
+impression here.
+
+The plain people are eager for peace but those interested in
+carrying on the war have the upper hand.
+
+The harvest is good, and is now being gathered.
+
+A number of navy and (which is significant) army officers visited
+von Tirpitz, lately in his Black Forest Retreat and gave him a
+testimonial.
+
+There is prospect that what is called here a "Burg Frieden"
+(Peace of the City) will be declared between the Chancellor and
+the principal Conservative newspapers.
+
+One of the American correspondents back from Verdun says that a
+corps commander said his corps took no prisoners.
+
+I think many of the Hungarians are for peace. I get this from
+Andrassy's son-in-law who is also a member of the lower house.
+Tisza, however, is still in full control.
+
+Prince Leopold's (he is a brother-in-law of the Kaiser) stags
+have destroyed vegetables of the plain people (as in the days of
+William Rufus) and people dare write letters, and Liberal papers
+dare publish them complaining of these depredations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+GERMANY'S EARLY PLOTS IN MEXICO
+
+
+_The Diary Concluded_
+
+_August, 1916._ Count Andrassy, leader of the opposition to Tisza
+in Hungary, has been here for some time. He lunched with us one
+day and I had a talk with him in German. Andrassy is rather old
+and tired. Andrassy's father, the Prime Minister, was originally
+a great friend of Germany.
+
+It is possible that Andrassy through German influence may be made
+Minister of Foreign Affairs instead of Burian. This is to be the
+first step in a German coup d'�tat to take place on the death of
+Francis Joseph--the throne successor to be given Austria alone,
+and Prince Eitel Fritz, the Kaiser's favourite son, to be King of
+Hungary with possibly a Czech kingdom in Bohemia.
+
+Andrassy had an audience with the Kaiser here. Andrassy is
+apparently friendly with America and is also for peace.
+
+_Von Tirpitz is out with a statement practically demanding war
+with America._ I am surprised that the newspapers are allowed to
+publish it. Very likely it will not be permitted to go out but it
+ought to be known in America.
+
+Germany probably will come out with a strong note about Poland,
+refusing help and saying harvest is sufficient. This is not true
+as to food for babies who cannot live on rye and wheat, but need
+condensed milk.
+
+The treatment of prisoners is going from bad to worse. The
+Chancellor and Foreign Office can do nothing against the military
+party.
+
+Hoover, Professor Kellog, and I are all very much discouraged
+about Polish and other relief questions. The Germans are getting
+more and more disagreeable about these matters, even though they
+are for the benefit of Germany. Warwick Greene, of the Rockefeller
+Foundation, being a new arrival is more hopeful, but that will
+soon wear off.
+
+The Germans are getting a blacklist of their own. One Barthmann,
+an American, who sells American shoes in Germany, wanted to get
+his pass stamped to go to America, and permission to come back,
+and was told that would only be done if the Chamber of Commerce
+(Handels-Kammer) consents; you see the connection--no American
+goods for Germany.
+
+The Jews here are almost on the edge of being "pogrommed." There
+is a great prejudice against them, especially in naval and
+military circles, because they have been industrious and have
+made money. Officers openly talk of repudiating the War Loan
+which they say would only mean a loss for the Jews.
+
+The Germans say they have new and horrible inventions which will
+end the war soon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I supposed that because I had some acquaintance with German
+watering places and German-Americans I knew a little about
+Germany. I was wrong. No casual traveller ever gets to know the
+military caste nor do the members of that caste travel except on
+"business."
+
+The members of the military caste live like Spartans and are
+consoled by the fact that they rule the country and look down on
+the merchant class. They feel that they have created modern
+industrial Germany. The military caste (of which the naval and
+all government bureaus are branches) has organised the nation for
+war with the efficiency of the managers of a great American
+corporation. The government is an absolutism. No Jew can become
+an officer. Officers of crack regiments do not go to the homes of
+persons in any kind of business. A business man is called a
+"Kaufmann," as we speak of a house painter. Some tame professors
+are paid by the State to give an impression of "Kultur."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This war is now a war for conquest or money. All people tell me
+that we must have "pay for so much blood." "If we don't keep
+Belgium there will be a revolution. Who is to pay for the War?" A
+Socialist who referred yesterday in the Reichstag to the Kaiser's
+speech of the beginning of the war which stated this was not a
+war to get territory, was well sat upon. Even the Socialists are
+all for war against Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+None of the German colonies is fit for Europeans. _Germany last
+year proposed joint intervention in Mexico to England._ If
+successful Germany will try to get a foothold in the Western
+Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is like a red rag to a bull to
+every German.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Relations with members of the Government here are quite agreeable
+but there is not an effective government at present. The
+Chancellor will take no decisive action and leaves matters to
+department heads who fight with other department heads. The
+Emperor saw fit to follow the traditions of 1870 and go to the
+field taking the Chancellor and heads of many departments with
+him, hence great governmental confusion, but this does not affect
+military organisation. He is bored by the Chancellor, a good man,
+but of no action or decision. Von Falkenhayn is the Emperor's
+favourite. He is the chief of the General Staff. Von Tirpitz and
+von Mueller (also naval) have great weight. The Kaiser is thus
+surrounded by military influences.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Saw summaries of the news published by the General Staff and
+given to the Emperor to read. He gets only German-American news
+from America and no bad news from anywhere. On the _Lusitania_
+case there is a disposition to think, because we were not warlike
+over Mexico, we will stand anything. _The Kaiser will not see me
+because of the delivery of arms by Americans to the Allies and
+has so stated._
+
+There is no shortage of food supply. I was told yesterday they
+did not need our Polish Relief Committee for German Poland as
+Germany can take care of this alone. The hate of Americans is
+intense. But this hate can be turned off and on by the Government.
+The people believe everything they see in the papers. The
+monetary situation is not bad. All the money for war supplies has
+been spent in Germany, except perhaps for a few horses, etc.,
+from Scandinavia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Chancellor and von Jagow have been in Vienna. Von Jagow told
+me only on current business, but this was a diplomatic statement.
+I believe they went to settle the fate of Poland. I hear Prussia
+wants an independent Poland and Austria wants to make it part of
+the Austrian Empire. In any event I think Prussia will secure the
+organising of the army which will soon be raised. A prominent
+Pole told me two days ago that the peasants were coddled by
+Russia, whose motto in Poland was "divide et impera," and that
+they will violently resent being drafted into the Prussian army.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bitter attacks on the Chancellor continue. At a recent
+meeting in Bavaria resolutions were passed that the first
+objective of the war was to get rid of the Chancellor and the
+second to "clean out the Anglophile Foreign Office," which
+prevented Germany from resorting to "reckless" methods for the
+swift winning of the war.
+
+As a son-in-law of a high official told me to-day, the break
+between the military and navy on one side and the Civil
+Government on the other has widened almost into civil war. The
+same man told me that the Kaiser has lately become quite
+apathetic and lets events take their course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of my attach�s has broken down completely, cries when spoken
+to; living in a fiercely hostile atmosphere is not agreeable and
+I wonder how long the rest of us can hold out.
+
+The harvest is very good, but does not provide fat, and as yet,
+meat. But the starving out business I have always said was an
+"iridescent" dream.
+
+New men, 80,000 in this vicinity alone, are being called to the
+colours.
+
+Every one here is getting more on razor edge, prisoners are
+treated more roughly and get worse food. Bavaria is getting
+restless and dissatisfied, this will not amount to anything
+definite but is a sign of the times.
+
+I went to Herringsdorff for a few days of swimming. At a concert
+in the evening a man recited a poem he said he had written about
+"having bled enough." He was vehemently applauded. Quite a
+contrast to the days when the best actors in Germany were not
+ashamed to spout the "HYMN OF HATE"!
+
+The military people use the censorship even against papers
+friendly to the Chancellor and Germans certainly can hate each
+other as thoroughly and scientifically as they do most other
+nations. Dr. Alonzo Taylor thinks that in peace times some one
+fed this nation too much meat.
+
+The newspapers are preparing the people for the entry of
+Roumania.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Professor ----, a school friend of Tisza's and Burian's who was
+recently in Austria, saw Burian and says Burian is ready and even
+anxious to make an arbitration treaty with America and also send
+an Ambassador in Dumba's place to Washington. This is out of my
+jurisdiction. He says that to-morrow or next day there will be an
+interpellation in the Hungarian Chamber about sending an
+Ambassador to America.
+
+The National Liberals probably will unite with the Conservatives
+and demand a strong hold on Belgium, if not actual possession of
+that country, as one of the objects of the war.
+
+This Union of National Liberals and Conservatives is dangerous
+and may mean a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The entry of Roumania took every one by surprise. Beldiman, the
+Roumanian Minister here, was visiting the reigning Prince of
+Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, brother of the Roumanian King, and
+apparently knew nothing of the danger of a break.
+
+To-day Hindenburg is named Chief of the General Staff, and his
+Chief of Staff, Ludendorff, is made Quartermaster General,
+Falkenhayn, former Chief of Staff is bounced without even the
+excuse of a diplomatic illness. This is all a great concession to
+popular opinion. I do not know where Hindenburg stands with
+reference to America, but have heard that he is a reasonable man.
+Of course, here the Army has as much to say in foreign affairs as
+the Foreign Office, if not more. When I was at the Great General
+Headquarters, Falkenhayn, although I knew him, did not call on
+me, and dodged me. He did not even appear at the Kaiser's table
+when I lunched there. From all this I judge he was against
+America on the submarine question. I also have heard that when
+Helfferich was talking before the Kaiser, in favour of peace with
+America, Falkenhayn interrupted him, but was told by the Kaiser
+to "stick to his last" or words to that effect.
+
+These people here are now nervous and unstrung and actually
+believe that America will now enter the war against them. It is
+impossible to conceive of the general breakdown of nerves among
+this people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_I have heard lately of men as old as 47 being taken for the
+Army._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Zimmermann has now gone on a vacation, his place being
+temporarily filled by von Treutler, Prussian Minister to Bavaria,
+who since the commencement of the war has been with the Kaiser. I
+judge this means the Kaiser is looking personally into matters
+at the Foreign Office. Von Treutler is, I think, against the
+resumption of reckless submarine war. He is lunching with me
+to-day. He is rather the type of intelligent-man-of-the-world and
+sportsman, and has little of the Prussian desire to "imponieren"
+by putting his voice two octaves lower and glaring at one like an
+enraged bullfrog.
+
+Dr. William Bayard Hale, of Mexican fame, who is in Berlin
+representing the Hearst papers, has become very thick with
+officials here. Von Jagow and Zimmermann are much impressed by
+him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans may hate the President, but there are in America
+hundreds of thousands of Czechs from Bohemia, Poles from Poland,
+Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croatians and Slavs from Hungary, Roumanians,
+Italians, Greeks, Russians, Scotch, Belgians, and French who HATE
+the Germans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I believe the Germans want an excuse to resume reckless submarine
+war and an American correspondent has taken the job of making bad
+feeling to justify such a course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_September, 1916._ As these people get desperate the submarine
+question gets deeper and deeper under their skin. I really think
+that it is only a question of time.
+
+Of course, from what I learn here Greece is sure to come in and
+this is expected here.
+
+As the Consul General at Hamburg has reported, serious riots
+have occurred there, two by the poor classes, mostly women, and
+one by students. The crowd shouted "Down with the Kaiser," called
+for an end of the war, calling for unlimited submarine war
+against England.
+
+The hate of Americans grows daily, if indeed it is possible to be
+greater.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ira Nelson Morris, American Minister to Sweden, was here. He and
+his wife are charming people. He is very popular in Sweden. Elkus
+is also here on his way to Constantinople. If any one can "get
+away" with that difficult post he can. I took Elkus to see von
+Jagow and had him at lunch with von Treutler, the man in
+Zimmermann's place. I talked with Elkus to von Jagow about Syrian
+Relief. A Syrian, whose name I cannot give away, says the Turkish
+Government reported to our Embassy in Turkey that the harvest in
+Syria was the best in years, whereas, in truth this year's
+harvest, on account of drought and last year's on account of
+locusts, are the worst in 35 years. Missionaries have told me
+that Syrians are starving.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fact for the Russian born--Germany does not recognise the
+American citizenship or naturalisation of a person born in
+Russia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yesterday there was a conference of all party leaders at the
+Chancellor's. I understand nothing was said about America or
+submarine question. I doubt this. The Press here and certain
+other agencies are trying to convince America that all is
+peaceful, but Baron Mumm two days ago told Elkus, in this house,
+that the ruthless submarine war undoubtedly would be resumed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In general conversation with von Jagow, recently, he said that
+the offensive on the Somme could not continue without the great
+supply of shells from America. He also said that recently a
+German submarine submerged in the Channel had to allow 41 ships
+to pass, and that he was sure that each ship was full of
+ammunition and soldiers but probably had some protecting American
+angels on board, and, therefore, the submarine did not torpedo
+without warning. He seemed quite bitter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wife of an American newspaper correspondent was recently
+attacked in the street. Of course, the husband will not cable
+this to America. Two stenographers from this Embassy were
+recently slapped on coming out of a theatre because they were
+speaking English.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Reventlow's paper was recently suppressed and Reventlow forbidden
+to write without special permission. This is a good sign from the
+Chancellor.
+
+Dr. Hale was recently given a special trip to the West front, and
+allowed to talk to the Crown Prince, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_December, 1916._ The Germans are simply delighted with the
+President's peace note. Only a few cranks or conservative papers
+are against it.
+
+I saw Zimmermann the day after my arrival. He was most friendly
+and said he hoped he and I would be able, as usual, to settle
+everything in a friendly manner.
+
+Yesterday he lunched here and gave me the German reply after
+lunch. He told me at the first talk that he, the Chancellor,
+Hindenburg and Ludendorff were all working together. Most people
+here say that Hindenburg and Ludendorff are at present the real
+rulers of Germany. Zimmermann remarked that there was no danger
+from "reckless" submarine war.
+
+Zimmermann said he regretted the sending of the Belgians to
+Germany but it was hard now to go back on what they had done. I
+have some hope that a retreat may be arranged--possibly by
+sending the Belgians back gradually and saying nothing about it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The American Chamber of Commerce are to give a big dinner January
+sixth to welcome me back. Zimmermann and von Gwinner, head of
+Deutsche Bank, have agreed to speak and many prominent Germans
+have accepted.
+
+The Press department of the Foreign Office has been reorganised
+by Zimmermann, and Hammann, the former head, fired. The new head
+is Major Deutelmoser, formerly of the General Staff, a personal
+friend of mine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor is at Potsdam and consulted with Zimmermann, General
+von Kessel, etc., as to the reply to the President's peace note.
+
+Berlin is much more melancholy than when I left. General von
+Kessel came to our American Colony Christmas tree for poor Berlin
+children. It was very pathetic. One little kid got up and prayed
+for peace and every one wept. I hope to get to see Ludendorff and
+Hindenburg soon and see how they feel toward America.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I went to Ruhleben, the British civilian camp, yesterday to tell
+the prisoners that all over 45 go home. It was quite a Christmas
+gift as 700 there are over that age. (Note: don't think this
+agreement of Germany and England ever went into effect!)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_January, 1917._ Germany wants a peace conference in order to
+make a separate peace on good terms to them with France and
+Russia, then hopes to finish England by submarines, then later
+take the scalp of Japan, Russia and France separately. The Allies
+ought to remember what Ben Franklin said about hanging together
+or separately. I get the above scheme from very good authority.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weather is most depressing; dark, and rain every day. All
+hands seem cross. Zimmermann, I think, finds it much more
+difficult to be the responsible first than the criticising
+second. It is not as easy as it looked to him.
+
+The Kaiser stated the other day that he did not expect peace now,
+that the English would try a great offensive in the spring and
+would fail.
+
+_Herbert Hoover writes me that the Germans are violating all
+their pledges in Belgium._ He expects a year of great difficulties.
+I hear this confirmed on best authority and that even the German
+official who is supposed to see that food is not sent from
+Belgium to Germany in violation of Germany's pledges sends out
+butter to his family; that there is an absolute reign of terror
+in Belgium, sudden and arbitrary arrests, etc. I think the
+Germans want to see all foreign diplomats out of Bucharest and
+Brussels and the charges against Voypicka should be considered in
+that light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The greatest danger from submarine war is that unthinking persons
+in the U.�S. may start a crusade against the President's policy,
+encourage the Germans in the belief that we are divided and lead
+them to resume reckless acts in that belief. The continuance of a
+strong front is the very best way to keep the peace.
+
+Both Zimmermann and the Chancellor asked me about Bernstorff, and
+returning good for evil, I said that he was O.�K., on very good
+terms with the Government, well liked (_sic_) and that no one
+could do better!
+
+A friend just returned from a week's visit in Hungary reports a
+great desire for peace. Persons who, a year ago, said that the
+President could have nothing to do with peace or negotiations,
+now say he is the only possible mediator. This comes from high
+government circles there.
+
+The historic crown of St. Stephen was much too large for the
+King, but the little crown prince made a great hit with the
+populace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An Armenian woman came through here the other day. Her husband
+had been captured or killed and her tale of the treatment of the
+Armenians by the Turks was heartrending.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everything points to a coming crisis in the matter of food, how
+serious it will be even the officials themselves do not know, as
+there is much concealed food and much smuggling over the various
+frontiers.
+
+In some parts of Germany, the country police or gendarmes are
+searching the farm houses thrice weekly.
+
+I have secured permission to visit and inspect the enslaved
+Belgians, have named as inspectors all members of our staff
+speaking French, but as yet have not received passes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here is a copy of a letter I have just received from a German:
+
+     "The hypocrisy of the German Government is really
+     disgusting! It is a well-known matter of fact,
+     that by hints and approbation, nay even by express
+     orders of the German military authorities the
+     troops in France and Belgium have been stimulated
+     to give no quarter at all in the case of British
+     adversaries, and that in Russia even whole
+     regiments and brigades have been annihilated by
+     grapeshot, although the poor wretches delivered
+     themselves on mercy and raised their hands, to
+     prove their submission. Both the Prussian and the
+     Bavarian crown-prince have expressly ordered to
+     make no prisoners, to spare ammunition and to
+     despatch the surviving by steel and bayonet. Has
+     the order been forgotten, issued by the Kaiser in
+     the beginning of the German China-Expedition, to
+     deal with the Chinese like the Huns, to destroy
+     and annihilate every human creature both men and
+     women and even innocent children!
+
+Quis Aulerit Gracchos de seditione quaerentes?
+                            Unus pro multis.
+
+     P.�S.
+
+     The war would be decided and peace restored as
+     soon as the U.�S.�A. Government would intervene in
+     favour of humanity, liberty and civilisation. Down
+     with the Prussian Tyranny!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans will do nothing about Belgium. The deportations were
+a military measure, demanded by Ludendorff, who constantly fears
+a British landing on the Belgian coast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man who called on von Tirpitz recently was told by von Tirpitz
+that he, von Tirpitz, was watched like a spy and all his letters
+opened. Von Tirpitz said that Hindenburg was the real ruler of
+Germany, that anything Bethmann said was censored by Hindenburg
+and that Hindenburg was now against reckless submarine war but
+that any substantial defeats in the field would make him change
+his mind. Von Tirpitz said that the Kaiser was losing his mind
+and spent all his time praying, and learning Hebrew.
+
+[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN COURTYARD OF EMBASSY, AUGUST,
+1916
+
+_Left to right_--Lanier Winslow; Albert B. Ruddock; Percival
+Dodge; Grafton Minot; von Gwinner, head of the great Deutsche
+Bank; Surgeon Ohnesorg, U.�S.�N.; Ernest Bicknell of Red Cross;
+Ambassador Gerard; Mr. Wilmeth of Treas. Dept.; Assistant
+Secretary of War Breckenridge; Roland Harvey; Charles Russell;
+Hugo Ballin, head of Hamburg-American Line; Major Ryan and First
+Secretary Grew.]
+
+The food situation grows worse. Potato cards must now be
+presented in restaurants and hotels. I doubt if potatoes can last
+beyond April. There is food in Roumania but much will go to the
+troops; Austrians and Turks: the railways are so used by troops,
+etc., that it is doubtful if any food from there can reach
+Germany for months.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All apartment houses in Berlin are closed at nine, and lights in
+halls extinguished. Theatres close at ten and movies also. There
+is want of coal due to lack of transportation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The President's address to the Senate yesterday (Jan. 22, 1917)
+is splendid. I don't know yet how it will be taken here. If it is
+published it will give the German people something to consider.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Postcards showing Zeppelins in the act of murdering the sleeping
+babies of an enemy city are distributed here with pride.
+
+All Germans of my acquaintance have impressed on me lately the
+renewed danger of submarine warfare. The American correspondents
+are not allowed to send out the hate of America speeches and
+articles. Cyril Brown of the _World_ says that last week fifty
+per cent of the matter he sent was cut out by censor here.
+
+The new U-boat campaign will go along the armed merchantman lines
+and an endeavour will be made to force or get us in some way to
+recognise that an armed merchantman is the same as a warship
+and, therefore, may be fired on without notice. It is the old
+story, but more subtly presented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Food situation more and more serious, riots lately in two markets
+in Berlin.
+
+Have not yet received passes to see the Belgians.
+
+Undoubtedly Ludendorff is the real dictator of Germany to-day.
+What he thinks about America may be judged from the circumstances
+before Colonel Kuhn's recall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nearer I get to the situation the more I consider the
+President's peace note an exceedingly wise move. It has made it
+very difficult for the terrorists here to start anything which
+will bring Germany into conflict with the U.�S.
+
+_The Chancellor, Zimmermann, Stumm, have all ridiculed the idea
+that Germany will go back on her "Sussex" pledges; but if she
+does, then the peace note makes it easier for America to enter
+the war on the Allies' side with a clear conscience and the
+knowledge on the part of the people at home that the President
+did everything possible to keep us out of the mess._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE KULTUR OF KAISERDOM--THE GERMAN SOUL
+
+
+The older I grow the more it seems to me that all men are alike
+and that they have been alike at all periods of history, capable
+of the same development and differing only because of environment.
+
+I do not believe, for example, that any mystery is concealed
+behind the faces of the peoples of the East. Once I asked
+Soughimoura, my colleague in Berlin, Ambassador of Japan, whether
+the Japanese were as much subject to nerves as western peoples.
+He answered in the affirmative but said they were taught from
+infancy to control their nerves. I asked him how, and he said the
+principle of the system was deep abdominal breathing with a slow
+release of the breath as soon as nervousness came on. Japanese
+wrestlers practised this, he added, and when a man took deep
+breaths it was almost impossible to throw him.
+
+Of course, social life and customs change with climate. But
+education is the most powerful factor of all. The Aztecs of
+Mexico offered human sacrifices, but the letter of the Aztec
+mother to her daughter, giving advice and counsel, mentioned by
+Prescott in his history, might have been written by a New
+England mother to-day. Somewhere in the world is a savage eating
+human flesh, persuaded that in so doing he is acting in
+accordance with the tenets of his religion.
+
+These are the extremes.
+
+But the German or rather the Prussian, has been moulded into the
+extraordinary person that he is to-day by a slow process of
+education extending through several generations. At Marienburg,
+on the Baltic shore of Germany, stands the ancient castle of the
+Teutonic Knights recently restored by the German Kaiser. The
+Knights at one time conquered and occupied much of the territory
+that is now modern Prussia. A military religious order, they
+attracted adventurers from all lands and their descendants
+constitute many of the noble families of Prussia. It is this
+tradition of conquest for gain that still animates the ruling
+class of Prussia and therefore all Germany.
+
+Later through the middle ages and as the central power of the
+Emperor grew weaker and weaker, what is to-day Germany became a
+nest of dukedoms and principalities. Before the French Revolution
+these numbered hundreds. After the Thirty Years' War which
+ravaged Germany from 1615 to 1645 extreme poverty was often
+conspicuous at these petty courts. War was an industry and the
+poor German peasants were frequently bartered as slaves to the
+war-god, as the Hessians were sold by their ruler to the British
+in our War of the Revolution. The Germans were then the
+mercenaries of Europe, savages skilled in war, without mercy
+towards the towns unfortunate enough to be given to their
+pillage. There is no more horrible event in all history than that
+of the sack of Rome by the German mercenaries in the year 1527.
+Under General George von Frundsberg, who joined forces with the
+recreant constable Bourbon of France and the Spaniards, these
+lawless Germans invaded the fertile plains of Italy and took Rome
+by assault.
+
+The most awful outrages were perpetrated. Prelates were tortured
+after being paraded through the streets of the Eternal City,
+dressed in their sacred pontificals and mounted on donkeys.
+Altars were defiled, sacred images broken, vestments and services
+and works of art taken from the plundered churches and sacred
+relics insulted, broken and scattered. For nine months the orgy
+continued, the inhabitants being tortured by these German
+soldiers in their effort to find hidden treasure. In fact
+conditions in Belgium to-day had their counterpart centuries ago
+in the treatment of Roman Catholic Priests and the people of
+Rome.
+
+The great change in the feeling of the country towards Prussia
+since the latter's conquest of the rest of Germany in 1866, is
+still exemplified by one quotation from Goethe. He said, "The
+Prussian was born a brute and civilisation will make him
+ferocious." We all have seen how prophetic was this sentence.
+Skilled in chemistry, in science, well educated, made rich by
+manufacturing and foreign commerce, the Prussians of to-day have
+shown themselves far more bloody, far more cruel than the German
+lansquenet of the middle ages who sold himself, his two handed
+sword, his military experience and his long lance to the highest
+bidder.
+
+Tacitus tells of how the ancient Germans when drawn up in battle
+array used to sing a sort of war song to terrify their enemies.
+
+It was Goethe incidentally who remarked "Amerika, du hast es
+besser." (America, you are better off.) The poet who died in 1832
+foresaw, indeed, the coming power of the free democracy across
+the seas.
+
+It was interesting to note the psychological development of the
+Germans during the war. For the very short time while war hung in
+the balance there was a period almost of rejoicing, among the
+singing crowds in the streets--a universal release of tension
+after forty years' preparation for war.
+
+Next came the busy period of mobilisation and then, as the German
+armies swept through Belgium and France, stronghold and fortress
+falling before them, there came a period of intense exaltation, a
+period when the most reasonable Germans, the light of success and
+conquest in their eyes, declared German Kultur would now be
+imposed on the whole world.
+
+The battle of the Marne ended this period of rejoicing and,
+through the winter of 1914-1915, when it became apparent that
+Germany would not win by a sudden assault, the temper of the
+people began to change to an attitude of depression.
+
+It has been at all times the policy of the German autocracy to
+keep the people of Germany from amusing themselves. I know of no
+class in Germany which really enjoys life. The Counts and Junkers
+have their country estates. Life on these estates, which are
+administered solely for profit, is not like country life in
+England or America. The houses are plain and, for the most part,
+without the conveniences of bath rooms and heating to which we
+are accustomed in America. Very few automobiles are owned in
+Germany. There are practically no small country houses or
+bungalows, although at a few of the sea places rich Jews have
+villas.
+
+The wealthy merchant takes his vacation in summer at Carlsbad or
+Kissingen or in some other resort where his physical constitution,
+disorganised by over-eating and over-drinking, can be regulated
+somewhat. Many Germans take their families to Switzerland where
+the German of all ages with knapsack and Alpine stick is a
+familiar sight.
+
+Earnestness is the watchword. For should the people once get a
+taste of pleasure they might decide that the earth offered fairer
+possibilities than life in the barracks or the admiring
+contemplation of fat and complacent grand dukes and princes.
+
+Much of this sycophancy is due to the poverty of the educated
+classes. Salaries paid to officials are ridiculously small. The
+German workingmen both in wages and living are on a lower scale
+than those of other western nations with the possible exception
+of Russia, Italy and the Balkan States. The professional and
+business classes earn very little. The reason for the superiority
+of the German in the chemical industry is because a chemist, a
+graduate of the university, can be hired for less than the salary
+of an American chauffeur.
+
+And this earnestness of life was insisted upon even to a greater
+degree by the autocracy with the opening of war. The playing of
+dance music brought a visit from the police. The theatres at
+first were closed but later opened. Only plays of a serious or
+patriotic nature were originally permitted. Dancing was tabooed,
+but in the winter of 1915-16 Reinhardt was allowed to produce a
+ballet of a severely classical nature and at the opera performances
+the ponderous ballet girls were permitted to cavort as usual.
+
+I saw no signs of any great religious revival, no greater
+attendance at the churches. Perhaps this was because I was in the
+Protestant part of Germany where the church is under the direct
+control of the government and where the people feel that in
+attending church they are only attending an extra drill, a drill
+where they will be told of the glories of the autocracy and the
+necessity of obedience. In fact, religion may be said to have
+failed in Germany and many state-paid preachers launched sermons
+of hate from their state-owned pulpits.
+
+Always fond of the drama and opera I was a constant attendant at
+theatres in Berlin. The best known manager in Berlin is
+Reinhardt, who has under his control the Deutsches Theatre with
+its annex, the Kammerspiel and also the People's Theatre on the
+B�low Platz. I made the acquaintance of Mr. Reinhardt and his
+charming wife who takes part in many of his productions. I dined
+with them in their picturesque house on the Kupfer Graben. In the
+Deutsches Theatre the great revolving stage makes change of scene
+easy so that Reinhardt is enabled to present Shakespeare, a great
+favourite in Germany, in a most picturesque manner. He manages to
+lend even to the most solemn tragedy little touches that add
+greatly to the interest and keep the attention fixed.
+
+For instance in his production of "Macbeth," when Lady Macbeth
+comes in, in the sleep-walking scene, rubbing her hands and
+saying, "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" the actress
+taking this part in Berlin gave a very distinct and loud snore
+between every three or four words: thus most effectively
+reminding the audience that she was asleep.
+
+As the war continued the taste of the Germans turned to sombre,
+tragical and almost sinister plays. Only a death on the stage
+seemed to bring a ray of animation to the stolid bovine faces of
+the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season
+was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, whose "Spring's Awakening,"
+given in New York in the spring of 1917, horrified and disgusted
+the most hardened Broadway theatregoers. The principal female
+r�le was played by a Servian actress, Maria Orska--very much on
+the type of Nazimova. In this play, presented to crowded
+audiences, only one of the four acts was without a death.
+
+Another favourite during war-time, played at Reinhardt's
+theatre, was "Maria Magdalena." The characters were the father,
+mother, son and daughter of a German family in a small town and
+two young men in love with the daughter. In the first act the
+police arrest the son for theft, giving the mother such a shock
+that she dies of apoplexy on the stage. In the second act, the
+two lovers have a duel and one is killed. In the third act, the
+surviving lover commits suicide, and, in the fourth act, the
+daughter jumps down the well. The curtain descends leaving only
+the old man and the cat alive and the impression is given that if
+the curtain were ten seconds later either the cat would get the
+old man or the old man would get the cat!
+
+The mysterious play of Peer Gynt was given in two theatres during
+each winter of the war. All of Ibsen's dramas played to crowded
+houses. Reinhardt, during the last winter I was in Berlin,
+produced Strindberg's "Ghost Sonata," in quite a wonderful way.
+The play was horrible and grewsome enough, but as produced by
+him, it gave a strong man nightmare for days afterwards.
+
+The German soul, indeed, seems to turn not towards light and gay
+and graceful things, but towards bloodshed and grewsomeness,
+ghosts and mystery--effect doubtless of the long, dark, bitter
+nights and gray days that overshadow these northern lands.
+
+I think the only time I lost my temper in Germany was when a
+seemingly reasonable and polite gentleman from the Foreign Office
+sitting by my desk one day, in 1916, remarked how splendid it
+was that Germany had nearly two million prisoners of war and that
+these would go back to their homes imbued with an intense
+admiration of German Kultur.
+
+I said that I believed that the two million prisoners of war who
+had been insulted and underfed and beaten and forced to work as
+slaves in factories and mines and on farms would go back to their
+homes with such a hatred of all things German that it would not
+be safe for Germans to travel in countries from which these
+prisoners came, that other nations had their own Kultur with
+which they were perfectly satisfied and which they did not wish
+to change for any made-in-Germany brand!
+
+Certain Germans have prated much of German "Kultur," have boasted
+of imposing this "Kultur" on the world by force of arms. What is
+this German "Kultur"? A certain efficiency of government obtained
+by keeping the majority of the people out of all voice in
+governmental affairs, a certain low cost of manufactured products
+or of carrying charges in the shipping trades made possible by
+enslaving the workmen who toil long hours for small wages--a
+certain superiority in chemical production because trained
+chemists, willing to work at one semi-mechanical task, can be
+hired for less than a Fifth Avenue butler is paid in America, and
+a certain pre-eminence in military affairs reached by subjecting
+the mass of the people to the brutal, boorish, non-commissioned
+officers and the galling yoke of a militaristic system.
+
+Subtract the German Jews and in the lines of real culture there
+would be little of the real thing left in Germany. Gutmann,
+Bleichroeder, von Swabach, Friedlander-Fuld, Rathenau, Simon,
+Warburg in finance; Borchardt and others in surgery, and almost
+the whole medical profession; the Meyers, the Ehrlichs,
+Bamberger, Hugo Schiff, Newburger, Bertheim, Paul Jacobson, in
+chemistry and research; Mendelssohn, and others, in music;
+Harden, Theodor Wolf, Georg Bernhard and Professor Stein in
+journalism.
+
+But why continue--about the only men not Jews prominent in the
+intellectual, artistic, financial, or commercial life of Germany
+are the pastors of the Lutheran Churches. And the Jews have won
+their way to the front in almost a generation. Still refused
+commissions in the standing army (except for about 114 since the
+war), still compelled to renounce their religion before being
+eligible for nobility or a court function, still practically
+excluded from university professorships, considered socially
+inferior, the Jews of Germany until a few years ago lived under
+disabilities that had survived from the Middle Ages. They were
+not allowed to bear Christian names. The marriages of Jews and
+Christians were forbidden. Jews could not own houses and lands.
+They were not permitted to engage in agriculture and could not
+become members of the guilds or unions of handicraftsmen. When a
+Jew travelled he was compelled to pay a tax in each province
+through which he passed. Jews attending the fair at Frankfort on
+the Oder were compelled to pay a head tax, and were admitted to
+Leipzig and Dresden on condition that they might be expelled at
+any time. Berlin Jews were compelled to buy annually a certain
+quantity of porcelain, derisively called "Jew's porcelain" from
+the Royal manufactory and to sell it abroad. When a Jew married
+he had to get permission and an annual impost was paid on each
+member of the family, while only one son could remain at home,
+and the others were forced to seek their fortune abroad. The Jews
+could worship in their own way, in some states, provided they
+used only two small rooms and made no noise.
+
+The reproach that the Jew is not a producer, but is a mere
+middleman, taking a profit as goods pass from hand to hand, is
+handed down from the time when Jews were forbidden by law to
+become producers and, therefore, were compelled to become traders
+and middlemen, barred from the guilds and from engaging in the
+cultivation of the soil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The German newspaper in size is much smaller than ours. If you
+take an ordinary American newspaper and fold it in half, the fold
+appearing horizontally across the middle of the page and then
+turn it so that the longer sides are upright, you get an idea of
+the size. There are no editorials in German newspapers, but
+articles, usually only one a day, on some political or scientific
+subject, one contributed by a professor or some one else
+supposedly not connected with the newspaper.
+
+The editor of the German newspaper in his desire to poison and
+colour the news to suit his own views does not rely upon an
+editorial, but inserts little paragraphs and sentences in the
+news columns. For instance, a note of President Wilson's might be
+printed and after a paragraph of that, a statement something like
+this will be inserted in parentheses. "This statement comes well
+from the old hyprocrite whose country has been supplying arms and
+ammunition to the enemies of Germany. The Editor." A few sentences
+more or a paragraph of the note and another interlineation of this
+kind. Small newspapers have a news service furnished free by the
+government, thus enabling the latter to colour the news to suit
+itself. It is characteristic of Germany and shows how void of
+amusement the life of an average citizen is and how the country
+is divided into castes, that there is no so-called society or
+personal news in the columns of the daily newspaper.
+
+You never see in a German newspaper accounts common even to our
+small town newspapers, of how Mrs. Snooks gave a tea or how Mrs.
+Jones, of Toledo, is visiting Mrs. Judge Bascom for Thanksgiving.
+If a prince or duke comes to a German town a simple statement is
+printed that he is staying at such and such a hotel.
+
+German newspapers, as a rule, are very pronounced in their views,
+either distinctly Conservative or Liberal or Socialist or Roman
+Catholic. The _Berliner Tageblatt_ is nearest our idea of a great
+independent, metropolitan, daily newspaper. Other newspapers
+represent a class and many of them are owned by particular
+interests such as the Krupps and other manufacturers or munition
+makers.
+
+There is little that is sensational in the German newspaper. I
+remember on one occasion that two women murderers were beheaded
+in accordance with German law. Imagine how such an occurrence
+would have been "played up" in the American newspapers, with
+pictures, perhaps, of the executioner and his sword, with
+articles from poets and women's organisations, with appeals for
+pardon and talk of brainstorms and the other hysterical
+concomitants of murder trials in the United States. But in the
+German newspapers a little paragraph, not exceeding ten lines,
+simply related the fact that these two women, condemned for
+murdering such and such a person, had been executed in the
+strangely medieval manner--their heads cut off on the scaffold by
+a public executioner.
+
+The German newspapers in reporting police court and other
+judicial proceedings often omit names and it is possible in
+Berlin for a man to prosecute a blackmailer without having his
+own name in print.
+
+When a German victory was announced flags were displayed, but as
+the war progressed so many victories announced turned out to be
+nothing wonderful or decisive that little attention was paid to
+the vain-glorious flaunting of German triumphs. Following an old
+custom ten or fifteen trumpeters climbed the tower of Rathhaus or
+City Hall and there quite characteristically blew to the four
+quarters of Heaven; but again as these official and brazen
+blowings were not always followed by the confirmation in fact,
+trumpetings were gradually discontinued.
+
+The Germans cleverly kept back the announcement of certain
+successes in order to offset reverses. For instance, on a day
+when it was necessary to tell the people of a German retreat the
+newspapers would have great headlines across the front of the
+first page announcing the sinking of a British cruiser (sunk,
+perhaps, a month before) and then hidden in a corner would be a
+minimised announcement of a German defeat.
+
+To us in Germany there was at the time no battle of the Marne. So
+gradually was the news of the retreat of the German forces broken
+to the people that to-day the masses do not realise that the fate
+of the world was settled at the Marne!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE LITTLE KAISERS
+
+
+As the king idea seems inseparably connected with war there is no
+country in the world where kings and princes have been held in
+such great account as in the Central Empires.
+
+I believe there are only two Christian kings in the world--the
+kings of Italy and of Montenegro--who are not by blood related to
+some German or Austrian royalty.
+
+For remember that while we think of Germany as ruled by the
+Kaiser and while it is his will that is certainly imposed upon
+the whole of that territory which does not exist politically or
+even geographically but which we call Germany, there are houses
+of royalty in it almost as numerous as our big corporations.
+There are the three kings of Bavaria, W�rtemburg and Saxony,
+grand dukes and dukes, and princes, all of them taking themselves
+very seriously and all of them residing in their own domains;
+jealously keeping away from the Emperor's court and jealously
+guarding every remnant of rule which the constitution of the
+German Empire has bequeathed to them.
+
+Once I asked one of these princelings what his older brother, the
+reigning prince, did with his time in the small provincial town
+which is the capital of the principality. The brother looked at
+me with real surprise in his eyes and answered, "Why he reigns!"
+
+Before the constitution of the German Empire, many of these
+poverty-stricken little courts were centres of kindly amusement,
+even of intellectual life.
+
+The court of the Grand Duke Charles-Augustus, of
+Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach at Weimar where Goethe resided and where he
+was entrusted with responsible state duties, was renowned in
+Europe as a literary centre.
+
+Many of these princelings, however ridiculous their courts may
+have seemed, exercised despotic power. To-day the inhabitants of
+the two Mecklenburg duchies are protected by neither constitution
+nor bill of rights. The grand duke's power is absolute and he can
+behead at will any one of his subjects in the market-place or
+torture him to death in the dungeons of the castle and is
+responsible to God alone.
+
+Here is an example from history. George Louis, Duke of
+Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle, married his mistress, a Huguenot girl
+called Eleanore d'Olbreuze. They had one daughter, Sophia
+Dorothea, who married the Elector of Hanover, who was also George
+I of England. Sophia Dorothea was supposed to have been involved
+in a love affair with a Swedish Count, Philip Konigsmarck.
+Konigsmarck was murdered by order of George I, and Sophia
+Dorothea incarcerated in Ahlden where she died in 1726.
+Konigsmarck's sister went to Saxony to beg the aid of the Saxon
+King, Augustus the Strong. She failed to get news of her brother,
+but became one of the mistresses of Augustus the Strong and the
+mother of the celebrated Marshal Saxe. I say one of the
+"mistresses" of Augustus the Strong because he boasted that he
+was the father of 365 illegitimate children!
+
+The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was the mother of Frederick the
+Great and his brothers, and therefore, an ancestor of the present
+German Kaiser. Any one writing about her in a disparaging manner
+is subject to be imprisoned, under the decisions of the Imperial
+Supreme Court, for "l�se-majest�" or injuring the person of the
+present monarch in daring to slander his ancestors. And, I
+suppose, any one referring to Augustus the Strong may be shut up
+in Dresden for insulting a predecessor of the present King.
+
+Every year the nobles of the Central Empires hold a convention at
+Frankfort, where the means are discussed by which their
+privileges may be preserved. No newspaper prints an account of
+this Convention of the highest Caste.
+
+The German peasants, as far as I have seen, are not so much under
+the dominion of feudal tradition as are the peasants in Austria
+and Hungary.
+
+I was shooting once with a Hungarian Count who stationed me in
+one corner of a field to await the partridges, which driven by
+the beaters were expected to fly over my head and as I stood
+waiting for the beaters to take up their positions two peasant
+girls walked past me. One of them, to my surprise, caught hold of
+my hand, which she kissed with true feudal devotion. As a guest
+of the Count I was presumably of the noble class and therefore
+entitled by custom and right to this mark of subjugation. And it
+became quite a task in walking through the halls of the castle to
+dodge the servants, all of whom seemed anxious to imprint on me
+the kiss of homage.
+
+Thackeray in the "Fitzboodle Confessions" gives a most amusing
+account of life in one of these small, sleepy, German courts and
+relates how he left Pumpernickel hurriedly, by night, after the
+court ball where he had discovered not only that his German
+fianc�e had eaten too much, but that she had a taste for bad
+oysters.
+
+All of these small kings and princes are jealous of the King of
+Prussia and of his position of German Emperor and show their
+jealousy by avoiding Berlin.
+
+In October, 1913, when in London on my way to Germany, I met the
+young Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz in the Ritz Hotel where
+he was dining with an English earl and his beautiful wife. As I
+happened to have a box for the Gaiety Theatre, we all went there
+together and paid a visit to George Grossmith behind the scenes
+and talked with Emmy Wehlen, the Austrian actress, who was
+appearing in the comic opera then running. But in all the time
+that I was in Germany I never once saw or heard of the young
+Grand Duke who rules the subjects of his duchy with autocratic
+rule without even the semblance of a constitution.
+
+Formerly our minister used to be accredited to some of these
+courts and, on inquiring informally through a friend, I learned
+that the American Minister is still accredited to Bavaria on the
+records of the Bavarian Foreign Office, no letters of recall ever
+having been presented. The fact that the American Ambassador is
+accredited to none of these courts is a distinct disadvantage
+because without letters of credence he does not come into contact
+with any of the twenty-four rulers of Germany who control the
+Bundesrat in which their representatives sit, voting as they are
+told by the kings, grand dukes and princes. A number of these
+kings and princelings, combining in the Bundesrat, can outvote
+the powerful king of Prussia. But they don't dare!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ROYALTY'S RECREATION
+
+
+I had a shooting estate about twenty miles from Berlin, one that
+I could reach by automobile in forty-five minutes from the door
+of the Embassy. Because of the strict German game laws I had
+better shooting there than within two hundred miles of large
+cities in America.
+
+There seemed to be something to shoot there almost every day of
+the year. On the sixteenth of May the season opened for male
+roe--a very small deer. About the first of August the ducks,
+which breed in northern Germany, can be shot. These were mallards
+and there were about two thousand or more on a lake on my
+preserve. We usually shot them by digging blinds in the oat
+fields, shooting them after sunset as they flew from the lake to
+feed in the newly harvested grain. The season for Hungarian
+partridge opened on August 20th. These were shot over dogs in the
+stubble and in the potato fields. After a few weeks partridges
+became very wild and we then shot them with a kite. When we had
+put up a covey out of range and marked where they went down in a
+potato patch or field, perhaps of lucern or clover, a small boy
+would fly a kite made in the form of a hawk over the field. This
+kept the partridges from flying and they would lie while the dogs
+pointed until we put them up.
+
+By October 1st pheasants could be shot; English pheasants become
+wild. These roosted in the trees at night and so escaped the
+plentiful foxes. Later on came shooting at long ranges, after
+they had collected in bands, of the female roedeer and also the
+hare shooting. Rabbits were shot at all times, and in November
+and December and January on foggy days it was not difficult to
+get a wild goose.
+
+The hares were shot in cold weather, after the snow was on the
+ground, by walking in line of ten or fifteen beaters with two or
+three guns at intervals along the line and later, when the hares
+were very wild and the weather very cold, by what is called by
+the Germans "kessel-jagd" or kettle-hunt. For this hunt the head
+keeper would collect a number of beaters, as many as a hundred,
+from the neighboring towns and villages, mostly small boys and
+old men. On the great, flat plain the keeper would send out his
+beaters to the right and the left, walking in a straight line at
+about twenty-yard intervals. After each side had gone perhaps
+half a mile they would then turn at right angles, walk a mile,
+and then turn at right angles until the two lines met, so that
+perhaps a square mile of territory would be enclosed by the
+beaters with the ten to fifteen men with guns at intervals in the
+line. When the square had been formed the head keeper blew a
+blast on his bugle and all turned and walked slowly towards the
+centre and the hares were shot as they attempted to break through
+the line.
+
+On one day just before I left Germany, I and members of the
+Embassy shot more than two hundred hares on one of these hunts.
+The German hare is an enormous animal with dark meat, almost
+impossible to distinguish from venison.
+
+After these hare drives, besides, of course, paying the beaters
+their regular wages, I used to hold a lottery, giving a number of
+these hares as prizes or distributing hares to the magnates of
+the village, such as the pastor, the school teacher, the
+policeman and the postmaster.
+
+When we were shooting in the summer and autumn the peasants were
+working in the fields and one had to be very careful in shooting
+roebuck with a high-powered rifle. It is customary to hunt
+roebuck on these flat plains from a carriage. In this way a
+bullet, travelling at a downward angle, if the buck is missed,
+strikes the ground within a short distance. If one were to shoot
+lying down, kneeling or standing, the danger to peasants in the
+fields would be very great. The pheasants were sometimes shot
+over dogs, but usually as the beaters drove small woods. A
+pheasant driven and flying high makes a difficult mark. One
+getting up before the dogs is almost too easy a shot.
+
+We shot the rabbits by using ferrets, little animals like weasels
+wearing little muzzles and bells upon their necks. In the woods
+where the rabbits had their holes four or five ferrets would be
+put in the rabbits' holes and it was quite difficult to shoot
+rabbits as they came out like lightning, dodging among the trees.
+In the early spring the "birkhahns" were shot, a variety of black
+and white grouse. There were some blinds or little huts of twigs
+erected near places where the ground was beaten hard and on these
+open, beaten spots early in the morning the "birkhahns" waltz,
+doing a peculiar backward and forward dance in some way connected
+with their marriage ceremonies. There were also on this estate
+numbers, at times, of a curious bird found only in Spain,
+Roumania, Asia Minor, and these plains of the Mark of Brandenburg,
+a large bustard called by the Germans "trappe." These birds were
+very shy and hard to approach. Although I had several shots at
+them with a rifle at four or five hundred yards I did not succeed
+in getting one.
+
+In talking with the Chancellor he almost always opened the
+conversation by asking if I had yet killed a "trappe." As a rule
+the German uses for shooting deer and roebuck a German Mauser
+military rifle, but with the barrel cut down and a sporting stock
+with pistol grip added. On this there is a powerful telescope.
+Many Germans carry a "ziel-stock," a long walking stick from the
+bottom of which a tripod can be protruded and near the top a sort
+of handle piece of metal about as big as a little finger. When
+the German sportsman has sighted a roebuck he plants his aiming
+stick in the ground, rests the rifle on the side projection,
+carefully adjusts his telescope, sets the hair trigger on his
+rifle and finally touches the trigger.
+
+At the commencement of the war the Duke of Ratibor collected all
+these sporting rifles with telescopes and sent them to the front.
+These were of the same calibre as the military rifles and took
+the military cartridge, so they proved enormously useful for
+sniping purposes.
+
+Going one day to a proof establishment to try a gun I opened by
+mistake a door which led to a great room where thousands of
+German military rifles were being fitted with telescopes. These
+telescopes have crossed wires, like those in a surveyor's
+instrument, and it is only necessary in aiming to fix the centre
+of the crossed wires on the game and pull the trigger. A clever
+arrangement enables the wires to be elevated for distant
+shooting.
+
+So great is the discipline of the German people that game on
+these estates is seldom, if ever, touched by the peasants. There
+is no free shooting in Germany. The shooting rights of every inch
+of land are in possession of some one and the tens of thousands
+of game keepers constantly killing the crows, hawks, foxes and
+other birds and animals that destroy eggs and game make the game
+plentiful. The keeper has the right by law to shoot any stray dog
+or cat found a hundred yards from a village. I paid the head
+keeper a certain sum per month and in addition he received a
+premium called "shot money" for each bird or roebuck shot. He
+also received a premium for each fox or crow or hawk he
+destroyed, bringing, on the first of the month, the beaks and
+claws of the hawks, etc., to prove his claim. Foxes are very
+plentiful in Germany and in one winter on this estate, only
+twenty miles from Berlin, the keeper trapped or killed twelve
+foxes.
+
+[Illustration: EXAMPLE OF THE COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OFFERED FOR
+SALE. ON THE OBVERSE IS THE PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE. ON THE
+REVERSE IS "YOUNG SIEGFRIED" ATTACKING A CHIMERA-LIKE MONSTER
+WITH FOUR HEADS: A BEAR FOR RUSSIA, A UNICORN FOR ENGLAND, A LION
+FOR BELGIUM, AND A COCK FOR FRANCE]
+
+The Emperor is very fond of fox shooting. Foxes are driven out of
+the forest past his shooting stand by beaters and one of the
+reasons why Prince F�rstenberg was such a favourite of the
+Emperor was that he provided him with splendid fox shooting,
+although it is whispered that he bought foxes in boxes in all
+parts of Germany and had them turned loose for the Emperor's
+benefit.
+
+In the more thickly forested portions of Germany deer as well as
+roedeer are shot and in many districts wild boar. In Poland and
+in a few estates in Germany on the eastern border, moose, called
+elk (elch in German), are to be had. These, however, have very
+poor horns.
+
+Talking to the keepers and beaters on this shooting estate gave
+me a very good idea of the hardships suffered in rural Germany,
+of the way in which the people in the farming districts are kept
+down by the lords of the manor and by the government, and it was
+from this village and the neighbouring town that I got some idea
+of the number of men called to arms in Germany.
+
+By a custom dating from the devastating wars of the Middle Ages
+there are practically no farms in Germany, but inhabitants of the
+agricultural districts are collected in villages and the few
+farms have, characteristically, a military name. They are called
+"vorwerk" or outposts. In the village on my estate there are
+almost exactly six hundred inhabitants, men, women and children,
+and of these at the time I left Germany one hundred and ten had
+been called to the Colours. In the neighbouring town of
+Mittenwalde, of almost three thousand inhabitants, over five
+hundred had joined the army. At the commencement of the war the
+population of the German Empire was about 72,000,000, or
+something over, and applying these same proportions it will be
+seen what a vast army was created.
+
+In the industrial districts where men are required for munition
+work perhaps not as great a proportion has been called. The name
+of the village on my estate was Gross Machnow, the road from
+Berlin to Dresden ran through it and only a few miles east was
+the shooting place of Wusterhausen where the favourite shooting
+box of the father of Frederick the Great was and where he was
+accustomed to hold his so-called tobacco parliament, when, with
+his cronies, over beer and long pipes, the affairs of the nation
+were discussed with great freedom.
+
+The horse races in Germany are excellent. There are several
+tracks about Berlin. The Hoppegarten, devoted almost exclusively
+to flat racing; the Grunewald, the large popular track nearest to
+Berlin where both steeplechases and other races are held; and
+Karlshorst, devoted exclusively to steeplechasing and hurdle
+racing.
+
+The jockey club of Berlin is the Union Club, which owns the
+Hoppegarten track. Its officers are men of the highest honour and
+in no country in the world are the races run more honestly, more
+"on the level," than in Germany.
+
+Nothing makes for mutual international understanding more than
+sport. Even during the most bitter crises between Germany and
+America I felt that I could go absolutely alone to the crowded
+race tracks and, while I know the Germans differed emphatically
+with the American views of the war, the gentlemen in charge of
+the races and the members of the Union Club treated me with the
+kindest consideration and the most graceful courtesy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am sorry that I never attended any of the Court hunts which
+took place in the vicinity of Potsdam. A pack of hounds is kept
+there and boars hunted. The etiquette is very strict and no one,
+not presented at court, can appear at these hunts. As I did not
+have an opportunity to present my letters of credence until a
+month or more after my arrival in Berlin in the autumn of 1913,
+the winter rains had set in before I was eligible for the hunts
+and in addition I had not taken the precaution to order the
+necessary costumes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first time that a man appears at one of these hunts he must
+wear a tall silk hat, a double-breasted red coat, with tails like
+a dress coat, white breeches and top boots. After he has once
+made his appearance in this costume he may, thereafter,
+substitute for it a red frock hunting coat, white breeches and
+top boots and a velvet hunting cap, the same shape as the caps
+worn by the jockies. There are no jumps on these hunts. When the
+boar has been brought to bay by the dogs, the right to despatch
+him with a long hunting knife is reserved for the most distinguished
+man present. If a royalty is present at one of these hunts he
+distributes small sprigs of oak leaves to every one at the hunt,
+cherished ever after as valued souvenirs.
+
+When I first arrived at Berlin, having brought horses with me
+from America, I used to ride every morning in the Tiergarten.
+Because so many Germans are in the army, riding is a very
+favourite sport and in peace times the Tiergarten is crowded with
+Berliners. Most of the riding was done between seven and ten in
+the morning. The early rising is compensated for, however, by the
+siesta after lunch, a universal custom.
+
+Shooting is almost more of a ceremony than a sport. The letters
+exchanged between Emperor William and Czar Nicholas, lately
+discovered in the Winter Palace, show what a large part shooting
+played in their correspondence. One or the other is continually
+wishing the other "Weidmanns-Heil," which is the German
+expression for "good luck" as applied to shooting. All royalties
+must ride and keep in practice, especially because of military
+service. Indeed, all the sports of the Kaiser and his people
+converge toward a common object--military efficiency and war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE ETERNAL FEMININE
+
+
+Even the women, many of whom are honorary colonels to regiments,
+must keep in trim for the great parade days of autumn and spring.
+Many of these female colonels appear in uniform, riding at the
+head of their regiments. They sit on side saddles, however, and
+wear skirts corresponding somewhat in colour with the uniform
+coat and helmet of the regiment of which they are the honorary
+proprietors.
+
+German female royalties are rather inclined to set an example of
+quietness in dress. They seldom wear the latest fashion and never
+follow the exaggerated modes of Paris. Even their figures are of
+the old-fashioned variety--pinched at the waist. While in the
+Tiergarten in the morning I saw many good horses, but only one
+fashionably cut riding habit. Many of the others must have been
+at least twenty years old, as the sleeves were of the Leg of
+Mutton style, fashionable, I believe, about that number of years
+ago.
+
+Many German noblewomen shoot and are quite as good shots as their
+husbands. I was quite surprised once on a shooting party to meet
+an elderly princess whose grey hair was in short curls and who
+wore a coat and waistcoat like a man's. She shot with great skill
+and smoked long Havana cigars!
+
+When German women get out of the country they very quickly
+imitate foreign fashions and extravagances of dress. The Czarina
+of Russia, for example, a German Princess, is very fond of
+fashions, and a friend of mine who had three audiences with her
+during the war tells me that on the occasion of his first
+audience she was dressed in black and received him in a room
+where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was
+in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her
+dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white.
+
+There is one good thing about the king and aristocratic system.
+The position of women in the social scale is fixed by the
+husband's rank. There is, therefore, none of that striving, that
+vying with each other, which so often exhausts the nerves of the
+American woman and the purse of the husband. The German women
+give their time and attention to the "Four K's" that, in a
+German's eyes, should bound a woman's world, "Kaiser, Kinder,
+Kirche, Kuche" (Emperor, children, church and kitchen).
+
+The successful business man of New York or Chicago or San
+Francisco is surprised to find how docile and domestic the German
+woman is--no foolish extravagance, but a real devotion to husband
+and home, a real mother to her many children. She matches that
+short epitaph of the Roman matron--"She spun wool; she kept the
+house."
+
+When I came to Germany I found, on studying the language, that
+there was no word in German corresponding to "efficient." I soon
+learned that this is because everything done in Germany is done
+efficiently, and there is no need to differentiate one act from
+another in terms of efficiency. But the German man could not be
+as efficient as he undoubtedly is, without the whole-hearted
+devotion of the German woman.
+
+German girls are given a good, strong, sound education. They
+learn languages, not smatterings of them. They are accomplished
+musicians. Domestic science they learn from their mothers. They
+are splendid swimmers, hockey players, riders and skaters.
+
+During our first winter in Berlin we spent many afternoons at the
+Ice Palace in the Lutherstrasse, an indoor ice rink much larger
+than the one in the Freidrichstrasse, the Admirals Palast, where
+the ice ballets are given and the graceful Charlotte used to
+appear. The skating club of the Lutherstrasse was under the
+patronage of the Crown Prince and was one of the very few meeting
+places of Berlin society. The women were taught to waltz by male
+instructors and the men by several young women--blonde skaters
+from East Prussia. I tried to improve my skating and spent many
+hours making painful "Bogens" or circles under the efficient eyes
+of a little East Prussia instructress. Afternoon tea was served
+during the interval of skating and one afternoon a week was
+specially reserved for the Club members.
+
+One of my young secretaries used to go occasionally to Wannsee,
+near Berlin, to play hockey with a German friend; as the young
+men were nearly all in the war, girls made up the majority of
+each team. My secretary reported that those German girls were as
+strong, as enduring and as skilful as the average young man.
+
+Girls of the working classes, instead of flirting or turkey
+trotting at night, make a practice of going to the Turnvereins,
+to exercise in the gymnasiums there. If the members of the German
+lower classes only had the opportunity to rise in life what would
+they not accomplish! So many of them are very ambitious,
+persistent, earnest and thrifty.
+
+Of course, female suffrage in Germany or anything approaching it
+is very distant. First of all, the men must win a real ballot for
+themselves in Prussia, a real representation in the Reichstag. In
+the Germany of to-day, a woman with feminist aspirations is
+looked on as the men of the official class look on a Social
+Democrat, something hardly to be endured. And this is in spite of
+the fact that the nations to the North, in Scandinavia, freed
+women even before America did.
+
+The most beautiful woman in Berlin society is Countess
+Oppersdorff--the mother of thirteen children. She is not German,
+but was born a Polish Princess Radziwill.
+
+The chief lady of the Imperial Court is Countess Brockdorff. She
+is rather stern in appearance and manner, and rumour has it that
+she was appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress
+to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the
+Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away
+from the traditional rigidity of the Prussian royal house.
+
+Countess Brockdorff is a most able woman. I grew to have not only
+a great respect, but almost an affection for her. At court
+functions she usually wears a mantilla as a distinguished mark
+and several orders and decorations. We had three women friends
+from America with us in Berlin whom we presented at Court. All
+were married, but only the husband of one of them could leave his
+work and visit Germany. The two other husbands, in accordance
+with the good American custom, were at work in America. Countess
+Brockdorff spoke to the lady whose husband was with her, saying
+to her, "I am glad to see that your husband is with you," an
+implied rebuke to the other ladies and an exhibition of that
+failure to understand other nations so characteristic of highly
+placed Germans. With us, of course, a good-natured American
+husband, wedded as much to his business as to his wife, permits
+his wife to travel abroad without him and neither he nor she is
+reproved in America because of this.
+
+Among the other ladies attendant on the Empress are Fr�ulein von
+Gersdorff, whose cousin is a lawyer practising in New York, and
+Countess Keller. There are other ladies and a number of maids of
+honour and all of them are overworked, acting as secretaries,
+answering letters and attending various charitable and other
+functions, either with the Empress or representing her. One of
+the charming maids of honour, Countess Bassewitz, was married
+during the war to Prince Oscar, the Kaiser's fifth son. This
+marriage was morganatic, that is, the lady does not take the
+name, rank and title of her husband. In this case another title
+was given her, that of Countess Ruppin, and her sons will be
+known as Counts Ruppin, but will not be Princes of Prussia.
+
+There is much misunderstanding in America as to these morganatic
+marriages. By the rules of many royal and princely houses, a
+member of the house cannot marry a woman not of equal rank and
+give her his name, titles and rank. But the marriage is in all
+other respects perfectly legal. The ceremony is performed in
+accordance with Prussian law, before a civil magistrate and also
+in a church, and should the husband attempt to marry again he
+would be guilty of bigamy.
+
+I gave away the bride at one of these morganatic marriages, when
+Prince Christian of Hesse married Miss Elizabeth Reid-Rogers, a
+daughter of Richard Reid Rogers, a lawyer of New York. Prince
+Christian has an extremely remote chance of ever coming to the
+throne of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, but nevertheless and because
+of the rules of the House of Hesse-Barchfeld, he cannot give his
+rank and title to a wife, not of equal birth. The head of the
+House, therefore, the Grand Duke of Hesse, conferred the title of
+Baroness Barchfeld in her own right on the bride, and her
+children will be known as Barons and Baronesses Barchfeld.
+
+When Prince Christian and his wife go out to dinner in Berlin, he
+is given his rank at the table as a member of a royal house, but
+his wife is treated on a parity with the wives of all officers
+holding commissions of equal grade with her husband in the army.
+As her husband is a Lieutenant, she ranks merely as a Lieutenant's
+wife. On the same day that Miss Rogers and Prince Christian were
+wedded, Miss Cecilia May of Baltimore married Lieutenant Vom
+Rath. I acted as one of Miss May's witnesses at the Standesamt,
+where the civil marriage was performed, while the religious
+marriage took place in our Embassy. Lieutenant Vom Rath is the
+son of one of the proprietors of the great dye works manufactories
+known as Lucius-Meister-Farbewerke at Hoehst, near Frankfurt a.�M.,
+where salvarsan and many other medicines used in America are
+manufactured, as well as dyestuffs and chemicals.
+
+In my earlier book I described presentations at the Royal
+Prussian Court in Berlin, especially the great court called the
+"Schleppencour," because of the long trains or Schleppe worn by
+the women. All the little kingdoms and principalities of the
+German Empire have somewhat the same ceremonies. In Dresden, the
+capital of Saxony, a peculiar custom is followed. The King and
+Queen sit at a table at one end of the room playing cards and the
+members of the court and distinguished strangers file into the
+room, pass by the card table in single file and drop deep
+courtesies and make bows to the seated royalties, who, as a
+rule, do not even take the trouble to glance at those engaged in
+this servile tribute to small royalty. I suppose that the excuse
+for this is that it is an old custom. But so is serfdom!
+
+There are in Germany many so-called mediatised families,
+so-called because at one time they possessed royal rank and
+rights over small bits of territory before Napoleon changed the
+map of Europe and wiped out so many small principalities.
+
+At the Congress of Vienna these families who lost their right of
+rule, in part compensation, were given the right to marry either
+royalties or commoners; so that the marriage of a Prince of
+Prussia with a daughter of one of these mediatised houses would
+not be morganatic. The girl would take the full rank of her
+husband and the children would inherit any rights, including the
+rights to the throne possessed by him.
+
+Thus the beautiful young Countess Platen, shortly before we left
+Berlin, was married to von Stumm, the very able Under Secretary
+of State for Foreign Affairs. While she became on her marriage
+Baroness von Stumm, nevertheless, if she had married the son of
+the Kaiser, she would have taken his rank and her children would
+have inherited all rights and titles possessed by their father.
+This is because the Platens, although bearing only the title of
+Counts, are a mediatised family.
+
+It is noteworthy that in Berlin women of that blonde type with
+regular features, which we believe is the German type, are very
+rare. This type is to be found perfected in Scandinavia,
+although a few specimens exist in Germany. Looking over a Berlin
+theatre I have often noticed the predominance of brown and black
+hair.
+
+There is always some one higher up to whom German women must
+curtsy. All women, whatever their husband's rank, must curtsy to
+a Royal Prince. Unmarried girls curtsy to married women and kiss
+their hands. Men, on meeting women, always kiss their hands.
+
+Berlin is certainly the gossip headquarters of the world. Some
+years ago the whole town was invaded by a mania for anonymous
+letter writing, and when the smoke had cleared away few were left
+with unriddled reputations.
+
+It is the fashion of the present court, however, to be very
+puritanical. No such little affairs are going on publicly, as
+have occurred in the annals of the Hohenzollern family. For even
+the old Emperor William, grandfather of the present Kaiser, had
+numerous love affairs. The tree is still pointed out near the
+Tiergarten where he met Princess Radziwill every day.
+
+And the Chancellor's palace was once the home of another royal
+"friend."
+
+The Foreign Office was at one time the home of the Italian
+dancer, La Barberini, the only woman who ever for a time enslaved
+Frederick the Great. I discussed affairs of state with von Jagow
+and Zimmermann in the very room where she gave her supper
+parties.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HOME LIFE AND "BRUTALITY" OF THE PEOPLE
+
+
+The apartments of Berlin are designed for outward show for which
+the Berliners have a weakness. They have great reception and
+dining-rooms called "representation rooms," but very little
+comfort or space in the sleeping quarters.
+
+It is impossible to think of dropping in suddenly on a Berliner
+for a meal. The dinners are always for as many people as the
+rooms will hold and are served by a caterer.
+
+Only two very distinguished guests may be invited. The host and
+hostess sit opposite each other at the sides of the table, with
+the guests tapering off in rank to right and left of them, the
+ends of the tables being filled up with aides and secretaries.
+When a great man is invited his aide or secretary must be asked
+also. These come usually without their wives.
+
+After dinner men and women leave the table together and smoke in
+the other rooms of the house, going from group to group. And,
+although perhaps ten kinds of wine are served during dinner, as
+soon as the guests leave the dining-room, servants make their
+appearance with trays of glasses of light and dark beer and
+continue to offer beer during the remainder of the evening.
+
+The Germans talk much of food and spend a greater part of their
+income on food than any other nation. They take much interest in
+table furnishings, china, etc., and invariably turn over the
+plates to see the marks on the under side.
+
+Whipped cream is an essential to many German dishes, and in the
+season a Berliner will commit any crime to obtain some plover's
+eggs.
+
+The weiss bier of Berlin, served in wide goblets, is rather going
+out of fashion. It often is drunk mixed with raspberry juice.
+
+The restaurants of Berlin are not gay, like those of Paris. There
+is, however, a rather rough night life created for foreign
+consumption. I did not take in any of these night restaurants and
+dancing cabarets, warned by the case of an Ambassador from ----
+who was reproved by von Jagow for visiting the "Palais de Danse."
+
+In peace time few automobiles are to be seen on the Berlin
+streets. There are many millionaires in the city, but the old
+habits of German thrift persist.
+
+The modern architecture of Germany is repulsive. The man who
+builds a new house seems to want to get something resembling as
+nearly as possible a family vault. Ihne, court architect and
+Imperial favourite, has produced, however, some beautiful
+buildings, notably the new library in Berlin.
+
+Munich pretends to be more of a centre of art and music than
+Berlin. Artists have their headquarters there, but the disciples
+of the awful "art nouveau" and kindred "arts" have produced many
+horrors in striving for new effects.
+
+The opera in Munich is better than in Berlin. One of the Bavarian
+Princes plays a fiddle in the orchestra in the Royal Opera House.
+
+The Berlin hospitals are better than ours, except for the caste
+system which prevails even there, and there are first, second and
+third class wards.
+
+The underground road is built at about the same depth as the New
+York subway. There are two classes, second and third; there are
+no guards on the trains, only the motorman in the first car. The
+passengers open the side doors themselves and these are shut
+either by passengers or station guards. Accidents are rare, all
+showing the innate discipline of the people. The charge is by
+distance. You buy a ticket for five or eight stations and give up
+the ticket as you go out of the station. If you have travelled
+farther than the distance called for by your ticket you must make
+the additional payment. This requires that each ticket be
+inspected separately when taken up.
+
+The tramways have different routes. These routes are shown by
+signs and by numbers displayed on the car. Women motormen in the
+war period caused many accidents.
+
+For those Germans who cannot afford to ride or shoot, walking is
+the principal recreation. There are a few golf courses in the
+German Empire, mostly patronised by foreigners and American
+dentists.
+
+Military training is always in view and the use of the knapsack
+on walking tours is universal, even school children carry their
+books to school in knapsacks and so become accustomed, at an
+early age, to carry this part of the soldier's burden.
+
+Occasionally, in summer, bands of girls or boys are to be seen on
+walking tours. In addition to the usual knapsack, they carry
+guitars or mandolins. These young people are known as "Wander
+vogel" (wandering birds), and sing as they walk. But they don't
+sing very loud. They might break some regulation.
+
+Outside of the large cities and even in the cities vacant lots
+are occupied by "arbour colonies" (lauben colonie)--tiny little
+houses of wood erected by city workingmen and surrounded by
+little gardens of vegetables and flowers. Here the city workman
+spends Sunday and often the twilight hours and the night in
+summer time. Of course, these are possible only in a country
+where the workingman is in a distinct social class and where he
+is compelled to be content with the amusements and occupations of
+that class alone.
+
+There is no baseball or substitute for it--the clerks get their
+diversion in a country excursion or at the free bath on the Wann
+or Muggel Lake.
+
+These "free baths," so-called, are stretches of sandy lake shore
+where the populace resort in hot weather, undressing with the
+indifference of animals on the beach, men and women all mixed
+together, the men wearing only little bathing trunks and the
+women scanty one-piece bathing suits. There is a bathing tent
+where two cents is charged for the privilege of undressing, but
+most prefer the open beach. Few swim or go in the water, but the
+majority lie about the beach, often sleeping in affectionate
+embrace, all without exciting any comment or ridicule.
+
+The boy scout movement was taken up enthusiastically in Germany
+with the cheerful support of the military caste, who look on the
+activity as a welcome adjunct to military training. The boys
+certainly are given a dose of real drill. On one occasion I saw a
+boy company at drill march straight into the Havel river, no
+command to halt having been given at the river bank!
+
+The workingmen of Germany are more brutal than those of England,
+France and America, but this is because of the low wages they
+receive, and because they feel the weight of the caste system.
+
+In a speech in December, 1917, I said that a revolution in
+Germany would come after the war and that a fellow Ambassador in
+Berlin had said to me that because of the great brutality of the
+workingmen in Germany this uprising would make the French
+Revolution look like a Methodist Sunday School picnic. A
+newspaper reported me as saying this on my own authority and
+added that I had said the Germans were the most "bestial" people
+on earth.
+
+I only want to be responsible for what I actually say. I did not
+call the Germans "bestial," although unfortunately it is a fact
+that many officers of the army and others have been guilty of a
+brutality which has helped turn the face of the world from the
+whole German people.
+
+Not all the Germans are brutal. I received many letters revealing
+evidence to the contrary.
+
+Here is the protest of a German soldier, an eye-witness of the
+slaughter of Russian soldiers in the Masurian lakes and swamps:
+
+     "It was frightful, heart-rending, as these masses
+     of human beings were driven to destruction. Above
+     the terrible thunder of the cannon could be heard
+     the heart-rending cries of the Russians: 'Oh,
+     Prussians! Oh, Prussians!' But there was no mercy.
+     Our Captain had ordered: 'The whole lot must die;
+     so rapid fire.'
+
+     "As I have heard, five men and one officer on our
+     side went mad from those heart-rending cries. But
+     most of my comrades and the officers joked as the
+     unarmed and helpless Russians shrieked for mercy
+     when they were being suffocated in the swamps and
+     shot down. The order was: 'Close up and at it
+     harder!'
+
+     "For days afterward those heart-rending yells
+     followed me, and I dare not think of them or I
+     shall go mad. There is no God, there is no
+     morality and no ethics any more. There are no
+     human beings any more, but only beasts. Down with
+     militarism!"
+
+This was the experience of a Prussian soldier. At present
+wounded; Berlin, October 22, 1914.
+
+     "If you are a truth-loving man, please receive
+     these lines, from a common Prussian soldier."
+
+Here is the testimony of another German soldier on the East
+front:
+
+     "Russian Poland, Dec. 18, 1914.
+
+     "In the name of Christianity I send you these
+     words. My conscience forces me as a Christian
+     German soldier to inform you of these lines.
+
+     "Wounded Russians are killed with the bayonet
+     according to orders, and Russians who have
+     surrendered are often shot down in masses
+     according to orders in spite of their
+     heart-rending prayers.
+
+     "In the hope that you, as the representative of a
+     Christian State, will protest against this, I sign
+     myself, '_A German Soldier and Christian._'
+
+     "I would give my name and regiment, but these
+     words could get me court-martialed for divulging
+     military secrets."
+
+The following letter is from a soldier on the Western Front:
+
+     "To the American Government, Washington, U.�S.�A.:
+
+     "Englishmen who have surrendered are shot down in
+     small groups. With the French one is more
+     considerate. I ask whether men let themselves be
+     taken prisoner in order to be disarmed and shot
+     down afterward? Is that chivalry in battle?
+
+     "It is no longer a secret among the people; one
+     hears everywhere that few prisoners are taken;
+     they are shot down in small groups. They say
+     na�vely, 'We don't want any unnecessary mouths to
+     feed. Where there is no one to enter complaint,
+     there is no judge.' Is there, then, no power in
+     the world which can put an end to these murders
+     and rescue the victims? Where is Christianity?
+     Where is right? Might is right.
+
+_"A Soldier and Man Who Is No Barbarian."_
+
+The first two letters refer to the battle of the Masurian Lakes,
+when the troops of Hindenburg, in checking the invading
+Russians, indulged in a needless slaughter of prisoners.
+
+I heard in Berlin of many cases of insanity of both German
+officers and men who were driven insane by the scenes of
+slaughter at this battle and especially by the great cry of
+horror and despair uttered by the poor Russians as they were shot
+down in cold blood or driven to a living death in the lakes and
+marshes.
+
+An American newspaper said this could not be true, asking why did
+I not publish the letters in my first book. But my first book did
+not contain all I have to relate, and the letters in question
+were sent by me to the State Department early in the war, and
+were not at hand on the publication of my other series.
+
+But speaking of anonymous letters, shortly before I left Germany
+I received a package containing a necklace of diamonds and pearls
+with a letter, which, translated, reads as follows:
+
+     "The enclosed jewelry was found in the fully
+     destroyed house of Monsieur Guesnet of 36 Rue de
+     Bassano, Paris. It is requested that this jewelry,
+     which is his property, be returned to him."
+
+The package was addressed to the Embassy of the United States. I
+took it with me on leaving Germany and restored it to the family
+of the owner in Paris. The Guesnet country house lay within the
+German lines and the sending of the jewelry to me shows
+conscience somewhere in the German army.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+AIMS OF THE AUTOCRACY
+
+
+I have shown how the Kaiser is imbued with a desire of conquest,
+how, as he himself states, he dreamed a dream of world empire in
+which his mailed fist should be imposed upon all the countries of
+the earth.
+
+But the Kaiser alone could not have driven Germany into war. His
+system could.
+
+The head of one of the great banks of Germany told me in the
+first few weeks of the war that the Kaiser, when called upon at
+the last moment to sign the order for mobilisation by the General
+Staff, hesitated and did so only after the officers of the
+General Staff had threatened to break their swords over their
+knees.
+
+If this story is true, what a pity that the Kaiser did not allow
+the officers to break their swords! What would have happened?
+Would the military have seized the power and deposed the Kaiser,
+putting the Crown Prince in his place? I believe it might have
+happened had he refused to sign the order. The Kaiser, after
+leaving Kiel, attended a council at Potsdam where war was decided
+upon, and I really doubt whether at the last moment he did not
+shrink before the awful responsibility or hesitate to sign the
+mobilisation order.
+
+The immediate cause of Germany's going to war was the feeling on
+the part of the autocracy that the people would not much longer
+bear the yoke of militarism. That this fear had justification was
+shown by the enormous vote of lack of confidence in the Reichstag
+after the Zabern affair. At all costs the autocracy must be
+preserved, and if in addition the world could be conquered, so
+much the better.
+
+With modern improvements on the outside the heart of the
+government of Germany is that of the Middle Ages. The nobles as a
+rule are poor, the returns from their landed estates small, and,
+in peace times, the army general, the Prussian noble, and the
+Prussian official is overshadowed in display and expenditure by
+the rich merchant.
+
+Army officers, nobles and governing class felt this and believed
+that war would restore what they regarded as the natural
+equilibrium of the country, the officers, the officials and the
+nobles at the top and the merchant class back in its place below.
+
+With war, retired generals living on small pensions in dingy
+towns once more became personages, rushing about the country in
+automobiles attended by brilliant staffs and holding almost the
+power of life and death. His lands worked by prisoners at six
+cents a day, and their products sold at five times the original
+price with no new taxes on either land or incomes, the Prussian
+Junker is enjoying the war.
+
+And this autocracy can make no peace which is not a "German
+peace," which does not mean that the Emperor and the generals can
+ride through the Brandenburger Thor to celebrate the conclusion
+of what may be thought a victorious war.
+
+For the plain people of Germany, while they can make no
+revolution now, on returning to their homes maimed and broken
+after four years in the trenches, will revolt at last, if a peace
+has been concluded which does not spell success for Germany. They
+will say to their government,--to the autocracy,--"We had no
+political power. We left everything in your hands. We had nothing
+to say either about the declaration of this war or its conduct.
+In return for our submission you promised efficiency and you
+promised us more, the conquest of the world. You have failed and
+we are going to overthrow you."
+
+It is the knowledge of this that makes the Emperor and the
+autocracy ready to take any chance, anxious to continue the war
+in the hope that some lucky stroke, either of arms or of
+propaganda, will turn the scale in their favour, because they
+know that any peace that is not a German peace will mean the end
+of autocracy and probably of the Hohenzollerns.
+
+And all the while the people are told that the war is a defensive
+war, although the German armies fight far in enemy territory in
+France, in Russia, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Roumania. They
+always are told, too, that it is Germany who is desirous of
+making peace and that the Allies refuse.
+
+Last summer (1917) when an interview I had with the Chancellor in
+which he named the peace terms of the autocracy was published,
+the interview was repudiated by the Chancellor, who stated that
+these terms were not his. I am sure that they are not his and
+were not his, but I am equally sure that they are the terms and
+were the terms of the autocracy of Prussia as stated by him.
+Shortly after this the newspapers confirmed part of these terms,
+telling of the talk in Germany of the guarantees to be exacted in
+case Belgium was surrendered by the Germans, which guarantees
+amounted to the absolute control of that unfortunate country and
+"rectification of the frontiers" demanded by Germany on the
+Eastern Front.
+
+Outside of Germany the propagandist and the pacifist and other
+agents of the Central Empires have proclaimed that this war is
+not a war of conquest or aggression.
+
+But the evidence is to the contrary.
+
+Kaiser and pastors, Reichstag members and generals, orators and
+journalists, have all at different times during the war declared
+themselves in favour of conquest.
+
+And it is extraordinary as showing the masterful manner in which
+the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making
+these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to
+cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented
+from making peace only by the wicked Allies.
+
+The King of Bavaria, speaking early in 1915 at a banquet, said,
+"I rejoice because we can at last have a reckoning with our
+enemies and because at last we can obtain a direct outlet from
+the Rhine to the sea. Ten months have gone by. Much blood has
+been poured out. But it shall not be poured in vain, for the
+fruit of the war shall be a strengthening of the German Empire
+and _the extension of its boundaries_, so far as this is
+necessary in order that we may be assured against future
+attacks."
+
+Duke John Albert of Mecklenburg, who is the gentleman who slapped
+his chest and cried out to me on one occasion that Germany would
+never forget the export of arms and ammunition to her enemies by
+America and that some day Germany would have her revenge,
+declared also in 1915 that the war would give Germany not only a
+mighty African Colonial Empire but a sufficiency of strongholds
+on earth for their navy, commerce, coaling and wireless stations.
+
+The Kaiser, himself, speaking in July, 1915, in his call to the
+German people issued from the Great General Headquarters, said
+"that Germany would fight until peace came, a peace which offered
+the necessary military, political and commercial guarantees for
+the future."
+
+Vice-President Paasche of the Reichstag, in April at Kreuznach,
+said, "We are not allowed to speak about conditions of peace. But
+the wish must be given expression that lives in the heart of
+every German that we will not give up enemy land conquered with
+so much German blood."
+
+A sentiment also expressed in April, 1915, by the National
+Liberal Reichstag member, Wachhorst de Wente, was to this effect:
+"Our fatherland must be larger. We must not allow it to be taken
+from us. Otherwise we will have obtained nothing except victory.
+We desire also to have the reward of victory. We will not give
+back all."
+
+Von Heydebrand, the Conservative Leader, the uncrowned King of
+Prussia, as he is called, demanded as a condition of peace "a
+stronger and larger Germany."
+
+Naturally, the Conservative leaders are for conquest and
+annexation. Numerous articles in the Centrist Cologne _Volkzeitung_
+were published protesting against giving Belgium her independence
+again. In April, 1916, this newspaper approved the statement of
+Leader Spahn of the Centrum party that the war must not end
+without "tangible results," and also the statement of Stresemann,
+another member of the Reichstag: "We demand and expect a larger
+Germany." In February, 1916, _Germania_, the Berlin organ of the
+Catholic party, demanded also a tangible prize of war as one of
+the conditions of peace.
+
+Countless examples can be given from speeches in the Reichstag
+and from leaders and newspapers of virtually all parties in
+Germany, showing this desire for conquest, showing that Germany
+will not be content to go back to the situation before the war.
+Even Maximilian Harden, who is respected all over the world
+because of his fearlessness and reason, has written since the war
+in favour of a greater Germany, thus:
+
+     "We wage the war from the rock of conviction that
+     Germany after its deeds has a right to demand
+     broader room on the earth and greater
+     possibilities of action and these things we must
+     attain."
+
+Dr. Spahn, to-day the leader of the Centrum party, answering in
+December, 1915, Scheidemann, who had argued against annexation,
+and speaking in the name of 254 members of the Reichstag
+representing the citizens' parties said:
+
+     "We wait in complete union, with calm
+     determination, and let me add, with trust in God,
+     the hour which makes possible peace negotiations,
+     in which forever the military, commercial,
+     financial and political interests of Germany must,
+     in all circumstances and by all means, be
+     protected, including the widening of territories
+     necessary to this end."
+
+Ludendorff is now perhaps the man of most weight and influence,
+barring no one, in all Germany. When only Chief of Staff of the
+East Army he wrote: "The Power of Middle Europe will be
+strengthened, that of the Great Russians pushed back towards the
+East, from whence it came, at a time not very distant."
+
+These quotations simply show that the great majority of
+Germans--those outside the social democratic party--of the
+Germans, indeed, who rule the country, conduct its commerce, and
+officer its army and navy--all have been infected with a
+dangerous microbe of Pan-Germanism and of world-conquest.
+
+Every one who professes a knowledge of German life and character,
+every one who writes of the origin of the war, talks of
+Treitschke, Nietzsche and Bernhardi.
+
+Nothing made the Germans angrier than to find in foreign
+newspapers that on this triumvirate was placed the burden of the
+responsibility for the war. And I agree with the complaining
+Germans. Bernhardi, who, during the war, was given a command
+behind the fighting front at Posen, was not considered a skilful
+general by the military or a great or even popular writer by the
+people.
+
+How many people in our country or in France or in England are
+influenced by the lectures or writings of one college professor?
+And yet, according to many out of Germany, Treitschke, the deaf
+professor of Heidelberg, is the one man who transmuted the soul
+of Germany and incited the Empire to a cruel war.
+
+In America you can find any brand of professor, from a professor
+in a Virginia College who recently boasted that he would not
+subscribe to American Liberty war bonds, but would send the money
+to the Socialist, pacifist candidate for Mayor of New York, to
+the Professor in the University of Chicago who based his claim to
+fame on the fact that he had never been kissed. What professor of
+history has had any great political influence beyond his own
+college?
+
+And it is equally absurd to think of a Prussian Junker, sitting
+by the fire in the evening, deeply absorbed in the philosophy of
+Nietzsche. All Germans, as a matter of fact, through pride of
+conquest in 1864, 1866 and 1870 and great industrial success,
+had come to believe themselves to be supermen delegated by Heaven
+to win the world. Treitschke and Nietzsche were simply affected
+in their writings by this universal poison of overweening vanity.
+They but reflected the fashion of the day in thinking; they did
+not lead the nation's thought. Nietzsche himself wrote in one of
+his letters shortly before his death which occurred in 1900,
+"Although I am in my forty-fifth year and have written fifteen
+books, I am alone in Germany. There has not been a single
+moderately respectful review of one of my books."
+
+I never found a German of the ruling class who had read anything
+written by Treitschke, Nietzsche or Bernhardi.
+
+Tannenberg had more readers and a greater following, although he,
+of course, expresses only the aspirations of the Pan-Germans. But
+he presents concrete positions which any one can understand.
+
+For instance, the German merchant looking at Tannenberg's book
+and seeing the map of South America coloured with almost
+universal German domination, smiles and approves, for he thinks
+German trade will swallow that rich continent and clever laws and
+regulations will exclude the imports of all other nations.
+
+In some aspects Tannenberg foresaw what is happening to-day when
+he says, "The Finns have been waiting a long time to detach
+themselves from the Great Russians, their hereditary enemies."
+
+But in the main, in his sketch of the war to which he looked
+forward, he failed to predict accurately the attitude of the
+world. His predictions represent many of the dead hopes of the
+Pan-Germans, those Germans who believe it is the right and duty
+of Germany to conquer all.
+
+Prophesying war between Germany on one side and France and Russia
+on the other, Tannenberg believed that more confusion and
+resistance to war than actually occurred would come in Bohemia
+and Poland following the order for mobilisation in the Slav parts
+of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He mistakenly wrote also that
+Japan would declare war on Russia, a belief shared by the
+torchlight paraders of Berlin in August, 1914.
+
+Tannenberg thought Italy would declare war on France. He was
+wrong in his confidence that France was decadent, wrong in
+believing that England and the United States would only talk but
+would not fight, yet right in his belief that revolution would
+break out in Russia. In fact, I think that for years after the
+Franco-Russian Alliance, Germany was preparing a Russian
+revolution to break out on whatever day the Russian troops were
+ordered to their colours. He says that France will be so
+thoroughly defeated that the "war ought not to leave her more
+than eyes to cry with."
+
+I am afraid that while many eyes will cry in France, through the
+breadth of Germany there will be but few homes where eyes will
+not weep over the casualties of war, for which cruel, crazy
+dreamers of world empire, like Tannenberg, are largely responsible.
+
+For Tannenberg's dream, the dream of the autocracy and of the
+Pan-Germanists, is to give to Germany most of South America, a
+great part of Africa, of Asia, the great islands north of
+Australia, including those of the Dutch; with Holland and Belgium
+part of the German Empire as well as the Baltic provinces, and a
+share of the French colonies to be divided with England.
+
+The share of the United States for standing by and agreeing to
+the robbery was to be, according to Tannenberg, a protectorate
+over Mexico and Central America.
+
+Mexicans who were offered Texas and New Mexico by Zimmermann
+should read this Pan-Germanistic book in which all of Mexico is
+generously bestowed on us.
+
+And I wish that Tannenberg's book could be read by every public
+man in South America--that South America in which the Argentine,
+Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, the southern parts of Brazil and
+Bolivia are, according to Tannenberg, to come under the
+protectorate of Germany. Latin-American publicists should inquire
+from the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina how long it is
+before a "protectorate" is transmuted into a conquered country.
+Tannenberg does speak for a great party in Germany. The
+children's school books show German "colonies" in Southern
+Brazil.
+
+As Sainte Beuve said, there is a fashion in intellect. The German
+to-day is essentially practical, cold, cynical, and calculating.
+The poetry and the Christmas trees, the sentiment and sentimentality,
+remain like the architectural monuments of a vanished race, mere
+reminders of the kindlier Germany that once was, the Germany of
+our first impressions, the Germany that many once loved. But that
+Germany has long since disappeared, buried beneath the spiked
+helmets of Prussianism, and another intellect is in vogue.
+
+That older, kindlier Germany was the nation tempered and softened
+by the suffering of the Napoleonic wars. After the battle of
+Jena, where Napoleon rubbed the face of Prussia in the mud of
+defeat, there came on Germany that period of privation which left
+its impress so deeply on the German as to make thrift his first
+characteristic. A spirit of lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism
+imbued the whole people. Young girls cut off their long golden
+hair to be sold for the Fatherland. Jewels were given by all who
+possessed them. "Gold gab ich f�r Eisen" (I gave gold for iron)
+became a saying based on the readiness with which the rich made
+sacrifices to the cause of country. And with this patriotism, and
+with this penury, came into every home a more intimate family
+life, a greater earnestness, a deeper religious sentiment, a
+turning towards the idealistic side of life; but all was changed
+by the successful wars of Prussia that gave Prussia the
+leadership, the right to rule Germany. Then, with the end of the
+Franco-Prussian war, came a period of material prosperity, the
+rush of the population to the cities, and the building of great
+manufactories, of enormous shipping interests, of powerful
+banking institutions, of trusts and combinations which marked the
+Germany of 1914.
+
+The fashion in intellect had changed, and the grasping,
+successful Prussian of 1914 was far removed from the ruined,
+chastened Prussian of 1810.
+
+Nations, like individuals, change in character with the stress of
+life. From 1810, the period of a sorrowing Germany, to 1914 is
+one hundred and four years. The same number of years subtracted
+from the year 1796, when our new Republic was firmly established,
+and when George Washington made his noble farewell address,
+brings us to 1692, when nineteen persons were legally hanged,
+charged with witchcraft in Massachusetts, and when in that State
+Giles Cory perished under the awful torture, judicially applied,
+known as the "peine forte et dure."
+
+It is quite true that weak voices against annexations have been
+heard.
+
+Dernburg and Professor Hans Delbr�ck (the latter not to be
+confused with the disgraced, pig-slaughtering, ex-Vice-Chancellor),
+in their petition against the annexation of Belgium, showed a
+most reasonable spirit, and signing this petition with them were
+many of the great men and great minds of Germany. But their
+movement was a failure in Germany itself. Their campaign of
+reason could make no headway against the "League of Six"--the six
+great iron and steel companies of the West, who, with their paid
+lansquenets of the press and hired accelerators of public
+opinion, clamour for annexation so that they may rivet the chains
+of their industrial monopoly on the whole continent of Europe.
+
+The Conservatives and Junkers, on the other hand, favour
+annexations to the East; especially do they eye greedily the
+Baltic provinces where great estates are in the hands of
+landowners of German blood. What a reinforcement to the
+conservative cause would these Junkers of the Baltic be and, in
+the Conservative view, if there are to be annexations in the West
+which would increase the number of industrial subjects and,
+undoubtedly social democrats, there must be a balancing accession
+of agricultural interest on the Eastern frontier.
+
+The only cloud in the serene blue sky of Junker hopes is the fact
+that annexations in Poland would add to the number of Roman
+Catholics and, therefore, to the power of the Centrum or Roman
+Catholic party. Hence the desire to make of Poland an independent
+kingdom, but one controlled by the Central Empires.
+
+The Poles are more at ease, having been given more liberty, under
+Austrian than under Prussian rule, and hence the tendency is to
+put Poland under Austrian rule. The Prussians do not object to
+this because it does not matter whether Prussia controls Poland
+directly or through Prussia's control of Austria, now, alas, only
+too apparent.
+
+But the principal aim of the nobles and the landed aristocracy of
+Germany, followed by their host of office-holders and dependents,
+is to keep the "graft," to hold the offices, civil and military,
+filled so long by these old Prussian families.
+
+The von Lachnows, to imagine a typical Junker family, hold one
+thousand acres of land in Brandenburg. The head of the house,
+Baron von Lachnow, was Minister to Sweden. After having held as a
+young man a position of Secretary of Legation, he left the
+diplomatic service to fight with his old regiment, the Gleiwitz
+Hussars, through the Franco-Prussian War. He then returned to the
+diplomatic service in which he finally attained the rank of
+Minister to Sweden. He now lives on his estate of Lachnow, with a
+pension as ex-minister. On great occasions he appears at the
+Royal Palace, resplendent in uniform, wearing the Orders of the
+Red Eagle and Prussian Crown with the Cross of the Johannis
+Order. His total income from pensions and estate is about ten
+thousand dollars a year. The oldest son, Baron Karl Friederich,
+after serving in his father's regiment, resigned and entered the
+diplomatic service and is now second secretary of the legation in
+Buenos Aires. He married there the daughter of a rich cattle
+owner. The second son, Baron Johann, is now Police President of
+the city of Schelsau, after having been district attorney in an
+industrial district where he distinguishes himself by his
+prosecution of the social democrats. He married the daughter of
+the rich manufacturing proprietor Schulz, who sells, wholesale,
+little statuettes on the Ritterstrasse in Berlin. Baron August is
+in the army, detailed to the General Staff and with a great
+future before him. Baron Max is now out of a job. While on his
+vacation the colony, in which he was secretary to the Governor,
+was captured by the British, and so at the outbreak of the war he
+assumed his old uniform of First Lieutenant in the Gleiwitz
+Hussars and was given command of the prison camp at Schluttenberg,
+where he has won distinction for his severity with British
+prisoners. Baron Ernst is in the navy. This is considered rather
+a come-down by the family, as the navy, unlike the army, is not
+aristocratic. He has great hopes of marrying the only daughter of
+Von Blitz, who owns a splendid estate in Silesia. One of the
+daughters, Hilda, is married to Count Wenharp, owner of a
+beautiful estate in Pomerania, and the other to Hochlst, who is
+judge of the law court in Holstein and who owns the Rittergut (or
+manor) of Klein Spassberg, near Kiel.
+
+[Illustration: VIEWS OF A TYPICAL HOLSTEIN COUNTRY HOME OWNED BY
+A JUNKER COUNTRY NOBLEMAN]
+
+The estate of Lachnow is perfectly flat ground. The road to
+Brandenburg runs through the estate and village, the houses of
+which front directly on the road. This road in the village is
+paved with rough cobblestones. The house of the von Lachnows
+almost touches the road, from which it is separated by an old
+stone wall. One side is on a square, cobblestoned courtyard,
+formed by the great barns, stables and sheds which surround the
+other three sides of the square. The house and all the barns are
+built of rough stone. The house is built on the plan of a piece
+of Castile soap, walls and roof and nothing more. Inside there
+are a dining-room, two parlours and an office-den for the master,
+upstairs bedrooms, opening on a long hall; no bathrooms, no
+conveniences, even the water is brought in by the maids from the
+well in the centre of the court. The furniture is old and plain.
+The family does not keep an automobile, but two horses draw a
+dog cart to the station and take the family on visits to the
+neighbouring aristocracy. The driver is the sexton of the village
+church on these occasions. On the two sides of the house away
+from the main road and the square of barns there is a park of
+about ten acres. Here are a few evergreens and gravel paths and a
+pond where some enormous carp excite the wonder of the village
+children.
+
+Baroness Lachnow is renowned for her devotion to the four K's. No
+one has a better stock of household linen, all made by her, her
+daughters and her maids, in the whole Mark. She superintends
+every household detail and holds the keys to closets and wine
+cellar.
+
+Of course, the family does not associate with the schoolmaster
+and the Lutheran minister of the village, but they speak very
+kindly to them and the Baron once interested himself in obtaining
+a long service decoration for the schoolmaster.
+
+The von Lachnows live on their estate the year round, except for
+two weeks in February when they go to Berlin to a cheap hotel and
+attend one of the court balls. The Baroness never spends more
+than three hundred and fifty dollars a year on her clothes,
+although when in Sweden, as a Minister's wife she spent more. The
+Baron and Baroness sometimes condescend to dine with the
+father-in-law of their son, a manufactory proprietor, at his
+handsome apartment on the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, but Schultz,
+in spite of his four million marks and growing business, is made
+to feel the wide gulf that separates him from the nobility.
+
+Baron Lachnow farms his own estate. His farm superintendent is
+von Treslow, once an officer in the Gleiwitz Hussars, who was
+compelled to resign because of a crippled arm, badly broken in a
+steeplechase. This taciturn, soured individual, on the outbreak
+of war, was given a place as commander of a village way station
+near the West Front, where his cruelties to the French inhabitants
+will long be remembered.
+
+Food is very simple. The family drink beer except on great
+occasions, but the Baron drinks Moselle at the midday meal and a
+red wine in the evening. The recreation is shooting and visits to
+the neighbours.
+
+Such a visit is a great event, arranged by letter beforehand. The
+von Lachnows drive to visit the von Seltows eighteen miles away.
+They arrive in time for lunch, when much wine is drunk. After
+this the women gossip over their fancy work and the men visit the
+stable, discuss crop prices and inspect the host's collection of
+horse flesh. The family photographs are inspected and Count
+Reventlow's latest article abusing the Americans is discussed and
+the belief suggested that a democratic people without King or
+Kaiser or nobility cannot be organised for war. The Social
+Democrats are condemned and the story gleefully told of how the
+son of von Seltow cut down a Social Democrat who was slow in
+getting out of his way.
+
+I can understand the feelings of the von Lachnows, the imaginary,
+typical Prussian family of the ruling class which I have
+pictured for you. If Germany should be democratised, what place
+would be left for them? The offices of the government thrown open
+to all classes in fair elections, places in the army and navy and
+diplomacy open to competition in great academies like West Point
+and Annapolis. Deprived of the aroma of power given now by
+diplomatic or military place and noble birth in the caste system,
+the sons and daughters could no longer make rich marriages with
+the sons and daughters of the rich business men and manufacturers.
+No more would the civil offices of Prussia be open only to
+appointments among the noble or Junker class.
+
+I do not blame the von Lachnows because they fight tooth and nail
+for the retention of their old privileges--because they endeavour
+to hold the common people in a serfdom almost as complete as that
+of the Dark Ages. The dawn of constitutional government will be
+their twilight, the twilight of the Gods of militarism, of
+privilege, and of caste. Prussian autocracy made the war in a
+last desperate endeavour to bribe the people into continued
+submission.
+
+The only excuse for the existence of the Prussian ruling class
+to-day, as much out of place as chain armour or robber barons, is
+its supposed honesty and efficiency; but no class which has
+brought this war on the German people can be described as
+competent; no sane governing class would have plunged into
+disastrous war a country that by peaceful penetration, by thrift
+and manufacture, and financial and commercial ability was in
+process of acquiring much of the wealth of the world.
+
+The _first_ aim of German autocracy is to keep its own political
+position at home.
+
+_Second_--To obtain as much of the territory of other nations, as
+great an influence in unconquered lands, as possible.
+
+_Third_--To make peace now, but only if that peace is a German
+peace, a peace which can be called and advertised and proclaimed
+as a German victory.
+
+More particularly, Germany now looks to the East. In the
+so-called Baltic provinces of Russia the lands to a great extent
+are owned by Russian subjects of German blood. The peasants are
+poor, servile, without education or property, an ideal field for
+the advance of autocracy. It is hoped to either annex these
+provinces boldly or to establish protectorates, which, sooner or
+later, at an opportune moment, will fall into German hands--just
+as Austria gained the consent of Europe to a protectorate over
+Bosnia and Herzegovina and then suddenly added them to the
+domains of the Hapsburgs.
+
+The German propagandists have long been working on the people of
+that part of Russia known as the Ukraine. If the Ukraine can be
+made a separate protectorate or a semi-independent state, some
+day it will be easily absorbed. The autocracy has the same hope
+about Lithuania, at one time semi-independent. There, too, the
+propagandists have worked on Lithuania--all these provinces, of
+course, differing slightly from the races surrounding and all
+with a semi-independent history, as, for instance, Courland.
+
+But all these races should think twice before they accept a
+momentary independence, if that autonomy is to lead them under
+the Prussian yoke. Whether that yoke is easy to bear or not is
+best answered by the Danes, Alsatians, Poles and Lorrainers who
+have been forcibly incorporated in the Kingdom of Prussia.
+
+But greatest prize of all is the commercial control of Russia
+which the autocracy hopes to win for its merchant class. Time and
+again I was told in Germany that a separate peace with Russia was
+near and that the exploitation of Russia by the enterprising
+German merchants, in a short time, would repay Germany for all
+the losses of the war.
+
+Would it not seem extraordinary if the language of business and
+commerce of the United States were French? But to-day in Russia
+and for years back the language of commercial business intercourse
+has been German. A great beginning, a great foundation it is for
+the eventual control, not only of the business, but the political
+structure of Russia. If the Germans at war with Russia have been
+able to split, revolutionise and divide it and put their
+representatives in control, what will they not be able to
+accomplish when peace shall bring them full liberty to circulate
+freely in that rich but ignorant country.
+
+In the end, all classes in Russia will demand a strong
+government, and if no military dictator, no Russian Napoleon has
+taken in his hands the reins of government, then the German
+Kaiser will stand by ready to whisper to the torn people of
+Russia, as Napoleon III did to the French, "My Empire is Peace!"
+
+But even if Germany evacuates France and restores the complete
+independence of Belgium, even if no territories are gained to the
+East, or protectorates or independent states carved from the body
+of Russia to be a later prey of Germany, Germany will have
+won--if from Bremen to Bagdad German influence or actual German
+rule is predominant in Middle Europe, the Great Central State,
+where the cotton of Mesopotamia, and the coal and iron of
+Westphalia, the copper of Servia, the oil and grain of Roumania
+all will contribute to the manufacturer of Germany, who, in turn,
+will sell his goods in that vast territory. And best of all in
+autocratic view, the man power of the Central Empires will be so
+increased that at a propitious moment, in a characteristic sudden
+assault, the armies of the Central Empires will invade and
+conquer Palestine, Egypt and India, and take what they will in
+Africa and Asia, while British, Japanese, and American and French
+navies impotently rage in useless control of the high seas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AUSTRIA-HUNGARY--THE KAISER'S VASSAL STATE
+
+
+Few people in America perhaps realise how completely
+Austria-Hungary is under the domination of Germany and Kaiserism.
+There are those who think that the hand of the Vienna Government
+was forced by Berlin when the ultimatum to Serbia was answered so
+reasonably by the little country to the south, but there can be
+no doubt that Austria has been ever since under the yoke of the
+German General Staff.
+
+And because the first break, the first glimpse of reasonable
+peace will in turn be forced on Germany by sorely tried
+Austria-Hungary, bent by war and bowed by debt, it is well to
+study a little the races and assess the influences of that
+unfortunate land.
+
+My wife's sister married a Hungarian Count, a member of the
+Hungarian House of Lords, and I have met many of the political
+leaders and magnates of that country on my trips there.
+
+The Germans of Austria are handsomer, more attractive but far
+less efficient than their bloody brethren from the cold,
+wind-swept plains of Prussia. They have acquired a slight touch
+of the Oriental and something of the ma�ana (to-morrow) of the
+Spaniards, a heritage, perhaps, of the days when Spain and
+Austria were so closely connected by Hapsburg rule.
+
+In the presence of an Austrian one feels his charm instead of the
+aggressive personality which is Prussian. Undoubtedly the
+Prussians counted on the good nature of the southern Germans,
+Hungarians, Poles and Slavs in their insidious campaign to make
+these peoples, practically, if not in name, subject and tributary
+to Prussian rule. The Prussian propagandist has brought them face
+to face with a new Kaiserism.
+
+Shortly after the war a great number of Austrian professors of
+German blood issued a manifesto demanding closer union with
+Germany--a prelude to the plots being hatched in Berlin against
+Hapsburg rule.
+
+The Court of Austria is quite different from that of Berlin; no
+modern ideas during the reign of Francis Joseph disturbed his
+medieval outlook.
+
+The beautiful Empress of Austria, who was assassinated by an
+anarchist in Switzerland, was probably insane. At any rate, for
+many years she lived apart from the Emperor, devoted to hunting
+and horses, going often as far as Ireland for her favourite sport
+and seldom appearing in Vienna. Francis Joseph, however, was
+consoled by an ex-actress, Frau Kathie Schratt, whom he visited
+daily and who occupied a position in Vienna almost as powerful as
+that of the mistresses of Louis XIV. Even in this very war when
+Frau Schratt established a hospital, she was photographed in the
+centre of a group of women all occupied at this hospital and all
+holding the highest rank at the Austrian Court. The instant the
+old Emperor died, however, her power, influence and prestige
+disappeared and I imagine that her titled and high born helpers
+were not long in deserting the hospital wards over which she had
+presided.
+
+That extraordinary Empire known as the Austrian Hungarian Dual
+Monarchy is less an Empire or a Kingdom or a State than the
+personal property of the Hapsburgs, whose hereditary talent for
+the acquisition of land is recorded on the map of Europe to-day.
+
+For centuries this royal family by treaty, by intrigue, by war,
+purchase and marriage has been adding to its dominions, bringing
+under its personal rule races who do not understand each other's
+language and who differ widely in customs, intellectual
+attainments and religion.
+
+The last acquisition of territory by the house of Hapsburg was in
+the year 1908, when the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office boldly
+declared that Bosnia and Herzegovina, placed under the protectorate
+of Austria-Hungary by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, had been
+annexed to the Empire. The German Kaiser, standing by like a
+watching accomplice while the burglary was in progress,
+threatened a general European war if any nations protested.
+
+At a time when Prussia was a struggling state, Austria was the
+dominant power in Central Europe, but the one battle of Sadowa in
+1866 settled for ever the question of supremacy and the German
+States like Bavaria, Saxony, W�rtemburg, etc., which stood with
+Austria in that war, after receiving a sound beating, ranged
+themselves on the side of the victor and, in 1870, joined in
+acclaiming the King of Prussia as the First German Emperor.
+
+That event settled the question of leadership in Central Europe
+and the dream of the Emperor Frederick who died about the time of
+the discovery of America. It was he who wrote the famous anagram
+on the vowels A, E, I, O, U.
+
+ ustria  st       mperare  rbi         niverso
+A       E        I        O           U
+ lles    rdreich  st       esterreich  nterthan
+
+"It is the fate of Austria to rule the world."
+
+In upper and lower Austria, so-called, there are about twelve
+million German Austrians. This territory is comparatively small
+and in it lies the city of Vienna. To the north and northeast lie
+Bohemia and Moravia, the country of the Tchechs or Szechs of
+Slavic blood. These people together number about six million.
+Prague is the capital of Bohemia, while in Moravia there is no
+great city. For centuries these peoples have been oppressed by
+the Austrians and in the Hussite rebellion the lands of Bohemia
+and Moravia were parcelled out to the Austrian nobles as well as
+to the warlike adventurers who had joined the Austrian armies.
+
+With extraordinary obstinacy and patriotism these peoples cling
+to their old language and customs. They have suffered much
+during this war and many tales are told of the shooting of all of
+the officers of Tchech regiments and the execution of every tenth
+man among the privates.
+
+It is a bit of poetic justice that the town of Bethlehem in
+Pennsylvania, where my friend Schwab is making so much war
+material to be used against the Central Powers, was founded by
+fugitives, who, rebelling against oppression, left Moravia in
+search of liberty.
+
+North of the Carpathians lies Galicia, a Polish country, with
+Lemberg and Krakow as its capitals, and in the eastern part the
+Ruthenians, a race identical with the Russians. These Ruthenians
+number upwards of four million.
+
+It is a peculiar fact that in the curious Dual Monarchy each race
+oppresses some other. The Ruthenians complain that they are
+oppressed by the Poles. The kingdom of Hungary lies to the east
+of Austria containing in its twenty million inhabitants about ten
+million Magyars, who are the dominant race and who in turn rule
+over a population of one and one-half million Ruthenians, two and
+one-half million Slovacks or Tchecks, three million Roumanians in
+the southeastern portion and about three million of the race now
+known as Jugo-Slavs. Of these Jugo-Slavs about two million are in
+that part of the Dual Monarchy under Austrian rule. These are the
+principal divisions of peoples. A Slavish race differing somewhat
+from the others is in the mountains to the east of Hungary where
+much fighting has taken place in the last war known as Boukovina.
+In the southeastern part of Hungary there is a German speaking
+country, known as Siebenburgen, where live the descendants of a
+German colony planted about two centuries ago.
+
+In Styria, in the mountainous districts of Austria to the west of
+Hungary, lives a race differing again from all the others, a
+mountain race supposed to be eaters of arsenic, a drug which they
+believe gives them a good complexion and stamina for mountain
+climbing. It is said that the bodies of these arsenic eaters
+remain undecomposed for a long time. And from this part of the
+world comes the curious superstition of the existence of human
+vampires.
+
+Slovenes, and Jews, Carinthians and inhabitants of Carniola, Serbs
+living like Moslems in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italians in Trieste
+and the Trient--all make up the strange Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
+
+The union between Austria and Hungary is a personal union. The
+Emperor of Austria is King of Hungary. Only in four particulars
+are the Empire and the Kingdom united, namely, a joint administration
+of the army and navy, of diplomatic affairs and of such finances
+as are connected with joint expenditures for these purposes.
+
+In 1848 Hungary sought to break away from Austria. Kossuth
+heroically led the Hungarians against their Austrian masters,
+only to be beaten in the end because of the advent of the
+Russians, because one autocrat came to the aid of another.
+
+Since then, by superior political talents and taste for intrigue,
+the Magyars have not only held the Slovaks, Roumanians, etc., of
+their own country in political subjection, but have held much of
+the power in the Dual Monarchy. Their danger lies, however, in
+the predominance of German influence; and some day the gay,
+easy-going, pleasant Hungarians may awake to find the Prussian
+Eitel Fritz seated on their throne and to learn what Prussian
+efficiency means when applied to those whom Germans consider an
+inferior people.
+
+The twelve million Austrian Germans differ much in character from
+the Prussians. They are far more polite, far more agreeable, far
+more fond of amusement of all kinds. Indeed it is because of
+their pleasant personal characteristics that so many other
+nations have been content to remain under their rule. In no city
+of the world is the mass of the population as fond of pleasure as
+in Vienna. The best light operas come from that city. Vienna is
+the original home of the waltz. The "Blue Danube" was composed on
+the shores of the river which flows through the Austrian capital.
+
+The dominant religion of the German Empire is Protestant, but in
+the Dual Monarchy it is Roman Catholic among the ruling Germans
+in Austria and Magyars in Hungary.
+
+In Austria and in Hungary most of the land is held in great
+estates. The peasants, as in Germany, sometimes own a few strips
+of land near their miserable villages. Possession of land is
+necessary to the standing of any noble. In Hungary, for example,
+no noble sits in the house of Magnates or House of Lords unless
+he is the owner of a certain amount of land.
+
+Once across the Hungarian border, one sees the people taking a
+certain delight in refusing to understand German. The names of
+the railway stations are in Hungarian, and the uniforms of
+station officials, conductors, etc., differ from those in
+Austria. Every effort is made by the population to emphasise the
+fact that Hungary is an independent kingdom, joined to Austria by
+personal rule alone.
+
+There is no melting pot in this part of the world. In the Lower
+House of the Hungarian parliament sit forty-three Croatian
+delegates, Croatia being that part of southwestern Hungary near
+the Adriatic where the inhabitants are of Slav blood. By the
+Hungarian constitution those delegates have the right to speak in
+the Hungarian parliament in their own language and so from time
+to time a Croatian delegate arises in his place and delivers an
+ambitious harangue in Croatian, understood by no one except his
+fellow delegates who already know what he intends to talk about.
+This is only one example of how these peoples cling tenaciously
+to their language and national rights.
+
+It is possible to find in Hungary an Hungarian village, a German
+village, a Slav village and a Roumanian village, all within a
+short distance of each other. Men from each of these villages
+after one month in the United States throw aside their national
+costume and buy their clothes in the same Bowery shop, eat the
+same food and send their children to the same public school not
+only without protest, but with eagerness, whereas, in Hungary,
+not one of the inhabitants of these different villages would
+think of abandoning his national traits to learn the language of
+his German neighbours.
+
+Because commands are given in German in the armies of the Dual
+Monarchy all the male population, at least during the term of
+their military service, have been compelled to learn some German.
+But this they forget as soon as possible when they return from
+their period of military service.
+
+Many members of these races go to America and after working there
+a short time amass enough money to return to Austria-Hungary and
+purchase a small piece of land,--the ambition of every one born
+of the soil.
+
+One of the sons of Prince Lichtenstein told me that a friend who
+was running for the Hungarian Lower House in a district of
+Hungary largely inhabited by Slavs, spoke in Hungarian and,
+finding that his audience did not understand him, tried German.
+Finally, when matters had come to a standstill, some one in the
+back of the room called out to him, asking if he spoke English.
+The candidate answered that he did. Whereupon the crowd told him
+to speak English which nearly all understood, and so the
+Hungarian, a candidate for parliament in Hungary, was forced, in
+order to be understood, to address his Hungarian electors in the
+language which they had learned in America.
+
+Franz Ferdinand, whose murder at Sarajevo was used by the Central
+Powers as a pretext for a war determined on long before that
+time, was the heir to the throne of the late Francis Joseph. He
+was a romantic character. He visited frequently at the house of
+Archduchess Isabella, where Countess Chotek, of a Bohemian noble
+family, was a lady in waiting. Franz Ferdinand fell violently in
+love with the fair Bohemian, and in his desire to marry, enlisted
+the aid of Koloman Szell, Premier of Hungary. Szell told friends
+how Franz Ferdinand loved mystery and how, when he wanted to talk
+to him about marriage plans, instead of meeting somewhere openly
+in Vienna, would arrange that Szell's train should stop in the
+open fields. Szell, on alighting and following directions, would
+find Franz Ferdinand hiding behind a designated haystack.
+
+In a country where one royal family not only rules but owns the
+land, this attempt of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then heir to the
+throne, and mad with love, to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, lady
+in waiting to Archduchess Isabella, caused a palace revolution.
+By the aid of Szell he at last succeeded in carrying out the
+marriage. But this was only after he and his wife had been
+required to submit to the most humiliating conditions and
+subscribe to a marriage contract or promise which was not only
+enacted thereafter as a statute in Hungary, but was formally put
+on record by the Austrian parliament.
+
+In this declaration, Franz Ferdinand declared it to be "his firm
+and resolute resolve to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, that he had
+sought, in accordance with the laws of the house, to obtain
+consent of the Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, the Emperor
+and King, Francis Joseph I, gloriously reigning, that the most
+serene, supreme head of the Arch house had deigned graciously to
+grant this permission and that Franz Ferdinand, however
+(describing himself as 'We'), recognise the house laws and
+declare them binding on Us particularly with regard to this
+marriage declaration, that our Marriage with Countess Chotek is
+not a marriage of equal birth, but a morganatic one and is to be
+considered as such for all time, and that in consequence neither
+our wife nor our issue or descendants is entitled to possess or
+claim those rights, titles, armorial bearings and privileges that
+belong to wives of equal birth and to children of archdukes or
+marriages of equal birth." Franz Ferdinand, further, recognised
+that his children from this marriage would have no right to
+succeed to the throne in the kingdoms and lands of Austria nor,
+consequently, to the lands of the Hungarian Crown and that they
+were excluded from the order of succession.
+
+He further agreed and promised not only for himself but for his
+wife and children, that none of them would ever attempt to revoke
+this declaration.
+
+The old Emperor gave the wife of Franz Ferdinand the title of
+Princess Hohenberg and later raised her to the rank of duchess
+which, in the Central Empires, is a higher rank than that of
+princess. She was also created a Serene Highness after the birth
+of her third child, Prince Ernest, in 1904. The first child,
+Princess Sophie, was born in 1901, and the second, Prince
+Maximilian Charles, in 1902.
+
+In spite of the rank thus granted to her, the Duchess of
+Hohenberg was frequently slighted by Archdukes and Archduchesses
+of the House of Hapsburg, and when the present Emperor, the
+Archduke Charles Francis Joseph, married Princess Zita of
+Bourbon-Parma, in 1911, and this marriage was followed by the
+birth of a son, on November 20, 1912, it was plain to Franz
+Ferdinand and his wife that the hostility of the old Emperor and
+the other members of the House of Hapsburg, aided by events, had
+succeeded in definitely excluding his children by Countess Sophie
+from the throne.
+
+These slights to his wife, so marked as to cause the publication
+of articles inspired by himself in a newspaper devoted to his
+interests, and the birth of the heir to Carl, must have had a
+profound influence on melancholy Franz Ferdinand.
+
+In all Europe there was one monarch clever enough to take
+advantage of the situation, to win Franz Ferdinand to him by the
+honours he paid to the Duchess of Hohenberg,--the German Emperor.
+Kaiser Wilhelm invited the pair to Potsdam and there both were
+made to feel that in one court, at least, the honours due to a
+wife of equal birth were paid to the ex-Countess Sophie. This
+Potsdam visit was in 1909, and I believe that, thereafter, the
+German Emperor and Franz Ferdinand met on other occasions.
+
+In the chapter on Emperor Wilhelm, I have stated the belief
+prevalent, even in Germany, that he intended as his first step
+towards his openly expressed ambition for world dominion, to make
+himself, on the death of Francis Joseph, Emperor of a Great
+Continental Empire in which the German Princes, his sons, should
+occupy the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia, the heir of the House
+of Austria to rule as king or grand duke of Austria with possibly
+another German ruled kingdom touching the sea on the south.
+
+There are some who believe that when the Kaiser, accompanied by
+von Tirpitz, visited Franz Ferdinand at Konopisht in June, 1914,
+before the Kiel week, that a great conspiracy was entered into,
+in which it was arranged that a great Central Empire should be
+created with one of the sons of the Duchess of Hohenberg on the
+throne of Bohemia and the other provided for by some newly carved
+out kingdom made from Bosnia, or a portion of Serbia. And it may
+have been part of this plot that Eitel Fritz and other sons of
+the Kaiser should be provided with thrones derived from Balkan
+territory.
+
+It will be remembered that as Franz Ferdinand and his wife fell
+under the assassin's bullet at Sarajevo he called out: "Sophie,
+live for our children!" His devotion to his wife and to their
+children was extraordinary. He was continually sparing from his
+income so that on his death his sons would have a large sum of
+money, saved from the income of estates which they could not
+inherit.
+
+It is hard to believe that such a crime against the House of
+Hapsburg and against his own country was contemplated from the
+inside of royalty. But one event seems a confirmation of this
+theory. The dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were buried with
+such lack of honour, almost with such contempt, as to lead to the
+belief that the head of the House of Hapsburg, Emperor Francis
+Joseph himself, without whose directions the Chamberlain, Count
+Montenuovo, would not have dared to act, discovered his heir in
+some act against the laws or fortunes of the Imperial House.
+
+For the funeral arrangements were such, that the Austrian and
+Hungarian aristocracy were moved to protest and as a result a
+belated order was issued directing that the troops of the Vienna
+Garrison should take part in the funeral ceremonies. About one
+hundred and fifty members of the leading families of Hungary and
+Austria, without invitation, entered the funeral procession and
+followed the bodies to the railway station. The _London Times_
+correspondent called attention to this in cables to his newspaper
+at the time.
+
+Personally, I do not incline to this view, but I do believe that
+at Konopisht the war of 1914 was finally agreed on. Too many bits
+of evidence point to this and from something said to me at Kiel
+by a very high personage, before the assassinations at Sarajevo,
+I would have guessed that war was coming, had it not been
+impossible for me to believe that the world was to be plunged
+into war simply because the German people were restless under the
+rule of the autocracy.
+
+When the murders occurred at Sarajevo, all plans had been laid
+for war and the death of Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of
+Hohenberg merely gave another excuse to begin hostilities, after
+Austria, in the Council of Potsdam, had ratified all the
+arrangements made by the Emperor Wilhelm and Franz Ferdinand for
+the European war. Undoubtedly the German Emperor used his
+influence with Franz Ferdinand and his wife in order to secure
+the former's aid in dragging Austria into the war,--a war begun
+to win the dominion of the world.
+
+How many in America have heard the name of Sophie Chotek? Yet the
+ambitions of this woman have done much to send to war the
+splendid youths who from all the ends of the earth gather in
+France to fight the fight of freedom.
+
+The clever German Emperor, playing upon her ambitions, induced
+the gloomy, hated Franz Ferdinand to consent to the world war,
+and matters had gone so far that even the death of the Archduke
+Franz Ferdinand could not change the situation nor turn the war
+party of Hungary and Austria from their programme of blood.
+Eighty-four years of age, the old Francis Joseph could only offer
+a weak defence to the martial insistence of Tisza, Premier of
+Hungary, and his able understrapper, Forgotsch, who represented
+him in the Foreign Office at Vienna and who undoubtedly is the
+man who drafted the forty-eight hour ultimatum to Servia.
+
+[Illustration: MAIN STAIRWAY IN THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BERLIN]
+
+Berliners say that although the German Emperor gave the Duchess
+of Hohenberg all the honours due to the wife of an Austrian
+Archduke, heir to the throne of the Austrian Empire, he was
+careful not to bring her claims in direct conflict with any
+Prussian female Royalty and that on the first visit of Franz
+Ferdinand and his wife to Potsdam, when the doors of the banquet
+room were thrown open, it was seen that the Kaiser had skilfully
+placed all the guests at small tables, sitting at one with the
+Empress and his two guests. In this way he prevented a conflict
+of precedence and a possible scene with some Prussian royal
+princess.
+
+After one of these Potsdam visits, the Austrian government
+appropriated three hundred millions for new Skoda cannon and a
+great and unexpected increase of the navy was voted. In Austria
+itself it was seen that the German influence was dragging
+Austria-Hungary nearer and nearer to war.
+
+Ferdinand disliked the Hungarians and in turn was hated by them.
+If he had attained the throne of the Empire, as his children
+could not inherit, he would have endeavoured first to remove that
+obstacle, but if he had not succeeded he intended, as I have
+said, either to restore the kingdom of Bohemia and place his son,
+child of a Bohemian mother, on the newly created throne, or
+create, possibly from conquered lands, another kingdom over which
+his heir could reign.
+
+The Magyars, the real Hungarian ruling race, are most skilful
+politicians. Their elections often are corrupt and all the tricks
+of the politician are in use in Hungary.
+
+In many families political talent seems hereditary. Tisza, the
+Premier of Hungary for the period for some time before the war,
+was the son of Tisza, who was Premier of Hungary about the year
+1875. Kossuth, son of the great Kossuth, has been active in
+politics. The father of Count Julius Andrassy was Premier about
+1866 and favoured Germany, a policy which has been inherited by
+his son. One of the sons-in-law of Count Andrassy's wife, Marquis
+Pallavicini, came to America to act as best man when my wife's
+sister married Count Sigray.
+
+Andrassy came to Berlin during the war where I had several long
+talks with him. The one desire of Hungarians and Austrians alike
+is for peace, but surrounded by the armies of their German
+masters, they have lost their independence of action, a bitter
+blow to the Magyars, who are not fond of the Germans.
+
+Count Stephen Tisza is an obstinate and able man, so many sided
+that it is related of him that he fought a duel, rode a
+steeplechase and made a great speech in Parliament, all in one
+day.
+
+Duelling is still a custom in Hungary, Austria and Germany. Once
+when I was in Hungary I took supper with a Count who had been
+second in a duel that day. One young Magnate was at a restaurant
+with an actress who wore a wide brimmed hat. Another young
+Magnate of his acquaintance looked under the hat brim to see who
+the girl was. Result: a duel with sabres in a riding school. On
+this occasion, as the insult was not deadly, the use of sharp
+points was forbidden. The duel was stopped after one young
+Magnate received a cut on the forehead.
+
+Stephen Tisza, on first taking office, was permitted by the old
+Emperor to obtain some apparent concessions for Hungary in order
+to make his premiership popular. It was arranged that Hungarian
+flags should be carried by Hungarian regiments, and that the
+officers of those regiments all should be Hungarians, but German
+was to be used as the military language and language of command
+even in the Hungarian regiments.
+
+As soon as Tisza became premier for the first time, Count Apponyi
+left the Liberal party and lately Count Julius Andrassy and his
+wife's sons-in-law, Count Karoli and Marquis Pallavicini, have
+been in violent opposition to Tisza, Pallavicini even fighting a
+duel with the Prime Minister.
+
+In a country where the majority of the inhabitants are Roman
+Catholics it is rather strange that Tisza and his father, both
+strong Protestants, should have attained the Premiership. The
+father of Count Stephen Tisza was even more obstinate than his
+son and greatly oppressed the Slovaks and Roumanians within the
+borders of Hungary.
+
+A great responsibility lies at the door of Stephen Tisza. He
+allowed the Germans to use him in bringing on the world war.
+Doubtless he believed that Russia and the Powers would not move,
+that Austria-Hungary could seize or invade Serbia, while Germany
+terrorised the world as in 1908 when Bosnia and Herzegovina were
+added to the Imperial dominions. But his failure to read the
+intentions of Russia and the other Powers is no excuse for the
+calamity he brought on Hungary and the world, no excuse for the
+fact that his country is now overwhelmed by Kaiserism, its armies
+surrounded by the armies of Germany and its very independence
+threatened by the subtle influence and intrigues of the master
+intriguer of the world,--the German Kaiser.
+
+The franchise in Austria and in Hungary is like that given
+grudgingly to the Prussian, a mere ghost of suffrage. Autocracy
+rules. In Hungary, particularly the Magyars, seeking to keep the
+political power in their hands, oppose a broadening of the
+franchise. Tisza has always been against any letting down of the
+bars, but when the young and brilliant Count Esterhazy was made
+Premier, many looked for a change--a change which has, however,
+not yet come.
+
+The new Emperor Carl at first seemed to exhibit Liberal
+tendencies, but only for a moment.
+
+The events in Russia will have a grave effect in Austria-Hungary.
+More than a million Russians are prisoners in the Dual Monarchy,
+nearly a million of whose subjects are in Russia--and of these at
+least fifty thousand Czechs are fighting the Austrians and
+Germans in the ranks of the Roumanian army. Many more will refuse
+to leave Russia, but the coming back of one-half, after having
+witnessed the winning of liberty by the Russians, will influence
+their countrymen in no small degree. Just as the French soldiers
+under Lafayette and Rochambeau, after helping us gain our
+independence, returned from the free fields of America to a
+France where the burdens of the plain people were almost
+unendurable and brought on the great French Revolution, the
+soldiers and prisoners who return to Prussia and to Austria-Hungary
+from the strange scenes of the Russian Revolution may, perhaps,
+leaven the inert slave masses of the Central Empires with a
+spirit of revolt for liberty.
+
+We should institute a great propaganda from the Italian front.
+For instance, I have been told by a man who has been on that
+front, a man who should know, that if a few American troops were
+sent there and signs erected stating "Come over and surrender to
+the Americans, you will be taken to America well fed and paid a
+dollar per day when you volunteer to work," there would be a
+great rush of Austro-Hungarian troops eager to be taken prisoner.
+
+The losses of Austria and Hungary have been enormous--men up to
+fifty-five have been drafted for the army, and the troops have
+often suffered defeat and the horrors of retreat at the hands of
+Russians, Serbians, and Italians.
+
+And all the time the iron hand of the German Kaiser grasps more
+and more of the power. Cheerless prospect it is for the once gay
+Hungarians, the once happy Austrians, if to financial ruin and
+the killing of the flower of their youth is to be added the iron
+horror of Prussian domination.
+
+Our citizens of Austrian and especially of Hungarian descent have
+been loyal to their new flag. And our great President with
+enlightened wisdom has eased the enemy alien regulations so as to
+favour those born in the Dual Monarchy. America will never
+forget the loyalty, ungrudgingly given by those of her people
+born under the double eagle of the Hapsburgs.
+
+In my many visits to Hungary I grew to like and admire the
+Hungarians. Natural in manners, hospitable, polite, there is
+something in them that wins Americans. How different the open
+hospitality and friendliness in Budapest from the stern, cold
+formality of the Prussian capital!
+
+And with all friends of Hungary I hope that that country will
+soon throw off the trance of Prussianism, which has led the Dual
+Monarchy into a Dance of Death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+GERMAN INFLUENCE ON THE NORTHERN NEUTRALS
+
+
+Just as I had the opportunity to study conditions in Austria, so
+also I came in contact with the politics and diplomacy of the
+nations contiguous to Germany on the north.
+
+My grandfather, Benjamin F. Angel, was American Minister to
+Sweden and Norway and on leaving received from the King the Order
+of St. Olaf. I have always taken a deep interest in Scandinavian
+affairs and it behooves the American people to regard closely
+what is happening nowadays in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
+
+The outbreak of the European War in 1914 served to bring the
+three northern nations close together. Their Kings met in
+conference and a peace monument was erected on the boundary of
+Norway and Sweden as if to proclaim to the world that in spite of
+their recent separation, Norway and Sweden were sister countries.
+
+The people of these three countries are of the same blood and
+their languages are somewhat similar. Norwegian and Danish
+written are practically the same. But there is quite a difference
+in pronunciation. Swedish is more like German and the pronunciation
+is not as difficult to learn as that of Norwegian and Danish. In
+Norway, there are older dialects, differing from Danish, and
+there has lately been a great movement in favour of a more national
+language. Many Norwegians regard the official Danish-Norwegian as a
+reminder of old subjection to Denmark and not at all fitted for
+the new independent Norwegian kingdom. The new national language
+is called "Landsmaal."
+
+Sweden and Norway were both under one king from 1814 to 1905. In
+that year after a peaceful secession, Prince Charles of Denmark,
+the son of the King of Denmark, was made the King of Norway, with
+the title of Haakon VII. Although both have kings, Denmark and
+Norway may be termed democratic countries.
+
+Copenhagen is lively since the war. The population of Denmark is
+only 2,500,000 and the whole country is only 14,829 square miles,
+which means an area about the size of Maryland. The country was
+once larger but in 1864 Prussia went to war with Denmark and,
+finally, after the war with Austria in 1866, added to the Crown
+of Prussia the two Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As
+the city and port of Kiel were included in this territory
+annexed, it is easy to see why the Germans engaged in this
+enterprise against Denmark.
+
+Denmark possesses the Faro Islands which lie far to north of
+Scotland, the great island of Iceland and Greenland, relics of
+the times when the Viking ships brought such terror to the other
+countries of Europe, that the Litany used to read: "From plague,
+pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, from sudden death
+and from the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us."
+
+In Christiania we saw on our trip out two graceful Viking ships
+dug out of the clay shores of the coast in a state of fair
+preservation--one of them a Princess's ship on which it was easy
+to imagine some blonde princess of the North, her long braids of
+golden hair flying in the wind, urging on her Scandinavian
+oarsmen.
+
+The Danes are a sturdy race, the women more independent than
+those of other countries. On the _Frederick VIII_, when we sailed
+from Denmark, September 28, 1916, for the United States, were two
+handsome girls, nineteen and twenty-one years of age, the
+daughters of the proprietor of the largest department store in
+Copenhagen. They were going to America to find employment in
+department stores in the different cities of the country,
+travelling entirely alone, and expected to return to Denmark
+after a year's experience in America with many new ideas of
+management and advertising for their father in Copenhagen. These
+girls were wonderfully educated, speaking in addition to Danish,
+French, German and English with hardly a trace of accent. They
+lived a short distance out of Copenhagen and told me that every
+morning of the year they jumped into the sea at six-thirty in the
+morning, something that I should not care to do even in August in
+that cold northern land.
+
+Danish farmers learned early that in order to be prosperous they
+must practise intensive farming. I believe that Denmark, which
+even before the war enjoyed a high degree of prosperity, is the
+only country in the world where there are pig sties steam-heated
+and electric lighted while the farmer himself does not have these
+luxuries.
+
+Our farmers have much to learn from the farmers of Denmark both
+in agricultural methods and in co-operation for the marketing of
+products. The reclamation of the Danish moors in Jutland has made
+surprising progress: it is in Jutland that a park has been
+preserved in its primeval state--the Danish-American Park, bought
+with money subscribed by Danish emigrants to America who
+prospered in their adopted land.
+
+Ever since the conquest of Denmark by Germany, there has been a
+deep hatred of all things German in Denmark on account of the
+treatment of those Danes, numbering between one hundred and two
+hundred thousand, who were living in Schleswig and Holstein and
+were unfortunate enough to be turned over as property to the King
+of Prussia.
+
+I found the Danes agreeable people. Of the same race as the
+Germans, living like them in the dark North, this difference in
+behaviour is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the Danes are
+free, while the Germans are oppressed by the weight of an ever
+present autocracy.
+
+While the Danish people hate the Germans, officially Denmark is
+careful to conceal this hate and even, apparently, to lean
+towards the German side, through fear of the German troops, which
+could easily overrun Denmark in thirty hours.
+
+Denmark, during the war, received oil cake from America, which
+was fed to cattle later sold to Germany. A great tonnage of fish
+has also been sent from Denmark to Germany while salt and potash
+have been imported. There is no question but that supplies of all
+kinds and in great quantities have found their way across the
+Danish border.
+
+And the Danes have prospered enormously since the war. Many
+people have become millionaires through the sale of food and
+other supplies to the Germans. A great deal of this food supply
+was sent in the form of canned meat, popularly known as goulash,
+and so to-day whenever an automobile passes on a Danish road, the
+small boys call out "goulash Baron," in the belief that the
+occupant is a new-made millionaire, enriched by trade with
+Germany.
+
+It is hard for us to realise how far north the Scandinavian
+countries lie. Christiania, the capital of Norway and in its
+southern part, is in the same latitude as the south point of
+Greenland; and is it not difficult to imagine a modern city
+situated in Greenland?
+
+In Christiania it is not fairly daylight in December until ten in
+the morning and dark early in the afternoon. The ample water
+power of Norway and Sweden furnishes electric light, a godsend in
+the short dreary winter days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Norway, in many respects, is one of the most advanced countries
+in the world. Having been ruled by Denmark for four hundred
+years, it was united to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, in 1814,
+with the approval of all the Powers, but against the inclinations
+of the Norwegians, who knew that they were given to Sweden to
+compensate that country for the loss of Finland, annexed to Russia.
+
+The ambitious Bernadotte arranged to govern Norway as king of
+that country, which was theoretically to retain its independence
+and be united to Sweden only through the personal rule of the one
+monarch.
+
+At this time, the Norwegian Constitution provided that no more
+personal privileges should be granted and since then the progress
+of Norway towards a real democracy has been rapid. It was the
+conflict over the right demanded by the Norwegians to establish a
+separate consular service that led to the dissolution of the
+union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, Norway voting for
+separation 368,211 to 184.
+
+There are now no nobles in Norway. Shortly after the union it was
+decided that those who had titles of nobility could hold them for
+life, but that their descendants could not inherit.
+
+Legislation for the protection of child workers, women, for
+insurance, etc., is of an advanced character. For instance, no
+child under fourteen is permitted to work and no woman for six
+weeks after her confinement--women receiving full sick benefit
+pay during this period. Many of the railways are state owned.
+
+Norway is a land of little farms, the shipping and fishing
+industries occupy many men, but with the exception of the water
+power driven nitrate plants, on the coast, and the wood-pulp
+factories, there is little manufacturing.
+
+The mass of the people are with the Allies. Last winter, when it
+was proposed that a German concert troupe should play and sing in
+Christiania, the people threatened to burn the theatre if the
+performance was permitted.
+
+But, as in Sweden, the German propagandists are at work in
+Norway. Here again, unless we present our case, the people may be
+turned from the Allies.
+
+King Gustavus V, who occupies to-day the throne of Sweden, has a
+German wife. All the sympathies of the court, which copies the
+little courts of Germany, of the aristocracy and of the army are
+strongly with Germany.
+
+In Sweden, although the king has not much more power than the
+kings of Denmark and Norway, there is an aristocracy which
+inclines to imitate the manners of the German aristocracy and to
+seize, if possible, the privileges enjoyed by that body. The
+officers in the army in Sweden are devoted to German ideals and,
+since the war, great bodies of them have been invited to Germany,
+where there has been much ado over them.
+
+The people, however, do not sympathise with Germany, knowing what
+the triumph of Germany means for them and how the court and the
+army and the aristocracy would be thereby encouraged to put the
+Swedish people in what the Germans would call "their place."
+
+The Swedes fear the domination of Germany and the domination of
+an aristocracy and army imbued with German ideas. They know that
+if Germany wins, the king business will take on a new lease of
+life. The ground was ripe for the Allies but the German
+propaganda, cleverly managed, spending money without stint, is
+gradually bringing the people to a point where, if the blockade
+is tightened, they may consent to Sweden's entering the war as an
+ally of the Central empires.
+
+In spite of the dislike of the people for the German cause, I
+think that the aristocracy and the court and the army would have
+forced Sweden into the war but for one thing. After some months
+of war, an arrangement was made whereby the so-called "heavily
+wounded" were exchanged with prisoners between Russia and
+Germany. The German who was a prisoner of the Russians and had
+lost an arm or a leg, was sent home. These wounded prisoners on
+their way to their home countries, were compelled to travel the
+whole length of Sweden and it was the sight of these poor stumps
+of humanity, as the trains stopped at the various stations in
+Sweden, that kept the Swedish people out of war. Many pictures of
+them printed in the Swedish papers caused profound dismay in
+Sweden and developed an inexpressible abhorrence of war.
+
+Since hostilities commenced, on the other hand, the Government,
+army and aristocracy of Sweden not only have been consistently
+opposed to the Allies, but of the utmost service to Germany.
+
+Swedish iron ore goes into German cannon and makes the best
+steel for aeroplane engines, and the imports into Sweden from
+America of foods and fats from America increased one thousand per
+cent almost immediately. These imports, with great quantities of
+copper and other supplies, found their way to Germany to the
+great profit incidentally of Swedish business men. For the plain
+people of Sweden the cost of living increased without a
+corresponding increase in salaries and wages, so that the new
+prosperity was confined to the "goulash barons."
+
+There is no question but that, just as in Argentina, the Swedish
+diplomatic pouch was in all countries at the service of Germany,
+and that the orders to the German spies in Russia were sent by
+this means. In fact, it is believed German prisoners in Russia
+found their way to Petrograd, there to participate in revolution
+and counter-revolution under orders sent through the Swedish
+officials.
+
+Smuggling is winked at and at Lullia on the Swedish coast near
+the head of the Gulf of Bothnia great quantities of rubber, block
+tin and oil arrive from Russian Uleaborg across the gulf.
+
+The French wanted to send a consul to Lullia, but their request
+was refused, doubtless because the Swedish authorities did not
+care to have any official foreigners see this traffic.
+
+Cleverest of all has been the work of the German financial
+agents. Warburg, the Hamburg banker, is attached to the German
+legation in Stockholm. So skilfully has he managed his task, that
+Swedish firms and Swedish banks have been induced to take German
+paper money, commercial paper and securities instead of gold, in
+return for copper, rubber, tin, food, fats, wool and supplies and
+in this way the Swedish business men, by the touch of self-interest,
+have been made to favour Germany.
+
+I confess that it is hard to bring about, but as each nation has
+the right to choose with whom its citizens shall do business, we
+must mercilessly blacklist those firms which assist Germany by
+accepting, in lieu of the gold which would thus be drained from
+Germany, what amounts to the promise of Germany to pay if
+successful in war.
+
+The Queen of Sweden, herself a German and an admirer of the
+German Emperor, has great influence over her husband and the
+Court.
+
+At a time when she was visiting her family in Karlsruhe (for she
+is a Princess of Baden) a reprisal attack made by Allied
+aeroplanes narrowly missed the royal palace and, consequently,
+the Queen. This has added to her prejudice against the Allies.
+The Crown Princess of Sweden was a Princess of Connaught, the
+sister of "Princess Pat," but she does not dare take any stand
+against the anti-ally propaganda.
+
+I am sure that President Wilson appreciates the gravity of the
+situation and that means are being taken to place our position
+not only before the Swedish people but those of Swedish birth and
+descent in the United States whose influence should be brought to
+bear on their friends and relatives in the old country.
+
+The crew of every Swedish ship that lands here should be given
+our viewpoint; every Swede who returns to Sweden should go as a
+missionary--we must not permit Sweden, whose people are bound to
+us by ties of blood and friendship, by the hospitality which we
+offered to every Swedish immigrant, to be ranged among our
+enemies by the German-admiring aristocrats of Sweden who by
+birth, training and education are opposed to democracy, who hope,
+if Germany wins, to gain as great an ascendancy in the government
+as the Prussian Junkers possess in Germany.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Finns who occupy that part of Russia nearest to Sweden have
+quite a sympathy for the Swedes, Finland having been at one time
+a part of Sweden. The races, however, are not the same. The Finns
+are a Mongolian race and certain similarities of language make it
+plain that the Finns and the Hungarians came from the same
+mysterious place of origin somewhere in the great mountains and
+highlands of Central Asia.
+
+Three languages, three influences, fight for mastery in Finland.
+The official Russian, the language of the government; Finnish,
+now receiving a new lease of life; and Swedish, the language of
+those who once conquered and held Finland, and who so imposed
+their civilisation on the more ignorant Finns, that to-day
+Swedish is the language of the more prosperous classes and of
+most of the business men.
+
+The women of Finland received the suffrage in 1906, all voting
+who are over twenty-four and who have been for five years
+citizens of Finland. Many women thereafter were elected to the
+Finnish parliament.
+
+In two Scandinavian countries the women vote. Norway was the
+first sovereign state of Europe to give full citizenship rights
+to women. In 1913, all Norwegian women of twenty-five and
+citizens for five years were put on a voting equality with men,
+and the only positions under the national government for which
+women are not eligible are in the army and navy, the diplomatic
+and consular service and the Supreme Court.
+
+The Danish women received the full franchise in 1915, but in
+aristocratic Sweden only the women paying income taxes have
+rights in the communal councils.
+
+In 1908, in Norway, a law was passed providing that women doing
+the work of men shall receive equal pay.
+
+Military service in all three northern nations is universal and
+compulsory.
+
+Possibly on a "tip" from Berlin to a fellow autocrat, there
+occurred in February, 1914, an extraordinary political event,
+arranged and "accelerated" by the Government, when thirty
+thousand farmers, meeting in Stockholm for the purpose, marched
+in procession to the Royal Castle to address the King and tell
+him that they were ready to bear any extra taxes imposed for the
+purpose of providing for national defence.
+
+Russia was the power particularly feared by Sweden who thought
+she desired to annex a part of Northern Sweden and Norway in
+order to get an outlet to the sea on the Norwegian coast.
+
+But recent events in Russia have ended this fear and the only
+question for the Swedes is the same, one with which the whole
+world is faced--Kaiserism or Democracy.
+
+Sven Hedin, the explorer, who was the leader in this movement for
+national defence, has appeared as a German propagandist so
+violent as to have become popular with the Germans. It is hard to
+understand why so intelligent a man should range himself on the
+side of autocracy. Now that the Russian danger, if danger there
+was, is past it is to be hoped that this celebrated man will be
+found in the ranks of those opposed to the autocracy which
+ordered the murders of many Swedish seamen.
+
+Norway, although it has often met the submarine of the Kaiser,
+which, defying all law, has sent to death so many Norwegian
+sailors and fishermen, suffers also from German propaganda and a
+certain self interest because of the forty-five million kronen
+sale of fish this last year to German buyers.
+
+Germany works, too, in Denmark with the Socialists and deliveries
+of coal are used to obtain food from that country.
+
+The jolly, free, brave Scandinavians are naturally opposed to all
+that Pan-Germanism and German rule means. It is necessary for us,
+especially our citizens of Scandinavian descent, not to lose this
+initial advantage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+SWITZERLAND--ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL
+
+
+Free Switzerland! You cannot imagine the feeling of relief I
+experienced as I passed from the lands of the Hohenzollerns and
+Hapsburgs to a free republic.
+
+It was February 11, 1917. To go into the railroad station
+restaurant and order an omelette and fried potatoes without a
+food card and with chocolate on the side seemed in itself a
+return to liberty.
+
+Our Minister, Mr. Stovall, gave us a dinner and evening reception
+so that we could meet all the notables and we lunched with the
+French Ambassador (for France maintains an Embassy in Switzerland)
+and dined with the British Minister, Sir Horace Rumbold, a very
+able gentleman who had been Chancellor of the British Embassy in
+Berlin before the war.
+
+As war had not yet been declared between Germany and the United
+States the correspondents of German newspapers waylaid me. Some
+seemed to think that in spite of the insulting blow given us by
+Germany, we nevertheless, scared to whiteness by the U-boat
+ultimatum, would lend all our energies to bring about a German
+peace.
+
+I received a letter from one of the editors of a Swiss newspaper
+published in Berne, probably inspired by the German Legation
+there, asking me if President Wilson, in spite of the break in
+relations, would not continue his work for peace.
+
+We all know that Switzerland is a republic but even those of us
+who have travelled there, probably because we were on a holiday,
+gave little thought to the Swiss political system. Indeed before
+this war we cared little about the government of any country
+except our own.
+
+The present constitution of Switzerland was adopted in 1848 and
+in many particulars is modelled after that of the United States.
+
+There are the same three great Federal powers, the Federal
+Assembly, representing the legislative branch, the Federal
+Council, representing the executive branch, and the Federal
+Court, representing the judicial branch.
+
+The lower Chamber is made up of representatives elected directly
+by the people, and the other Chamber of members elected, as in
+our Senate, two by each canton or state. The Bundesrat or Federal
+Council which has all the executive powers, is elected by the
+Federal Assembly and it is the Chairman of this body who is known
+as the President of Switzerland. In reality he does not possess
+the powers of our President, but it is the Bundesrat as a whole
+which exercises the powers. Each member of this Council is
+minister or head of some separate department, such as Military,
+Justice and Police, Foreign Affairs, Posts and Railways, etc. The
+Swiss Cantons have much power, and there is a distinct jealousy
+by each canton of states' rights.
+
+It is in Switzerland that we encounter two little friends,
+sponsored by William Jennings Bryan--the Initiative and
+Referendum--means by which the Swiss people are given a direct
+voice in their government. By the Initiative a certain number of
+voters may propose new legislation and when the requisite number
+sign a petition the proposed law must then be submitted to
+popular vote. This rule applies both in the separate cantons and
+in the Republic as a whole.
+
+The Referendum, more often used, provides that if the requisite
+number of signers be obtained any law passed by a cantonal
+legislative body or by the Federal Assembly shall be submitted to
+the voters. In certain cantons the Referendum is obligatory and
+every law is thus submitted to the people. In practice the
+Referendum has acted as a check to advanced legislation.
+
+The Swiss have reason to fear the designs of Prussia. As late as
+1856, Prussia and Switzerland were on the edge of war. Prior to
+1815 Neuch�tel acknowledged the King of Prussia as its overlord;
+the Congress of Vienna, however, included this territory in the
+Swiss Confederation as one of the Swiss Cantons. But Prussia, in
+spite of this formal arrangement, with its usual disregard of
+treaties, continued to claim Neuch�tel.
+
+In 1848 the revolutionary influence resulted in more democratic
+rule in Neuch�tel but the Prussian propagandist of that day was
+at work and, in 1856, Count Pourtales' plot was discovered and
+several hundred prisoners seized by the Swiss government. All
+but a score were released. Frederick William IV of Prussia
+demanded their instant pardon and release and ordered the
+mobilisation of his army but, finally, through the intervention
+of Napoleon III, the affair was settled, the prisoners released
+by way of France, and the Prussian King renounced all rights over
+Neuch�tel.
+
+The Kulturkampf of Bismarck, his contest against the Roman
+Catholics, had its echoes in Switzerland and it probably was due
+also to German influence that until 1866 full freedom was
+withheld from the Jews.
+
+The Red Cross had its origin in Switzerland and the Geneva
+Conventions have done much to bring about the adoption of better
+rules of war. The Geneva Cross is the badge of international
+charity and help.
+
+Switzerland always has opened her doors to the politically
+oppressed. Over ten thousand revolutionists from Baden took
+refuge in Switzerland in 1848. Austria, in 1853, as a reprisal
+for the alleged actions of Italians in Switzerland in conspiring
+against Austria, drove thousands of Swiss citizens from that part
+of Italy occupied by Austria. Also in the Franco-Prussian war the
+French General Bourbaki and his army of nearly one hundred
+thousand men sought an asylum in Switzerland.
+
+The army of Switzerland is a true citizen army--an army of
+universal service--and it is due to the existence of this force
+that Switzerland remains an independent state in the midst of
+Europe.
+
+To stand apart in Europe is the very essence of life for
+Switzerland. It is regrettable therefore that German money and
+German propaganda and some sympathy for Germany among the
+officers of the army should have touched the fine flower of Swiss
+neutrality. A triumphant Prussia and a free Switzerland cannot
+exist in the same Europe.
+
+In Switzerland, it is in the military that we find the greatest
+sympathy for Germany. In 1915, Swiss officers were discovered
+working out the ciphers of other nations for the benefit of the
+German armies and the punishment given, at the ensuing Court
+Martial, was not only incommensurate with the offence, but was a
+plain indication of the early sympathies of the Chiefs of the
+Swiss Staff.
+
+The food question between the United States and Switzerland
+requires delicate handling. We like the Swiss and do not wish
+them to suffer, but the Swiss must understand that our food is
+our own and that we do not propose it shall go to nourish Germans
+or that it shall take the place, in Switzerland, of Swiss food
+sold by the Swiss to our enemies.
+
+The President of Switzerland related to me the difficult position
+in which Switzerland found herself. Iron and coal, necessary to
+the industries of Switzerland, to keep the population warm and to
+cook the food, came, he said, from Germany, while food was
+shipped to the French Mediterranean port of Cette from America
+and the Argentine, and transported across part of France to
+Switzerland, so that since the war Switzerland, as the President
+explained, has been dancing about; first on one side, then on the
+other, in the attempt to get food through France and coal and
+iron through Germany.
+
+Everything in the office of the President was the extreme of
+republican simplicity. He questioned me about the situation in
+Germany, especially from the food standpoint. And I learned of
+the difficulties of the Swiss. It must not be forgotten that in
+Switzerland about seventy per cent of the people speak German,
+twenty-three per cent, French, and seven per cent, Italian. Many
+of the German-speaking Swiss, of course, sympathise with Germany.
+They are the farmers, dairymen, etc., but in French-Switzerland,
+in the neighbourhood of Geneva and Lausanne, the industrial
+population sides with the Allies. Millions of the delicate fuses
+used on shells have been manufactured in that part of Switzerland
+for the Entente. In retaliation for this the Germans boycotted
+Swiss watches.
+
+The usual German-paid propaganda newspapers operate in the
+principal towns. The army officers are the first to be influenced.
+It is the same in Switzerland as with the officers of many armies,
+solely because of the past reputation of the German military machine.
+
+We and the civil authorities of South America must not forget
+that Japan copied German military methods, that the armies of
+Argentina and Chili have been trained, for years, by German
+officers sent there on temporary leave of absence from the German
+army.
+
+Von Below, a German officer in Berlin who had been in the
+Argentine, used to make merry over the Argentine soldiers and
+said that they objected to drilling when it rained. I do not
+believe this officer, but I should like to have the brave
+Argentine officers hear his jokes and gibes.
+
+We left, after three or four days in Berne, on the evening train,
+for the French frontier. In the train corridors, outside the
+compartments, spies stood staring at us, spies pretending to read
+newspapers came into each compartment; police spies, betrayed by
+heavy boots; general staff spies, betrayed by a military
+stiffness; women spies; spies assorted and special. And these
+gentry had followed me all over Berne--for in the neutral
+countries of Europe as well as the belligerents are we constantly
+reminded of the insidious methods of Kaiserism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE
+
+
+At Pontarlier, on the French frontier, a special train was
+waiting for my party and into this train a German-American
+inserted himself after first mixing his baggage with mine. I went
+through the train and this enterprising gentleman and another
+German-American were detained for some days at Pontarlier. One of
+them, later, on reaching Spain, reported immediately to the head
+of the German secret service there, thus justifying my suspicions.
+Fortunately when he subsequently arrived in Spain we had already
+sailed, so that if he bore any sinister message from Berlin to
+the German agents in Spain to hinder our voyage, he was too late.
+
+The night trip to Paris was uneventful. At the Gare St. Lazare we
+were met by our Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, with several of his staff
+and a representative of the French Foreign Office.
+
+Paris was indeed a changed Paris since I had last seen it in
+October of 1913. The pavement in the Place Vend�me, in front of
+the Hotel Ritz, where we stopped, was full of holes, but
+taxicabs, almost as extinct as the dodo in Berlin, rushed merrily
+through the crowded streets. The boulevards were lively, full of
+soldiers looking far more cheery, far more snappy, than the heavy
+footed German soldiers who so painfully tramped down Unter den
+Linden. Many soldiers were to be seen without an arm or leg,
+something impossible in Germany where, especially in Berlin, it
+has been the policy of the Government to conceal those maimed by
+war from the people at home. Although constantly walking the
+streets of Berlin I never saw a German soldier without an arm or
+leg. Once motoring near Berlin I came upon a lonely country house
+where, through the iron rails of the surrounding park, numbers of
+maimed soldiers peered out, prisoners of the autocratic
+government which dared not show its victims to the people.
+
+At night in Paris the taxicabs and autos rushed dangerously
+through streets darkened to baffle the Zeppelins. In the hotel
+there was little heat, only wood fires in one's room. In the
+homes a single electric light bulb was permitted for each room;
+violation of this rule meant loss of electric light from that
+apartment for three weeks.
+
+In the Ritz Restaurant there were lights on the table only. And
+the gloomy dining room, where a few Americans and British
+officers and their families conversed in whispers, resembled but
+little the gay resort so often filled, before the war, with
+American millionaires. Olivier, the head waiter, appeared only at
+night, absent during the day on war duties. No lights, no music,
+it is hard to think of Paris without these, Paris which calls
+itself the "Ville Lumi�re"--the City of Light.
+
+On our first Sunday in Paris a grand concert was held in the
+Trocadero--a great government owned auditorium on the banks of
+the Seine,--under Canadian auspices. When Ambassador Sharp and I
+entered the centre box the vast audience rose and cheered--a new
+sensation for me to be so welcomed after my war-years in Berlin,
+where I had been harried and growled at, the representative of a
+hated people, of a people at once envied for their wealth, hated
+because they had dared to keep their rights and treaties and sell
+goods to the enemies of Germany, and despised because the Germans
+believed them too rich and cowardly, too fat and degenerate, to
+fight in the great war for the mastery of the world.
+
+Lord Esher called on me at the hotel and invited me on behalf of
+Field Marshal Haig, to visit the British line. I am sorry that I
+did not have time to accept this invitation, especially as in
+Germany I had not even heard the distant firing of cannon.
+
+The Great General Headquarters at Charleville-M�zi�res where I
+had visited Emperor William at the end of April, 1916, was only
+about seventy kilometres from the battle front near Rheims. I was
+naturally anxious to inspect, if not the front trenches, at least
+the vicinity of the front, but the army officers attached to the
+German Foreign Office, who had accompanied me, informed me that
+the Chancellor had telephoned all the Generals in the vicinity to
+ask permission for me to visit the lines but that not one of them
+would permit me to visit his sector. This was a fairly certain
+indication that sooner or later the hate for America must lead
+to war or that the U-boat settlement made at the time was only a
+stop gap until the increased number of submarines would enable
+Germany to commence ruthless U-boat war once more in defiance of
+law and humanity, and with a greater hope of military success.
+
+Compared to Berlin, Paris seemed a land of abundance. In the
+restaurants, however, the customer was limited to two courses,
+but with the privilege of a second helping.
+
+I called on Lord Bertie, the British Ambassador, to ask him to
+convey my acknowledgments to the Honourable Arthur James Balfour,
+from whom I had received a most complimentary communication. I
+found him in the beautiful home of the British Embassy on the Rue
+St. Honor�, a house so cold for want of coal that I was compelled
+to make my visit short for fear of pneumonia.
+
+With Mrs. Gerard we lunched with our friends from Berlin, Jules
+Cambon, a former French Ambassador there, and his family, at the
+La Rue restaurant, opposite the Madelaine. Cambon seemed as game
+as ever, but fatigued.
+
+Briand, who was then Premier, invited me to breakfast at the
+Minister of Foreign Affairs. The other guests included our
+Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, Cambon and the Ambassadors of Britain,
+Italy, Russia and Japan and several distinguished Frenchmen.
+
+[Illustration: AMBASSADORS WILLIAM G. SHARP AND JAMES W. GERARD
+FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN PARIS, FEBRUARY, 1917]
+
+I did not sit next to Briand as I ranked after the Ambassadors
+accredited to France, but after lunch I sat alone with him
+before the fire in one of the large and beautiful salons and
+there we had a long talk, as, naturally, he wanted to know about
+the situation in Germany. He impressed me as a strong man, with
+the vigour of an orator, a man of temperament, a man endowed by
+nature to become a leader of the French--as the French were
+before the war.
+
+Lord Esher, at the request of General Lyautey, then at the head
+of the military force of France, took me to see that General. I
+had to wait for him some time, as he was appearing before a
+committee of the Chamber of the Senate. His inability to agree
+with the Chamber caused his resignation not long afterwards.
+
+I was struck in France by the fact that the leaders, civil,
+military and naval, seemed older than those in similar positions
+in other countries.
+
+The present Premier, Clemenceau, is an example of this fondness
+of the French for government by old men. Clemenceau is seventy-six
+years old, but is a vigorous fighter.
+
+Mrs. Gerard and I lunched with Gabriel Hanotaux and his
+attractive wife at their home. Cambon was there, and Ribot, since
+become Premier of France, a good old man; also the Secretary of
+the Navy and several learned French philosophers and members of
+the Academy and one of the heads of the Credit Lyonnais, perhaps
+the greatest financial institution of France.
+
+War, war--who could talk of anything else? Hanotaux said that in
+our time we had been unusually fortunate, unusually free from
+war, that there was underneath France, underneath even the fair
+city of Paris, under the smiling sunlit fields, another France, a
+France of caves and catacombs, excavated by the poor people, the
+plain people who, during the One Hundred Years' War, had sought
+in marching armies, the far-riding plunderers and the depths of
+the earth refuge from the harassing, camp followers, the roving
+bands of "White Companies," the robber barons who, English and
+French, Gascon and Norman, harried the lands of France.
+
+I said that I had heard the statement made, and there seemed no
+reason to doubt it, that since the birth of Christ the world has
+only in one year out of every thirteen enjoyed a rest from war.
+
+Mr. Fabre-Luce, Vice-President of the Credit Lyonnais, told us of
+an interesting book written by a Russian and published before the
+war which predicted much that has happened in this war with
+almost the foresight of a Cassandra. I was so impressed that I
+secured a copy.
+
+This book, "The Future War," by Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch,
+counsellor of the Russian Empire, and published in 1892, had so
+great an effect on the Czar of Russia that it was the reading of
+it which impelled him to call the Peace Conference at The Hague.
+In the course of his book the author explains that it is
+impossible for the Powers to continue longer in the path of
+armaments and that they ought to look each other in the face and
+demand where these great armaments and this extension of forces
+are conducting them. He writes:
+
+     "How can one believe it possible to solve
+     international questions by means of the veritable
+     cataclysm which will constitute, with the present
+     means of destruction, war waged between the five
+     great Powers, by ten millions of soldiers?... In
+     this war explosives so powerful will be employed
+     that every grouping of troops on the flat country
+     or even under the protection of fortifications
+     will become almost impossible and that, therefore,
+     the preparations of this character made in
+     expectation of the war will become useless....
+
+     "The future war will see the use of a great
+     quantity of new aids to war, bicycles, pigeons,
+     telegraph, telephones, optical instruments and
+     photographic instruments for the purpose of
+     mapping from a great distance the positions
+     occupied by the enemy and means to observe the
+     movements of the enemy such as observing ladders,
+     balloons and so on....
+
+     "In the future war every body of troops holding
+     itself on the defensive or found taking the
+     offensive, when it is not the question of sudden
+     assault, will have to fortify itself in a chosen
+     position and the war will be confined principally
+     to the form of a series of combats in which the
+     possession of fortified positions will be
+     disputed, and in which the assailant will have to
+     meet the accessory defensives in the neighbourhood
+     of the fortifications such as barricades, barbed
+     wire, etc., the destruction of these objects
+     costing many victims.... The infantry, when on the
+     defensive, will dig itself in. The conduct of the
+     war will depend, in a large measure, on the
+     artillery."
+
+According to our author, who foresaw "No Man's Land" between the
+two opposing forces, "there will be formed a certain zone
+absolutely impassable in consequence of the terrible fire with
+which it will be inundated from a short distance from each side."
+Bloch adds: "This war will last a long time and entire nations
+will be seen in arms or rather the flower of each nation. Germany
+will begin the war by throwing itself on France and then, using
+the many German railroads, will turn against Russia. By virtue of
+its military force Germany will take the initiative of operations
+and will make the war on the two fronts."
+
+His prophetic eye saw even the submarine war of the future. "It
+will happen, possibly, that the future war will produce engines
+of war completely unknown and unexpected up to the present time;
+in any event one can foresee the advent in a short time of
+submarines destined to carry below even ironclads, torpedoes
+powerful enough to wreck the strongest ships."
+
+He quotes the opinions of Jomini, who says that future armies
+will not be composed of troops recruited voluntarily but of
+entire nations called by a law to arms and who will not fight for
+a change of frontier but for their existence. Jomini states "that
+this state of affairs will bring us back to the third and the
+fourth centuries, calling to our minds those shocks of immense
+peoples who disputed among themselves the European continent,"
+and "that if a new legislation and a new international law do not
+come to put an end to these risings of whole peoples that it is
+impossible to foresee where the ravages of future war will stop.
+It will become a scourge more terrible than ever, because the
+population of civilised nations will be cut down, while in the
+interior of each nation the normal economic life will be
+arrested, communications interrupted and if the war is prolonged
+financial crises will come with a fearful rise in the price of
+everything and famine with all its consequences."
+
+Bloch, in depicting the future war, says that "in 1870, the
+struggle was between two Powers, while in the war of the future
+at least five great nations will take part without speaking of
+the intervention of Turkey and England.... The comparing of the
+coming war with any war of the past is impossible because the
+increase in the effective fighting forces has been of a rapidity
+so unexampled and this increase brings with it so great an
+augmentation of expenditures and of victims that the future war
+will have the character of a struggle for the existence of
+nations.... It is true that the war of 1870 gave us something of
+an example of this character. That was a war without mercy,
+brought on by secular hate, a war of revenge on the part of the
+Germans because of the ancient victories of the French, a war
+where volunteers were shot and villages burned and where unheard
+of exactions were imposed on the conquered whom the conqueror
+sought to wrong and weaken for a long period of time. A new war
+in Central Europe will be a second edition of the same struggle
+but by how much will it not surpass the former wars by its
+magnitude and by its length and by the means of destruction
+employed."
+
+Does not Bloch give a better prediction of this war than the
+often quoted Bernhardi?
+
+The table conversation at Hanotaux's was in French; few Frenchmen
+and hardly any public men in France speak English.
+
+At this lunch, Ribot, since Premier, said to me, "In men, in
+fighting, we can hold out, but we must have help on the credit
+side."
+
+How much more than credit have we sent since to help beloved,
+beleaguered France!
+
+My interview with President Poincar� of France was set for
+five-thirty in the Elys�e Palace. I had to wait some minutes in
+an ante-room, hung with splendid tapestries, where the secretary
+in charge introduced me to Deschanel, the Secr�taire perp�tuel of
+the Academie Fran�aise, with whom I had a few minutes' talk.
+
+The President sat in a small, beautifully decorated room in this
+historical Elys�e Palace. A small fire burned in the grate, a bit
+of grateful warmth in almost coalless Paris. He, too, plied me
+with questions, but not as closely as others, about the land I
+had left behind. He spoke of a great gift of money made by James
+Stillman, a fund to help the families of members of the Legion of
+Honour.
+
+Poincar� is a man of fifty-seven, wears a small beard growing
+grey, and is a little under medium height (of this country) and
+has much the manner of an American lawyer. What a contrast those
+polite, agreeable Frenchmen were to the stiff, formal, overbearing
+Germans. There are "well born" Germans with charming international
+manners and the lower classes in Germany have kindly, natural
+manners, but the manners of the minor members of the merchant
+class and of the lesser officials is rude to boorishness.
+
+And here I want to say a word about the democracy of my own
+countrymen. Before the war and during it we entertained countless
+Americans in the Embassy; all sorts and under a variety of
+conditions, Jew and Gentile, business men and students,
+travellers and musicians. They carried themselves with ease,
+whatever the occasion. I was proud of them always and of our
+system of education that had given them such pleasant equality.
+
+After my arrival in Berlin a magnificent darkey, named George
+Washington Bronson, called in search of a job. Over six feet four
+and well built, I thought he would make an impressive appearance
+opening carriage doors or taking hats in the hall. So I engaged
+him. But he did not get on well with the other servants, and his
+discharge followed. Great consternation was caused shortly
+afterwards at our Lincoln day reception when Mrs. Gerard and the
+ladies of the Embassy were receiving the American Colony, by the
+report that George Washington, dressed up to the nines,
+accompanied by a coloured friend, presenting the appearance of a
+new red buggy, was on his way up stairs. I decided that on
+Lincoln's birthday all were welcome; so George Washington and his
+friend, resplendent, received the same greeting accorded all
+Americans and the manners of George Washington excelled those of
+a Grand Duke. But although one could see his mouth water, he did
+not approach the table where our local Ruggles presided over the
+refreshments. There was "that" about Ruggles' eye which told
+George Washington he would have to "go to the mat" before his
+former superior officer would serve him with champagne.
+
+The cold in Paris was bitter, biting into the very bones, and all
+classes of the population suffered intensely from the lack of
+coal. In the theatres, for instance, there was absolutely no
+heat. Theatrical performances were permitted in each theatre
+three times a week. Evening dress was prohibited. I went to the
+Folies Berg�res, arriving so late that the crowded house had
+warmed itself and it was possible to stay until the end in spite
+of the want of ventilation.
+
+At one of the theatres I arrived early, but the cold was so
+bitter that even sitting in fur overcoat and with my hat on I was
+so chilled I had to leave after twenty minutes. This play was a
+_revue_, the actresses appearing in the scanty costumes peculiar
+to that form of entertainment, but the cold was of such intensity
+that they had added their street furs, presenting a curiously
+comical effect.
+
+I spoke to many of the soldiers in the streets. All were animated
+by a new spirit in France, an obstinate calm, a determination to
+see this thing through, to end forever the fear of Prussian
+invasion which for so many years had impended. If any sign of
+weakness was apparent it was among the financiers; not among the
+poor and the men of the trenches.
+
+At the railway station I talked with a blue-clad French soldier,
+calm, witty, but determined. He said, "My family comes from the
+East of France, my great grandfather was killed by the Prussians
+in 1814, my grandfather was shot in his garden by the Prussians
+in 1870, my father died of grief, in 1916, because my two sisters
+in Lille fell into Prussian hands and were taken as their slaves
+with all that that means. I have decided that we must end this
+horror once and for all, so that my children can cultivate their
+little fields without this constant haunting fear of the invading
+Prussian."
+
+We left Paris on the evening train for the Spanish border.
+Newspaper men taking flashlights and "poilus" in uniform crowded
+the station platform as the train with our still numerous party
+pulled out.
+
+How France has disappointed German expectations! France to-day is
+not the France that calls out, "We are betrayed," and runs away
+after the failure of its first assault. France to-day is a calm
+France that seeks out its traitors, and deliberately punishes
+them, that organises with an efficiency we once thought a
+Prussian monopoly, a France that bleeds but fights on, a France
+that, standing with its back to its beloved, sunny fields, with
+many of her dearest sons dead, facing the Kaiser across No Man's
+Land, cries boldly, bravely to the world, the war cry of Verdun,
+"They shall not pass!"
+
+But even while war goes on, even while the French poilus hold
+fast the long battle line, the French people are beset within by
+agents of the Kaiser. Face to face they are with the secret
+agents, the spies, the informers, the buyers of newspapers and of
+public men, the traffickers in honour who, behind French
+citizenship or neutral passports, seek to divide France, to make
+the soldier at the front feel that he is betrayed by traitors at
+home, to render the French distrustful and suspicious of each
+other and thus to strike as mortal a blow at the French defence
+as was attempted at Verdun.
+
+Bolo Pasha and all his tribe slip past trench and barbed wire and
+do more damage than a German army corps to the cause of Liberty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+MY INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF SPAIN
+
+
+Neutrals--how obsolete the word seems!
+
+Yet there are some nations in Europe which will remain neutral no
+matter how great the hardship. How much this is due to inherent
+weaknesses of government, fears that the people may acquire too
+much of the infectious spirit of liberalism that war brings and
+thereby overthrow royalty, is hard to judge. But I must say that
+Kaiserism has omitted no word or act to impress upon the royalty
+of those countries, which might otherwise be inclined to aid the
+entente, the advantages to them of keeping out of the war unless
+they become allies of Germany.
+
+You will meet Kaiserism in Spain and the other neutral countries
+of Europe as much as you will in Austria or Bulgaria or Turkey. I
+do not mean that Spain, for instance, is by any means an ally of
+Germany, but I do mean that the German propagandist has had free
+rein.
+
+I shall never forget the fact that the King of Spain, during my
+talk with him, remarked: "Remember that while I am King of Spain,
+I am also an Austrian Archduke."
+
+And not only is the King of Spain by descent and in the right of
+his father an Archduke of Austria but his mother was an Austrian
+Princess of the House of Hapsburg. Study, for the moment, the
+genealogy of the King and Queen of Spain and you will see how
+royalty is inter-related in this war.
+
+The Queen of Spain was brought up at the court of the late Queen
+Victoria of England and is a Battenberg princess. In 1823,
+Alexander, Prince of Hesse and the Rhine, took in morganatic
+marriage a Countess von Hauke. He made her Countess of Battenberg
+and in 1858 she was given the title by the ruler of Hesse, of
+Princess Battenberg, her children and their descendants to take
+the same title. One of these Battenbergs, descendants of Countess
+von Hauke, married Beatrice, daughter of Queen Victoria, and the
+daughter of the marriage is the present Queen of Spain, who just
+before her marriage to Alfonso was created a Royal Highness by
+King Edward VII. Queen Victoria Eugenia has become quite Spanish.
+With a mantilla on her head, she attends bull fights and is very
+popular.
+
+The father of Alfonso XIII, Alfonso XII, was very intimate with
+the German Court. In 1883, he visited the old Emperor William I
+in Germany and accepted the colonelcy of a Uhlan regiment then in
+garrison in Strassburg, one of the towns taken from France in
+1870. On his return journey he stopped in Paris and was the
+object of a popular demonstration so violent that the President
+of France and his ministers called in a body to apologise.
+
+Shortly thereafter the Crown Prince (later Emperor) Friedrich
+paid a visit to Spain and an intimacy was maintained between the
+two courts.
+
+It is the inclination of those in the king business to keep
+together and a tradition of Prussia that fellow Kings must be
+sustained and, if possible, maintained against democracy. That's
+why the Kaiser finds reciprocal sympathy in Spain.
+
+Our popular Ambassador, Mr. Willard, and his staff, with a
+representative of the Spanish Foreign Office, met us at the
+station at Madrid on my arrival from Paris.
+
+Madrid is a handsome city, comparatively modern. From its highest
+point the great Royal Palace dominates the capital and from the
+palace the royal park stretches unbroken to the Guadarrama
+mountains sixty miles away.
+
+In many respects Spain seems a land upside down. We arrived at
+Madrid just at the close of the Carnival season. Masked balls
+began at three in the afternoon and many theatres not until ten
+or even eleven at night. Madrid sleeps late. The rich people get
+up only in time for lunch. The streets are full of noise and
+people until four in the morning, the sellers of lottery tickets
+making special efforts to swell the volume of night sounds.
+
+My visit to the King of Spain was at eleven in the morning.
+Ambassador Willard went with me. As we entered the palace and
+waited at the foot of an elevator, the car descended and one of
+the little Princes of Spain, about eight years old, dressed in a
+sailor suit, stepped out. Evidently he had been trained in royal
+urbanity for he immediately came up to us, shook hands and said,
+"Buenos dias."
+
+And as we strolled down a long corridor where Palace guards in
+high boots and cocked hats stood guard with halberds in their
+hands another little Prince, about eleven, also in a sailor suit,
+came out of a room and walked ahead of us; behind followed two
+nuns, walking side by side at a respectful distance. As he
+appeared in the corridor one of the guards stamped his halberd on
+the floor, calling out in Spanish, "Turn out the guard--the
+Infant of Spain." And in the guardroom at the end of the corridor
+the guards, forming in line, clashing their arms, did honour to
+the baby Prince.
+
+Ambassador Willard and I waited in the great, splendid room of
+the Palace. Inside, priests and officers, ladies, officials,
+diplomats, were waiting to present petitions or pay homage to
+their King. Outside in the court yard, the guard was being
+changed, infantry, cavalry and artillery all being represented. A
+tuneful band played during the ceremony of guard mount, which was
+witnessed by crowds of poor folk who are permitted to enter the
+Palace precincts as spectators.
+
+While waiting I was presented to the Archbishop of Toledo, head
+of the Spanish Church, resplendent in his gorgeous ecclesiastical
+robes. Finally a court official came and said that I was to go
+into the King alone; that Mr. Willard was to see him later.
+
+I found King Alfonso in a small room about twenty by fourteen
+feet. He wore a brown business suit, a soft shirt and soft
+collar fastened by a gold safety pin--quite the style of dress of
+an American collegian. He is tall and well built.
+
+The King speaks perfect English--without a trace of accent. After
+we had talked a few moments, I noted the difference between
+Teuton and Latin, the vast abyss which separates the polite and
+courteous Spaniard, thinking of others, anxious to be hospitable,
+and the rough, conceited, aggressive Junker of Germany. How often
+have I found that we ourselves, although good hearted and easy
+going, in comparison with our friends in South and Central
+America, do not measure up to the standards of Castilian
+courtesy.
+
+Some one knocked at the door and King Alfonso rose and answered.
+He returned with odd looking implements in his hands which I soon
+discovered to be an enormous silver cocktail shaker and two
+goblets. After a dexterous shake, the King poured out two large
+cocktails, saying, "I understand that you American gentlemen
+always drink in the morning."
+
+I had not had a cocktail for years and if I had endeavoured to
+assimilate the drink so royally prepared for me I should have
+been in no condition to continue the conversation. I think King
+Alfonso himself was quite relieved when, after a sip, I put my
+cocktail behind a statue. I noticed that he camouflaged his in a
+similar manner.
+
+Unfortunately, as Maximilian Harden said, the Germans think of us
+as a land of dollars, trusts and corruption; and other nations
+think of us as devotees of the cocktail and of poker. Their
+school boys dream of fighting Indians in Pittsburg and hunting
+buffalo in the deserts of the Bronx.
+
+The characteristic of Alfonso which impresses one immediately is
+that of extreme manliness. He has a sense of humour that will
+save him from many a mishap in his difficult post. He has a wide
+knowledge of men and affairs and, above all, as the Spaniards
+would put it, is _muy espa�ol_ (very Spanish), not only in
+appearance but in his way of looking at things, a Spaniard of the
+best type, a Spaniard possessing industry and ambition and
+bravery, a Spaniard, in fact, of the days when Spain was supreme
+in the world. His favourite sport is polo, which he plays very
+well. Indeed, the game, which requires dash, quickness of
+thought, nerve and good riding, is particularly suited to the
+Spanish character. The King showed at the time of the anarchistic
+outbreaks, that he was a brave man. Yet he must be careful at all
+times to remember that he is a constitutional king, that in a
+country like Spain leadership is dangerous, that he should always
+rather stand aside, let the representatives of the nation decide,
+thus taking no definite position himself. A king who abandons the
+council table to shoot pigeons or play polo is often acting with
+far more wisdom than a constitutional ruler who attempts by the
+use of his strong personality and lofty position to force upon
+his councillors a course which the majority of them do not
+recommend.
+
+The Spaniards are politically an exacting people. But it is to
+be hoped that they will not turn the heavy artillery of their
+criticism upon a king who serves them so gracefully and well.
+
+The king has a natural desire to take a prominent part in the
+negotiations for peace, but here again is dangerous ground for
+him. He should be given a part, if possible, in the preliminaries
+of peace, but while I believe that he sympathises with one of the
+Entente countries, the Allies are forced to recognise the fact of
+which he himself reminded me, that he is not only King of Spain,
+but Archduke of one of the Central Empires, the son of an
+Austrian Archduchess.
+
+The king told me that he was most desirous that American capital
+should become interested in the development of Spain. He did not
+tell me the reason for this desire but perhaps he fears that if
+German capital should take a great part in the development of
+industrial Spain that the tentacles of the German propaganda and
+spy system which go hand in hand with her commercial invaders
+would wrap themselves around the commercial, social and political
+life of Spain.
+
+Perhaps King Alfonso, when he wishes capital other than German to
+become interested in Spain, is thinking of the occurrences of
+1885, when Spain and Germany so nearly clashed. In that year the
+crew of a German warship hoisted the flag of the German Empire on
+the island of Yap, one of the Carolina group, an island long
+claimed by Spain. The act so stirred the people of Spain that a
+great meeting was held in Madrid, attended by over one hundred
+thousand people. Later the mob attacked the German Embassy and
+Consulate, tore down the shield and flag staff of the Consulate
+and burned them in the principal square of Madrid. In the end,
+Spain was compelled to humbly apologise to Germany for the insult
+to the German Ambassador.
+
+Some years before the war the King sent to this country a special
+emissary to interest American capital in Spain. Means of
+transportation are very meagre. Great mineral districts are as
+yet undeveloped and many other opportunities for foreign capital
+present themselves.
+
+I asked the Spaniards why Spain was not developed by Spanish
+capital and they told me that the rich put all their money in
+government bonds and lived as gaily as possible on the interest.
+
+Our own Government, whether Democratic or Republican, must always
+be careful to see that taxes are not so high as to prevent the
+naturally enterprising American from risking part of his capital
+in new ventures and such protection must be given to American
+citizens that they will continue to try their luck at business in
+foreign countries for the immediate benefit, of course, of
+themselves, but also for the commercial supremacy of the United
+States.
+
+The American who goes to Mexico and there develops a railroad or
+a plantation, a commercial business, a bank or a mine, is not
+only adding to the wealth of Mexico, but any money which he makes
+after paying his due share of taxes there, is brought back by him
+to the United States, is subject to taxation, and by just so
+much not only lightens the tax burden of other Americans, but
+adds to the power in trade of the whole country.
+
+A business man who is taxed too much on any profits that he makes
+will, like the Spaniard, invest his capital in Government bonds.
+He will stop taking up new enterprises because if he loses no one
+compensates him for his loss, while if he wins most of his profit
+is taken in taxes by the State.
+
+I do not think that the Spanish harbour any spirit of revenge
+against us because of the events of the Spanish-American war.
+There was nothing in that war to arouse particular resentment. No
+one used poison gas, or enslaved women or cut off the hands of
+babies. On our side, at least, there was an intense admiration
+for the splendid, chivalrous bravery of our enemies. Spain was,
+in reality, benefited by the loss of Cuba and the Philippines; in
+fact, they were practically lost to her before we entered the
+war. Thinking Spaniards believe the war with America benefited
+Spain; and the lower classes rejoice because their sons and
+husbands are not forced to serve in the Spanish Army in the
+fever-laden swamps of the tropics.
+
+On the war Spain is hopelessly divided: Conservative, against
+Conservative; Liberal, against Liberal. The usual German
+propaganda is furiously at work, all the paraphernalia, bought
+newspapers--bribes. Roman Catholic prejudice against former
+French Governments is a great stumbling block in the way of the
+Allies in Spain, for that country became the refuge of many
+orders and priests driven from France. Many of the Spanish
+Catholics still resent the action of previous French Governments
+towards the Catholic Church.
+
+But whatever may be the faults of the French Government in this
+particular, whether it or the teaching orders went too far--the
+Roman Catholics of Spain sooner or later will realise that, after
+all, the bulk of the French and Italian and Belgian people are
+their co-religionists, and they will recall the attempts of
+Bismarck to master the Roman Catholics of Germany and to bind its
+priests to the will of the Imperial Government, attempts recent
+enough to keep the Catholics of Germany still organised in the
+political party which they created in the dark days of Bismarck's
+"war for Civilisation," as he dared call his contest with the
+great Roman Catholic Church.
+
+Spanish and other Catholics throughout the world will remember
+this and will remember, too, that from every valley of the
+Protestant section of the German Empire the eye can see a
+"Bismarck Thurm," or Bismarck Memorial Tower, erected on some
+commanding height by the admirers of the dead Iron Chancellor.
+
+I believe that after the war the Roman Catholic Church in France
+and Belgium will be on a healthier, sounder basis, that it will
+have more and more influence with the people, that it will be
+more popular and respected than before, unless some act on the
+part of the Pope should lead the French and Belgians to believe
+that he favours Germany. Priests are not exempt from military
+service in France and these Abb�s, fighting, dying, suffering
+wounds and privation, working cheek to cheek with the soldiers of
+France, will do much to bring about the change. I met a number of
+these priest-warriors in the prison camps of Germany. They are
+doing a great work and have earned the respect and love of their
+countrymen--their fellow prisoners.
+
+Several of these soldier Abb�s were prisoners in Dyrotz, near
+Berlin, and I remember how they were looked up to by all the
+soldiers. What a consolation were these noble warriors who fought
+a two-fold winning fight--for their country and their faith.
+
+Spain has suffered much from the war. In the northeast part
+called Catalonia are located the manufacturing industries of
+Spain, cloth weaving, cotton spinning, etc. In Barcelona, the
+principal industrial town, are many manufacturing industries. If
+these plants cannot obtain raw materials or a market for their
+finished products, then industrial depression ensues and
+thousands are thrown out of employment.
+
+So in the north, where iron ore is produced, the submarine
+blockade of England, chief buyer of iron ore and the seller of
+coal, has made itself felt in every province; and in the south,
+the land of sun and gypsies, oranges and vines, the want of sea
+and land transportation, the diminished exports of wine and
+fruits to other countries have brought many of the inhabitants to
+the verge of ruin.
+
+In the coast cities sailors and longshoremen are out of
+employment, and this condition--these hundreds of thousands
+without work through disturbance of industry,--has ripened the
+field for the German propagandist and agent who threatens the
+King with revolution, should he incline to the Allies.
+
+In no country of the world has the German agent been so bold and
+no neutral government has been more forcibly reminded in its
+policy and conduct of the fact that it is always face to face
+with Kaiserism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+GERMAN SPIES AND THEIR METHODS
+
+
+German spies who looked like "movie" detectives hung about and
+followed us on the journey from Berlin to Switzerland, France and
+Spain. There were even suspicious characters among the Americans
+with German accent who came on our special train from Germany to
+Switzerland.
+
+Berne is now the champion spy centre of the world. Switzerland, a
+neutral country, bordering on Germany, France, Italy and Austria,
+is the happy hunting ground and outfitting point for myriads of
+spies employed by the nations at war. The Germans, however, use
+more spies than all the other nations together.
+
+Bismarck said that there are male nations and female nations, and
+that Germany was a male nation--certainly the German has less of
+that heaven-sent feminine quality of intuition than other
+peoples. The autocrat, never mingling with the plain people of
+all walks of life, finds the spy a necessity.
+
+Spy spies on spy--autocracy produces bureaucracy where men rise
+and fall not by the votes of their fellow citizens but by back
+stairs intrigue. The German office-holder fears the spies of his
+rivals. I often said to Germans holding high office during the
+war, "This strain is breaking you down,--all day in your office.
+Take an afternoon off and come shooting with me." The invariable
+answer was, "I cannot--the others would learn it from their spies
+and would spread the report that I neglect business!"
+
+While in Spain I met the then Premier, Count Romanones, a man of
+great talent and impressive personality. He told me of the
+finding of a quantity of high explosives, marked by a little
+buoy, in one of the secluded bays of the coast. And that day a
+German had been arrested who had mysteriously appeared at a
+Spanish port dressed as a workman. The workman took a first class
+passage to Madrid, went to the best hotel and bought a complete
+outfit of fine clothes. Undoubtedly the high explosive as well as
+the mysterious German had been landed from a German submarine.
+Whether the explosive was destined as a depot for submarines or
+was to help overturn the Spanish government was hard to guess,
+but Count Romanones was worried over the activity of the German
+agents in Spain.
+
+It has been very easy for German agents in America to communicate
+with Germany through this submarine post from Spain to Germany,
+the letters from America being sent to Cuba and thence on Spanish
+boats to Spain.
+
+At all times since the war the Germans have had a submarine post
+running direct from Germany to Spain. Shortly after our arrival
+in Spain Mrs. Gerard received mysteriously a letter written by a
+friend of hers, a German Baroness, in Berlin. This letter had
+undoubtedly been sent through the very efficient German spy
+system.
+
+Sometime in 1915 a German soldier, in uniform, speaking perfect
+English, called one day at the Embassy. He said that his name was
+Bode and that he had at one time worked for my father-in-law, the
+late Marcus Daly. Of course, we had no means of verifying his
+statements and Mrs. Gerard did not remember any one of that name
+or recall Bode personally. He said that he was fighting on the
+East front and that he had a temporary leave of absence. I gave
+him some money and later we sent him packages of food and tobacco
+to the front, but never received any acknowledgment.
+
+In Madrid one of my assistants, Frank Hall, while walking through
+the street, ran across Bode, who was fashionably attired. His
+calling cards stated that he was a mining engineer from Los
+Angeles, California. He told Hall a most extraordinary fairy
+story, saying that he had been captured by the Russians on the
+East front and sent to Siberia, that from Siberia he had escaped
+to China and from there he had gradually worked his way back to
+America and thence to Spain.
+
+Of course, without any definite information on the subject it is
+impossible to say exactly what he was doing in Spain. But I am
+sure that it is far more likely he had landed from a German
+submarine on the coast of Spain and that he was posing as an
+American mining engineer for a particular purpose.
+
+I told certain people in Spain about Bode and of his intention to
+visit the mining districts of Spain where numbers of men are
+employed. Bode must have suspected that I had given information
+about him, for Hall and I received several postcards of a
+threatening character, evidently from him.
+
+My cables to and from the State Department passed through our
+legation at Copenhagen, and, of course, if the Germans knew our
+cipher these messages were read by them. On special occasions I
+made use of a super-cipher the key to which I kept in a safe in
+my bedroom and which only one secretary could use. The files of
+cipher cables sent and received were kept in a large safe in the
+Embassy. But before leaving Germany, knowing the Germans as I
+did, and particularly what they had done in other countries and
+to other diplomats, knowing how easy it would be for them to
+burglarise the safe after we left, when the Spaniards and Dutch
+were out of the building at night, I tossed all these despatches
+as well as the code books into a big furnace fire. Commander
+Gherardi and Secretary Hugh Wilson stood by and personally saw
+that the last scrap was burned. Of course, copies of all the
+cables are in the State Department.
+
+German spies are adepts at opening bags, steaming letters--all
+the old tricks. The easiest way to baffle them is to write
+nothing that cannot be published to the world.
+
+For a long time after the beginning of war I was too busy to
+write the weekly report of official gossip usually sent home by
+diplomats. I suppose the Germans searched our courier bags for
+such a report vainly. Anyway, its absence finally got on the
+nerves of Zimmermann so much that one day he blurted out, "Don't
+you ever write reports to your Government?"
+
+Sealed letters are opened by spies as follows:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+by inserting a pencil or small round object in the envelope,
+steamed a little, if necessary; the envelope is opened at the end
+flap and the contents pulled out without disturbing the seal, the
+contents are then read, put in their place again, the end flap
+re-inserted, a little gum used and the envelope is as intact as
+before.
+
+The only safe way to seal an envelope is thus:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Even then a clever spy can open the letter, read the contents and
+seal it again. This is done by cutting through the seals with a
+hot razor--the divided seals are then united by pressing the hot
+razor against each side of the cut and then pressing the two
+parts of the cut seal together. This is, however, a very delicate
+operation and doesn't always work.
+
+From the outbreak of war we sent and received our official mail
+through England, and couriers carried it between Berlin and
+London through Holland via Flushing and Tilbury.
+
+On account of the great volume of correspondence between
+Ambassador Page and myself on the affairs of German prisoners in
+England and English prisoners in Germany, there were many pouches
+every week. These were leather mail bags opened only by duplicate
+keys kept in London and Berlin and, for the American mail, in
+Berlin and Washington. Our couriers did their best to keep the
+numerous bags in their sight during the long journey but on many
+occasions our couriers were separated, I am sure with malicious
+purpose, from their bags by the German railway authorities and on
+some occasions the bags not recovered for days.
+
+Undoubtedly at this time the Germans opened and looked over the
+contents of the bags. Later in the war our courier while on a
+Dutch mail boat, running between Flushing and England, was twice
+captured with the boat by a German warship and taken into
+Zeebrugge. Undoubtedly here, too, the bags were secretly opened
+and our uncoded despatches and letters read.
+
+German spies were most annoying in Havana and one of them, a
+large dark man, followed me about at a distance of only six feet,
+with his eyes glued on the small bag which I carried from a thick
+strap hanging around my shoulder. I brought it from Germany in
+that way. I never let it out of my hands or sight.
+
+What was in that bag? Among other things were the original
+telegrams written by the Kaiser in his own handwriting,
+facsimiles of which appear in my earlier book, "My Four Years in
+Germany," and the treaty which the Germans tried to get me to
+sign while they held me as a prisoner. Under the terms they
+proposed the German ships interned in America were to have the
+right in case of war, to sail for Germany under a safe conduct to
+be obtained from the Allies by the United States. Somewhat of a
+treaty! And quite a new, bright and original thought by some one
+in the Foreign Office or German Admiralty. There were also in
+this mysterious bag many other matters of interest that may some
+day see the light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Poisonous propaganda and spying are the twin offspring of
+Kaiserism.
+
+There is in Mexico, for instance, one force that never
+sleeps,--the German propaganda. It is the same method as that
+used by the Teutons in every country, the purchase or rental of
+newspaper properties, bribing public men and officers of the army
+and the insidious use of Germans who are engaged in commerce.
+This propaganda is backed by enormous sums of money appropriated
+by the German government which directs how all its officers and
+agents, high and low, shall participate in the campaign.
+
+In the long run a paid propaganda always fails. It is like paying
+money to blackmailers. The blackmailer who has once received
+money becomes so insatiable that even the Bank of England will
+not satisfy him in the end. Sometimes the newspapers which are
+not bought, but are equally corrupt, become vehement in their
+denunciation of the country making the propaganda in the hope of
+being bought and in the hope that their bribe money will be in
+proportion to their hostility. Corrupted public men who are not
+bribed often become sternly virtuous and denunciatory with a
+similar hope. Those who have received the wages of shame, on the
+other hand, become more insistent in their demands, crying,
+"Give! Give!" like the daughter of the horse-leech.
+
+The blows of war must be struck quickly. Delays are dangerous and
+the temporary paralysis of one country by propaganda may mean the
+loss of the war. The United States has been at a great disadvantage
+because our officials have not had the authority, the means or
+the money to fight the German propaganda with effective educational
+campaigns, both offensive and defensive.
+
+Bernstorff in this country disposed of enormous sums for the
+purpose of moulding American public opinion. I, in Berlin, was
+without one cent with which to place America's side before the
+German people. It is a conflict of two systems. In Berlin I did
+not even have money to pay private detectives and on the rare
+occasions when I used them as, for instance to find out who was
+connected with the so-called American organisation, the League of
+Truth, which was engaged in a violent propaganda against America
+inside Germany, I was obliged to bear the expense personally.
+
+South of the Rio Grande the Germans are working against us, doing
+their best to prejudice the Mexicans against the United States,
+playing upon old hatreds and creating new ones and, in the
+meantime, by their purchase of properties and of mines creating a
+situation that will constitute for us in the future a most
+difficult and dangerous problem.
+
+The Germans cannot understand why we do not take advantage of
+conditions in Mexico in order to conquer and hold that unfortunate
+country. They could not believe that we were actuated by a spirit
+of idealism and that we were patiently suffering much in order
+really to help Mexico. They could not believe that we were
+waiting in order to convince not only Mexico but the other States
+of Central America and the great friendly republics of South
+America, that it was not our policy to use the dissensions and
+weakness of our neighbours to gain territory.
+
+On one occasion before the war I and several other Ambassadors
+were dining with the Kaiser and after dinner the conversation
+turned to the strange sights to be seen in America. One of the
+Ambassadors, I think it was Cambon, said that he had seen in
+America whole houses being moved along the roads, something of a
+novelty to European eyes where the houses, constructed of brick
+and stone, cannot be transported from place to place like our
+wooden frame house. The Emperor jokingly remarked: "Yes, I am
+sure that the Americans are moving their houses. They are moving
+them down towards the Mexican border."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+EN ROUTE HOME--KAISERISM IN AMERICA
+
+
+Our party was so numerous that we were compelled to charter a
+special train to take us from Madrid to La Coru�a, the port in
+the extreme northwestern corner of Spain from which the _Infanta
+Isabela_ was to sail.
+
+Just before the train started, a Spanish gentleman from the
+Foreign Office, who had courteously come to see us off, said to
+me, "Do you know you have a Duke as engineer?" "The Duke of
+Saragossa is going to take out your train." So we ran forward to
+the engine and I shook hands with the Duke who was in blue
+overalls.
+
+This Duke of Saragossa, Grandee of Spain, often drives the engine
+of the King's train. Why he engineered our train I do not know,
+unless it was because of the rumours that German agents would try
+to stop my journey home.
+
+At any rate the Duke proved a most competent engineer, guiding us
+with velvet touch through the steep inclines and sharp turns of
+the Guadarrama mountains. At Venta de Ba�os his turn at the
+engine ended and on my invitation he came to dine with us in the
+dining car. He proved a most charming gentleman, speaking English
+well. He said that his great ambition was to visit America and
+see the big locomotives and the pretty girls. At dinner he was,
+of course, dressed in his overalls and carried out the professional
+touch by using clean cotton waste instead of a pocket handkerchief.
+
+Arrived at La Coru�a in the morning, carriages sent by the
+Spanish government met us and the Mayor and the other officials
+were most polite. The Mayor accompanied us on board ship next
+day, giving to Mrs. Gerard a beautiful basket of flowers entwined
+with ribbons of the colours of the City of La Coru�a.
+
+We found the _Infanta Isabela_ a clean splendid ship--her Captain
+competent and kind. I cheerfully recommend her to any who wish a
+safe voyage across the Atlantic during the war.
+
+My stay in Havana was brief and I was soon en route northward
+from Key West.
+
+As our train came north through Florida there were crowds and
+bands at the stations and at St. Augustine my eyes were delighted
+by the sight of Frank Munsey and Ex-Senator Chauncey Depew.
+
+At the station in Washington Secretary McAdoo met me. What a
+splendid record of achievement is his since the war, and now with
+the burden of all the railways in the country added to that of
+finance I suppose in no country at war has one man so successfully
+undertaken such gigantic tasks.
+
+President Wilson was ill in bed but next day got up on purpose to
+hear my report. I was with him for over an hour.
+
+[Illustration: THE "INFANTA ISABELLA," ON WHICH AMBASSADOR GERARD
+RETURNED FROM EUROPE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN HAVANA HARBOR,
+MARCH, 1917]
+
+The following day I arrived in New York, being met in Jersey
+City by a committee headed by the celebrated lawyer, John B.
+Stanchfield; Clarence Mackay, Herbert Swope (whose splendid
+articles in the _New York World_ were the first warnings to
+America and other countries respecting the ruthless submarine
+warfare), United States Marshal Thomas D. McCarthy, State Senator
+Foley, James J. Hoey,--a faithful trio of good friends who saw me
+off for Denmark only a few months before. I was escorted to the
+City Hall where I was welcomed by the Mayor. In a speech on the
+steps of the City Hall I said:
+
+     "We are standing to-day very near the brink of
+     war, but I want to assure you that if we should be
+     drawn into the conflict it will be only after our
+     President has exhausted every means consistent
+     with upholding the honour and dignity of the
+     United States to keep us from war. I left Berlin
+     with a clear conscience, because I felt that
+     during all my stay there I had omitted nothing to
+     make for friendly relations and peace between the
+     two nations.
+
+     "I am very glad to-day to see on the list of this
+     Reception Committee the names of people of German
+     descent. It is but natural that citizens of German
+     descent in the beginning of the war should have
+     had a sentimental feeling toward Germany, that
+     they should have looked back through rose-coloured
+     glasses on that land which, however, they left
+     because they did not have equality of opportunity.
+     We read to-day in the newspapers for the first
+     time that there is a prospect that after the war
+     the Germans will be given an equal share in their
+     own government. I believe that in our hour of
+     trial we can rely upon the loyalty of our citizens
+     of German descent, and if they would follow me I
+     would not be afraid to go out with a regiment of
+     them and without any fear of being shot from
+     behind.
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "The nation that stands opposite to us to-day has
+     probably no less than 12,000,000 men under arms. I
+     have seen the Germans take more prisoners in one
+     afternoon than there are men in the entire United
+     States Army.
+
+     "Does it not seem to you ridiculous that the two
+     States of New York and New Jersey should have more
+     chauffeurs in them than there are soldiers in our
+     army? My companions from the Twelfth Regiment that
+     have honoured me by coming here to-day, and more
+     men like them throughout the country, have done
+     what they can. But they can't do it all. There
+     must be a public sentiment if we are to maintain
+     ourselves as a nation. If we had a million men
+     under arms to-day we should not be near the edge
+     of war.
+
+     "Gentlemen, I have tried in Berlin to be, as the
+     Mayor has told you, an American Ambassador, and I
+     thank you because you, an audience of patriotic
+     Americans, by your presence here set your seal of
+     approval upon my conduct during the last two and a
+     half years."
+
+I have never been able to understand why so many people did not
+sooner realise what Kaiserism meant for us. But now, at last, the
+nation understands that we must fight on until this menace of
+military autocracy has vanished and that not until then will the
+world enjoy a lasting peace.
+
+Almost as soon as I was settled in New York I was drafted.
+Drafted by a public curiosity which insisted on knowing
+something about Germany and the war.
+
+And so for me began a new life--that of a public speaker--I spoke
+first in New York at a lunch at the Chamber of Commerce--war had
+not then been declared and I was compelled to be careful--for
+even then there seemed a fear of Germany, a foolish desire to
+surrender all manhood to a fat neutrality.
+
+On April 2nd came President Wilson's message demanding war. I was
+in the opera house that night. Between the acts extras appeared.
+I telephoned Swope of the _World_ who confirmed the news. While I
+was receiving this information one of the directors of the
+Metropolitan Opera Company came in the room. I told him what had
+happened and asked if he was not going to do something--order the
+news read from the stage--for example, and the "Star Spangled
+Banner" played. He said, "No, the opera company is neutral."
+
+I returned to the box where I was sitting and stepping to the
+front called on the house to cheer President Wilson. There was,
+for a moment, surprise at such unconventional action, but the
+whole house soon broke into cheers.
+
+Conventionalism was gone.
+
+The opera was DeKoven's "Canterbury Pilgrims" and a few minutes
+after the curtain rose on the last act Frau Ober, a German
+singer, who was taking one of the principal parts, keeled over in
+a faint,--rage, perhaps, that the Yankees were at last daring to
+cheer, to assert themselves against the Kaiser!
+
+As I spoke in Albany, Buffalo, Harrisburg, Trenton and Boston, in
+Philadelphia, Providence and many times in New York and other
+places, I noted always an eagerness to learn about Germany, the
+war and foreign affairs. We Americans had travelled, but not with
+our eyes open--"seeing, we saw not."
+
+The first great, great question we faced was that of universal
+service for the war--or the selective draft--again how farsighted
+our President then proved himself. What would be our situation
+now if we had tried to go to war under the volunteer system? This
+question once solved, our President led us with a breadth of
+vision, an efficiency, and on a scale commensurate with the size
+of the undertaking in which we at last had become partners.
+
+Perhaps we are a little over indulgent, however, in the treatment
+of the German enemy alien within our gates. No American singer or
+musician could travel about Germany at will, unwatched by the
+police, collecting money from Americans to be used in propaganda,
+or things much worse, against America. Americans in Germany are
+compelled to report twice daily to the police and cannot leave
+their homes at night. November 17, 1917--seven months after we
+went to war with Germany--I met Hugo Schmidt, a director of the
+Deutsche Bank, riding in Central Park. He lived at the German
+Club, saw whom he liked and only reported to the police when he
+changed his residence. In January 1918, he was finally interned.
+
+Long before our break with Germany, American consuls and
+officials were insulted in the street and in opera houses because
+they made use of their own language, not at all because they were
+taken for British for every one knew that all British had been
+interned.
+
+The wife of our naval attach� attended a reception presided over
+by a German admiral's wife. She was presented to this high
+personage by the wife of a German naval officer, who, in making
+the presentation, spoke in English. The admiral's wife rebuked
+both the wife of our attach� and the officer's wife for daring to
+talk English. I am thankful to say that Mrs. Gherardi immediately
+left the house to receive later the officially ordered apologies
+of the admiral's wife.
+
+And while Americans did not dare use their own language in Berlin
+in time of peace between the two countries yet after the outbreak
+of war, newspapers in the United States, printed in German, owned
+by Germans and German sympathisers, dared to attack America and
+her President.
+
+The autocracy always hope to divide us, to make of us a Russia,
+torn by Maximalists and Minimalists, by Militarists and
+Bolsheviki and, consequently, impotent for war.
+
+In travelling through the United States in August and September
+of 1917, although I was on private business, I made speeches in
+many cities, such as Minneapolis, and Helena, Billings, Butte and
+Missoula in Montana, Spokane, Seattle and Tacoma in Washington,
+Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and surrounding country, Los
+Angeles, San Diego and Pasadena and then Milwaukee, Chicago and
+Cleveland. In all this territory I found great enthusiasm, great
+patriotism and a sincere desire to learn about Germany and the
+war. But I found everywhere also the trail of Germany's poisonous
+propaganda.
+
+The great majority of our citizens of German-American descent
+have been splendidly loyal to their country in this crisis of its
+history. But the fact must be faced that there are those who, for
+some unknown reason, still sympathise with the German Kaiser in
+his war of aggression.
+
+More unfortunately there are politicians in America who seek the
+votes of those disaffected, and approach treason in doing so. In
+all the history of sordid politics, there is nothing more
+nauseating than the effort of these cheap politicians thus to
+gratify their personal ambitions.
+
+Their shameful identity is known to all. A generation from now
+their own descendants will be applying to the courts for a change
+of name.
+
+If, when the test comes, it is found that the votes of these
+disaffected citizens count for something in our elections, we
+must find some means to disenfranchise them rather than have our
+low politicians outbidding each other within the law in order to
+get these votes.
+
+Have we not had examples enough from Russia of what the slimy
+bribe and the snaky propaganda can do?
+
+In Chicago, where one Thompson is Mayor, there is a censorship of
+moving picture films. The chief censor is Major Funkhouser. When
+I was in Los Angeles, at the end of September, like all strangers
+there, I visited movie-land to see the pictures made.
+
+At the house of my college chum, Dr. Walter J. Barlow, I met the
+beautiful and celebrated Mary Pickford.
+
+In conversation she told me about Major Funkhouser, and how he
+had refused an exhibition permit for one of her films called "The
+Little American." Curious to see the film rejected by Chicago
+officialdom, I asked Miss Pickford if she would have it run off
+for my benefit. I could see nothing in the film that could hurt
+the susceptibilities of any except the Germans with whom we are
+now engaged in war!
+
+Later the Fox Film Company informed me that their film called
+"The Spy" and which deals with the adventures of an American who
+is supposed to go to Germany to get a list of German spies and
+agents in America, was refused the right of exhibition in Chicago
+by this same Major Funkhouser. In this case the Fox Company
+appealed in the courts and obtained from Judge Alschuler an
+injunction preventing any one from interfering with the
+exhibition of this film. The decision of Judge Alschuler was
+affirmed on appeal.
+
+And yet the mass of the people in Chicago are splendidly
+patriotic as the record of Chicago for enlistment and Red Cross
+and Liberty Loan shows.
+
+When I spoke in the great Medinah Temple under the auspices of
+the Hamilton Club, on October twenty-second, I was able to show
+to the audience two German text-books used in the Chicago public
+schools, stamped with the royal arms of Prussia. The books had
+been approved by Ella Flagg Young, Superintendent of Schools, in
+1914.
+
+These books were furnished me by my friend, Anthony Czarnecki of
+the _Chicago Daily News_ whom I first met in Berlin where he came
+to do most excellent work for his paper. In one of these books is
+printed the German patriotic song, The Watch on the Rhine ("Die
+Wacht am Rhein"). What a howl there would have been if some
+public school superintendent had selected for the schools under
+her jurisdiction a text-book of English literature with the royal
+arms of England stamped on the cover and "Rule Britannia"
+prominently displayed inside!
+
+These text-books were cleverly compiled to impress children at a
+youthful age with a favourable idea of kings and emperors. In one
+of these was an anecdote about Frederick the Great and a miller,
+and in another, one about the Emperor Charlemagne and the
+scholar, of course, making Frederick and Charlemagne appear as
+good kindly people, and giving the impression that all kings and
+emperors are beneficent beings. But no word is there in these
+books quoting the present German Emperor's statement in which he
+puts Frederick in the same class as the four other bloody
+conquerors of history, Alexander, Julius C�sar, Theodoric and
+Napoleon, and says that where they failed in their dreams of
+world conquest, his mailed fist will succeed. Why was not
+Frederick the Great's statement printed in these books, his
+admission that he engaged upon the Seven Years' War "in order to
+be talked about"?
+
+These books contained quotations from Goethe. Why did they not
+contain Goethe's statement, "Amerika, du hast es besser."?
+(America, you are better off). Or his prophecy about the
+Prussians, "The Prussian was born a brute, and civilisation will
+make him ferocious."
+
+The only foreign language taught in the grammar schools of
+Chicago is German. Parents are compelled to sign a statement in
+which they answer the question as to whether they wish their
+children to be taught German or not.
+
+See how subtle this is! Doubtless if a Teuton parent answers that
+he does not desire to have his children taught German the paid
+agents of the German propaganda stir up feeling against these
+Germans who have dared to refuse to have their children taught
+the language of the fatherland.
+
+And when a parent has once elected that his children shall be
+taught German, not the principal of the school, not the district
+superintendent, but only the head of all the Chicago school
+system, on the application of the parent, can excuse the child,
+during his or her school course, from further study of German.
+
+Worst of all, however, is the Chicago official school speller, a
+book printed under the direction and compiled by the school
+authorities of Chicago. In this speller there is just one piece
+of reading matter and that a fulsome eulogy of the present German
+Emperor.
+
+This is an account of an alleged incident of the Kaiser's school
+days and the author concludes that the facts set forth (probably
+untrue) show that the Kaiser as a boy had the "root of a fine
+character in him," possessed "that chivalrous sense of fair play
+which is the nearest thing to a religion" in boys of that age and
+hated "meanness and favouritism." The Chicago Board of Education
+end the eulogy by stating, "There is in him a fundamental bent
+toward what is clean, manly and aboveboard."
+
+"Chivalrous sense of fair play and hates meanness!" "Fundamental bent
+toward what is clean, manly and aboveboard!" How about the enslavement
+of women and girls in France, the use of poison gas, the deportations
+of the Belgians, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the killing of
+women and babies by Zeppelins and submarines.--Sickening!
+
+A number of the books used in the public schools of New York have
+so much in them favourable to kings and emperors, have so much of
+German patriotism and fatherland, that the hand of the propagandist
+must have had something to do with the adoption of these books.
+
+Of course, it is only in the books of the advanced courses that
+propaganda appears. It is not possible, however clever the
+author, to incorporate much propaganda in simple exercises, or in
+such sentences as "Have you seen the sister of my cousin's
+wife?" or "The bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account
+of the rain."
+
+But the following extracts from books used in the public schools
+of New York should not be without interest to those who know that
+the impressions given to persons under the age of sixteen or
+seventeen are the impressions that often persist through life.
+
+For instance in the "Deutscher Lehrgang, First Year," by E.
+Prokosch of the University of Texas, "Die Wacht am Rhein" is
+printed with music.
+
+I should be very much surprised to hear that the "Star Spangled
+Banner," with music, had ever been printed in any school book in
+Germany.
+
+On page 109, of this book, there is an article in German
+entitled, "The German Constitution." It begins with the sentence,
+"The German Empire is a union State like the United States of
+America." How far the German Empire is from the United States of
+America in political liberty can be answered by any German
+immigrant or Jewish merchant who has voted under the circle
+system or been denied access to court because of his religion!
+
+The second paragraph commences with the sentence, "The German
+Kaiser is not monarch of the Empire. He only is President of the
+Union." I am quite sure that if the Kaiser ever saw this sentence
+he would very soon convince the author that he was something more
+than the President. The article continues:
+
+"He is the over-commander of the army. Through him is war
+declared and peace made, but he can declare war only with the
+consent of the Bundesrath."
+
+The Bundesrath had nothing to say about the commencement of this
+war. They never voted on the question. The German Constitution,
+as a matter of fact, gives the Kaiser the right to declare war
+himself, providing that the war is a defensive war. In 1914, the
+Kaiser first announced, without presenting any evidence, that
+Germany had been attacked, and then declared war on the strength
+of this statement, never since substantiated.
+
+The text book writer adds: "The people are represented in the
+Reichstag as the American people are represented in Congress." If
+the American people were represented in Congress under the same
+unfair representation from which the German people suffer, there
+would soon be a revolution in this country. The districts which
+elect members to the Reichstag have not been changed since 1872,
+so that millions of Germans are not represented at all in the
+Reichstag.
+
+"Professor" Prokosch remarks: "The Bundesrath is like the Senate
+of the United States. It is composed of representatives of the
+particular States."
+
+Of course, the only _difference_ is that our Senators are elected
+by the people and the members of the Bundesrath are appointed by
+the ruling kings and princes of the German states and vote
+exactly as they are told by these rulers.
+
+This is only to show how carelessly, if not maliciously,
+Professor E. Prokosch of the University of Texas and his helper,
+C.�M. Purin of the State Normal School at Milwaukee, have handled
+the German Constitution, doubtless to give the impression to
+school children in America that the German empire instead of
+being a despotic autocracy, is ruled in very much the same manner
+as our own republic.
+
+Frederick the Great, who admitted that he went to war "in order
+to be talked about," who boasted that he had only one cook and a
+hundred spies, who was one of the most tyrannical kings of all
+history, has a whole book dedicated to him for use in the Public
+Schools of New York. Frederick Betz, head of the Department of
+Modern Languages in the East High School of Rochester, New York,
+is the author of a book called, "About a Great King and Others."
+The author in the preface states that the anecdotes which he
+prints do not narrate the story of the lives of these famous
+Germans, but, nevertheless, give glimpses of what they did and
+may help to show why the Germans held them in such high esteem.
+The book contains four anecdotes about King Frederick William I,
+the father of Frederick the Great, a villainous king who was
+prevented from executing his own son only by the protests of the
+other kings of Europe.
+
+Then follow forty-nine anecdotes about Frederick the Great, all
+of them, of course, revealing him as a good king and a popular
+character; eight anecdotes about Beethoven, Mozart, Schiller, and
+Lessing, and the remainder of the book is made up of one
+anecdote about Queen Louise, one about Field Marshal Bl�cher,
+eighteen anecdotes about Bismarck, three about the Emperor
+William I, and three about the present Emperor.
+
+The booklet entitled "German Poems for Memorizing," with music to
+some of the poems, edited by Oscar Burkhard, Assistant Professor
+of German in the University of Minnesota, contains a number of
+German patriotic poems and prints the "Wacht am Rhein" twice,
+once in the text and once with music. "Deutschland �ber Alles" is
+printed twice in the same way.
+
+I should like to be present at the trial in the secret court in
+Germany of a schoolmaster who dared to teach his pupils to sing
+the "Star Spangled Banner" or the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
+Prokosch and Purin seem to be popular with the Board of
+Education, for they are represented by another book called
+"Conversation and Reading Book," which is full of stories and
+patriotic anecdotes. Charlemagne, Barbarossa and Frederick the
+Great are all exhibited as great men to be emulated. There is a
+picture of the coronation of Charlemagne which represents the
+Pope about to place the iron crown on Charlemagne's head while
+the Deity, attended by seraphim and cherubim, floating on clouds
+overhead, lends his presence to the ceremony; only another
+example of how the Prussians believe that God is the tribal Deity
+of their nation who takes a personal interest in all their
+ceremonies and wars.
+
+A long article appears in these books entitled, "The Germans in
+the United States." It implies that William Penn had no success
+until he called in Dr. Daniel Pastorius of Frankfort. Among the
+bits of history set forth the author alleges that, in 1760, there
+were more than a hundred thousand Germans in Pennsylvania, and
+that on account of their importance in this State it was proposed
+to make German the official language, the proposition being
+beaten by only one vote! The article says further: "The only
+reason why the contentious Puritans succeeded in making English
+the language of the country and in impressing their character on
+its politics was because the German immigrants were poor,
+downtrodden people."
+
+But it is when we come to the description of the War of the
+Revolution and other wars that the authors really turn loose. We
+learn that Washington's bodyguard was composed of Germans and
+that Baron von Steuben apparently reorganised the American army,
+so that Washington moved Congress to name General von Steuben,
+Inspector General, and to make his position almost independent.
+The writers say that the siege of Yorktown and surrender of the
+English army was in a great part the work of Steuben.
+
+I think that other historians might have something to say on this
+subject. The authors fail to tell that Baron von Steuben, a
+soldier of fortune, who sold his services to the highest bidder,
+was hired to join the American army by a Frenchman, Beaumarchais,
+who sympathised with the United States.
+
+Attention is also called to the fact that 190,000 Germans fought
+against the South and the authors observe in conclusion:
+
+     "If to-day the United States of America is a power
+     of world political importance, if its industry,
+     agriculture and commerce betoken a powerful danger
+     commercially over the old Europe, so have they to
+     thank the political power and the methodical
+     perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants from
+     England as well as the industry, the bravery and
+     the cheerfulness of the Germans who have placed
+     themselves politically in the service of the Anglo
+     Saxons."
+
+It is noteworthy that of the four books I have set forth as
+examples, three apparently have been produced since the
+commencement of the World War.
+
+Does not all this show the hand of the German propaganda--the
+same hand which sends from Berlin every year a large sum of money
+to the German colonists in the southern states of Brazil in order
+that the German schools may be maintained there, German ideas
+inculcated and the population prevented from losing its German
+identity?
+
+From the time of the visit of Prince Henry to this country the
+German system of propaganda has been at work smoothing out
+traditional differences and feuds between Germans and doing its
+best to make Germans from Bavaria, Saxony and Hanover and
+W�rttemberg, and Hesse forget that their countries were conquered
+by the Prussians in 1866.
+
+When Prince Henry was here on his trip through the country he
+spent very little time with Americans. He was chiefly occupied
+with German-Americans and German-American Societies.
+
+Prince Henry's visit to the United States in 1902 was primarily
+to attend the christening of the racing yacht of the Emperor
+which was being built in this country. One of the members of his
+suite was von Tirpitz, then secretary of state of the German
+Navy. After having been officially received by President
+Roosevelt he visited Annapolis, Brooklyn Navy Yard and West Point
+and then toured the middle west stopping at twenty cities between
+New York and St. Louis. During the entire trip he continually
+asked questions of all the delegates sent with him by the U.�S.
+Government, such as for instance facts about the shops at
+Altoona, the coal mines, farms, factories and handsome women!
+
+At every station he was met by the Mayor of the city and the
+German Societies, and greeted with German music. The Deutscher
+Kriege Verein, a German Society consisting of military veterans,
+always had a place of honour in the celebrations. In many cities
+the German-American citizens gave the Prince albums or souvenirs
+in which were engraved pretty pledges of devotion to the
+Fatherland. For instance in Chicago, the German Roman Catholic
+Society presented the following address: "The German Roman
+Catholic Staats-Verband of Illinois begs your Royal Highness to
+permit it to express its great joy for your visit to the United
+States and to assure your Royal Highness of its respect and
+regard."
+
+     "We extend to your Royal Highness our heartiest
+     greeting as the illustrious guest of this country
+     and _the envoy of the wise and noble ruler of our
+     Fatherland_, whom the world recognises and
+     respects as prince of peace and as the
+     representative of a great and mighty nation that
+     by its own power has united its people and
+     achieved its present prominent position among
+     nations of the earth.
+
+     "May the Almighty grant that the visit of your
+     Royal Highness bear a rich fruit, that rulers and
+     their people may join together and thereby promote
+     peace, harmony and good-will throughout the world!
+     May God grant this prayer!"
+
+Everywhere the Prince went he was surrounded by German-American
+and German influences. In St. Louis, where the Prince spent about
+three and a half hours, the German-Americans gave him a great
+reception in the Grand Hall and lunch at the St. Louis Club which
+was attended by many Germans. In Chicago, a reception was given
+after the Mayor's banquet, in the First Regiment Armory, and
+attended by ten thousand Germans. The following day in Chicago he
+went to a large luncheon at the Germania Club. In Milwaukee the
+officers of the Deutscher Kriegebund gave a reception at the
+Exposition where ten thousand German-Americans cheered the
+Prince, and also a luncheon at the Hotel Pfister where many
+German-American officials were invited.
+
+The speeches throughout had the same tone, those of the
+German-Americans expressing their respect for the Fatherland and
+those of the Prince spurring on loyalty in the hearts of the
+German-Americans. The Prince's speech in the Armory in Chicago is
+quite typical. In reply to a speech made by a German-American,
+the Prince said:
+
+_"You have left your Fatherland, but if you still have some love
+for the Fatherland then I ask you to give three cheers for the
+one who has sent me here as the representative of Prussia to
+bring this greeting--the German Emperor and King of Prussia."_
+
+In another speech which the Prince began with "Mr. Chairman and
+Fellow-Germans," he said: "I would like to say that the Germans
+in this country have done a great deal for the literature and
+science of this country and I hope they will continue in this
+good work." The whole attitude of the Prince seemed to be one of
+benevolence to his "Fellow-Germans" and personal interest in
+them. Wherever the Prince discovered a German wearing the Iron
+Cross in the crowd, he would ask an aide to bring the man up to
+him so that he could shake hands and converse with him.
+
+Talking with Prince Henry one day before the war he told me he
+regretted that on his trip to America he had seen so little of
+the Americans. He said: "You know the Ambassador kept me always
+with the Germans and German Societies." I suppose the poor Prince
+did not himself know what was the real object of his visit. But
+undoubtedly his shrewd trip manager and the clever propagandists
+who accompanied him knew only too well.
+
+It is hard to understand why any German-Americans should take
+sides with German autocracy. There are many merchants of
+Frankfort and Hamburg and Bremen and the great industrial towns
+of Germany who do not approve of the cruelties practised in this
+war and many of these will leave Germany as soon as peace is
+concluded.
+
+Any one had a right to sympathise, to side with Germany, before
+our entrance into the war. But now what the lawyers call "the
+time of repentance" has gone by, there is no middle course and
+every citizen must declare himself American or be thought a
+traitor.
+
+It is hard to understand what the pro-Germans in our country
+want. They left Germany because of a lack of opportunity there,
+because of their dislike for military service under Prussian
+conditions, because of the caste system which kept them under the
+heel of autocracy and because here every avenue of business, and
+social and political advancement is thrown wide open for them and
+their children. And I am quite sure that if one of these
+prosperous Germans were deprived of the money that he has won
+here, given back the rags and wooden shoes in which he landed and
+told that he was on his way to Germany, no wild animal in all the
+mountains and swamps of the United States would scratch and bite
+and kick and squawk more vigorously than he would. These
+German-Americans do not want to be sent back to their Kaiser and
+their fatherland!
+
+Certainly we Americans will not stop the war nor surrender our
+rights nor invite the invasion of our shores because of their
+stubborn devotion to a country which they were so glad to
+abandon. We must appeal to their sons and their daughters--to
+those who have become part and parcel of our nation, to see that
+these obstinate old codgers do not persist in an attitude which
+may end in creating a prejudice against those of German descent
+in America.
+
+Those of us who are of Scotch or Irish or English descent can
+urge this with greater insistence because our ancestors were much
+nearer, in 1766, to the English fatherland, than German-Americans
+are to the German Empire and these ancestors did not hesitate in
+that year to turn against Great Britain on a mere question of
+commerce--did not hesitate again, in 1812, to face Great Britain
+in arms on a question of sea rights; and on account of this we
+expect all those of German-American descent to stand unreservedly
+by their adopted country,--forced into war by an autocracy that
+not only murdered our women and children in defiance of
+international law and common humanity but which threatens, if
+successful in this war, to invade our shores.
+
+Do these stubborn German-Americans think that if a German force
+should occupy America their position would be any better than
+that of the other citizens of this country, that they would be
+put to rule over the rest of us and allowed to save their goods
+and houses from the indemnities that would be put upon this
+nation in case of our defeat?
+
+Let me tell them one thing and that is, if by any remote
+possibility the Germans did gain a foothold in this country
+through the aid of those of German descent here, before we, of
+other descent in this country submitted to German rule we would
+attend to every traitor!
+
+We did not lure any citizens of foreign nations to our shores.
+They came here to escape serfdom and starvation and forced
+military service in an army where they could never be officers.
+We sent them no excursion tickets when they came here as
+half-starved peasants. We opened to them the doors of hospitality
+and of opportunity, and we do not propose that they shall pay us
+like the frozen snake in �sop's fables.
+
+Some of our finest citizens came from Germany in 1848 after the
+failure of the revolution against autocracy. Where do you think
+that General Siegel and Carl Schurz would stand if they were
+alive to-day?
+
+The daughter of General Siegel has answered in giving her son, on
+whom she was dependent, to the army of the United States, saying,
+"His grandfather fought under Lincoln for liberty and he must
+take his place to-day in the great fight for freedom."
+
+We are too good-natured, too soft, too easy in this country. Our
+great ex-President, that splendid American and patriot, Theodore
+Roosevelt, said not long ago of one of our United States
+Senators, if that Senator were a German and acted in Germany the
+way he acted in America as an American he would be put at digging
+a trench. I do not like to differ with Theodore Roosevelt, but
+from my knowledge of German conditions during this war, I know
+that if this Senator acted as a German in Germany as he has been
+acting as an American in America, he would not be put by the
+Germans at digging a trench but that with the ten bullets of a
+firing squad in his chest he would be filling one!
+
+Are these Germans in America imbued with the belief that the
+German Kaiser has been sent by heaven to rule the German Empire
+and bend the world under German "Kultur"? President Wilson, in
+one of his notes in 1916, referred to the German government as
+"the mouthpiece of the people." A German conservative newspaper,
+I think the _Tages Zeitung_, commenting upon this said that "the
+German Emperor is not our 'mouthpiece' but our truly beloved
+Emperor sent to us by God."
+
+Does the German-American ever stop to consider how the
+Hohenzollerns obtained possession of the Mark of Brandenburg, the
+basis of modern Prussia? Five hundred years ago the Hohenzollerns
+were Counts of Nuremberg, then as now a rich trading city.
+Sigismund III wanted ready money and this was advanced by the
+Hohenzollerns, Counts of Nuremberg, on the security of the mark
+of Brandenburg pledged as collateral to the loan which totalled
+only $100,000. Later the Counts of Nuremberg foreclosed their
+mortgage and took possession of the Mark of Brandenburg and have
+held it ever since.
+
+Does a German-American in this country who has placed a mortgage
+on his house think when he fails to pay the interest or
+principal of the mortgage that the man who has sold him out was
+sent by God?
+
+This calls to mind one of the great failures of the war--the
+failure of religion in the German Empire. I attended a great
+service, in the Protestant cathedral of Berlin, held to celebrate
+the five hundredth anniversary of the occasion when the first
+Hohenzollern, having foreclosed his mortgage, entered into
+possession of Brandenburg. The Emperor sat in an elevated gallery
+and across the great cathedral Dr. Dryander, the Court preacher,
+mounted the pulpit to deliver an eulogy on the Hohenzollern rule
+and the Hohenzollerns.
+
+What an opportunity then if Dr. Dryander, lifting an accusing
+finger, had spoken of the rivers of innocent blood sacrificed to
+the Prussian Moloch of conquest, if he had demanded in the name
+of Christianity that the barbarities of Prussian rule should
+cease, that the Belgian workingmen, dragged from their homes to
+manufacture shells to be used against their own brothers, sons
+and fathers in Prussian factories, should be sent back; if he had
+demanded that the twenty thousand women and girls driven into
+worse than slavery from Lille and Tourcoing and Roubaix in the
+North of France should be given their freedom once more; if he
+had spoken of the whole nation of the Armenians, of the Syrians,
+of the Jews, massacred by the Turks while the German Generals in
+command of the Turkish armies stood by; if he had denounced the
+invasion of Belgium, the breaking of treaties, the starvation of
+Poland, the horrors of poisoned gas and the cruelties exercised
+upon those of the opposing armies unfortunate enough to become
+prisoners of the Germans.
+
+But no, Dr. Dryander droned on. No pastor in Germany has dared to
+risk his state-paid salary to stand up for Christianity and the
+right.
+
+The Prussians cannot get away from the belief that they have a
+sort of personal God who takes a direct and kindly interest in
+their destinies, especially in the ordering of their bloody
+battles. Countless sermons were preached through Germany during
+the war, but the most ridiculous was that of a Protestant pastor
+in Berlin early in the war. He announced the title of his sermon
+as, "Is God neutral?", and in his fourteenthly proved to his own
+satisfaction, that the Deity, abandoning neutrality, had declared
+Himself unequivocally for the success of German arms!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THAT INTERVIEW WITH THE KAISER
+
+
+After the appearance, in August, 1917, in the _Philadelphia
+Public Ledger_ and other newspapers in America and the _Telegraph_
+in England of the message of the Kaiser to President Wilson, the
+official _North German Gazette_, evidently unaware of the fact
+that the original message of the Kaiser in his own hand was in my
+possession, published the following:
+
+     "The _London Daily Telegraph_ publishes from the
+     memoirs of former Ambassador Gerard a telegram
+     that His Majesty the Kaiser is alleged to have
+     sent to President Wilson on August 10, 1914, and
+     in which the events before the participation of
+     England in the present war are set forth.
+
+     "We are, in these circumstances, in the position
+     TO GIVE THE ASSURANCE THAT A TELEGRAM OF THE
+     KAISER OF THIS NATURE DOES NOT EXIST.
+
+     "It is correct that an audience was granted to
+     Ambassador Gerard on August 10, 1914, in order to
+     give the opportunity to spread before His Majesty
+     the peace mediation offer of President Wilson.
+
+     "The personal message of President Wilson to the
+     Kaiser runs as follows: 'As official head of one
+     of the Powers which signed the Hague Convention, I
+     feel according to Article III of this Convention
+     it is my right and my duty to declare to you in
+     the spirit of the truest friendship that I would
+     welcome every opportunity to act in the interest
+     of the peace of Europe whether now or at another
+     more fitting time....'
+
+     "This proposition came at a time when the opposing
+     armies had already crossed the frontiers and when
+     it seemed out of the question to halt the march of
+     events.
+
+     "His Majesty could, therefore, only transmit to
+     the President his thanks for the mediation offered
+     and to add thereto that it was too early for the
+     mediation of a neutral Power, but that later the
+     friendly proposition of President Wilson could be
+     taken up again.
+
+     "His Majesty, the Emperor, then talked for some
+     time with the American Ambassador and set forth to
+     him separately the events which led to the
+     outbreak of the war. Particularly did the Kaiser
+     call attention to the equivocal and unloyal
+     position of England which had destroyed the hope
+     of a peaceful issue.
+
+     "The setting forth by Ambassador Gerard in his
+     memoirs seems to be a contradiction of this
+     conversation.
+
+     "If the press of enemy countries sees revelations
+     in this that only shows that they are not
+     acquainted with the German White Book which sets
+     forth these events.
+
+     "Possibly, during the interviews, the Emperor
+     wrote down notes for the Ambassador, in order that
+     the latter should not send anything incorrect to
+     Washington. In this case we have to do only with
+     certain notes to aid the memory of the Ambassador,
+     not with a communication of the Emperor to
+     President Wilson."
+
+The _Tageblatt_ reprinted this lame and silly explanation in its
+issue of August 13, 1917, and complained that, although its
+correspondent at the Hague sent, on August 7, 1917, this part of
+my first book in a telegram, only on August 11, did the
+Government permit the delivery to the _Tageblatt_ of this story
+from the correspondent. Then the newspaper despatch had to be
+submitted to the Censorship officials who only released it for
+publication at midnight. The _Tageblatt_ says, "The form of the
+explanation which has now appeared in the _North German Gazette_
+can hardly be called very happy. What does this mean--'possibly
+during the interview the Kaiser wrote down notes for the
+Ambassador in order that the latter should not send anything
+incorrect to Washington'? Now, after a week the occurrence must
+have been fathomed and it was not necessary to make use of a
+'possibly.' Could Mr. Gerard consider these 'notes' in the
+handwriting of the Emperor as a draft for a telegram? And do
+these notes read, as a telegram of the Emperor to Wilson--as Mr.
+Gerard repeats them?"
+
+Does not the _Tageblatt_ article give a glimpse not only of how
+the newspapers of Germany are hampered and censored, but of the
+positively glorious incompetency of the Government officials who
+denied the existence of an original document in the Kaiser's own
+hand which the most elementary inquiries in their own circle
+would have disclosed not only was in existence but in my
+possession?
+
+The redoubtable Reventlow writing in the Conservative _Tages
+Zeitung_ commented as follows:
+
+     "Kaiser William had possibly for his answer
+     written down notes and given them to Gerard, but
+     these were only helps for Gerard's memory and it
+     was not a question of a direct communication of
+     the German Kaiser to the President. In accordance
+     with the Gerard reports it now seems that
+     nevertheless the Ambassador telegraphed the
+     Imperial notes immediately and literally to
+     Washington. Mr. Gerard has, therefore, again in
+     this respect lied, which is not surprising."
+
+Reventlow, of course, had not then seen the facsimile of the
+Kaiser's telegram which is headed in his own hand "To the
+President, personally."
+
+Later the other German newspapers took the Foreign Office to task
+for making such a weak denial of an incontrovertible fact. And
+note the charming parliamentary language of dear old Reventlow!
+
+The article, which appeared in the _Tages Zeitung_ of August 14th
+last, is interesting because Reventlow is without doubt the
+oracle and mouthpiece of the Prussian Conservatives. He continues
+to attack me in this article but much of the attack is in reality
+praise, and, as we say in expressive slang, "every knock is a
+boost." The article continues:
+
+     "It is very desirable to know if the former
+     Chancellor was present at the audience; it is
+     regrettably not inconceivable, but is a new proof
+     of the incompetence of the Chancellor, that he did
+     not, according to his duty, inform his Imperial
+     Lord of the political personality and character of
+     a man like Gerard.
+
+     "In the U-boat crisis Mr. Gerard had been able to
+     play a quite decisive part. He was like Mr. von
+     Bethmann-Hollweg entirely of the view that the
+     German Empire must give in to the demands of the
+     United States and constantly showed himself
+     wonderfully informed about what step each inner
+     circle would for the moment take.
+
+     "The influence of Mr. Gerard is all the more a
+     shameful and heavy reproach for the official
+     leadership of Mr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, since this
+     American Ambassador, while an intriguer, was not a
+     personality.
+
+     "But when Gerard said anything, wished anything or
+     threatened anything, that imported always a
+     fear-exciting event, and he was finally sly enough
+     to seize and use this halo to the limit. That a
+     man like Gerard has been able through all these
+     years to win and keep such a position and such an
+     influence over German affairs is without example."
+
+But I must really put aside the halo which Reventlow so
+graciously hands me. While I was informed of what was going on, I
+certainly did my best to persuade Bethmann-Hollweg and von Jagow
+and Zimmermann as well as the Emperor and numberless others from
+defying America. If von Bethmann-Hollweg and any of the others
+were against ruthless submarine war, seeing that to adopt any
+other policy would bring America into this war, then they took
+this position because it seemed to them best for their country
+and history will prove them right.
+
+Reventlow says further:
+
+     "In the winter of 1916-17 one dreamed already of
+     loans and imports from the United States during
+     the peace negotiations. Mr. Gerard came back from
+     America with alms for the wounded and the result
+     of his sublime patience and of the sublime
+     patience of Mr. von Bethmann-Hollweg was
+     pictured by the Gerard celebration in Berlin.
+
+     "Then came the decision for ruthless submarine
+     war. The first time in his ambassadorial service
+     was Mr. Gerard surprised and the men who
+     entertained him were also surprised for they
+     dreamed of and wished for quite other things. It
+     is incorrect, if it has been stated, that at the
+     time of the Gerard celebration ruthless submarine
+     war had already been agreed on. That came later."
+
+[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AFTER THE BANQUET GIVEN
+AMBASSADOR GERARD IN BERLIN ON JANUARY 6TH, 1917. PROBABLY THE
+ORDERS FOR THE RESUMPTION OF "RECKLESS" SUBMARINE WAR HAD BEEN
+GIVEN WHEN THIS LOVE-FEAST TOOK PLACE.
+
+_Sitting, left to right_--Von Wermuth, Mayor of Berlin;
+Ambassador Gerard; Zimmermann; Von Sydow, Minister of Commerce.
+
+_Standing, left to right_--Unknown; Consul General Lay; Commander
+Gherardi, U.�S.�N.; First Secretary Grew; Unknown; Count
+Montgelas; Solf, Colonial Minister; General Friedrich, in charge
+of prisoners of war; Isaac Wolf, President of American Association of
+Commerce and Trade; John B. Jackson, former Minister to Cuba.]
+
+But I did know that ruthless submarine war was coming, knew of
+the orders given, and this is proved not only by my reports which
+are still secret, but by what I told not only many people in
+America but several editors who with my full approval published
+articles showing this belief.
+
+I am obliged to Reventlow for what he says of me. I admire him as
+a powerful writer for whose ability I have a deep respect and
+perhaps if I were a Prussian Junker I would follow him as blindly
+and confidently as do the army and navy officers, the nobles,
+great and small, and the land-holding squires of Prussia, to whom
+his writings are as seductive as the pipings of the Pied Piper to
+the townsfolk of Hamlin.
+
+Reventlow's charge of lying was made in the line of his duty as a
+Prussian Junker, according to the best traditions of Prussian
+government and diplomacy but it is so thoroughly disproved and
+the authenticity of the Kaiser's telegram so universally admitted
+in Germany, even in official circles there, that I feel only
+sorrow for a Prussian nobleman and Junker and editor compelled by
+the exigencies of his position to make so ridiculous a statement.
+
+I think that the Germans just now are beginning to realise that I
+always told them the truth and treated them fairly, a procedure,
+I admit, far more disconcerting and disturbing to them than the
+most subtle wiles and moves of the old diplomacy.
+
+Von Bethmann denied that the peace terms as set forth in my book
+were his (he did not deny that they are the terms of the Junkers)
+and criticised me for "unethically" publishing an account of my
+experiences in Germany. This is what he said:
+
+     "In his published report of this particular
+     conversation Mr. Gerard attributed utterances to
+     me which may have been made in other quarters in
+     Germany and to which he frequently referred in the
+     progress of our conversation but which were not my
+     own. This applies especially to those references
+     to Germany's alleged intentions to seize Li�ge and
+     Namur, and of Germany's plans to take possession
+     of the Belgian ports, the railways and to
+     establish military and commercial dominion over
+     that country.
+
+     "I never unfolded such German war aims to Mr.
+     Gerard. In the course of my several conversations
+     with him as also in our discussion last January I
+     invariably referred to my Reichstag speeches in
+     which I stated that Germany would exact positive
+     guarantees that Belgian territory and politics
+     would not in the future be exploited as a menacing
+     factor against us. I did not make any statement as
+     to the nature of these guarantees.
+
+     "In the progress of our conversation Mr. Gerard
+     suggested that the realisation of far-reaching
+     aspirations in Belgium would give King Albert
+     merely a sham authority and asked whether it
+     would not be better for Germany to forego such
+     plans and instead of them endeavour to acquire
+     Li�ge which Mr. Gerard thought possible of
+     achievement.
+
+     "Perhaps this suggestion was a bait intended to
+     provoke a reply from me. If so, the attempt
+     failed. In all my discussions with the Ambassador
+     on this subject I referred to my public utterances
+     in which I emphasised that I was endeavouring to
+     procure a peace that would permit us to live in
+     cordial and neighbourly relations with Belgium.
+
+     "Mr. Gerard's memory would seem also to have
+     served him faultily when he wrote down what was
+     said about Russia. He dealt but superficially with
+     Germany's eastern war aims, observing that the
+     United States' interest in this direction was very
+     limited and that Germany undoubtedly would have a
+     free hand there. For Roumania and Serbia he also
+     revealed very slender sympathy. Mr. Gerard did not
+     obtain out of my mouth any of the statements
+     concerning these countries which he attributes to
+     me.
+
+     "When diplomats undertake to exploit their
+     official career for journalistic purposes they are
+     very apt to be misled into putting into mouths of
+     foreign statesmen utterances which either are the
+     creation of an ample imagination or are based on
+     faulty memory. Discussion of political opinions is
+     bound to be transitory and fleeting.
+
+     "You Americans are impetuous people. You do not
+     seem to permit even your retiring diplomats to
+     observe the traditional silences nor have you the
+     patience to abide the post mortem publication of
+     their memoirs. Sir Edward Goschen (former British
+     Ambassador to Germany and Austria) or Jules Cambon
+     (former French Ambassador to Germany, the United
+     States and Spain) probably could excel Mr. Gerard
+     in revelations of entertaining diplomatic history
+     and gossip. Count von Bernstorff, former
+     Ambassador to the United States, too, I imagine
+     might startle us with a diary of his Washington
+     experiences.
+
+     "In Europe, however, it was seen that publication
+     of such matters was best postponed by common
+     consent to a later period when judgments are both
+     calm and more mature. Mr. Gerard, however, may
+     hold the special license conferred by shirtsleeve
+     diplomacy, as you call it, and I shall not dispute
+     his prerogatives. But he must not give his
+     imagination the free rein."
+
+And this was my answer: published in the _New York Times_ for
+September 2, 1917:
+
+     "Dr. Hollweg apparently did not have the exact
+     copy of my articles for if he had read them he
+     would have seen clearly that I said the peace
+     terms described were the German peace terms and
+     not the opinions of the Chancellor. Dr. Hollweg
+     said he himself was subject to the rule of the
+     military party of Germany and could not follow his
+     own desires.
+
+     "In the second place, Dr. Hollweg admits that the
+     German government intended to exact guarantees
+     from Belgium and makes the admission himself after
+     the interview in which he so sharply criticises
+     me.
+
+     "Thirdly, I ask if those terms as cited are not
+     the German peace terms, then what are the German
+     peace terms?
+
+     "Dr. Hollweg gives nothing different from these
+     and so it might be assumed they are the German
+     terms after all. I consider it a matter of great
+     regret that the German government put Dr. Hollweg
+     out of office and I feel that personally he is
+     bitterly opposed to the ruthless submarine warfare
+     of the German government and that he only
+     refrained from resigning his office out of
+     deference to the wishes of Emperor Wilhelm.
+
+     "I presume he was put out because his ideals were
+     too liberal for the German authorities to endure.
+     This liberality is shown in the interview. I am
+     sorry to take issue with Dr. Hollweg on this
+     subject because I have a great admiration for him
+     and I think he is a fine old fellow.
+
+     "The old-time diplomacy, which Dr. Hollweg
+     advocated, has succeeded in plunging almost the
+     whole world into the bloodiest war of history.
+     When the people of a nation know what is going on
+     in the seats of government such wars cannot
+     happen.
+
+     "I do not believe in backstairs diplomacy any more
+     than Dr. Hollweg. I believe the people of a nation
+     are entitled to know what is going on. This German
+     diplomacy may be all right in a monarchy of the
+     most limited type but it will not go at all in a
+     modern democracy.
+
+     "As to the ethics of publishing my memoirs now, I
+     pass over the obvious repartee that to hear a
+     German speak of ethics borders on the ludicrous
+     and especially the man who openly in the Reichstag
+     announced that necessity knows no law and that the
+     German troops were at that moment deliberately
+     violating the neutrality of Belgium.
+
+     "But I believe that the old style diplomacy in the
+     dark caused this war. Of course, it is hard for a
+     German ex-official to conceive that the people
+     have a right to be enlightened about this awful
+     calamity. But I hope one of the results of this
+     war will be the end of backstairs diplomacy. When
+     the Germans with the Chancellor's approval
+     violated the usage of all nations and times and
+     kept me as a hostage after I had demanded my
+     passports, I think to talk of ethics comes with a
+     bad grace from the German side."
+
+Understand that Bethmann-Hollweg is not a bad man, but for one
+who openly announced that necessity knows no law and defended the
+invasion of Belgium, failed to stop the cruelties of the prison
+camps and gave official, if not private, consent to the murder of
+women and babies not only on the high seas but in undefended
+towns, to talk of ethics because I dared to tell the world what
+was happening in Germany is more than ridiculous. It verges on
+the ludicrous--but why attack poor Bethmann? Opportunity knocked
+at his door, but the want of a backbone prevented his becoming a
+great figure.
+
+History will laud him for opposing ruthless submarine war so
+long, but will blame him for weakly yielding in the end. As for
+the "ethics," I have been careful to give only official
+conversations with the Emperor, interesting as the others are,
+and never shall disclose my private conversations with Bethmann,
+von Jagow, Zimmermann and others, including my talks with
+Bethmann and Zimmermann on the day I left Germany, because it was
+understood that these conversations should never be disclosed
+whatever happened.
+
+And as time goes on more and more do I believe that history will
+vindicate von Jagow and teach the Emperor and the people of
+Germany that a faithful and skilful servant should never be
+sacrificed to the intrigues of a few gossiping politicians. It is
+part of the strength of President Wilson that he backs up his
+officials and refuses to listen even to widespread popular
+clamour for their heads. It was the business of von Jagow to
+conduct the Foreign policy of Germany, but the intriguers
+demanded his removal because he was too occupied to waste time
+talking to amateur politicians, and because his voice did not
+charm the Reichstag.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE FUTURE KAISER--THE CROWN PRINCE AND HIS BROTHERS
+
+
+In a country where the supreme power swings between the Emperor
+and the impersonal General Staff, all are interested, since even
+an Emperor is mortal, in learning something about the heir who
+succeeds in case of death. And we who face with the rest of the
+world the forces of Kaiserism desire to know about this heir.
+
+The Crown Prince is about five feet nine, blond and slim. In
+fact, one of his weaknesses is his pride in an undeniably small
+waist which he pinches and his characteristic pose is with one
+foot thrown forward and one hand at the waist, elbow out and
+waist pressed in. He is well built, his face much better looking
+than his photographs show, nose rather long and eyes very keen
+and observing. Possessed of a great youthfulness of manner and a
+boyish liveliness and interest in life, his traits are somewhat
+American rather than German. He is a good sportsman and excels at
+many sports, is proud of his trophies but not afraid to meet
+other men in contest for them.
+
+His manners are open and engaging and because of this he is very
+popular in Germany. Unlike his father on whom a pretty woman
+makes no impression whatever, he is a great admirer of female
+beauty, so much so that when he is playing tennis, for example,
+if there is a good looking girl watching he can hardly keep his
+eye on the game. This weakness for the feminine has been the
+foundation for countless stories linking his name with that of
+various women, in all countries and of all classes of life, but
+personally, I think these rumours are untrue and that he is fond
+of his lovely wife, who is not in the least disturbed by his
+frank and open admiration of other members of the fair sex. A
+brood of strong, good-looking children have been born to the
+Crown Prince and Crown Princess.
+
+A Prince so fond of a good time, one who loves dancing and
+racing, hunting and shooting, with a shrewd eye and cool head,
+might make an ideal king, but the one dark shadow in the
+background is the Crown Prince's real love for war. From his seat
+in the Royal Box in the Reichstag, he has applauded violently and
+ostentatiously utterances looking toward war: he had made himself
+the head of the war party, and the Militarists look to him as
+their chief. The great danger is that if this war ends in the
+defeat of Germany without the democratisation of Germany then the
+Crown Prince will lead the party of revenge, of preparation for
+war, and if the war ends in what the Germans can call a success
+or ends in a draw (which means German success) then the Crown
+Prince and the Militarists, crying that the military system has
+been justified, will seek new excuses to enter once more on a
+war of conquest. All paths or speculations turn to one gate; if
+the German people continue slavishly to leave the power to drive
+them into war in the hands of the Crown Prince, or the Emperor,
+or the General Staff, there will be no prospect of such a world
+peace as can justify a universal disarmament. Absolute monarchs
+and Emperors and Crown Princes and their attendant nobles, all
+spell war. They are the products of war and they can only
+continue to rule if the desire for war animates their people.
+
+While the Crown Prince has not set himself in direct opposition
+to his father or at any rate taken a part in public affairs with
+the view either to force his father's hand or take a dominant
+political part, nevertheless he has allowed no occasion to pass
+when he could encourage the army and war party even if this
+brought him into conflict with the policy of the Emperor, and so
+there have been periods of coolness between the Emperor and the
+Crown Prince son.
+
+Thus after one scene in the Reichstag when the Crown Prince
+applauded those in favour of aggression it was reported that he
+was banished to Dantzig. At any rate during the winter of 1913-14
+the Crown Prince and his family were at Dantzig, the headquarters
+of the regiment he commands, the famous "Death's Head Hussars."
+
+Some say that it is a tradition in the Hohenzollern family for
+the Crown Prince to appear to oppose the King. Then, when the
+King dies, the Crown Prince enjoys a certain popularity in the
+first years of his rule from those who have been against the
+Government, and by the time this popularity has waned the new
+ruler is firmly seated on the throne.
+
+The Crown Prince, born in 1882, will be thirty-five in May next.
+His military education began long before he was ten years old. In
+accordance with Hohenzollern custom, on his tenth birthday, he
+became an officer of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards and on this
+birthday was introduced to the other officers and took part in a
+regimental dinner. Before this great event he had learned enough
+of military drill and usages to carry himself as an officer.
+
+In 1895, he and his brother Eitel entered as cadets at Ploen in
+Schwerin, where they were subjected to very strict discipline.
+After leaving Ploen the Crown Prince entered Bonn University, and
+there became a member of the "Borussia" student corps.
+
+I never heard that he took part in the corps duels. His face is
+not scarred, so I imagine as heir to the throne he was excused
+from a custom in which other corps members are compelled by
+public sentiment to take part. From photographs I have seen and
+from what I have heard I believe that the Crown Prince entered
+cheerfully into the student life of the place and lived on terms
+of college equality with his brothers of the "Borussia" corps.
+These corps members, however, hold themselves aloof from other
+students.
+
+The Crown Prince attended the Technical High School of
+Charlottenburg, that large building just across the canal which
+separates Berlin from Charlottenburg. Here he gained some
+knowledge of machinery, chemistry, etc. In 1909, he went to work
+in the Ministry of the Interior, where he learned something of
+government administration, how to manage the constabulary and
+their activities,--something quite necessary for an absolute
+ruler in a country where every citizen's acts is noted in the
+copy books of the police.
+
+Meantime, his military activities continued. He was gradually
+promoted and finally, in 1911, became Colonel in command of the
+Dantzig Black Hussars. This regiment owes its black uniform and
+white death's heads to the thrift of Friedrich II who utilised
+the black funeral hangings at the elaborate funeral of his father
+to make uniforms for this regiment. It has been in existence
+about 175 years. The white death's heads and bones which appeared
+in the funeral trappings were used to make ornaments for the
+front of the regimental headgear.
+
+While stationed at Dantzig the Prince was taught agriculture so
+as to understand the needs of the Prussian Junkers. He even
+studied the methods of brewing beer in the Dantzig brewery. His
+education has been strenuous. He has not been coddled or spoiled
+and is far better fitted for the battle of life than most
+graduates of our colleges.
+
+The father of the Crown Princess was a Grand Duke of
+Mecklenburg-Schwerin and her mother a Russian Grand Duchess. In
+appearance the Crown Princess is very attractive, her face rather
+Russian, with an expression of good nature and cleverness.
+Although the Crown Prince is tall (about five feet ten), the
+Crown Princess overtops him, and on occasions when they appear
+together she wears shoes with very low heels and keeps her head
+bowed.
+
+[Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCE AND CROWN PRINCESS. FROM A
+PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN THEIR PALACE ON THE NIGHT OF A FANCY DRESS
+BALL. THE CROWN PRINCESS IS IN RUSSIAN COSTUME, AND THE CROWN
+PRINCE WEARS A UNIFORM OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO OF HIS REGIMENT,
+THE DEATH'S HEAD HUSSARS]
+
+The marriage took place in 1905 and was undoubtedly a love match,
+the young couple having met in 1904 and become devotedly attached
+to each other.
+
+There is only one defect in the character of the Crown Prince and
+that is his fondness for war, his regard for war not as a horror,
+but as a necessity, an honourable and desirable state.
+
+I have long been apprehensive that when he came to the throne the
+world might again be hurried into a universal conflict and that
+vast military preparations would burden every State.
+
+The Crown Prince and I often talked over shooting in various
+parts of the world. He wishes to see America and especially to
+kill game in Alaska where the heavily horned heads and enormous
+bears make such magnificent trophies. When I told him once how my
+friend, Paul Rainey, had killed seventy-four lions in Africa he
+could talk of nothing else at that interview.
+
+The Crown Prince has been pictured as a libertine and a pillager.
+His face has been caricatured so often that people have the
+cartooned impression of him and believe him to be a sort of
+monstrous idiot.
+
+On the contrary, he is a good sport, a clever man, a charming
+companion, but the shadow of military ambition hangs over all
+and I doubt if the effect of his infernal military education,
+commencing when he was a child, can be entirely removed.
+
+If some day he learns the idiocy of war, if he recognises that
+the world has progressed, and allows the people some share in
+their own government, he will make a splendid constitutional
+ruler of Prussia and the German Empire.
+
+Should the German people fail to take unto themselves the
+war-making power, they will, before long, be decimated again for
+the amusement of the Crown Prince, or as he once put it, "for his
+fun."
+
+The favourite son of the Kaiser is presumed to be Prince Eitel
+Friedrich. A large, fat, healthy, good natured young man, married
+to the daughter of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, a rather pretty
+but discontented looking Princess. It is said of him that he has
+shown not only great bravery in this war but real military
+capacity. Ridiculous scandals have been circulated about him in
+Berlin, but this is only the usual gossip circulated about
+persons in prominent positions.
+
+Adalbert, the sailor Prince, is now married to a German Princess.
+He is the best looking of the Kaiser's sons, possessing all the
+charm, and vivacity of manners of the Crown Prince, but is
+without that Prince's absurd ideas about the necessity of war.
+Any one of those three sons of the Kaiser can give yards to any
+other young Royalty in Germany and win easily in capacity for
+administration and the King business.
+
+Certainly if the German people insist on being ruled by some one
+and on being occasionally dragged out to be shot or maimed in an
+unnecessary war, they could not find more capable rulers than the
+Hohenzollerns.
+
+Prince August Wilhelm is of a milder character. He, of course,
+wears the uniform of an officer, but has entered the civil
+service of the government. He is now a landrat or government
+official, and some day will be given charge of one of the
+provinces of Prussia such as Silesia or Posen. He is married to
+his first cousin, a niece of the Empress, the Princess Alexandria
+Victoria, daughter of H.�H. Frederick Ferdinand, Duke of
+Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gl�cksburg. They have one son, a
+fine healthy specimen. The August Wilhelms live very simply in a
+palace in the Wilhelmstrasse, very plainly furnished. They are
+fond of amusements, riding, theatres and dancing. August Wilhelm
+has none of that desire of war so characteristic of the Crown
+Prince.
+
+Of Princes Oscar and Joachim, little is known. Oscar, during the
+war, married Countess Bassewitz, who has been a Maid of Honour in
+the Palace. The marriage was of course morganatic, and on
+marrying the young Countess was given the title of Countess
+Ruppin. Her children will be Count and Countess Ruppin and cannot
+inherit in any contingency, the Kingdom of Prussia.
+
+Adalbert had no resting place in Berlin, but perhaps now that he
+is married a palace may be assigned to him. Eitel Fritz and his
+wife occupy the Bellevue Ch�teau between the Tiergarten and the
+River Spree. His wife is childless.
+
+The Kaiser, the Crown Prince or some of the numerous Princes of
+Prussia are always rushing about the streets in motors, each one
+heralded by a blast on the cornet. Beside the chauffeur on each
+royal motor sits a horn player who plays the particular few notes
+of music assigned to that Prince. The Kaiser's call goes well to
+the words fitted to it by the Berliners, "celeri salade" (celery
+salad) and has quite a cheerful sound.
+
+On days of an outdoor function the streets ring with these calls
+as the royal automobiles whizz back and forth. It is forbidden by
+law for any one other than royalty to announce his coming by more
+than one note on a Gabriel horn, or other device. I do not know whether
+out of town or suburban royalties from Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Strelitz,
+Lippe, etc., are allowed this privilege when in Berlin; I think
+not, and that is perhaps one reason why they so consistently shun
+the capital of Prussia.
+
+When the Kaiser motors to Potsdam he usually sits in one of three
+motors which travel very fast, one behind the other. I do not
+know whether this is by design or not, but of course, it makes an
+attempt on his life more difficult.
+
+I used one of the Kaiser's motors in occupied France--a large
+Mercedes, run by a skilful driver at a great rate of speed.
+
+The Crown Prince is especially fond of horses and if he succeeds
+to the throne will undoubtedly keep up the Royal stable or
+Marstall. This is situated on the bank of the Spree across the
+square from the Royal Schloss in Berlin. There are kept the
+carriages of state, those sent to bring Ambassadors to the Palace
+when they first present their letters, two hundred splendid
+saddle and driving horses, with modern carriages, four-in-hand
+coaches, dog carts, etc. Most of the Foreign Ambassadors use
+state carriages for great occasions, with bewigged coachmen and
+standing footmen. I think Ambassador White was the last American
+who indulged in the luxury of a state carriage. As a plain dress
+suit did not exactly fit with a Cinderella coach, I went to
+functions, such as the Emperor's birthday reception, in a large
+automobile, retaining only of the former state the necessary body
+huntsman who acted as footman on these occasions and who wore a
+livery of hunting green, a cocked hat, with red, white and blue
+plumes and a long hunting dagger in his belt.
+
+Out of consideration for the feelings of others I retained the
+porter in his old finery, a Berlin institution. At state dinners
+the porter of a Royalty or Ambassador stands at the house
+entrance, clad in a long coat, wearing a silver belt diagonally
+across his chest, and crowned by an enormous cocked hat worn
+sideways. The porter carries also a great silver headed staff,
+like a drum major's baton, and when guests of particular
+importance arrive he pounds this stick three times on the
+pavement.
+
+It used to amuse the Berlin crowd lining Unter den Linden to see
+the Ambassadors and Ministers leave the Palace or Cathedral on
+the Kaiser's birthday, New Year's day, etc., to see the state
+carriages of the other Ambassadors overtaken by the modern
+automobile from America.
+
+The Berlin lower classes are renowned for their dry wit and they
+find much to amuse them in the tasteless statues and monuments of
+Berlin.
+
+In the square outside our house was a statue of one of Friedrich
+the Great's generals which seemed to afford the boys great fun.
+The General is shown in the act of reflectively feeling his chin
+and by chance is gazing uncertainly at the barber shop of the
+neighbouring hotel Kaiserhof.
+
+Nobody knows, of course, whether the present Crown Prince will
+succeed Emperor William--nobody knows the fortunes of war or the
+fate that this war has in store for the Hohenzollerns but while I
+personally like the Crown Prince, admire his skill in sports, his
+amiable ways, his smiles to the crowd, I know also of his crazy
+belief in war. And so long as a ruler persists in this, he is as
+dangerous to the peace of the world as a man with a plague to the
+health of a small community.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WHEN GERMANY WILL BREAK DOWN
+
+
+I remember a picture exhibited in the Academy at London, some
+years ago, representing a custom of the wars of the Middle Ages.
+
+A great fortress besieged, frowns down on the plain under the
+cold moonlight. From its towering walls the useless mouths are
+thrust forth--if refused food by the enemy, to die--the children,
+the maimed, the old, the halt, the blind, all those who cannot
+help in the defence, who consume food needed to strengthen the
+weakened garrison.
+
+Every country of the world to-day is in a state of siege, is
+conserving food and materials, but not yet has Germany sent forth
+her useless mouths, to Holland, to Scandinavia and to Switzerland,
+a sign that not yet is the pinch of hunger in the Empire imperative.
+
+Since I arrived in America in March, 1917, I have been like
+Cassandra, the prophetess fated to be right, but never believed.
+I said then Germany would never break because of starvation, or
+fail because of revolution, and that her man-power was great.
+
+We have not made sacrifices enough in this war, there are too
+many useless mouths. I believe that there are in the States of
+New York and Pennsylvania alone 175,000 professional chauffeurs,
+a great number of them employed on automobiles not used for
+business or trucking. And then think of the thousands of skilled
+mechanics employed in garages and factories repairing and making
+mere pleasure vehicles. If all these chauffeurs (nearly all with
+some knowledge of machinery) and mechanics were put at work
+building ships or making rifles there would be no loss to the
+country, but certain overfed women and their poodles would have
+to walk, greatly to the advantage of their health and figures.
+
+Private automobiles disappeared very quickly in Germany. At first
+a man who could not reach his business in any other way was
+allowed to use his own automobile but even these soon went out of
+commission and then bicycles were forbidden except for rides to
+and from business, work or school. A few ramshackle taxicabs
+still survive in Berlin at the railway stations, driven by benzol
+instead of gasoline and shod with spring tires. No one can keep a
+taxi waiting, it is subject when waiting to be commandeered by
+the first comer.
+
+Gradually as we realise the gravity of the conflict our lives
+will become more earnest and luxuries will be given up to meet
+the changed condition. There must be a committee who will tide
+over the workers in luxury industries and help them to learn new
+war trades. This was done in Germany by the great organisation of
+the Woman's Service. Already Fifth Avenue dressmakers have
+dismissed many of their workers, who, being without resources,
+should receive assistance and advice until they have learned
+other trades.
+
+Our farmers are entitled to cheaper labour. Why should not enemy
+aliens work our farms? We do not propose to make the Austrian and
+German and Hungarian women agricultural slaves as the Germans
+made the Russian women caught by the war within the borders of
+Germany, nor have we the right, I believe, to force civilian
+prisoners to work. But we can give these civilian men instead of
+meat twice a day, now given them, the same food which the Germans
+give their prisoners, until the enemy aliens volunteer to work in
+our fields. They should, of course, work as in Germany under
+guard. They should be used also in mines, factories, etc. The
+sooner we use every ounce of war energy, the sooner we shall beat
+Germany and obtain a lasting peace.
+
+Eventually forced by the hopelessness of the economic situation,
+the nerve of Germany will break. There is a suicide point in the
+German character. The German has been sustained since the war by
+victories somewhere. No defeats were brought home to the German
+people. Viewed from inside the German Empire what are the loss of
+a few villages on the West front or even of distant colonies
+compared to the conquest of Belgium, of the richest part of
+France, of thousands of square miles of Russia, of Roumania,
+Montenegro and Serbia? With the exception of a very small bit of
+Alsace the war is being fought far from German territory. The
+German can swagger down the streets of the capitals of his
+enemies, in Brussels, Belgrade, Bucharest, Warsaw and Cettinje
+and Prussian greed exacts tribute from rich cities from Lille on
+the West to Wilna far within the frontiers of Russia.
+
+Our President has never faltered. He will convince the Germans at
+last that we are unfaltering, in the war, that nothing can swerve
+us from our goal,--the destruction of the autocracy which looks
+on war as good and seeks the dominion of the earth. When the
+Germans grasp that, then will come the suicide point.
+
+There is nothing in the war for the German who is not a noble or
+a junker, an officer or an official. German victory will only
+bend the collar of caste and servitude, low wages and militarism
+tighter on the German neck. Sooner or later the deceived German
+will discover this; revolution will not come during the war, but
+after it, unless it closes with a German peace, or unless in
+anticipation of revolt, rights are granted to the people.
+
+We cannot stop, we cannot bear the burden of the debts of this
+war and at the same time burden ourselves with future military
+preparation to meet a confident conquering Germany ready to carry
+the sword into South America. Whatever the sacrifice, we must go
+on.
+
+And for each country and for the Allies as a whole there is one
+word, Unity.
+
+When all had signed our Declaration of Independence, Benjamin
+Franklin said, "And now we must all hang together or we all
+shall hang separately."
+
+Russia has, for the moment, failed and unless she recovers
+herself she will pay the penalty by submission to German rule.
+
+Is there a defect in the Russian character? Is persistency
+lacking? In 1760, the Russian troops had taken Berlin. If Russia
+had gone on strongly with the war, the power of Frederick the
+Great might have been broken. But apparently the Russian troops
+simply turned around and went back to Russia. In 1854, in the
+Crimean War, after a long siege and bitter losses, the French,
+Turks, English and Sardinians succeeded in taking one Russian
+city, Sebastopol, in the extreme southern part of Russia. With
+this exception, Russian territory was intact and yet the Czar
+Alexander II, shortly after the death of Nicholas, begged for
+peace. As a result the Black Sea was made for a time neutral and
+no state could have warships or arsenals on it with the exception
+of small gunboats for police purposes.
+
+In 1878, after the Russo-Turkish war, when the Russian troops
+were in sight of the minarets of Constantinople, the Russians
+allowed themselves to be bluffed by the diplomats of Europe from
+obtaining the fruits of victory.
+
+Secretly or openly, Germany will propose to the world to take her
+pay from the skin of the Bear, from the conquered territories of
+Russia which remain in her possession. The inhabitants of those
+territories would have to become the slaves of Prussia as did
+the inhabitants of Belgium and Northern France. Prussians of
+Russia paid the agitators to talk about peace without indemnities.
+Germany, since the first days of the war, has been taking
+indemnities not only in money, but in property and in labour from
+the conquered countries. Belgium alone has been compelled to pay
+a tribute of forty-million francs a month (lately sixty million)
+to her conquerors and vast sums have been exacted from Lille and
+other conquered cities. Property, including machinery, has been
+seized and transported to Germany in the effort, not only to
+obtain a temporary advantage, but to destroy forever factories
+that compete with German manufacturers.
+
+Especially do the German autocrats hope to obtain the so-called
+Baltic provinces as a spoil of war. Of Courland, Livonia and
+Esthonia now largely occupied by the German invaders, Courland
+and Livonia were originally possessions of the Teutonic Knights,
+then became a part of Poland and finally passed to Russia. The
+three provinces were governed semi-independently, until 1876,
+when they became in all respects an integral part of the Russian
+Empire. The land in the provinces is held by great landowners,
+mostly of German blood--and the mass of the population belongs to
+the Lutheran Church. The peasants have been kept down by the
+lords of the soil, whose sympathies turn to Germany.
+
+In 1913-1914 I met in Berlin several landlords from these
+provinces who acted in Berlin and were treated in Berlin like
+Germans, although subjects of the Russian Czar. So backward were
+these provinces in liberty under their German landlords that it
+was not until 1848 that the infamous "right of the lord" (_droit
+du Seigneur_ or _Jus prim� noctae_) was abolished.
+
+What Tannenberg has to say about Courland, Livonia and Esthonia
+is well worth studying. He writes:
+
+     "The most precious portions for us of the Russian
+     heritage are the German Baltic provinces,
+     Courland, Livonia, Esthonia.
+
+     "To the north in Esthonia and in the northern part
+     of Livonia live the Esthonians. In the South, the
+     Livonians of the Lithuanian branch. Esthonians and
+     Livonians are Lutherans and form the principal
+     part of the population. There are 250,000 Germans.
+     But the civilisation is German and gives to the
+     whole country a German stamp. In the rural
+     districts, the great landlords, the ministers of
+     the Gospel and the school masters are German. In
+     the cities the middle classes are Germans. But the
+     workingmen are Esthonians or Livonians. The
+     Russians are only represented in the large cities
+     by officials.
+
+     "It was in the middle of the twelfth century that
+     the first German settlements were made at the
+     mouth of the Dina. In 1201, Riga was founded, and,
+     in 1202, the Order of the Knights of the Sword. In
+     1237 this Order was united with the powerful Order
+     of the Teutonic Knights. There was no thought then
+     of the Muscovites. From Marienburg to Riga it is
+     five hundred kilometres, from Koenigsburg to Riga,
+     three hundred and fifty, to Moscow eight hundred
+     and fifty. Moscow was then going through a very
+     difficult period. In 1225, the battle of the
+     Kalka took place which put an end to the power of
+     the great Russian Princes.
+
+     "From Riga to Kalka, Dantzig, Stettin and Lubeck,
+     there was sea communication. The all powerful
+     merchant marine of the Hanseatic League was at its
+     height...."
+
+Tannenberg describes how these provinces finally became part of
+Russia and adds:
+
+     "Courland, Livonia and Esthonia became the model
+     provinces of the whole Empire. The German nobility
+     furnished Russia with its generals and its high
+     officials: the University of Dorpat was founded
+     and was the model of the high schools created
+     later in Russia.... The University of Dorpat
+     exchanged its professors with the other German
+     high schools of the Russian Empire. The students
+     of the Baltic provinces passed several terms in
+     the German Universities of the South and East of
+     Germany and then returned to Dorpat to undergo
+     their examinations to enter in the service of the
+     Baltic or Russian State.
+
+     "One encounters constantly in our literature
+     allusions to the Baltic provinces. Kant, the
+     philosopher of pure reason, published his work at
+     Riga.... In the time of Goethe students from
+     Courland and Livonia visited the great of Weimar.
+     Richard Wagner commenced at Riga his theatrical
+     and musical career."
+
+Tannenberg speaks of the revolution after the defeat by the
+Japanese of the Russian troops in these provinces when the
+castles of the German Barons were besieged by the people and
+says, "The cry of indignation resounded through all Germany. A
+military German intervention was generally expected. Against all
+expectation nothing of the kind happened." ... "When the Russian
+Government finally got control the Russian troops treated the
+rebels mildly and it was finally the sparkling on the horizon of
+five million German bayonets that hastened matters so well that
+superficially, at least, order was re-established."
+
+Speaking on the annexation of those provinces to Germany he says:
+
+     "There is no money to be seized in the East but
+     there is something which is of more value than
+     cash and that is lands, lands of colonisation for
+     new German peasants." And he points out that the
+     Baltic provinces are about the same size as
+     Bavaria and W�rttemberg, but in Bavaria and
+     W�rttemberg there are eight and a half millions of
+     inhabitants while the Baltic provinces support a
+     little over two millions.
+
+     "The Baltic provinces have always occupied an
+     important place in the thought and sentiments of
+     the German people. The public as a whole does not
+     inquire if it's true that only fifteen per cent of
+     the population is German. For the public they are
+     simply the German provinces of the Baltic and the
+     German people are right, because since seven
+     hundred years the proprietors of the land there
+     are Germans and the civilisation has always been
+     German."
+
+Should Germany be allowed to seize these provinces, to increase
+her population and man power enormously, a second great war like
+this one will not be far off and Russia, deprived of what Peter
+the Great called "His window on the Baltic," will lose her place
+as an European Power.
+
+The Germans will endeavour, during any peace negotiations, to
+keep their troops there in the hope that they will be permitted
+to occupy these provinces or that, if a vote should be taken to
+determine to which country the inhabitants wish to be annexed,
+the latter would be coerced through the German landlords, and by
+the use of money and terror made to appear as desirous of
+annexation to Germany.
+
+Prince M�nster, who had been in this section during the war, told
+me once how easy it was to observe that the more prosperous
+sections of the population were German and how anxious these
+people were to become Germans. In this case I think he was right
+to the extent that the feudal landlords of the Baltic provinces
+believe that as Prussian Junkers they would have a greater chance
+to continue to oppress the people than as Russian citizens,
+especially citizens of a new Russian republic.
+
+The Allies must guard against any move which can add to the man
+power of the Central Powers, and this reason alone is sufficient
+reason never to permit the Arabs and Syrians, who have been so
+oppressed by the Turks, to suffer again under the rule of the
+Young Turks.
+
+The world must not be disturbed again by Prussian dreams of world
+conquest, nor must Jerusalem and the Holy Land, towards which the
+eyes of all Christians have turned for twenty centuries, be
+voluntarily given back to the Turks.
+
+To allow the Germans access to Bagdad is to invite trouble--a
+second attempt of the Kaiser to don the turban and proclaim a
+Holy War in the interest of the fat merchants of Hamburg and
+Frankfort.
+
+If this were an old time war, when sly diplomats sat at a green
+table, exchanging territories and peoples like poker chips, we
+might consent to the partition and destruction of Russia as most
+natural. But this war is between two systems, and wars either
+will be continued or cease hereafter. We who hope for the end of
+war cannot permit Germany to add to her man power any part of the
+rapidly multiplying population of that great territory which we
+now call Russia.
+
+It is probable that Russia will go through the stages of the
+great French Revolution. We have had already the revolution made
+by the whole nation, Duma, army, and the control of the
+respectable moderate Republicans. The period of the Jacobins, the
+extremists, has come, too, and we must in the end expect the
+appearance of the military leader, a strong man who will bring
+order. That is what will happen, for Russia cannot remain a
+nation under the control of any government which cheerfully
+consents to dismemberment of her territory. Perhaps Trotzky will
+be clever enough to transform himself into a patriotic militant
+leader, if not, then he will not long remain at the head.
+
+All these movements of lesser so-called nationalities are
+fostered by Prussian propagandists.
+
+The region of the Ukraine, in Southern Russia, is supposed to be
+clamouring for freedom and independent existence. Long before
+the Russian revolution, I and all the diplomats of Germany were
+flooded with newspapers, pamphlets and literature about the
+longing of the Ukraine--all as plainly issued by the Germans as
+if they had been stamped with the Royal arms of Prussia and the
+seal of the General Staff.
+
+The Lithuanians, too, stir uneasily. There is, perhaps, more in
+their claim; they request the world not to confuse them with the
+Poles and they protest against incorporation with Poland. But
+should a number of little states be created, sliced from the map
+of Russia, they would enjoy but a short independence before
+falling, one by one, into the maw of Prussia.
+
+Every one sympathises with the Poles and hopes for the
+establishment of a really free and independent Poland, and not a
+Poland under the rule or protection of either Austria or Germany.
+It will be a great experiment, because in the past the great
+state of Poland, one of the greatest in Europe, was broken
+because of the incapacity of the Poles to rule themselves. Their
+armies showed great bravery, the Polish cavalry, winged like
+angels, terrified enemy cavalry horses and charged often to
+victory; but the Polish aristocrats, camped with thousands of
+retainers at the place where the King was elected, sat patiently
+waiting for the highest bidder before giving their votes.
+
+And the King once elected, the Polish diet accomplished nothing,
+because any noble who voted against a proposition could defeat
+it. This was the so-called "liberum veto" so fatal to Poland.
+Katharine of Russia, that clever, wise, dissolute but great
+German Princess, placing a puppet favourite on the Polish throne,
+insisted on the retention of the "liberum veto" in the Polish
+Constitution, because she knew that by the mere existence of this
+asinine institution Poland could be counted on to commit suicide
+for the benefit of the watching spoilers, Russia, Prussia and
+Austria.
+
+But a new, real Poland would not be governed by its aristocracy,
+and under a democratic government the splendid Polish race could
+be trusted to work out successfully their political salvation.
+
+Should the strong man fail to appear in Russia and the Bolsheviki
+continue to rule, then the confusion of Russia may not prove an
+immediate help to Germany.
+
+In the first place, no one now works in Russia; the population
+will be in want of food and will not have any great surplus to
+export; and it will be a long time before Germany can draw any
+material help from the Steppes of incompetency. Had Russia
+immediately settled down to a new form of government, the case
+might have been different, but now Germany or some power in
+Russia must first organise that vast country for production under
+new conditions before Germany can begin to profit from the
+withdrawal of Russia from the war except, perhaps, in that
+important factor--the release of German troops from the Eastern
+frontier. But as time passes the Germans may use food from
+Russia to bribe northern neutral nations into an alliance with
+the Central Empires.
+
+Revolutions are contagious. In 1848, the movement started in
+France spread all over Europe. The burdened horse on the road
+evinces a tendency to get out of hand at the mere sight of
+another horse cavorting about a pasture. The Germans are in
+blinders and driven by heavy hand, but forgotten as liberty is in
+Germany, the German Michael, the peasant chained to the soil, the
+hard-driven, poorly paid worker of the cities, at least, will
+exhibit a spirit of uneasiness, when across the line he sees
+Ivan, the Russian moujik, capering about, free from restraint and
+running things at his own sweet will. The yoke fits tight to
+Michael's neck, the German Kaiser drives hard from his All
+Highest Place; but no Emperor seemed more secure than the head of
+the Romanoffs, and the very fact that the chains of the yoke seem
+so strong may make the driven cattle all the more ready to toss
+the yoke aside when knowledge of power comes to the lower castes
+of Germany and Austria.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the question of war Prussia is a civilisation as different
+from that of France, Great Britain and America as is China.
+
+Ministers of the Gospel, professors, poets, writers, teach war;
+the necessity, the glory, the nobility of war. Long before
+Nietzsche wrote and Treitschke taught war as a part of the
+Prussian creed the teachings of these mad philosophers expressed
+an indigenous feeling in Germany. It is not some abstract
+belief to be studied. It is a vital, burning, ever-present
+question which affects deeply, intimately, every man in this
+world. For until the Prussians are made weary of this belief and
+converted to a milder life, there is no woman in any corner of
+the earth, however remote, who may not have to see her son or
+husband go out to die in the fight against Prussian aggression,
+who may not, if this fight fails, be dragged away with her
+daughters to become slaves or endure that which is far worse than
+slavery.
+
+[Illustration: REPRODUCTION OF A POST CARD CELEBRATING THE
+PROWESS OF THE ZEPPELIN, SOLD IN GERMANY]
+
+[Illustration: ZEPPELIN POST CARD OF PATRIOTIC SENTIMENT SOLD IN
+GERMANY POPULARIZING THE AIR RAID ON DEFENSELESS CITIES]
+
+If the Prussian people themselves cling to their Gods of War, if
+Kaiser and Crown Prince fulfil their ideals, if the Prussian
+leave the reins in the hands of these warlike task masters and
+refuse to join the other peoples in stamping out the devil of
+war, then the conflict must go on, go on until the Germans get
+their stomachs full of war, until they forget their easy
+victories of the last century, until their leaders learn that war
+as a national industry does not pay, until their wealth and their
+trade has disappeared, until their sons are maimed and killed and
+their land laid waste, until the blinders fall from their eyes
+and they sicken of Emperor and Crown Prince, of the almost
+countless Kings and Grand Dukes and Princes, Generals and
+Admirals, Court Marshals and Chamberlains and Majors and
+Adjutants, Captains and Lieutenants, who now, like fat, green,
+distended flies, feed on the blood of Germany. What is there in
+war for any one but those men of froth at the top? It is this
+infernal king business that is responsible; so much of the king
+tradition is bound up with war that a king with power feels that
+he is untrue to the traditions of his ancestors if he fails at
+some period of his career to give the court painters and the
+court poets and the court historians a chance to portray him as a
+successful warrior.
+
+The British air minister recently announced that reprisal raids
+were to be made on German towns. Who is not sorry for the poor
+people who may suffer, but the war must be brought home to them.
+They have made no protest while Zeppelins killed babies and women
+and children in the "fortress" of London. The "fortress" of
+London, indeed! First the Germans attack an open town, contrary
+to every rule, and then, when guns are mounted to ward off future
+attacks, the Germans christen the town a "fortress" and claim the
+right to continue this slaughter of non-combatants.
+
+Postcards were sold and eagerly bought all over Germany showing
+the Zeppelins bombing towns. When some German father sits by the
+hospital bed of his dying daughter, who sobs out her life torn
+with a fatal wound, let him tack one of these postcards over the
+bed and in looking on it remember that "he who lives by the sword
+shall perish by the sword," that it was at the command of the
+Kaiser and the Crown Prince when they thought only the German
+Zeppelins could make a successful air raid that these massacres
+were ordered and that the German people at the time yelled their
+approval of deliberate dastardly murder.
+
+"Te Deum" has been always the favourite psalm sung in cathedrals
+for all Christian conquerors, but neither psalms nor the paid
+pastor's praises of the Emperor will satisfy the German people,
+who have made awful sacrifices for intangible victories.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE ERRORS OF EFFICIENT GERMANY
+
+
+The Yankee finding himself, like Mark Twain's hero, suddenly
+transported back to King Arthur's Court is landed in a surprising
+and unknown world. But one of King Arthur's knights brought to
+life at the court of the present German Emperor aside from steam,
+electricity, gun powder, telegraph and telephones would find the
+system as despotic as in the days when the enchanter, Merlin,
+wove his spells and the sword Excalibur appeared from the depths
+of the magic lake. But while the system is as royal and as
+despotic as in King Arthur's day, while the king and his military
+nobles look down on the merchants and the toilers and the plain
+people, no knights ride forth intent upon good deeds, to protect
+the poor or avenge the wrongs of the innocent.
+
+It was the cold realists of the General Staff who battered down
+the defences of Belgium and the forts of France, destroyed the
+monuments of art and levied a tax of sixty million francs a month
+upon a little country deprived of its means to produce wealth,
+took the food from the inhabitants, shipped the machinery and raw
+material into Germany, deported the men and insulted the women
+and drove whole populations from their homes to work as slaves
+for the conquerors.
+
+But while they can plan military successes in the first rush of
+assault on the chessboard of Europe they have failed to
+understand other nations--failed even to learn the lessons of
+history. They did not know that in every land, in every walk of
+life, there are men who will "reject a bribe and who will die for
+an idea."
+
+Imagine a German Staff officer reporting in Berlin that over a
+hundred thousand Alsatians were armed and organised and that they
+threatened, unless certain proposed legislation uniting them, for
+example, with Baden, was withdrawn, to resist forcibly any
+attempt to incorporate them in that Grand Duchy. Would not this
+look to a German officer like real revolution and nothing else?
+And when, in addition, there came news of the landing of arms for
+the Nationalists in Ireland and of the organisation of the
+Nationalist army, the Germans, without knowledge of the
+psychology of other peoples, believed that Great Britain had her
+hands full and that the moment had come when they could go to war
+and leave Great Britain out of all calculations. So studying only
+the German mind, believing that all peoples in national character
+are like the Germans, the Great General Staff, the greatest
+military aggregation the world has ever seen, failed lamentably,
+whenever the human element became the factor in the situation.
+Its military successes have been marvellous; its judgments of
+mankind ridiculous. Its errors of judgment may be arranged as
+follows:
+
+
+_Error Number One._
+
+Italy was in alliance with Germany and Austria, although there
+was no greater hate before the war than that between Italians and
+Austrians; and the Great General Staff believed that Italy would
+remain in this unnatural alliance, would fight in order to give
+the Germans and the German-Austrians the domination of Europe.
+The victory of the Central Empires would have placed Italy under
+that Austrian influence from which in her struggle for freedom
+under the leadership of Cavour, Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel she
+had liberated herself.
+
+Prince Buelow, who early in his career romantically married a
+charming Italian of good family, was sent to Rome to keep Italy
+neutral. But he failed.
+
+
+_Error Number Two._
+
+Germany's belief that because of the Carson movement Great
+Britain was immobilised and could take no part in the war.
+
+
+_Error Number Three._
+
+The theory cherished especially in military circles that because
+the Japanese army had been trained by Prussians Japan would join
+Germany. Indeed, at the moment when the Japanese were packing
+their trunks and preparing to leave their Embassy, a German crowd
+with flags and torches was assembled in front cheering Japan,
+the latest ally of the Entente.
+
+
+_Error Number Four._
+
+The belief by the General Staff that the British Colonies would
+render no assistance to the mother country.
+
+In the first days after England entered the war many German
+statesmen said to me, "Of course, now Canada will be incorporated
+in the United States." The Germans believed that the practical
+thing, for the moment, for the Canadians was to avoid war, to
+disavow all their obligations and ties of blood and permit
+Britain to be destroyed. The General Staff thought that because
+the world did not have actual proof of the German designs of
+world conquest, because that design had not been publicly
+proclaimed, that no people or nation would either know or
+understand the vast enterprise of conquest on which Prussian
+autocracy had embarked.
+
+
+_Error Number Five._
+
+The unexpected resistance of the Belgians.
+
+The German armies were held only a few days, yet the delay of
+those few days changed the fortunes of the world.
+
+
+_Error Number Six._
+
+The splendid stand of France which was a complete surprise to the
+Great General Staff. They believed that France was degenerate,
+torn by scandals, and that a sudden assault would land the
+German army in Paris. In this connection it was another great
+error for the Germans to have sought Paris, important from a
+sentimental but not a military point of view. They might better
+have occupied first the north coast of France, and from there
+could have conducted the German submarine campaign with deadly
+effect.
+
+
+_Error Number Seven._
+
+We have seen what a shell the Russian Empire was, but in July,
+1914, the Great General Staff believed that Russia was on the
+edge of a revolution. Barricades had been erected in the streets
+of Petrograd and the Staff believed that the revolution, which
+has since divided Russia, was in the making. Instead of this the
+Russian Empire lasted for nearly three years and the Russian
+troops and generals inflicted many a hard blow not only on the
+Austrians but on the German forces.
+
+
+_Error Number Eight._
+
+Germany was confident that the United States had been so
+propagandised, so covered by bribes, by paid newspapers, that the
+export of supplies to the Allies could be prevented. Another
+error was the barbarity shown in the sinking of the _Lusitania_
+by which it was sought to terrorise Americans into withholding
+from England and France the privileges of international law, and
+of the definite treaty of The Hague in 1907, in which Germany had
+joined and which gave to private individuals the right to supply
+munitions of war to any belligerent.
+
+
+_Error Number Nine._
+
+Thinking that the Emperor, by posing as a Mohammedan in the East,
+could with the aid of the Turks stir all Mohammedans to a Holy
+War.
+
+The Germans laboured with the Mohammedan soldiers captured by
+them. I saw many fine looking old Sheiks from the desert entering
+the Foreign Office in Berlin. The Eastern world was filled with
+German spies. But the Holy War was a failure, and the hope that
+the races of Asia and Africa would rise in favour of Germany was
+not borne out by events. The men of the East are wise, the rulers
+of India are enlightened and were not silly enough to place
+themselves voluntarily under the harsh rule of Prussia.
+
+
+_Error Number Ten._
+
+The belief that President Wilson had been elected with an
+absolute mandate to keep the peace at all costs, the Germans
+declared for unrestricted submarine warfare, expecting a craven
+neutrality from the United States.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+PRESIDENT WILSON AND PEACE
+
+
+Once the Kaiser said to me, "I wish I had as much power as your
+President. He has far more power than I have."
+
+What would the Kaiser say of the power and prestige now enjoyed
+by the President of the United States?
+
+At first blush it seems almost ridiculous for us to rush to war
+shouting against autocracy while the man with the greatest power
+the world has ever seen announces to the world that we fight "to
+make the world safe for Democracy."
+
+Charles I must turn enviously in his grave when his spirit sees
+the obedient Parliament of Washington; and a line of fallen
+Kings, from Charles to Nicky Romanoff, must wish that they had
+had the opportunity to attend lectures at Princeton University
+where our President, Woodrow Wilson, once held forth on the
+science of government.
+
+But it is characteristic of the high intelligence of our people
+that we have recognised that war to be waged effectively must be
+directed by one head. We know that after the war we shall be able
+to recover all the powers delegated to the President. We have
+gained by our temporary surrender all the efficiency of
+autocracy and risked none of its dangers, and have simply
+followed the custom of the free German tribes which elected a
+leader for war and gave him a power never given the chiefs in
+time of peace.
+
+How much more enduring is our Government! Since the war the
+government cabinets of England have twice changed radically, that
+of France five times, and Italy very frequently indeed. Few
+realise that our Constitution is the oldest in the world to-day.
+Since its adoption the government of every land in some material
+particular has changed many times, France, for instance, from
+King and Republic, then to citizen kingship, then to Republic,
+then to Empire, and finally to Republic. In England the form has
+remained the same, but the power passed, in 1830, with the
+passage of the Reform Bill, from nobles to commoners, as great a
+revolution as any in France.
+
+And I admire the very inaccessibility of President Wilson. He
+does not waste time on non-essentials, on useless polite
+conversation or pointless discussion. This may add to his enemies
+but makes for efficiency.
+
+When I saw the President on one occasion about German affairs we
+talked for four and a quarter hours without intermission. In that
+period he extracted from me all the information he required at
+the time. He is a wonderful man to have at the head of our nation
+in war or peace.
+
+Gradually the splendid peace message of our President (Jan. 8,
+1918) will sink into the consciousness of the German people.
+
+There are liberal and reasonable men among them striving for
+peace and for disarmament.
+
+In January of 1917, just at the moment when the military
+autocracy brought on war with America by their sudden announcement
+of ruthless submarine warfare, the liberals of Germany were
+preparing to co-operate with our President in the efforts that he
+was then making for peace.
+
+A Socialist member of the Reichstag, a man whose name is known
+throughout the world, wrote at that time two articles to be used
+in the effort for peace, and I print them in order that those
+outside of Germany may obtain a glimpse of the mind of one of the
+leading Socialists of that country. These articles have never
+before been published.
+
+I feel that now when we are at war with Germany perhaps it would
+cause embarrassment to this man should I publish his name. In a
+country where a man may be sent to jail for speaking without
+respect of some act of the Kaiser's ancestors, committed more
+than four hundred years ago, it is dangerous for any German to
+put his name to utterances which might not march with the wishes
+of despotic Germany.
+
+It has always been the desire of the Kaiser's government to draw
+the Allies into a peace conference with the hope of detaching
+some of the Allies from their combination. Perhaps these
+articles, although written by a Socialist, were part of a clever
+governmental peace propaganda to which the majority Socialists
+so readily lent themselves during the year 1917. But on the other
+hand I think these articles represent the sincere real expression
+of the writer who is still a member of the Minority or Haase
+faction of the German Socialist Party. Though written a year ago
+they discuss points still unsolved and which must come before the
+peace conference that settles the war:
+
+     HOW AMERICA CAN HELP EUROPE.
+
+     BY ---- ----, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG
+
+     The immediate reply of the Central Powers to
+     President Wilson's note (Dec., 1916) has been a
+     polite refusal to indicate, beyond some
+     generalities open to the blame of ambiguity, in a
+     clear way what their demands of peace would be. It
+     has been followed by their note to the neutrals of
+     the 11th of January, which also avoids giving a
+     distinct delineation of their demands. The Central
+     Powers maintain that only a peace conference of
+     the belligerents themselves would be the proper
+     place to bring forth the respective peace
+     conditions, and they state they would produce
+     theirs when once the conference has met. Putting
+     aside every insinuation of motives one cannot help
+     being reminded by this of the attitude of the
+     Central Powers during the fateful twelve days of
+     July-August, 1914, when they refused any outside
+     mediation and insisted on direct conversations
+     between Russia and Austria, whilst the punitive
+     military expedition of the latter against Servia
+     had to take its course. In so far their suggestion
+     would not augur well for the execution.
+
+     The Entente Allies, on their side, have been
+     somewhat more explicit. Their answer to President
+     Wilson includes the delineation of demands that
+     certainly are open to criticism, but just for this
+     call for a reply or even compel it. At the time
+     these lines are written only newspaper comments
+     have so far come forward, and it is not necessary
+     to dwell upon these. Nor does it seem appropriate
+     to anticipate the reply of the Chancellor, which
+     in some form or other will surely be given in the
+     course of the next weeks. What matters is that
+     there is a programme given for discussion and we
+     are able to scrutinise its nature and bearing.
+
+     The demands explicitly or implicitly contained in
+     the note of the Allies can be summarised under
+     five heads, viz.:
+
+         1. Restitution of occupied territory to its former
+            political community,
+
+         2. Reparation for inflicted material and moral
+            wrongs,
+
+         3. Territorial changes motivated by alleged
+
+            a. rights of nationality,
+
+            b. need for freeing suppressed or protecting
+               consistently maltreated nationalities,
+
+         4. Reform of International Law,
+
+         5. National and international treaties for the
+            protection of inland and maritime boundaries.
+
+     Of these the demands under 1 and 2 are certainly
+     in their principle quite reasonable, and if it
+     comes to actual and exact formulation are apt to
+     lead to a fair agreement.
+
+     The demands under 3 are partly on principle also
+     unobjectionable, whilst some, as e.g., the cession
+     of the Polish provinces of Prussia to a Polish
+     state under Russian tutelage or the cession of the
+     European vilayets of Turkey to Russia or some
+     newly created community under Russian tutelage,
+     can hardly be supported by reasonable argument in
+     the face of the fact that they could only be
+     carried out by dictation after a complete and
+     crushing victory of the Allies over the Central
+     Powers. That is to say, after a prolonged war more
+     murderous and more embittered than that behind us.
+     It is to be expected that public discussion will
+     in regard to demands of this nature create an
+     opinion resulting in their reduction if not
+     disappearance. What is reasonable in them falls
+     either under number 3, letter "a," or under
+     numbers 4 and 5.
+
+     Now as regards the demands under 4 and 5, the
+     settlement of most of them belongs rightly to an
+     International Conference of all the nations. In
+     their good and efficient regulation all are
+     interested. They are also of the greatest concern
+     to the future of mankind as a whole. The demands
+     or questions can as regards their general
+     character also be divided under three other heads,
+     viz.:
+
+     Firstly, questions of justice to nations or
+     nationalities as political or sociological
+     entities,
+
+     Secondly, questions of the most expedient
+     settlement of disputes between individual Powers
+     or groups of such where no fundamental principles
+     of nationality or similar rights are concerned,
+     and
+
+     Thirdly, questions which concern all the nations
+     through their common interest in general security
+     and protection against the disturbance of
+     international peace and traffic.
+
+     Both the Allies and the Central Powers agree to
+     the idea of settling these latter questions in a
+     better way than before; i.e., by an International
+     League of the Nations to enforce peace. But both
+     want the creation of this League to be settled
+     after the war. It can, however, with good reason
+     be upheld that there is in this a fault against
+     logic which would have to be paid dearly by them
+     as well as by the neutral world. Both base a
+     number of their demands on the necessity of
+     protecting themselves against renewed onslaughts
+     by their opponents. Now such protection might be a
+     necessary thing under the present state of an
+     International Law which has been outraged and
+     partly been made inane by themselves and has
+     partly turned out not to meet the conditions of
+     modern warfare as they result from the modern
+     weapons of destruction. But it would be made
+     unnecessary or its requirements be greatly reduced
+     if the League of the Nations, such as is in
+     principle accepted by them, did already exist or
+     had its rules and regulations already laid down in
+     detail. Is it reasonable to allow this
+     contradiction to cause now innumerable deaths and
+     mutilations of human beings and unbounded
+     destruction of material wealth instead of seeking
+     means to dissolve it as early as possible? Ought
+     not all our wits be exerted to find this earlier
+     solution?
+
+     There are within the means of the neutrals, if
+     acting together, two ways to bring the war to an
+     earlier end than that to be expected from the free
+     decision of the belligerents. The one is to drop
+     all considerations of neutrality such as at
+     present regarded and, without directly supporting
+     the one section to the detriment of the other,
+     withdraw from both of them all supplies in food,
+     raw material, half and wholly manufactured goods,
+     not minding which section would by this be more
+     damaged than its opponents. In fact, it would most
+     likely be a decidedly unneutral measure against
+     the one section which now benefits more than the
+     other by these supplies, and because of this and
+     from other reasons there is little probability
+     that it would find general acceptance. The other
+     way is to reduce the justification of the
+     continuation of the war by minimising the objects
+     for which it is led in the belief of the great
+     masses of the people engaged as much as in the
+     eyes of the outside world.
+
+     Both belligerents, to say it again, put in the
+     first line of their requirements security against
+     renewed attacks, protection against the
+     continuation of the insecurity of peace. Both
+     admit that the proposed League of the Nations has
+     become a necessity; both admit that it might
+     indeed protect mankind against new wars and a
+     state of incessantly endangered peace. Why then
+     wait and let the disaster go on instead of
+     proceeding at once to lay the foundation of this
+     League?
+
+     The step is not so impossible as it might appear.
+     Supposing one neutral state took the matter in
+     hand and, after having ascertained the consent of
+     the other neutrals or at least a majority of
+     them--which it is almost sure to obtain--would
+     invite all the nations, the belligerents included,
+     to a conference or a congress at a neutral place
+     for the discussion and the arrangement of the
+     principles and rules of the proposed League of the
+     Nations. Would the belligerent nations refuse to
+     send their delegates to such a conference? Could
+     they do it without damaging their case before the
+     world of the neutrals and the masses of their own
+     people? It is most improbable that they would do
+     such a thing. And even if they did they would not
+     by this put the conference to naught. It would be
+     there and would give palpable substance to an idea
+     which until now lived, in spite of great and most
+     ingenuous work spent on it, politically only in
+     the sphere of lofty speculation or projects.
+
+     And the conference could do more. Starting from
+     the maxim which finds such impressive accentuation
+     in President Wilson's note that war in general
+     must not, and the present war in particular can
+     not, be regarded as the private affair of the
+     individual states that engage in it, the
+     conference could also take into consideration some
+     questions of consequence connected with the
+     present war. It could, e.g., whilst laying the
+     foundations for the security of countries against
+     wilful attacks lay down opinions about the just
+     settlement of disputed questions of nationality
+     and the liberation of nations or part of such from
+     allegiance to a state or empire of different or
+     mixed nationalities. It seems to become a
+     necessity to make clear whether a Power or
+     coalition of such can be justified to put in the
+     list of their war aims the liberation of
+     nationalities without sufficient proof that the
+     latter all want to sever their connection with the
+     state or empire to which they just belong.
+
+     The Tcheques in Austria and the Finns in Russia
+     strive for their full autonomy within these
+     empires, but they have very little shown of a
+     desire to become a separate state. An opinion that
+     wars for abstruse benefits never asked for can
+     under no circumstances be regarded as liberation
+     wars would wrong nobody because it would apply to
+     all, but it may contribute much to have designs
+     given up which otherwise would uselessly cause
+     bloodshed and prolonged enmities.
+
+     The conference would also be justified in taking
+     measures to procure an impartial expert opinion on
+     the origin and the legal conduct of the war and
+     the general principles of national and
+     international right involved.
+
+     If the conference would invite neutral experts in
+     international law of general renown to investigate
+     the questions indicated above and draw up reports
+     it would not by this offend in the smallest degree
+     against the requirements of impartiality. But the
+     reports could, if based on careful examination and
+     considerately worded, contribute very much to
+     soften the excited minds in the countries engaged
+     and facilitate the preliminaries of a genuine
+     peace.
+
+     There are, no doubt, all sorts of objections that
+     could be raised against this suggestion. But they
+     can be met satisfactorily if the matter is taken
+     up in earnest and with practical mind. The
+     principal difficulty to overcome is _time_; no
+     time must be wasted by research in far-fetched
+     details. It is a comparatively short list of
+     pertinent questions which would have to be
+     answered, and the materials of their examination
+     are already at hand in the declarations and
+     documentary publications of the different
+     governments themselves which want to be verified
+     by juxtaposition with the corresponding
+     publications of the other side and to be
+     scrutinised upon their intrinsic significance.
+     Works of conscientious legists and historians that
+     could serve as specimens are not missing. But they
+     are occasioned by private enterprise and express
+     opinions not always in the measured language that
+     would alone fit the purpose here in view.
+
+     This purpose is to direct the minds of the
+     greatest possible number of people in the affected
+     countries to such way of regarding the questions
+     of the war and to such comprehension of the
+     feeling of the other side as are the necessary
+     conditions of a sane and sober appreciation of the
+     nature and the possibilities of a reasonable
+     peace. The present feeling in these sections of
+     the public which form public opinion in this
+     country as in England and in France, is as full of
+     bitterness as can be. A cure is badly wanted, but
+     it does not proceed automatically. Weariness of
+     the war is there, but it is counteracted partly by
+     the manifold incidents of the war itself, by the
+     appetites it has awakened, by the mutual distrust
+     it has created.
+
+     It might be objected that one can hardly expect a
+     number of even neutral experts to come to a
+     concerted opinion on these points. But it would be
+     of little consequence if the experts, instead of
+     agreeing on a common report, would publish
+     majority and minority reports. What matters is
+     that opinions of qualified experts are at all
+     drawn up and published, so that discussion is as
+     much as possible free from the effects of the
+     biased speeches of interested statesmen and other
+     politicians and their press. The report or reports
+     would also be of use when an armistice at least
+     had been agreed upon and a conference for the
+     conclusion of a peace is sitting. And even if the
+     work of the invited experts should take more time
+     than the conclusion of the peace itself, the
+     reports might still be of considerable value. For
+     what matters is not only that a peace is come to
+     but also that the nations should afterward possess
+     authoritative impartial opinions on the main
+     questions of consequence connected with the origin
+     and the conduct of the war. For such opinions
+     would educate the poisoned minds to an objective
+     and argumentative discussion of the means to
+     prevent a repetition of the present disaster.
+
+     Only those who live in the affected countries can
+     be aware how great the need is for providing the
+     general public with unbiased authoritative
+     expositions of these questions.
+
+     Finally the conference could and should also
+     discuss in a pertinent way the question of
+     _disarmament_. This question has to-day reached a
+     stage much beyond that of mere desirability. It is
+     now a question of commanding necessity, one can
+     justly say of life and death of the reached stage
+     of civilisation. Not pious wishes or theoretical
+     expositions will in regard to it now suffice. We
+     must have practical proposals, proposals of a
+     scheme to put disarmament into practice and
+     proposals of the means to induce the different
+     states to accept the scheme and to carry it out.
+
+     It is a big and pretentious programme here
+     suggested, the first to be decided by breaks with
+     the old principle of non-interference in state
+     affairs. But the times are so exceptional that
+     extraordinary measures cannot be shunned. If one
+     sees two lads fight each other with their fists or
+     even sticks one may well say, "Let them first
+     fight it out and then we shall see to bring them
+     to reason." But if they stand on board a ship and,
+     mad with rage, and, without interruption and
+     unremittingly, throw incendiary matter at each
+     other you would rather stop them before the ship
+     is in flames. Under other conditions it might be
+     the right thing to convoke a conference to be held
+     after the war is over. As it is now, reason would
+     demand not to adjourn the term to that juncture.
+     This is not the place to adjudicate
+     responsibilities. Suffice it to say that the
+     present aspect of the conflict is the worst since
+     its beginnings and threatens aggravations of its
+     horrors.
+
+     Of all the neutrals none is more predestined to
+     take the initiative in this grave matter than the
+     United States of America, by their great power, by
+     their geographical position, by the ethnological
+     composition of their citizens and last, but not
+     least, by their historical traditions they before
+     all are called to act. The small European nations
+     are already, as it were, too much under the fire
+     around them to be so free in their action as is
+     the government of the giant republic on the
+     western hemisphere. But that they would with the
+     greatest readiness join in the convocation of a
+     conference for the settlement of at least the two
+     first of the described subjects is sure beyond any
+     doubt.
+
+     The leader in the arrangement of this conference
+     is, in my opinion, the least objectionable, and at
+     the same time it is the most promising help that
+     in the present appallingly entangled situation
+     America can give Europe. The Old World is
+     poisoned. The virus of the most irrational hatred
+     of its component sections against each other,
+     inoculated into them by all sorts of false
+     leaders of opinion, eats deeper and deeper and
+     threatens to mortify all the roots of a wholesome
+     life. May the United States of America help a
+     disunited Europe to find the way out of the deadly
+     miasmatic jungle into which it has lost itself.
+
+
+     THE HELPLESSNESS OF EUROPE
+
+     BY ---- ----, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG
+
+     Europe is in the position of a wanderer who has
+     gone astray into a swamp. In vain he labours to
+     regain firm ground. The more frantically he
+     struggles the surer he is to become submerged.
+     Like an infant child he is unable to help himself.
+     Help must come from people outside the swamp.
+
+     We are now in the third year of the biggest, the
+     most fratricidal and the most hopeless war the
+     world has ever seen. It is hopeless in so far as
+     on the one side none of the two coalitions is
+     likely to be in a visible time as much the victor
+     over the other that it can dictate it its own
+     terms, and as on the other side there is no common
+     basis to be seen for a sensible compromise. It is
+     not the extravagance of demands that forms an
+     insuperable barrier for peace. Extravagant terms
+     of peace have indeed been formulated by
+     unauthorised persons or groups but they have
+     nowhere received the sanctioning stamp of the
+     responsible governments. The latter prefer rather
+     to shine by the moderation of their demands, at
+     least as far as territory is concerned. But it is
+     just this apparent moderation that makes peace
+     such an almost insoluble problem.
+
+     Far behind this moderation in regard to
+     territorial demands looms the desire to destroy
+     the opponents' chances of political predominance.
+     The war is, for the present at least, in the
+     first instance a struggle about the supremacy in
+     Europe. And this perhaps more in a negative sense
+     than otherwise. Jingoes are, of course, everywhere
+     in high and low quarters, but it is very doubtful
+     whether one of the responsible heads of the
+     belligerent nations pursues for himself or his
+     nation seriously and consistently what might be
+     called the mastery of Europe. All are, however,
+     dead against the idea that this mastery might pass
+     into the other camp. Comparatively easy as it is
+     to settle a dispute on questions of territory by
+     arbitration or to work out schemes for compromise
+     in regard to such, so difficult or almost
+     impossible it would be to arbitrate on a question
+     of actual supremacy or to settle it by compromise.
+
+     Particularly in the camp of the Allies is the
+     possibility lest Germany might emerge out of the
+     war the actual arbiter of Europe conceived as an
+     unbearable thought. None of the allied Powers,
+     neither England nor France and not even Russia,
+     Italy being in this respect quite out of question,
+     has during the last decades shown a disposition or
+     a pretence to play up to such a part.
+
+     But Germany is suspected of nourishing ideas of
+     this kind, and utterances of some of their
+     prominent men, _occasional sayings of the Kaiser
+     included_, tend to give substance to this
+     suspicion. In vain Germans object that their
+     country has all the 44 years since 1870 kept the
+     peace in Europe. We have done the same, would the
+     others reply, and we have not, as Germany has
+     done, again and again threatened war when things
+     did not run according to her wishes or humours.
+     _Germany has in fact abstained from actual peace
+     breaking. But she was regarded and has not a
+     little done to acquire the fame, as the latent or
+     virtual disturbing element in European politics._
+
+     This view in regard to political Germany has
+     greatly been enhanced through many of her actions
+     during the present war. It is natural enough,
+     though not particularly edifying, that in a war
+     each party ascribes all the guilt thereof to the
+     opponents and poses as the innocent who
+     maliciously was surprised when not dreaming of any
+     harm. But the cantankerous way in which almost the
+     whole political and intellectual Germany has
+     handled this question and has treated it as a
+     crime not to take in every respect the German view
+     of the case and of all the details of warfare has
+     strengthened the feeling that this nation has come
+     to regard itself as a sort of high judge of
+     Europe. People were reminded of that
+     ill-considered harangue to German soldiers at the
+     time of the China expedition when they were
+     entreated to act towards the Chinese like the Huns
+     under Attila. _This and the eagerness to crush by
+     overwhelming power every small nation that
+     ventures to take sides with the Allies as well as
+     the proclaiming of rights for submarines and
+     Zeppelins upon her own authority--these and
+     similar measures have only been too suited to
+     nourish the conception that Germany places herself
+     in the r�le of the scourge of God._
+
+     How this feeling reacts upon political thought is
+     illustrated by a conversation a German socialist
+     has had in the summer of 1915 on neutral ground
+     with a French socialist politician of no jingoish
+     leanings at all on the possibilities of peace.
+     Even if Germany declared herself ready to
+     relinquish Belgium and to return to France every
+     inch of ground occupied, his countrymen would not
+     accept peace from her, explained the Frenchman.
+     And on the question, "Why not?" he replied
+     passionately: "Because it would be the German
+     peace; because it would yet leave Germany the all
+     powerful of Europe; because it would make us
+     depend upon the whims and tempers of that
+     conceited military nation."
+
+     "But are you going to bleed yourself to death?"
+     was the next question, and the reply, uttered in a
+     voice where sadness mingled with determination,
+     was:
+
+     "Yes, rather be ruined!"
+
+     This is a specimen of the feeling created by the
+     present war, and I am afraid the sentiment has not
+     abated a whit yet. Germans have done a good deal
+     in attempts to detach the French from the English.
+     They have told them that they are only the poor
+     seduced tools of the base and egotistic
+     Britishers, that Germans did not bear them any
+     malice, that they rather pitied them and would
+     fain be ready to come to terms with them. But
+     declarations of this sort proved only how little
+     the French mentality was understood this side of
+     the Vosges. The French nation is too much
+     impressed by the memory of her great past and the
+     part played by her in European politics to stand
+     being pitied and patted like children of tender
+     age. It will be respected as an equal who acts
+     with the full knowledge of the state of things and
+     is too much given to political reflection to
+     accept willingly any view of the war that visibly
+     is coloured by the interest of Germany in the
+     dissension between the two great Powers of Western
+     Europe. The anti-German feeling runs still very
+     high in France; her leading papers excel without
+     any exception in extremely harsh language against
+     everything German, and the great mass of those who
+     in former years had propagated the idea of a
+     Franco-German understanding are now dead against
+     it.
+
+     A similar feeling has step by step got hold of the
+     British nation. From not being very popular at its
+     beginning in England, the war has come to be
+     regarded as a greater national concern than any of
+     its predecessors. The frantic if not hysterical
+     outbursts of hatred against England in Germany
+     when the former decided to stand by France in the
+     war were at first not taken too seriously. But by
+     and by the unceasing utterances of spite have,
+     together with the known acts of German aerial and
+     submarine warfare, deeply reacted on the British
+     mind. The feeling is now general that England has
+     never before had an enemy so full of hatred
+     against her, so ardently desirous of causing her
+     irreparable harm as she now has in present day
+     Germany.
+
+     Even such socialist papers as the _New Statesman_,
+     which before the war had no anti-German bias at
+     all, have arrived at the same conclusion
+     concerning what may be called a German peace as
+     the French socialist politician whose opinions
+     were given above characterised it. In an article
+     called "The Case for the Allies," and especially
+     addressed to Americans, the _New Statesman_
+     explains in its number of December 30th that peace
+     with an unbeaten Germany would mean "Mittel Europa
+     from the Baltic to the Black Sea," that nothing
+     would prevent its expansion through the Balkans to
+     El Arish and Bagdad, that throughout this vast
+     area the authority, if not the suzerainty, of
+     Berlin would be acknowledged and that the small
+     European States north and northwest of Germany
+     would without any resistance--by the mere force of
+     things--come to be subjected to the dictate of
+     Germany. In the words of the _New Statesman_, as
+     the result of an inconclusive peace, "militarism
+     would be more firmly established than ever by the
+     record of its marvellous success and by the
+     manifest need for a military organisation
+     proportionate to so vast an expansion."
+
+     Is this feeling justified? Does it appreciate
+     facts at their exact value? _There is undoubtedly
+     an influential section in Germany which entertains
+     feelings of this kind._ It has its adherents
+     particularly in naval circles and amongst the
+     intellectuals of the nation and in a considerable
+     degree also in the financial world. These sections
+     hate in England partly the happy possessor of what
+     in their opinion ought by right to belong to the
+     German race and partly the power without which
+     German expansion would meet with no resistance
+     worth speaking of by European nations. _This
+     section of anti-English on principle or by deeply
+     rooted hatred, influential as it is, is, however,
+     not the whole nation._ It has only now the hold of
+     her mind because it has succeeded in instilling
+     into her the belief that England is the secret
+     manufacturer of the present war, that she is the
+     selfish fermenter of hatred in Europe, the
+     scheming brewer of strife on the Continent.
+     England has become to the average German mind a
+     real nightmare, a sort of a Frankenstein or any
+     such spookish monster, and as she now, by the
+     vicissitudes of the war, has indeed become the
+     most dangerous of Germany's opponents it is not
+     possible to educate people from the inside to a
+     more rational view of her part in this war and in
+     European politics altogether.
+
+     There you have the greatest hindrances to peace in
+     Europe. I did not mention Russia. But the war
+     between Germany, inclusive of Austria-Hungary, and
+     Russia is of quite a different nature. It is more
+     of a war of the older order. It has, of course,
+     also evoked a good deal of hatred. But on the
+     whole it is as wars go, more of an objective
+     nature. There are material differences on which it
+     would not be impossible to compromise. But there
+     is no such deeply-seated irrational opposition,
+     which now sets Germans and English and French and
+     Germans against each other. The war between the
+     Central Powers and Russia is, comparatively
+     speaking, an accident in the political history of
+     Europe. _The war between England, France and
+     Germany is a catastrophe in European civilisation.
+     As a war it is most irrational, and just because
+     of its absurdity it is so utterly difficult to
+     find a solution for it, and there is little hope
+     that unless some outside force intervenes, it may
+     end otherwise than by absolute general
+     exhaustion._
+
+     Things would be otherwise if there were reasonable
+     hopes of a concerted action on the part of the
+     international union of the socialist parties. But
+     such hopes, if they ever could be entertained,
+     have by now become a thing of the past. In the
+     three countries named the majority of the leaders
+     of organised labour have taken sides in the war
+     alongside of their governments and have by this
+     more or less given up independency and lost the
+     confidence of their former comrades in the
+     opposite camp. Distrust, which in general has so
+     much contributed to bring about this war, prevails
+     also in the ranks of the socialists in regard to
+     the leaders of the movement on the other side of
+     the frontier. Minorities everywhere work for a
+     greater independency as a step to a better
+     international understanding. But they have as yet
+     nowhere succeeded in winning the majority of the
+     movement over to their views and policy, and even
+     if they did, all sorts of hindrances would by the
+     governments be put in the way of these Socialists
+     to assemble internationally in sufficient number
+     for work of this nature.
+
+     Nor is it to be expected that revolts of the
+     discontented masses will be vast enough to force
+     the governments into peace negotiations against
+     their will. The possibilities of centralised
+     governments against revolutionary upheavals as
+     long as these remain locally isolated, which in
+     the face of the enormous extent of the section of
+     the globe directly drawn into the war is most
+     probable, are too great to let these movements
+     have a great chance of changing the policy of the
+     rulers. This would only happen when at least some
+     of these classes or parties which at present
+     support the war come round to their opinion, of
+     which very few signs are at present to be seen.
+     The work of small minorities everywhere, the war
+     has got hold of the minds of the millions in all
+     countries and has filled nations against nations
+     with such distrust and spite as in the history of
+     civilised mankind never before have been
+     witnessed.
+
+     How little we are justified to expect peace from
+     the action of these socialists who stand by
+     governments in the war is, as far as my own
+     country is concerned, shown by the fact that the
+     big meetings now (and, I am willing to admit, it
+     is the intention of the initiators to hold them in
+     favour of peace) led by the leaders of the
+     majority of the social-democratic party, such as
+     Messrs. Scheidemann, David, Ebert and others, turn
+     out in practice as meetings in support of the
+     policy of the government in regard to the question
+     of war and peace. In order to defend their own
+     political attitude the speakers are compelled to
+     shift the responsibility for the war and its
+     continuation wholly on the shoulders of the
+     governments of the opposite countries and their
+     supporters, and by this they increase in the mind
+     of their hearers the conviction that nothing short
+     of a defeat of these countries will bring the war
+     to a desirable end. In England the majority of the
+     Labour Party and a considerable number of the best
+     known socialist leaders and in France the most
+     influential leaders of socialist party support
+     also the war policy of their respective
+     governments in all principal issues. The well
+     meant and praiseworthy attempts to convene a full
+     International Socialist Congress for the purpose
+     of settling these differences by finding a common
+     line of action are, I am sorry to say, under the
+     circumstances most likely to prove abortive. _They
+     will founder on the self-contradiction that the
+     Socialists of the Entente countries argue that
+     their governments hate the idea of German
+     militarism coming out unbeaten and unreduced out
+     of this war which in their opinion was provoked by
+     it, whilst the leaders of the German Socialists in
+     power would rather see this same militarism which
+     they in former years have so violently attacked
+     and denounced, come out victorious than have it
+     interfered with by outside influence._
+
+     In short, sections of the socialist movement will
+     assist other forces in the action for peace, but
+     the movement as a whole is incapable to act in the
+     matter as a force of compelling strength.
+
+     Help must in the main come from outside.
+     Consequently President Wilson's action in his note
+     to the belligerents of December 20th would have
+     been the right thing, even if it had offended in
+     some way against the rules of diplomatic
+     procedure. Under so exceptional circumstances as
+     these occasioned by the present war extraordinary
+     steps are certainly justified and breaches of
+     etiquette of little significance. But the note was
+     faultless in this respect, and it can moreover be
+     said that in no way did it endanger legitimate
+     interests of the one or the other section of the
+     belligerents. It offends only in spirit against
+     Cain's word, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and in
+     distinct words against the conception that war is
+     a private affair of states may it ever so much
+     interfere with the material and moral welfare of
+     other nations.
+
+     The step has not at once succeeded. But it has
+     opened the way; nay, it has forced the door open
+     for discussion in a fashion that nobody will be
+     strong enough to shut it again. True, the Central
+     Powers have by their offer of peace negotiations
+     forestalled the note by a week. But this offer
+     would have come to naught without Mr. Wilson's
+     action. Harsh as the reply of the Allies is to the
+     offer, it would most likely have been put in much
+     more negating terms had not the American note
+     caused the Entente Allies to avoid a blunt "No"
+     and content themselves with raising objections and
+     interjecting accusations. By this they have
+     willy-nilly provoked a debate and instead of
+     shutting the door kept it well open.
+
+     People may call this a small success. In fact it
+     is a beginning, and for the first as such
+     sufficient. The question is now what shall the
+     next step be and how can the debate be directed to
+     positive proposals?
+
+Of course, as these articles were given by this Socialist-Author
+for publication any one is at liberty to reproduce them.
+
+In conducting the peace negotiations, President Wilson will have
+the benefit of the services of Colonel House, the one man who, I
+believe, is best fitted to protect the interests of America and
+of humanity at such a conference. I, of course, saw Colonel House
+during the war in Berlin and in America and I consider that no
+man alive is his superior in either knowledge of the whole
+situation or in ability to cope with the trained diplomats of
+Europe. Human nature is much the same and the gentle mannered
+Texan who has been so successful in American politics will not
+fail when representing us at the table of Peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+AFTER THE WAR, WHAT?
+
+
+No one but a fortune teller or professional seer dares to predict
+the condition of the world after this war. Only mere suggestions
+can be thrown out, shadows of prophecy as to what may come.
+
+Will the tide of emigration turn from Europe and the United
+States to other countries or will people of German birth and
+descent leave America to return to the Fatherland after the war?
+
+I made it my business after I had learned German to talk to many
+of the plain people in Berlin and elsewhere, to get their views.
+I found that the common soldiers, especially those representing
+the class of skilled workingmen in the industrial centres were
+almost unanimous in saying that after the war and at the first
+opportunity they intended to leave Germany, to turn from a
+country capable of perpetrating this calamity on the world, a
+country where they have been subject not alone to military
+service but to a cruel and oppressive caste system of discipline.
+I believe that Germany will enact laws against emigration and
+that there will be zones of espionage on all German frontiers
+designed to watch and keep back such Germans as may seek to
+escape to other countries.
+
+In Austria even more stringent laws will be necessary to keep the
+unmarried males from leaving.
+
+I know that experts of the United States Government believe at
+least three millions of Slovaks, Greeks, etc., will leave America
+after the war, taking with them the money they have earned, for
+investment in new opportunities in the Old Country.
+
+With this view I cannot agree. The soil of the European continent
+is too poor, wages too small, hours too long, and distaste for
+the military and caste systems too great, to tempt those who have
+tasted the equality and the freedom of America. Why to-day an
+ordinary coal miner in Pennsylvania can earn $5,000 a year--a sum
+greater than the pay of a Prussian or Austrian general! Why
+should this miner go back to insult and slavery?
+
+The greatest problem of Germany comes after the war--when these
+millions of men, trained for four years or more to murder, shall
+return. It will be hard for them to settle down to regular work,
+impossible for them to submit again to the iron discipline of
+German civil life. Will they not, as Bloch predicts, possibly,
+re-enact the horrors of the French Commune, or even those of the
+French Revolution?
+
+It is hard to understand why Prussian autocracy does not freely
+offer what it will be compelled to give after the war--equal
+suffrage in Prussia, fair representation in the Reichstag--a
+government responsible to the Reichstag. Is it not better for the
+Emperor to offer this--following Bismarck's saying that "in
+Prussia the revolutions are made by the rulers."
+
+And who of all rulers in history seemed to sit more securely on
+his throne than Nicholas who is now learning from his keepers
+what a Czar really is?
+
+The Emperor said to me once, "Is it not wonderful how the German
+people bear their sufferings in this war?" I said I thought it
+was wonderful. It is that and more,--it is almost a miracle--that
+a whole nation can so nearly approach this delirium.
+
+The autocratic idea survives in Germany--on November 22, 1917,
+the Conservative Union of the Province of Brandenburg unanimously
+adopted the following resolution.
+
+"The Prussian State, fundamentally a people of its Princes, is
+the foundation on which the German Empire rests.
+
+"Not sovereignty of the people but Kingship by Divine Right is
+its corner stone.
+
+"We implore our deputies to do their best to prevent the Kingship
+being debased into a sham Kingship and being replaced by that
+sovereignty of the people by means of the alteration of the
+Prussian franchise."
+
+After reading this can any one wonder that the Kaiser believes he
+is called by God to rule the Germans?
+
+"Kingship by Divine Right"--is quite a development of a Kingship
+that originated in foreclosure proceedings, when Prussia was
+taken for a debt by the crafty, rich Hohenzollern Burgraf of
+Nuremberg.
+
+Is it any wonder that the Kaiser once said to me during the war,
+"Everything seems to be going my way--don't you think God is
+helping me?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The efforts of those in charge of the German propaganda to sow
+dissensions among the Allies are more than awkward.
+
+For some time after the landing in force of the British troops in
+France, the newspapers of Germany were filled with cartoons
+representing the British refusing to leave Calais; and now that
+America has entered the war even so intelligent a philosopher as
+Chancellor Hertling speaks as follows:
+
+     "If those who hold power in France forcibly
+     repress every suggestion of peace, and try to
+     rouse fresh will for war by a show of assurance of
+     victory, in spite of the frightful sacrifices the
+     war has cost the country, and must cost still
+     further, it is because they are sustained by the
+     hope of help from America. In this hope they
+     patiently tolerate the Americans also making
+     themselves at home in France, turning Bordeaux
+     into a great American harbour with immense loading
+     and unloading wharves, and cutting down the
+     forests of the Gironde in order to build a camp in
+     the neighbourhood of Bordeaux for the expected
+     army. French workmen tolerate in their factories
+     the competition of American workmen, with whom
+     they are not in sympathy, and the owners allow
+     them to look into the secrets of their business,
+     all so that the new Ally may help to take the
+     revenge on the hated Germans."
+
+Misguided old Philosopher!
+
+The most stupid peasant of the Bordeaux country does not believe
+that the Americans have come to France in order to occupy
+permanently a section of that sandy, barren scrub pine desert
+which stretches to the south of Bordeaux.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And President Wilson and his cabinet, Lloyd George and the
+statesmen of France and Italy, Portugal and Russia must be on
+their guard--Wolff's agency is at work, spreading poisonous
+propaganda. Here is an excerpt that speaks for itself:
+
+"The Imperial and Royal Propaganda Department, Section of Foreign
+Affairs, calls the editor's attention to the practice of the
+enemy press in caricaturing the Kaiser, the Crown Prince,
+Hindenburg and alleged German militarism, with the evident
+intention of an odius anti-German propaganda. It would,
+therefore, be important from the patriotic point of view for the
+daily newspapers also to occupy themselves by means of caricatures
+with the principal events of the day.
+
+"The idea of such propaganda has been conceived by the supreme
+military command. And it is therefore desirable that all should
+conform to it. The official cinema has been ordered by the
+supreme command to enter into direct communication with the daily
+press, and many leading newspapers have hastened to express
+their readiness to insert these patriotic caricatures, for the
+drawing of which the service of the best artists in Munich and
+Berlin have been secured. These caricatures will regard chiefly
+the heads of state of the Entente powers, their political leaders
+and those who make no mystery of their hatred for Germany. The
+blocks will be supplied free of expense."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+German employers will never be able to grind down their workmen
+as before the war. The men who have fought in the trenches will
+return with a new feeling of independence, a new spirit of revolt
+against the caste prejudices, a disinclination to do the same
+work in the same hours and for the same wages.
+
+My tailor in Berlin told me that several of his men who had
+returned after being discharged from the army because of some
+physical disability or wounds took an entirely different attitude
+and that one of them, for example, had said to him: "Do not think
+that I have come back to work as before. I have the Iron Cross, I
+have helped to save Germany. I am a hero and I do not propose
+again to be your industrial slave."
+
+That is the new spirit which after the war will animate the
+deceived, hitherto down-trodden lower classes of Germany.
+
+In our own country, the balance of political power may be held by
+the soldiers who are enlisted in the war and who, like the G.�A.�R.'s
+after our Civil War, may doubtless organise not only for protection
+but for political purposes. And this great restless body of returned
+troops, veterans of wars beyond the seas, may change our whole
+foreign policy in ways of which we do not dream. We shall be a
+more warlike nation, less patient to bear insult, more ready for
+war, unless this war ends all wars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The war after the war, in trade and commerce, may be long and
+bitter. The rivers of Germany are lined with ships of seven or
+eight thousand tons, many of them built or completed since the
+war, and Germany designs as her first play in this commercial war
+to seize the carrying trade of the world. The German exporter has
+lost his trade for years. Alliances have already been made in
+great industries, such as the dyestuff industry, in preparation
+for a sudden and sustained attack upon that new industry in
+America. Prices will be cut to far below the cost of production
+in order that the new industry of America fighting single handed
+against the single head German trust may be driven from the
+field. The German Government will take a practical hand in this
+contest and only the combination of American manufacturers and
+the erection of a tariff wall of defence can prevent the
+Americans, if each fights single handed and for his own end, from
+falling before the united, efficient and bitter assault of German
+trade rivals.
+
+The war has brought new power and new responsibility to women.
+Armed with the franchise they will demand not only equal rights
+but equal pay. In Great Britain alone, before the war, there
+were less than five hundred thousand women workers where now
+over five million carry the burden even of the war industries of
+the country.
+
+Unless the war ends with a victory so decisive for the Allies
+that an era of universal peace shall dawn for the world, each
+nation will constitute itself an armed camp fearing always that
+the German, with his lust for war and conquest, will again
+terrorise the world by a sudden assault.
+
+And a necessary sequence of this preparation for war will be the
+desire of each nation to be self-sufficient--to produce within
+itself those materials indispensable for the waging of war.
+Capital will be wasted because each nation will store up
+quantities of these materials necessary to war which it is
+compelled to import from other countries.
+
+For instance, Germany will always carry great stocks of grain and
+of fats, of copper and cotton and wool, all of the materials for
+the lack of which she suffered during the present war.
+
+In my first book, I touched on the change in the industrial
+system that will be brought about by the socialised buying and
+selling introduced first by Germany and which must be copied by
+the other nations if they desire to compete on equal terms with
+that country. In Germany for several years after the war at
+least, and perhaps as a permanent regulation, the purchase of all
+luxuries outside of Germany will be forbidden because of the
+desire to keep German gold and credits at home.
+
+Germans have even stated to me that they do not fear in a trade
+way any prejudice created against them in other countries by
+their actions during this war. They say that a man always will
+buy where he can buy the cheapest, and that however much a
+merchant may hate the Germans after the war, if he can buy the
+goods he wants for his use from Germany at a cheaper rate than
+anywhere else, he will forget his prejudices in the interest of
+his pocketbook.
+
+This is a question which each reader will have to solve for
+himself. Personally, I believe that in England, in France, and in
+America, too, if the war should last a long time, the prejudice
+against German trickery and brutality in war will become so great
+that many a merchant will prefer to lose a little money than deal
+with German sellers. However, the appeal of the pocketbook is
+always so earnest and so insistent that the Germans may be right
+in the view that financial considerations will weigh down the
+balance as against the prejudice engendered in this struggle. And
+if there comes a change of government in Germany, if the
+Hohenzollerns no longer control, or if in a liberalised Germany
+the ministers are responsible to a popular parliament, while
+kings sink to the political position of the kings of Great
+Britain or of Spain, then the commercial prejudice certainly will
+not last long. The boycott of Germany for fifty years suggested
+by the American Chamber of Commerce is a most powerful weapon.
+
+And why, if wars are to continue after this one, should we
+contribute to German trade profits and consequently to German
+preparations for another war? The nations of the Allies must
+reckon, too, with the bitter, bitter hate felt for them by the
+whole German people--and only one who has been in Germany since
+the war can realise its intensity.
+
+One great factor in forcing a change of government will be the
+desire of the individual German after the war to say that the
+government of his country existing then is not the government
+that ordered the shooting of Edith Cavell, the enslavement of the
+women and girls of northern France, the deportation of the
+Belgian workingmen, the horrors of the prison camps, the burning
+of Louvain and all the other countless barbarities and cruelties
+ordered by the German military commanders.
+
+Imagine after this war in some distant island, perhaps, a
+Frenchman, an Englishman, an American, a Portuguese, an Italian
+all seated at the dining table of a little hotel. A German comes
+in and seeks to join them. Will he be treated on an equality?
+Will he be taken into their society? Or will he be treated as a
+leper and a pariah?
+
+The Germans will wish to be in a position to say: "Why,
+gentlemen, I was against all these cruelties. I was against the
+sinking of the _Lusitania_, and the murder of its women and
+children. I was against the starving of Poland and the slaughter
+of the Armenians and the crucifixion of prisoners, and we Germans
+have thrown out the government that was responsible for these
+horrors."
+
+Stronger than any other consideration will be the desire of the
+German to repudiate these acts which have made the Germany of
+to-day a Cain among the nations,--an outcast branded with the
+mark of shame.
+
+The Russian author Bloch whom I have quoted, says, referring to
+the future war:
+
+     "Behind all conflicts of interest between nations
+     statesmen must balance the chances of success of
+     their nation, promised by the recourse to arms,
+     against the terrible miseries of the victims
+     caused by war as well as the social peril which
+     can be the consequence of war.
+
+     "They who ask themselves when it will be possible
+     to propose to the people of any nation after the
+     war a compensation for its enormous sacrifices,
+     forget that the conquered will be so exhausted
+     that there will be no question of being able to
+     draw from a conquered nation the least pecuniary
+     indemnity. All that can be imposed on the
+     conquered will be the abandonment of some rags of
+     frontier territory.
+
+     "In these conditions, up to what point can calm be
+     counted on to reign among the millions of men
+     called to the colours, when in their ranks there
+     is not more than a handful of old officers and
+     when the command will be in the hands of those
+     newly promoted from among the non-commissioned
+     officers? That is to say, men belonging to the
+     working classes. Will these workingmen surrender
+     their arms in the states of Central Europe where
+     the propaganda has spread already among the
+     masses?
+
+     "Will they allow themselves to be disarmed after
+     the war and could there not come events more
+     horrible than those which signalised the rapid
+     triumph of the Commune of Paris?"
+
+Just as to-day it is not isolated armies but whole peoples in
+arms that are opposed, so in the war of commerce after the war
+not single producers and exporters, corporations or individuals,
+but whole nations will meet in the markets of the world.
+
+Germany has favoured trusts--controlling prices and unfair
+competition--and we shall encounter in buying and in selling the
+whole German nation ranked behind their Central Buying Company in
+buying and their Kartels in selling.
+
+Isolated firms and individuals cannot on our side cope with such
+an offensive--but we are hampered in effectiveness by the
+so-called Sherman law--a law from which England is free.
+
+The war will produce great and sudden alterations and President
+Wilson in meeting new problems has pursued a progressive course;
+witness his support of the Webb law, which enables our manufacturers
+to combine in export trade.
+
+Every sign points to a new era in business--an era in which the
+Government will permit--even encourage--enlightened business
+combinations.
+
+The railroads of the country in the efficient hands of McAdoo
+have already bettered service, and the rights of the Savings
+Banks and of other holders of the securities of each road have
+been secured.
+
+We must, on the one hand, permit the abolition of ruinous
+competition and on the other safeguard the public from high
+prices, and the smaller firms and corporations from the unfair
+competition of a powerful rival.
+
+Great changes are coming in the social structure of the world. We
+are on the threshold of a great readjustment. Whatever else our
+entrance into the war may accomplish, let us hope that it will
+have made of us a nation with the throb of a single patriotism
+and the steady pulse of an energetic efficiency that shall not
+merely seek in honest rivalry to compete with other nations but
+in an enlightened and helpful way shall strive truly to heal a
+wounded civilisation in the God-given days of peace.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: EXACT SIZE REPRODUCTION OF A PAGE OF THE FAMOUS
+"DIE ZUKUNFT" PUBLISHED BY MAXIMILIAN HARDEN, THE ONE UNCENSORED
+EDITOR OF GERMANY]
+
+[Illustration: COVER OF PROGRAM OF SERVICE IN PROTESTANT
+CATHEDRAL, BERLIN, IN CELEBRATION OF THE FIVE-HUNDREDTH
+ANNIVERSARY OF THE LORDSHIP OF HOHENZOLLERNS IN
+BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA]
+
+
+
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+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Face to Face with Kaiserism, by James W.
+Gerard</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Face to Face with Kaiserism</p>
+<p>Author: James W. Gerard</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 3, 2007  [eBook #21991]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3 class="pg">E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Irma Spehar,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px; margin-top: 2em">
+<img src="images/front_cover.jpg" width="500" height="179" alt="front_cover" title="front_cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>FACE TO FACE<br />
+WITH KAISERISM</h1>
+
+<p class="by">BY</p>
+
+<p class="author">JAMES W. GERARD</p>
+
+<p class="authordesc">LATE AMBASSADOR TO THE GERMAN IMPERIAL COURT,<br />
+AUTHOR OF "MY FOUR YEARS IN GERMANY"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width:97px; margin-top: 4em">
+<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="97" height="90" alt="logo" title="logo" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="publisher">NEW YORK<br />
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="copyright">
+COPYRIGHT, 1918,<br />
+BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br />
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE PUBLIC LEDGER COMPANY<br />
+COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1918, BY THE PUBLIC LEDGER COMPANY<br />
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="line-height: 1.5em; padding-bottom: 4em">
+<small>TO</small><br />
+COLONEL EDWARD M. HOUSE<br />
+<small>STATESMAN AND FRIEND</small><br />
+THE AUTHOR<br />
+<small>DEDICATES THIS BOOK</small><br /></p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="illustrations">
+
+<tr><td><p class="figcenter"><a href="images/50pfennig.jpg"><img src="images/50pfennig_th.jpg"
+alt="Prison Camp Money" title="PAPER MONEY USED IN PRISON CAMPS" /></a></p>
+<span class="caption"> PAPER MONEY USED IN PRISON CAMPS</span></td>
+
+<td rowspan="3"><p class="figcenter"><a href="images/stamps.jpg"><img src="images/stamps_th.jpg"
+alt="Prison Camp Money" title="POSTAGE STAMPS ISSUED AT RUHLEBEN PRISON CAMP.
+USED BY PRISONERS WRITING TO EACH OTHER IN THE CAMP.Y" /></a></p>
+<span class="caption">POSTAGE STAMPS ISSUED AT RUHLEBEN PRISON CAMP.
+USED BY PRISONERS WRITING TO EACH OTHER IN THE CAMP.</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="figcenter"><a href="images/1pfennig.jpg"><img src="images/1pfennig_th.jpg"
+alt="Prison Camp Money" title="FACSIMILE OF A PRISON CAMP MONEY CERTIFICATE
+ISSUED AT THE PRISON CAMP OF NEUHAMMER" /></a></p>
+<span class="caption">FACSIMILE OF A PRISON CAMP MONEY CERTIFICATE
+ISSUED AT THE PRISON CAMP OF NEUHAMMER</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="figcenter"><a href="images/eine_mark.jpg"><img src="images/eine_mark_th.jpg"
+alt="Prison Camp Money" title="PAPER MONEY ISSUED AGAINST PROPERTY IN GERMANY.
+REALLY A &quot;GREENBACK&quot; OR ALMOST FIAT MONEY" /></a></p>
+<span class="caption">PAPER MONEY ISSUED AGAINST PROPERTY IN GERMANY.
+REALLY A &quot;GREENBACK&quot; OR ALMOST FIAT MONEY</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 420px; padding-top: 2em">
+<img src="images/wilhelm_card.jpg" width="420" height="283" alt="Kaiser's visiting card"
+title="FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION OF THE KAISER&#39;S VISITING CARD" />
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em">FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION OF THE KAISER&#39;S VISITING
+CARD</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px; padding-top: 2em">
+<img src="images/wilhelm_card2.jpg" width="450" height="232" alt="Kaiser's visiting card" title="THE VISITING CARD OF THE CROWN PRINCE, REPRODUCED
+IN FACSIMILE" />
+<p class="caption">THE VISITING CARD OF THE CROWN PRINCE, REPRODUCED
+IN FACSIMILE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a href="images/frontispiece.jpg"><img src="images/frontispiece_th.jpg"
+alt="The Kaiser and Von Treutler" title="THE KAISER AND VON TREUTLER TAKEN IN THE NORWEGIAN
+TOWN OF ODDE IN 1910" /></a><a name="frontispiece" id="frontispiece"></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">THE KAISER AND VON TREUTLER TAKEN IN THE NORWEGIAN
+TOWN OF ODDE IN 1910</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTORY_NOTE" id="INTRODUCTORY_NOTE"></a>INTRODUCTORY NOTE<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span>
+</h2>
+
+
+<p>In some measure this book is a continuation of <small>MY FOUR YEARS IN
+GERMANY</small>, the narrative here being carried up to the time of my
+return home, with some observations on the situation I have found
+in the United States.</p>
+<p>What I want especially to impress upon the people of the United
+States is that we are at war because Germany invaded the United
+States&mdash;an invasion insidiously conceived and vigorously
+prosecuted for years before hostilities began;&mdash;that this war is
+our war;&mdash;that the sanctity of American freedom and of the
+American home depend upon what we do <i>NOW</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">James W. Gerard.</span></p>
+
+<p class="signature"><span class="smcap">New York,<br />
+<span style="padding-left: 1em">April First, 1918.</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="pageno"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I</a></td><td class="chapter">Personality of the Kaiser and Something of the King Business</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II</a></td><td class="chapter">Who Does the Kaiser's Thinking and Who Decided on the Break
+with America?</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III</a></td><td class="chapter">Who Sank the "Lusitania"?</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV</a></td><td class="chapter">The Kaiser and "L&egrave;se-Majest&eacute;"</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V</a></td><td class="chapter">When the Kaiser Thought We Were Bluffing</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI</a></td><td class="chapter">The Inside of German Diplomacy</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII</a></td><td class="chapter">Germany's Plan to Attack America</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII</a></td><td class="chapter">Germany's Early Plots in Mexico</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX</a></td><td class="chapter">The Kultur of Kaiserdom&mdash;The German Soul</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X</a></td><td class="chapter">The Little Kaisers</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI</a></td><td class="chapter">Royalty's Recreation</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII</a></td><td class="chapter">The Eternal Feminine</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII</a></td><td class="chapter">Home Life and "Brutality" of the People</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_166">166</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV</a></td><td class="chapter">Aims of the Autocracy</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV</a></td><td class="chapter">Austria-Hungary&mdash;the Kaiser's Vassal State</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI</a></td><td class="chapter">German Influence on the Northern Neutrals</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII</a></td><td class="chapter">Switzerland&mdash;Another Kind of Neutral</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII</a></td><td class="chapter">A Glimpse of France</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX</a></td><td class="chapter">My Interview with the King of Spain</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX</a></td><td class="chapter">German Spies and Their Methods</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI</a></td><td class="chapter">En Route Home&mdash;Kaiserism in America</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII</a></td><td class="chapter">That Interview with the Kaiser</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII</a></td><td class="chapter">The Future Kaiser&mdash;The Crown Prince and His Brothers</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV</a></td><td class="chapter">When Germany Will Break Down</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_323">323</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV</a></td><td class="chapter">The Errors of Efficient Germany</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_340">340</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI</a></td><td class="chapter">President Wilson and Peace</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_346">346</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapterno"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII</a></td><td class="chapter">After the War, What?</td><td class="pageno"><a href="#Page_368">368</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td class="illus">&nbsp;</td><td class="pageno"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#frontispiece">The Kaiser and von Treutler</a></td><td class="pageno"><i>Frontispiece</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#iron_cross">The Iron Cross</a></td><td class="pageno">36</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#embassy_staff">The United States Embassy Staff, Berlin</a></td><td class="pageno">50</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#order">Facsimile of an Order Issued by Commander
+of German Prison Camp of Doeberitz</a></td><td class="pageno">78</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#pamphlet">Cover of Pamphlet by John L. Stoddard</a></td><td class="pageno">104</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#courtyard">Photograph Taken in Courtyard of Embassy,
+August, 1916</a></td><td class="pageno">126</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#medal">Example of a Commemorative Medal Offered
+for Sale</a></td><td class="pageno">152</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#holstein_home">Views of a Typical Holstein Country Home</a></td><td class="pageno">188</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#stairway">Main Stairway in the American Embassy, Berlin</a></td><td class="pageno">210</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#ambassadors">Ambassadors Sharp and Gerard, Paris, February,
+1917</a></td><td class="pageno">240</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#infanta">The &quot;Infanta Isabella&quot;</a></td><td class="pageno">274</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#banquet">Photograph Taken after Banquet Given Ambassador
+Gerard on January 6th, 1917</a></td><td class="pageno">304<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#prince">The Crown Prince and Crown Princess</a></td><td class="pageno">316</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#zeppelin">Reproduction of Zeppelin Post Card of Patriotic
+Sentiment</a></td><td class="pageno">336</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="illus"><a href="#postcard">Zeppelin Post Card Sold in Germany</a></td><td class="pageno">336</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="FACE_TO_FACE_WITH_KAISERISM" id="FACE_TO_FACE_WITH_KAISERISM"></a>FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h3>
+
+<h4>PERSONALITY OF THE KAISER AND SOMETHING OF THE KING BUSINESS</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>o</span> the American mind the Kaiser is the personification of
+Germany. He is the arch enemy upon whom the world places the
+responsibility for this most terrible of all wars. I have sat
+face to face with him in the palace at Berlin where, as the
+personal representative and envoy of the President of the United
+States, I had the honor of expressing the viewpoint of a great
+nation. I have seen him in the field as the commanding general of
+mighty forces, but I also have seen him in the neutral countries
+through which I passed on my return home and in my own beloved
+land&mdash;in the evidence of intrigue and plotting which this
+militaristic monarch has begotten and which is to-day "the
+Thing," as President Wilson calls it, which has brought the
+American people face to face with kaiserism in the greatest
+conflict of all history.</p>
+
+<p>What manner of man is he? What is his character? How much was he
+responsible for what has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> happened&mdash;how much his General Staff?
+What of the Crown Prince and what of the neutral peoples and
+their rulers whom Germany has intimidated and would fain
+subjugate if it suited her purpose? These are the questions I
+shall attempt to answer out of my experiences in Germany and my
+contacts with the rulers of other countries in my journeys to and
+from Berlin and Washington.</p>
+
+<p>To illustrate the craft of the Kaiser, I believe I can perform no
+better service to Americans than to reveal an incident which has
+not hitherto been published. It occurred at the New Year's
+reception of 1914 when the Ambassadors of all the foreign
+countries represented at the German court, were ranged in a large
+room at the Palace. They stood about six feet apart in the order
+of their residence in Berlin. The Kaiser and his aides entered
+the room, and the Emperor spoke a few minutes to each envoy. He
+tarried longest with the Turkish Ambassador and myself, thereby
+arousing the curiosity of the other diplomats who suspected that
+the Kaiser did more than merely exchange the greetings of the
+season. He did.</p>
+
+<p>What the German Emperor said to me interests every American
+because it shows his subtlety of purpose. <i>The Kaiser talked at
+length to me about what he called Japan's designs on the United
+States. He warned me that Mexico was full of Japanese spies and
+an army of Japanese colonels.</i> He also spoke about France, saying
+that he had made every effort to make up with France, that he had
+extended his hand to that country but that the French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> had
+refused to meet his overtures, that he was through and would not
+try again to heal the breach between France and Germany!</p>
+
+<p>All this was in 1914, six months before the outbreak of the
+European War. Little did I know then what the purpose was back of
+that conversation, but it is clear now that the Emperor wished to
+have the government of the United States persuaded through me
+that he was really trying to keep Europe at peace and that the
+responsibility for what was going to happen would be on France.
+The German is so skilful at intrigue that he seeks even in
+advance of an expected offensive to lay the foundation for
+self-justification.</p>
+
+<p>But the reference to Japan and alleged hostility against us on
+the part of fanciful hordes of Japanese in Mexico made me wonder
+at the time. There were many evidences subsequent to that New
+Year's Day reception of an attempt to alienate us from Japan. As
+a climax to it all, as a clarification of what the Emperor had in
+mind, came the famous Zimmermann note, the instructions to the
+German Minister in Mexico to align both Japan and Mexico against
+us when we entered the war against Germany!</p>
+
+<p>Plotting and intriguing for power and mastery! Such is the
+business of absolute rulers.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that had the old Austrian Kaiser lived a little while
+longer, the prolongation of his life would have been most
+disastrous both for Austria and Hungary. I believe after the
+death of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo and after a year of war the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+German Emperor and autocracy were brooding over a plan according
+to which, on the death of Francis Joseph, the successor should be
+allowed to rule only as King or Grand-Duke of Austria, the title
+of Emperor of Austria to disappear and German Princes to be
+placed upon the thrones of Hungary and of a new kingdom of
+Bohemia. These and the king or grand-duke of Austria were to be
+subject-monarchs under the German Kaiser, who was thus to revive
+an empire, if not greater, at least more powerful, than the
+empires of Charlemagne and of Charles the Fifth. Many public
+utterances of the German Kaiser show that trend of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Emperor William deliberately wrote and published, for instance,
+such a statement as this: "From childhood I have been influenced
+by five men, Alexander the Great, Julius C&aelig;sar, Theodoric II,
+Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a
+dream of world empire. They failed. I have dreamed a dream of
+German world empire and my mailed fist shall succeed."</p>
+
+<p>Could any declaration of a life's ambition be more explicit? It
+seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man
+loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged
+animal or ambition drives him always on&mdash;he is never content with
+any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million,
+when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and
+desire, presses on insatiably with the first million in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+pocket, more restless, more dissatisfied, than the hungry
+farmer's boy who first carries his ambitions to the great city.</p>
+
+<p>When these zealous, scheming men gain the power of kingship, they
+usually bring disaster to their country. Their subjects find no
+compensation in the personal ambitions which hurry a nation into
+the miseries of war. Better Charles II, dallying with his
+ringletted mistresses, than an Alexander the Great; better Henry
+the Fourth of France, the "ever-green gallant," than Frederick
+the Great, bathing his people in blood. "Happy nations have no
+history."</p>
+
+<p>William the Second, the present German Emperor, might well be
+called the Restless Emperor. He is never satisfied to remain more
+than a few days in any place or in any occupation. He commands
+his armies in person. He has won distinction as a writer and a
+public speaker. He is an excellent shot. He has composed music,
+written verses, superintended the production of a ballet, painted
+a picture; the beautiful Byzantine chapel in the Castle of Posen
+shows his genius for architecture; and, clothed in a clergyman's
+surplice, he has preached a sermon in Jerusalem. What ruler in
+all history has exhibited such extraordinary versatility?</p>
+
+<p>In my conversations with the Emperor I have been struck by his
+knowledge of other countries, lands which he had never visited.
+He was familiar not only with their manners, customs, industries
+and public men, but with their commercial problems.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> Through his
+conversation one can see the keen eye of the Hanseatic trader
+looking with eager envy on the trade of a rival merchant. The
+Emperor, incidentally, while instinctively commercial, has an
+inborn contempt, if not for the law, at least for lawyers. In
+October, 1915, for instance, he remarked to me, "This is a
+lawyers' war, Asquith and Lloyd George in England, Poincar&eacute; and
+Briand in France."</p>
+
+<p>In appearance and conversation Emperor William is very manly. His
+voice is strong, with a ring in it. He is a good rider. Following
+the German custom, he puts on his nightshirt every afternoon
+after lunch and sleeps for two hours&mdash;for the German is more
+devoted to the siesta than the Spaniard or Mexican. The hours of
+the Berlin Foreign Office, for example, were from eleven to one
+and from four to eight. After a heavy lunch at one o'clock all
+the officials took a nap for an hour or two. Also, the hours of
+the bank where I did business were from ten to one and from four
+till six. This meant that after six o'clock the clerks had to sit
+until perhaps eight making up the books for the day.</p>
+
+<p>In 1916, the Olympic games were to have taken place at Berlin,
+and in September, 1913, before sailing for Germany, I attended a
+luncheon at the New York Athletic Club, given by President Page,
+with the members of the German Commission who had come to America
+to study athletics and to see what could be done in Germany so
+that the Germans could make a good showing at the games in their
+own city.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After my arrival in Germany one of the members of this commission
+told me that it was impossible, he believed, to organise the
+Germans as athletes until German meal and business hours had been
+changed. He said that with us in America young men leaving
+business at four-thirty, five or five-thirty, had time in which
+to exercise before their evening meal, but that in Germany the
+young men ate so much at the midday meal that they required their
+siesta after it, and that they did not leave their offices until
+so late in the evening that exercise and practice were
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>On the Emperor's table his wine glasses or rather cups are of
+silver. Possibly this is because he has been forbidden by his
+physician to drink wine. The Germans maintain the old-fashioned
+custom of drinking healths at meals. Some one far down the table
+will lift his glass, look at you and smile. You are then expected
+to lift your glass and drink with him and then both bow and smile
+over the glasses. As the Emperor must reciprocate with every one
+present, his champagne and wine are put in silver cups in order
+that those drinking wine with him do not see that he consumes no
+appreciable quantity of alcoholic liquor on the occasion of each
+health drinking. Some people in America may have often wished for
+a similar device.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor is out of uniform only on rare occasions.
+Occasionally, when in a foreign country, he has appeared in
+civilian dress, as shown in the accompanying photograph, taken in
+1910 at the small town of Odde in Norway, where he had landed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+from his yacht. He appears to much better advantage in uniform
+than in civilian attire. Although uniformed while at sea as an
+Admiral, his favourite uniform is really that of the Hussars. In
+this picture he is accompanied by Baron von Treutler, Prussian
+Minister to Bavaria and Foreign Office representative with the
+Kaiser. Von Treutler is a German of the world. I met him at the
+Great General Headquarters, at the end of April, 1916, when the
+submarine question was being discussed. He came to dinner several
+times at the Chancellor's house, undoubtedly reporting back what
+was said to the Emperor, and I believe that his voice was against
+the resumption of ruthless submarine warfare and in favour of
+peace with America. Shortly after this period he fell into
+disfavour and went back to occupy his post of Minister in Munich.</p>
+
+<p>In conversation, the Emperor reminds one very much of Roosevelt,
+talking with the same energy, the same violence of gesture and of
+voice so characteristic of our great ex-President. When the
+Emperor talks all his attention is given to you and all his
+mental energy is concentrated on the conversation. In this
+violence of manner and voice he seems not at all German. The
+average German is neither exuberant nor soft-spoken.</p>
+
+<p>His favourite among his ancestors is William of Orange. Once he
+attended a fancy-dress ball in costume and make-up copied from
+the well-known picture of that Prince. The Emperor is strongly
+built and is about five feet nine inches tall. He sits well on
+his horse and walks, too, with head erect and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> shoulders thrown
+back&mdash;a picture of military precision.</p>
+
+<p>A friend of mine who was present at Kiel with his yacht, in 1910,
+tells me that when all the yachts and warships had been assembled
+along the long narrow waterway which constitutes that harbour,
+with the crews lined up on deck or manning the yards, with bands
+crashing and banners floating, the <i>Hohenzollern</i> slowly steamed
+into the harbour and passed lazily and majestically through the
+waiting ships. Alone on the upper bridge stood the Monarch,
+attired in full military uniform, with white coat and tight
+breeches, high top boots, shining silver breastplate and silver
+helmet, surmounted by an eagle, the dress of the Prussian Guard
+Regiment so dear to those who portray romantic and kingly r&ocirc;les
+upon the stage, a figure on whom all eyes were fixed, as splendid
+as that of Lohengrin, drawn by his fairy swan, coming to rescue
+the unjustly accused Princess. And, alas, the Germans like all
+this pomp and splendour. It appeals to something in the German
+heart and seems to create a feeling of affection and humility in
+the German breast.</p>
+
+<p>When I talked at length one day with President Wilson on my visit
+to America in October, 1916, he remarked, half to himself, in
+surprise at my tale of war, "Why does all this horror come on the
+world? What causes it?" "Mr. President," I answered, "it is the
+king business."</p>
+
+<p>I did not mean nominal kings as harmless as those of Spain and
+England. I was thinking of the powerful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> monarchs. A German
+republic would never have embarked on this war; a German Congress
+would have thought twice before sending their own sons to death
+in a deliberate effort to enslave other peoples. In a free
+Germany teachers, ministers and professors would not have taught
+the necessity of war. What German merchant in a free Germany
+would have thought that all the trade of the East, all the riches
+of Bagdad and Cairo and Mosul could compensate him for the death
+of his first-born or restore the blind eyes to the youngest son
+who now crouches, cowering, over the fire, awaiting death? For
+there was no trade necessity for this war. I know of no place in
+the world where German merchants were not free to trade. The
+disclosures of war have shown how German commerce had penetrated
+every land, to an extent unknown to the best informed. If the
+German merchants wanted this war in order to gain a German
+monopoly of the world's trade, then they are rightly suffering
+from the results of overweening covetousness.</p>
+
+<p>Experts in insanity say that the Roman Emperors as soon as they
+attained the rule of the world were made mad by the possession of
+that stupendous power. The sceptre of Emperor William is mighty.
+No more autocratic influence proceeds from any other monarch or
+ruler. But you will say how about our President in time of war?
+Great power can safely be given to a president. Our presidents
+have all risen from the ranks. Usually they have gone through the
+school of hard knocks. And there are ways of keeping them abreast
+of the people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is told that hidden from public view, crouched down in the
+chariot in which the successful Roman pro-consul or general drove
+triumphantly through the crowded streets of Rome, was a slave
+celebrated for his impertinence, whose duty it was to make the
+one honoured feel that, after all, he was nothing more than an
+ordinary mortal blessed with a certain amount of good luck.
+Probably as the chariot passed by the forum the slave would say,
+after a thunderous burst of applause from the populace: "Do not
+take that applause too seriously. That is the T. Quintus Cassius
+Association whose chief received a hundred sesterces from your
+brother-in-law yesterday, on account, with a promise of a hundred
+more in case the Association's cheers seemed loud and sincere."</p>
+
+<p>So in America the press, serious and comic, takes the place of
+the humble slave and throws enough cold water on the head of any
+temporarily successful American to reduce it to normal
+proportions. Besides, the President knows that some day he must
+return to the ranks, live again with his neighbours, seek out the
+threads of a lost law practice or eke out a livelihood on the
+Chautauqua circuit in the discomfort of tiny hotels, travelling
+in upper berths instead of private cars and eating on lunch
+stools in small stations instead of in the sumptuous surroundings
+of presidential luxury. These are sobering prospects.</p>
+
+<p>Kings, on the other hand, come to look on their subjects as toys.
+A post-card popular in Austria and Germany showed the old
+Emperor, Francis Joseph,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> seated at a table with a little
+great-grand-nephew on his knee, teaching the child to move toy
+soldiers about on the boards; and it is unfortunately true that
+the same youngster&mdash;should the system of the Central Empires be
+perpetuated&mdash;will be able to move his subjects across the map of
+Europe just as he did the toy soldiers on his great-grand-uncle's
+table. He will be able to tear men from their work and their
+homes, to seize great scientists, great chemists, great
+inventors&mdash;men who may be on the eve of discoveries or remedies
+destined to rid the human race of the scourge of cancer or the
+white plague&mdash;and send them to death in the marshes of Macedonia
+or the fastnesses of the Carpathians because some fellow-king or
+emperor has deceived or outwitted him.</p>
+
+<p>In a monarchy all subjects seem the personal property of the
+monarch and all expressions of power become personal. This
+extends throughout all countries ruled by royalty.</p>
+
+<p class="newsection">When, for example, a member of the royal family dies, even in
+another country, it must be lamented by the court circle of other
+lands. Here is the official notice sent to all diplomats and
+members of the Imperial German Court on the occasion of the death
+of the Queen of Sweden.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Court goes into mourning to-day for Her
+Majesty the Queen-Mother of Sweden for three weeks
+up to and including the 19th of January, 1914.</p>
+
+<p>"Ladies wear black silk dresses, for the first
+fourteen days, including January 12th, with black
+hair ornaments,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> black gloves, black fans and
+black jewelry; the last eight days with white hair
+ornaments, grey gloves, white fans and pearls.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen wear the whole time a black band on the
+left sleeve. Civilians wear with the embroidered
+coat, during the first fourteen days, including
+January 12th, on occasions of Grand Gala, black
+buckles and swords with black sheathes. During the
+last eight days bright buckles; on occasions of
+'Half Gala' gold or silver embroidered trousers of
+the color of the uniform and in the one as in the
+other case gold or silver embroidered hat with
+white plume; with the 'small' uniform, however,
+black trousers (or knee-breeches, black silk
+stockings, shoes with black bows and the
+'three-cornered' hat with black plume). During the
+first fourteen days gentlemen wear black woolen
+vests and black gloves, in the last eight days
+black silk vests and grey gloves.</p>
+
+<p>
+"Berlin, December 30, 1913.<br />
+<span style="float: right; padding-right: 8ex;">"The Ober-Ceremonienmeister.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap" style="float: right; padding-right: 6ex;">"Graf A. Eulenburg.</span><br /></p>
+
+<p class="newsection">"By command of His Majesty the Emperor, mourning
+will be suspended for New Year's Day and the 17th
+and 18th of January."</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">So, it is apparent what a close corporation all the royal
+families make and the peoples are simply viewed as the personal
+property of the ruling princes. In his telegram which the German
+Kaiser wrote to President Wilson on August tenth, observe that
+all is personal. The Kaiser says, "I telegraphed to His Majesty
+the King, <i>personally</i>, but that if, etc., I would employ <i>my</i>
+troops elsewhere.... His Majesty answered that he thought <i>my</i>
+offer...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> He speaks of the King of the Belgians "having refused
+<i>my</i> petition for a free passage." He refers to "<i>my</i> Ambassador
+in London."</p>
+
+<p>This telegram shows, on the other hand, another thing,&mdash;the great
+ability of the Kaiser. Undoubtedly he knew why I was coming to
+see him&mdash;to present the offer of mediation of President
+Wilson&mdash;but from our conversation I do not think that he had even
+in his mind prepared the answer, which sets forth his position in
+entering the war.</p>
+
+<p>He said, "Wait a moment, I shall write something for the
+President." Then taking the telegraph blanks lying on the table,
+he wrote rapidly and fluently. It was a message in a foreign
+language, and, whatever we may think of its content, at any rate
+it is clear, concise, consecutive and forceful.</p>
+
+<p>The personal touch runs through that extraordinary series of
+telegrams in the famous "Willy-Nicky" correspondence between
+Kaiser Wilhelm and the last of the Romanoffs, discovered in
+Petrograd by Herman Bernstein. These reveal, moreover, the
+surpassing craft of the German Kaiser. He was the master schemer.
+Touting for German trade, always for his advantage, he twists the
+poor half-wit of the Winter Palace like a piece of straw.</p>
+
+<p>Emperor William was not satisfied with a quiet life as patron of
+trade. As he studied the portraits of his ancestors, he felt that
+they gazed at him with reproachful eyes, demanded that he add, as
+did they, to the domains of the Hohenzollerns, that he return
+from war in triumph at the head of a victorious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> army with the
+keys of fallen cities borne before him in conquering march.</p>
+
+<p>One-tenth of Frederick the Great's people fell, but to the
+poverty-stricken peasant woman of Prussia, lamenting her husband
+and dead sons, did it matter that the rich province of Silesia
+had been added to the Prussian Crown? What was it to that broken
+mother whether the Silesian peasants acknowledged the Prussian
+King or the Austrian Empress? Despots both. And what countless
+serfs fell in the wars between the King and the Empress! I once
+asked von Jagow when this war would end. He answered, "An old
+history of the Seven Years' War concludes, 'The King and the
+Empress were tired of war, so they made peace.' That is how this
+war will end." Will it? Will it end in a draw, to be resumed when
+some king feels the war fever on him? No, this war must end
+despots, and with them all wars!</p>
+
+<p>It is all such a matter of personal whim. For instance before
+Bulgaria entered the war on the side of Germany, even the best
+informed Germans predicted that King Ferdinand would never join
+Germany because of an incident which occurred in the Royal Palace
+of Berlin. This is how it happened:</p>
+
+<p>It is the custom for one monarch to make his pals in the King
+business officers of his army or navy. Thus the German Emperor
+was General Field Marshal and Proprietor of the 34th "William the
+first, German Emperor and King of Prussia" Infantry, and of the
+7th "William the Second, German Emperor and King of Prussia"
+Hussars, in the Austro-Hungarian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> Army; Chief of the "King
+Frederick William III St. Petersburg Life Guards," the 85th
+"Viburg" Infantry and the 13th "Narva" Hussars, and the "Grodno"
+Hussars of the Guard, in the Russian Army; Field Marshal in
+British Army; Hon. Admiral of the British Fleet and
+Colonel-in-Chief 1st Dragoons; General in the Swedish Army and
+Flag Admiral of the Fleet; Hon. Admiral of the Norwegian and
+Danish Fleets; Admiral of the Russian Fleet; Hon. Captain-General
+in the Spanish Army and Hon. Colonel of the 11th "Naumancia"
+Spanish Dragoons; and Hon. Admiral of the Greek Fleet.</p>
+
+<p>The King of Bulgaria was Chief of the 4th Thuringia Infantry
+Regiment No. 72, in the Prussian Army. As per custom, on a visit
+to Berlin he donned his uniform of the Thuringian Infantry. He
+had put on a little weight, and military unmentionables, be it
+known, are notoriously tight. So as he leaned far out of the
+Palace window to admire the passing troops, he presented a mark
+so tempting that the Emperor, in jovial mood, was impelled to
+administer a resounding spank on the sacred seat of the Czar of
+all the Balkans. Instead of taking the slap in the same jovial
+spirit in which it was given the Czar Ferdinand, a little jealous
+of the self-assumed title of Czar, became furiously angry&mdash;so
+angry that even the old diplomats of the Metternich school
+believed for a time that he never would forgive the whack and
+even might refuse to join Germany. But Czar Ferdinand, believing
+in the military power of Germany, cast his already war-worn
+people in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> war against the Allies, much to the regret of many
+Bulgarian statesmen who, having been educated at Robert College,
+near Constantinople, a college founded and maintained by
+Americans, and having imbibed somewhat of the American spirit
+there, were not over-pleased to think of themselves arrayed
+against the United States of America.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no monarch in all Europe who is more wily than Czar
+Ferdinand. At a great feast in Bulgaria at which Emperor William
+was present, Czar Ferdinand toasted the Emperor in Latin and
+alluded to him as "<i>Miles Gloriosus</i>"&mdash;which all present took to
+mean "glorious soldier"; but the exact Latin meaning of
+"gloriosus" is "glorious" in its first meaning and "boastful" in
+its second, a meaning well known in Berlin where, at the "Little
+Theatre," in a series of plays of all ages, the "<i>Miles
+Gloriosus</i>" of Plautus had just been presented&mdash;a boastful,
+conceited soldier, the "<i>Miles Gloriosus</i>," the chief character
+of the comedy.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing illustrates more vividly the belief of the royal families
+of the Central Empires in their God-given right to rule the plain
+people than those few words of Maximilian written before his
+ill-fated expedition to Mexico. Speaking of the Palace at
+Caserta, near Naples, he wrote, "The monumental stairway is
+worthy of Majesty. What can be finer than to imagine the
+sovereign placed at its head, resplendent in the midst of these
+marble pillars,&mdash;to fancy this monarch, like a God, graciously
+permitting the approach of human beings. The crowd surges upward.
+The King vouchsafes a gracious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> glance, but from a very lofty
+elevation. All powerful, imperial, he makes one step towards them
+with a smile of infinite condescension. Could Charles V, could
+Maria Theresa appear thus at the head of this ascending stair,
+who would not bow their heads before that majestic, God-given
+power?"</p>
+
+<p>What was the condition of the people under Maria Theresa, whom
+Maximilian spoke of as possessing a power that, according to him,
+was so God-given no one could fail to bow the head before her
+majestic presence? The peasants, under her rule, were practically
+slaves, as they could not leave the lord's lands nor even marry
+without his permission, nor could they bring their children up to
+any profession other than that of labourer. In other words, the
+children of the slave must remain slaves.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Maximilian! He was a brother of the late Emperor Francis
+Joseph and a member of that Kaiserbund and royal system which,
+while America was busy with domestic difficulties between the
+North and South, sought to wrest from Mexico her liberty. I
+wonder if the Mexicans have forgotten the incident and its
+implications.</p>
+
+<p>But one-man power always fails in the end. No man, king or
+president, whatever he may himself think, has a brain all
+powerful and all knowing. There is wisdom in counsel. Too much of
+some favourite dish may lead to indigestion and that to bad
+judgment at a critical time and disaster. Napoleon III, just
+before 1870, was suffering from a wasting disease and so allowed
+himself to be ruled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> by the beautiful, narrow, fascinating,
+foolish Spanish Empress whom he gave to the French in a moment of
+passion because, as she said to him, "The way to her room lay
+through the church door." Colonel Stoffel, the French Military
+Attach&eacute; to the Berlin Embassy, wrote confidentially report after
+report to the Emperor telling him of the immense military
+strength of Prussia and of her readiness for immediate war. But
+most of these reports were afterwards found unopened in the desk
+of the doting, sick and fallen Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>For, after all, however divine the King, Emperor or Kaiser may
+consider himself, he is but a vulnerable human being&mdash;and no
+accident of birth should give even a small number of people on
+this earth into the hands of a single mortal.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>WHO DOES THE KAISER'S THINKING AND WHO DECIDED ON THE BREAK WITH
+AMERICA?</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">B</span>ecause</span> the German Emperor possesses talents of no mean order,
+because of his fiery energy, because of the charm of his
+conversation and personality, his ambitions for world conquest
+are most dangerous to the peace of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly of all the ruling houses of the world, the
+Hohenzollerns have shown themselves the most able, and of the six
+sons of the Kaiser there is not one who is unable or unworthy
+from the autocratic standpoint to carry on the traditions of the
+house. They are all young men who in any field of human endeavour
+are more than a match for men of their age, and by reason of
+these qualities, so rare in kings and princes, it has been easy
+to arouse a great feeling of devotion for the royal house of
+Prussia among all classes in Germany, with the possible exception
+of the Social Democrats. The other kings and princes of Germany
+have been overshadowed, mere puppets in the king business, by the
+surpassing talents of the Hohenzollerns, and so the task of those
+who, in Germany and out, hope for that evolution towards
+liberalism or even democracy which alone can make the nations of
+the world feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> safe in making peace with Germany, is beset with
+numerous difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>Before the war the Emperor turned much of his enterprising talent
+into peaceful channels, into the development of commercial and
+industrial Germany. No one has a greater respect for wealth and
+commercial success than the Emperor. He would have made a
+wonderful success as a man of business. He ought to be the
+richest person in the Empire, but the militaristic system which
+he fostered gave that distinction to another. For the richest
+person in Germany before the war was Frau Krupp-Bohlen, daughter
+of the late manufacturer of cannon. She inherited control of the
+factories and the greater part of the fortune of her father and
+was rated at about $75,000,000. It was a contest between Prince
+Henckel-Donnersmarck and the Emperor for second place, each being
+reputed to possess about sixty to sixty-five million dollars.
+Most of the Emperor's wealth is in landed estates, and of these
+he has, I believe, about sixty scattered through the Empire. The
+Emperor is credited with being a large stockholder in both the
+Krupp works and the Hamburg-American Line. What a sensation it
+would make in this country were the President to become a large
+stockholder in Bethlehem Steel or the Winchester Arms Company!</p>
+
+<p>The earnings of the Krupp's factory since the War have been
+immense and doubtless the fortune of the Krupp heiress since then
+has more than doubled. The subscriptions to war loans and war
+charities, thrown by Frau Krupp-Bohlen and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> Krupp directors
+as sops to public opinion, are mere nothings to the fat earnings
+made by that renowned factory in this war.</p>
+
+<p>And what a sensation, too, would be caused in America if the
+Bethlehem Steel Company or the United States Steel Corporation
+were to purchase newspapers or take over The Associated Press in
+order to control public opinion! Yet the German nation stands by,
+apathetic, propagandised to a standstill, stuffed and fed by news
+handed them by the Krupps and the alliance of six great
+industrial iron and steel companies of western Germany.</p>
+
+<p class="newsection">A question which interests every inhabitant of the world to-day
+is, where does the ultimate power reside in Germany?</p>
+
+<p>Where is the force which controls the country? The Reichstag, of
+course, has no real power; the twenty-five ruling princes of
+Germany, voting in the Bundesrat through their representatives,
+control the Reichstag, and the Chancellor is not responsible to
+either but only to the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>Consider, for a moment, the personality of von Bethmann-Hollweg,
+Chancellor of the Empire for eight or nine years. He lacked both
+determination and decision. Lovable, good, kind, respected, the
+Chancellor, to a surprising degree, was minus that quality which
+we call "punch." He never led, but followed. He sought always to
+find out first which side of the question seemed likely to
+win,&mdash;where the majority would stand. Usually he poised himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+on middle ground. He could not have been the ultimate power in
+the State.</p>
+
+<p>I have a feeling that the Kaiser himself always felt in some
+vague way that his luck lay with America, and I imagine that he
+himself was against anything that might lead to a break with this
+country. What, then, was the mysterious power which changed, for
+instance, the policy of the German Empire towards America and
+ordered unrestricted submarine war at the risk of bringing
+against the Empire a rich and powerful nation of over a hundred
+million population?</p>
+
+<p>The Foreign Office did not have this decision. Its members, made
+up of men who had travelled in other countries, who knew the
+latent power of America, did not advise this step&mdash;with the
+exception, however, of Zimmermann, who, carried away by his
+sudden elevation, and by the glamour of personal contact with the
+Emperor, the Princes and the military chiefs, yielded to the
+arguments of military expediency.</p>
+
+<p>The one force in Germany which ultimately decides every great
+question, except the fate of its own head, is the Great General
+Staff.</p>
+
+<p>On one side of the K&ouml;nigs-Platz, in Berlin, stands the great
+building of the Reichstag, floridly decorated, glittering with
+gold, surrounded by statues and filled, during the sessions of
+the Reichstag, with a crowd of representatives who do not
+represent and who, like monkeys in a cage, jibber and debate
+questions which they have no power to decide. Across the square
+and covering the entire block in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> a building that resembles in
+external appearance a jail, built of dark red brick without
+ornament or display, is the home of the Great General Staff. This
+institution has its own spies, its own secret service, its own
+newspaper censors. Here the picked officers of the German army,
+the inheritors of the power of von Moltke, work industriously.
+Apart from the people of Germany, they wield the supreme power of
+the State and when the Staff decides a matter of foreign policy
+or even an internal measure, that decision is final.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar relations of the Emperor to the Great General Staff
+make it possible for him to dismiss in disgrace a head of the
+Staff who has failed. But at all times the Kaiser is more or less
+controlled in his action by the Staff as a whole and at a time
+when the chief of the Great General Staff is successful, the
+latter, even on questions of foreign policy, claims the right
+then to make a decision which the Emperor may find it difficult
+to disregard. This is because in an autocratic government, as in
+any other, personality counts for much. Von Tirpitz controlled
+all departments of the navy, although only at the head of one.
+The Ludendorff-Hindenburg combination, especially if backed by
+Mackensen, can bend the will of the Emperor.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em"><a name="iron_cross" id="iron_cross"></a>
+<img src="images/illo041.jpg" width="350" height="343" alt="The iron cross" title="THE IRON CROSS. IN THE EXPECTATION OF A SHORT WAR
+THOUSANDS OF THESE CROSSES WERE DISTRIBUTED IN THE FIRST MONTHS
+OF THE WAR AND THE PRECEDENT THUS ESTABLISHED HAS LED TO THE
+GIVING OF PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THESE DECORATIONS" />
+<p class="caption">THE IRON CROSS. IN THE EXPECTATION OF A SHORT WAR
+THOUSANDS OF THESE CROSSES WERE DISTRIBUTED IN THE FIRST MONTHS
+OF THE WAR AND THE PRECEDENT THUS ESTABLISHED HAS LED TO THE
+GIVING OF PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THESE DECORATIONS</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet while the head of the Great General Staff may fall, the
+system always remains. An unknown, mysterious power it is,
+unchanging, and relentless, a power that watches over the German
+army with unseen eyes. It seeks always additions to its own ranks
+from those young officers who have distinguished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> themselves by
+their talents in the profession of arms. What does it mean to
+them?</p>
+
+<p>It is January twenty-seventh, the birthday of the Kaiser in a
+German garrison town. The officers of the regiment are assembled
+in the mess-hall, the regimental band plays the national air of
+Prussia, "Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz" (Hail, thou, in the
+conqueror's wreath). (The music is familiar to us because we sing
+it to the words of "America." The British sing the air to the
+words of "God Save the King." This music was originally written
+for Louis XIV.) The health of the Emperor is proposed and drunk
+with "Hurrahs" and again "Hurrahs," and then comes a telegram
+from Berlin announcing the promotions and decorations granted to
+some of the officers of the regiment: the most envied of all is
+that younger officer, perhaps the student among them, who
+receives the laconic despatch telling him that he is detailed to
+the Great General Staff!</p>
+
+<p>Then commences for the young officer a life of almost monastic
+devotion. No amusements, no social obligations or entertainments
+must interfere in the slightest with his earnest work in that
+plain building of mystery which so calmly, and with such mock
+modesty, faces the garish home of the Reichstag on the
+K&ouml;nigs-Platz, in Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>Who decided on the break with America? It was not the Chancellor,
+notoriously opposed; it was not the Foreign Office, nor the
+Reichstag, nor the Princes of Germany who decided to brave the
+consequences of a rupture with the United States on the submarine
+question. It was not the Emperor;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> but a personality of great
+power of persuasion. It was Ludendorff, Quartermaster General,
+chief aid and brains to Hindenburg, Chief of the Great General
+Staff, who decided upon this step.</p>
+
+<p>Unquestionably a party in the navy, undoubtedly von Tirpitz
+himself, backed by the navy and by many naval officers and the
+Naval League, advocated the policy and promised all Germany peace
+within three months after it was adopted; unquestionably public
+opinion made by the Krupps and the League of Six (the great iron
+and steel companies), desiring annexation of the coal and iron
+lands of France, demanded this as a quick road to peace. But it
+was the deciding vote of the Great General Staff that finally
+embarked the German nation on this dangerous course.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think the Emperor himself, unless backed by the whole
+public opinion of Germany, would dare to withstand the Great
+General Staff which he himself creates. They are so much his
+devotees that they would overrule him in what they consider his
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever thinking the Emperor does nowadays is more or less on
+his own account. There is to-day no shining favourite who has his
+ear to the exclusion of others. The last known favourite was
+Prince Max Egon von F&uuml;rstenberg, a man now about fifty-four years
+old, tall, handsome, possessed at one time of great wealth and a
+commanding position in Austria as well as Germany, with the
+privilege of citizenship in both countries. The Prince in his
+capacity as Grand Marshal accompanied the Emperor,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> walking in
+his train as the latter entered the White Hall at a great ball
+early in the winter of 1914. The Emperor was stopping at the
+Prince's palace in southern Germany at Donnaueschingen when the
+affair at Zabern and the cutting down of the lame shoemaker there
+shook the political and military foundations of the German
+Empire. Prince Max together with Prince Hohenlohe, Duke of Ugest,
+embarked, however, on a career of vast speculation in an
+association known as the Princes' Trust. They built, for
+instance, the great Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, and a hotel of the
+same name in Hamburg, and an enormous combined beer restaurant,
+theatre and moving picture hall on the Nollendorff Platz in
+Berlin. They organised banks, and the name of the princely house
+of F&uuml;rstenberg appeared as an advertisement for light beer. They
+even, through their interest in a department store on the east
+end of the Leipziger Strasse, sold pins and stockings and ribbons
+to the working classes of Berlin. As this top-heavy structure of
+foolish business enterprise tumbled, the favour of Prince Max at
+the Imperial Court fell with it. For the Emperor never brooks
+failure.</p>
+
+<p>During the present war Von Gontard, related by marriage, I
+believe, to brewer Busch in St. Louis; von Treutler, who
+represented the Foreign Office; von Falkenhayn, for a while head
+of the Great General Staff and Minister of War, and the Prince of
+Pless, and von Plessen with several minor adjutants, have
+constituted the principal figures in the surroundings of the
+Emperor. Falkenhayn fell because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> of his failure in the attack of
+Verdun, ordered by him or for which he was the responsible
+commander. Von Treutler probably told the truth; he was against
+the breaking of the submarine pledges to America; and Prince
+Pless, who remains still in favour, never took a decided stand on
+any of these questions. Prince Pless, as Prince Max was, is rich.
+His fortune before the war, represented mostly by great landed
+estates in Silesia, mines, etc., amounted approximately to thirty
+million dollars. His wife is an Englishwoman, once celebrated as
+one of the great beauties of London, daughter of Colonel and Mrs.
+Cornwallis-West, and sister of the Duchess of Westminster and
+Cornwallis-West, formerly married to Lady Randolph Churchill, and
+now the husband of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the well-known actress.
+And therefore the position of Princess Pless has not been
+enviable during this war.</p>
+
+<p>Emperor William does not, like many kings and dictators, confine
+himself in his search for general information regarding men and
+conditions to the reports of a few persons. He always has been
+accessible, seeking even to meet strangers, not merely his own
+people but foreigners, thus escaping the penalty of those rulers
+who shut themselves up and who have all their information and
+thoughts coloured for them by the preferences and desires of
+prejudiced counsellors.</p>
+
+<p>The chiefs of the army are always in close touch with the Kaiser,
+but he is consulted on army commands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> and promotions much less
+than on civil and even naval promotions.</p>
+
+<p>Always with him is the head of the Civil Cabinet, who advises
+with the Emperor on all appointments and promotions on the civil
+side of the Government, helping even to make and unmake
+Ambassadors and Chancellors. Admiral von Mueller, head of the
+Marine Cabinet, is constantly in the Emperor's company. He is a
+shrewd, capable, reasonable man; for a long time Admiral von
+Mueller was against taking the chance of war with America and
+perhaps, even to the end, persisted in this course. After the
+fall of von Tirpitz, von Mueller acquired more real power. But in
+a sense it is incorrect to speak of the forced retirement of von
+Tirpitz as a "fall," because from his retirement he was able to
+carry on such a campaign in favour of "ruthless" submarine war
+that the mass of the people, Reichstag deputies, the General
+Staff, and all came over to his point of view and von
+Bethmann-Hollweg, who had brought about his dismissal, was forced
+officially to adopt the policy first sponsored by this skilful
+old sea-dog and politician.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>WHO SANK THE "LUSITANIA"?</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">W</span>ho</span> is responsible for the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>, for the
+deliberate murder which has always remained deep in the
+consciousness of every American, and which at the outset turned
+this great nation against Germany?</p>
+
+<p>In the first place there was no mistake&mdash;no question of orders
+exceeded or disobeyed. Count von Bernstorff frankly, boldly,
+defiantly, and impudently advertised to the world, with the
+authority of the German Government, that the attempt to sink the
+<i>Lusitania</i> would be made. The Foreign Office, no doubt,
+acquainted him with the new policy. Von Tirpitz, then actual head
+of the Navy Department and virtual head of the whole navy, openly
+showed his approval of the act, and threw all his influence in
+favor of a continuation of ruthless tactics. But a question which
+involved a breach of international law, a possible break with a
+friendly power, could not be decided by even the Foreign Office
+and Navy together.</p>
+
+<p>The Great General Staff claims a hand in the decision of all
+questions of foreign policy which even remotely affect the
+conduct of the war. Similarly it was the duty of the Foreign
+Office to point out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> the possible consequences under the rules of
+international law; but when the question of submarine warfare was
+to be determined, the consultation was usually at the Great
+General Headquarters. At these meetings von Tirpitz or the navy
+presented their views and the Great General Staff sat with the
+Emperor in council, although it was reported in Charleville at
+the time of the settlement of May, 1916, that Falkenhayn,
+speaking in favour of submarine war, had been rebuked by the
+Emperor, and told to stick to military affairs.</p>
+
+<p>All the evidence points to the Emperor himself as the responsible
+head who at this time ordered or permitted this form of murder.
+The orders were given at a time when the Emperor dominated the
+General Staff, not in one of those periods, as outlined in a
+previous chapter when the General Staff, as at present, dominated
+the Emperor. When I saw the Kaiser in October, 1915, he said that
+he would not have sunk the <i>Lusitania</i>, that no gentleman would
+have killed so many women and children. Yet he never disapproved
+the order. Other boats were sunk thereafter in the same manner
+and only by chance was the loss of life smaller when the <i>Arabic</i>
+was torpedoed. It is argued that, had the Emperor considered
+beforehand how many non-combatants would be killed, he would not
+have given the order to sink that particular boat. But what a
+lame excuse! A man is responsible for the natural and logical
+results of his own acts. It may be too that Charles IX, when he
+ordered, perhaps reluctantly, the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
+did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> not know that so many would be killed, but there can be no
+Pilate-washing-of-the-hands,&mdash;Emperor William was responsible. He
+must bear the blame before the world.</p>
+
+<p>Blood-shed in honorable war is soon forgotten; but the cowardly
+stroke by which the Kaiser sought to terrorise America, by which
+he sent to a struggling death of agony in the sea, the peaceful
+men and women and children passengers of the <i>Lusitania</i>, may
+ever remain a cold boundary line between Germany and America
+unless the German people utter a condemnation of the tragedy that
+rings true and repentant.</p>
+
+<p>We want to live at peace with the world when this war is over, to
+be able to grasp once more the hands of those now our enemies,
+but how can any American clasp in friendship the hand of Germans
+who approve this and the many other outrages that have turned the
+conscience of the world against Germany?</p>
+
+<p>To Americans in Berlin, the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i> came like
+a lightning stroke. No Bernstorff warnings had prepared us. I
+believed I would be recalled immediately. In making preparations
+to leave, I sent a secretary to see the head of one of the
+largest banks in Germany, a personal friend, to ask him, in case
+we should leave, to take for safe-keeping into his bank our
+silver, pictures, etc. He said to my secretary, "Tell Judge
+Gerard that I will take care of his valuables for him, but tell
+him also, that if the <i>Mauretania</i> comes out to-morrow we shall
+sink her, too."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That was the attitude of a majority of the business men of
+Germany. German casualties at that time had been great so that
+the mere loss of human life did not appal as would have been the
+case in a country unused to the daily posting of long lists of
+dead and wounded. Consequently the one feeling of Germany was of
+rejoicing, believing indeed that victory was near, that the
+"damned Yankees" would be so scared that they would not dare
+travel on British ships, that the submarine war would be a great
+success, that France and England deprived of food, steel and
+supplies from America soon would be compelled to sue for peace,
+especially since the strategically clever, if unlawful, invasion
+of France by way of Belgium had driven the French from the best
+coal and iron districts of their country.</p>
+
+<p>I do recall that one Imperial Minister, a reasonable individual
+whose name I think it best not to mention, expressed in private
+his sorrow, not only for the deed itself, but for the mistaken
+policy which he saw, even then, would completely turn in the end
+the sympathies of America to the Entente Allies. And there were
+others,&mdash;among the intellectuals, and, especially, among the
+merchants of Hamburg and Frankfort who had travelled in the outer
+world both on pleasure and business, who realised what a profound
+effect the drowning of innocent men, women and children would
+have on our peace-loving people.</p>
+
+<p>Many of these men said to me, "The sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i> is
+the greatest German defeat of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> the war. Its consequences will
+be far-reaching; its impression, deep and lasting."</p>
+
+<p>The Teutonic Knights, from whom the ruling class of Prussia is
+descended, kept the Slavic population in subjection by a reign of
+physical terror. This class believes that to rule one must
+terrorise. The Kaiser himself referring to the widespread
+indignation caused by German outrages of the present war, has
+said: "The German sword will command respect."</p>
+
+<p>Terrorism&mdash;"Schrecklichkeit"&mdash;has always formed a part, not only
+of German military inclination, but of German military policy. I
+often said to Germans of the Government, "Are you yourselves
+subject to being terrorised? If another nation murdered or
+outraged your women, your children, would it cause you to cringe
+in submission or would you fight to the last? If you would fight
+yourselves, what is there in the history of America which makes
+you think that Americans will submit to mere frightfulness; in
+what particular do you think Americans are so different from
+Germans?" But they shrugged their shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>I have heard that in parts of Germany school children were given
+a holiday to celebrate the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>. I was busy
+with preparations, too anxious about the future to devote much
+time to the study of the psychology of the Germans in other parts
+of Germany at this moment, but with the exception of the one
+Cabinet Minister aforementioned, and expressions of regret from
+certain merchants and intellectuals, it cannot be denied that a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+great wave of exultation swept over Germany. It was felt that
+this was a master stroke, that victory was appreciably nearer and
+that no power on earth could withstand the brute force of the
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Mingled with this was a deep hate of all things American
+inculcated by the Berlin Government. And we must understand,
+therefore, that no trick and no evasion, no brutality will be
+untried by Germany in this war. It was against the rules of war
+to use poison gas, but first the newspapers of Germany were
+carefully filled with official statements saying the British and
+French had used this unfair means. Coincidentally with these
+reports the German army was trying by this dastardly innovation
+to break the British lines. It was not a new procedure. Months
+before the <i>Lusitania</i> crime, the newspapers and people had been
+poisoned with official statements inflaming the people against
+America, particularly for our commerce with the Entente in war
+supplies.</p>
+
+<p>It was the right, guaranteed by a treaty to which Germany was a
+signatory, of our private individuals to sell munitions and
+supplies, but as Prince von Buelow once remarked on December
+13th, 1900, in the Reichstag, "I feel no embarrassment in saying
+here, publicly, that for Germany, right can never be a
+determining consideration."</p>
+
+<p>Indeed the tame professors were let loose and many of them rushed
+into government-paid print to prove that, according to law, the
+murders of the <i>Lusitania</i> were justified. A German chemist
+friend of mine told me that the chemists of Germany<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> were called
+on, after poison gas had been met by British and French, to
+devise some new and deadly chemical. Flame throwers soon appeared
+together with more insidious gases. And it is only because of the
+vigilance of other nations that German spies have not succeeded
+in sowing the microbes of pestilence in countries arrayed against
+lawless Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Remember there is nothing that Kaiserism is not capable of trying
+in the hope of victory.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE KAISER AND "L&Egrave;SE-MAJEST&Eacute;"</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> talents and ability and agreeable personality of the German
+Emperor must not blind us to the fact that he is the centre of
+the system which has brought the world to a despair and misery
+such as it never has known since the dawn of history. We must
+remember that all his utterances disclose the soul of the
+conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a
+conspicuous place in the gallery of human events; envious, too,
+of the great names of the past, his ears so tuned for admiration
+and applause that they fail to hear the great, long drawn wail of
+agony that echoes around the world. His eyes are so blinded with
+the sheen of his own glory that they do not see the mutilated
+corpses, the crime, the pestilence, the hunger, the incalculable
+sorrow that sweeps the earth from the jungles of Africa to the
+frozen plains of the North, from Siberia to Saskatchewan, from
+Texas to Trieste, from Alaska to Afghanistan&mdash;everywhere he has
+brought the dark angel of mourning to millions upon millions of
+desolate homes.</p>
+
+<p>Do you remember that picture of the Conquerors, C&aelig;sar and
+Alexander, Attila and Napoleon, Charlemagne and Cambyses, astride
+their horses or in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> chariots in the centre of the picture, dark,
+gloomy, menacing? On each side of them, lining a vast plain that
+fades in the distance, lie the dead&mdash;stiff, cold, grey,
+reproachful;&mdash;yet all the victims of those conquerors, as well as
+all their battalions do not equal the countless number that have
+already drenched a forgiving earth with their dying blood in this
+war:&mdash;victims all of the vain-glorious ambition of a single
+mortal&mdash;the German Kaiser.</p>
+
+<p>But the despot who sends his subjects to die, as Frederick the
+Great said, "in order to be talked about" is not indigenous to
+any one particular country. Like conditions produce like results.
+The career of Louis XIV, the "Sun King," for instance, whose wars
+and extravagances sowed the seeds of the French Revolution, is
+epitomised in two phrases uttered by him: "I am the State" and "I
+almost had to wait."</p>
+
+<p>After the French Revolution, another despot, the first Napoleon,
+not only sought the conquest of the world, but made his ex-waiter
+and ex-groom marshals and his washerwomen duchesses ape the
+manners and customs of the old r&eacute;gime. Despotism has been
+characteristic of many generations but the world had thought
+itself rid of the worst offenders.</p>
+
+<p>Royalty still lives to torture and retard civilisation. Its
+methods of perpetuation are unchanged from the middle ages. What
+is l&egrave;se-majest&eacute; but a survival of feudalism, a kind of slavery to
+inviolable tradition&mdash;the immunity of the monarch and his family
+from that criticism and freedom of discussion which is the
+essence of democracy?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="embassy_staff" id="embassy_staff"></a><a href="images/illo056.jpg"><img src="images/illo056_th.jpg"
+alt="Berlin US embassy" title="THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY STAFF, BERLIN: MR.
+GERARD IN THE CENTER" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 26%; margin-right: 25%">THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY STAFF, BERLIN: MR.
+GERARD IN THE CENTER</p>
+
+<p>To commit l&egrave;se-majest&eacute;, to speak slightingly of royalty in
+Germany, is a very serious offence.</p>
+
+<p>I have taken the following examples of decisions in l&egrave;se-majest&eacute;
+cases not from the records of the lower courts, the decisions of
+which may be reversed, but from the records of the Imperial
+Supreme Court at Leipzig, the highest court in the land.</p>
+
+<p>For instance: The defendant, a speaker at a meeting consisting
+chiefly of sympathisers with the socialist cause, made the
+following statement in reference to a speech of the Kaiser:</p>
+
+<p>"Under the protection of the highest power of the State the
+gauntlet has been flung before the (socialist) Party, the
+gauntlet which means a combat for life and death. Well, then, so
+far as the insult concerns our Party, we are so far above it,
+that the mudslinging&mdash;no matter from what direction it may
+come&mdash;cannot touch us."</p>
+
+<p>The defence pointed out that the defendant "had considered each
+word carefully before he had made the speech, and that in doing
+so, wanted to avoid any possibility of l&egrave;se-majest&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>The Supreme Court held that although the defendant carefully
+selected his words and tried to evade prosecution, he must be
+adjudged guilty, because his audience could not have
+misunderstood the insinuation. The sentence was affirmed.</p>
+
+<p>Dangerous as it is to say anything that can be construed as
+derogatory of the authority, of the Kaiser it is equally
+dangerous to attack the dead members of the Royal House.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The editor of the <i>Volkswacht</i> had published in his paper an
+article entitled "The German Characteristics of the
+Hohenzollerns" which the Lower Court interpreted to be a reply to
+a statement of the Kaiser, which had referred to a group of
+people considered unworthy by him to be called "Germans." Without
+doubt the editor was alluding to the Kaiser's speech, made at
+Koenigsberg to the newly enlisted army recruits, in which he
+called the socialists "vaterlandslose Gesellen," i.e., scoundrels
+without any country. The writer, however, discussed "the conduct
+of the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg and of his brother
+Albrecht, Elector of Mainz, before and during the election of
+Emperor Charles V."</p>
+
+<p>The defence claimed that the defendant could not be held guilty
+of l&egrave;se-majest&eacute; against the Kaiser since the defendant
+"criticised the Kaiser's ancestors and not the Kaiser himself."
+But the Court held that it was the intent of the defendant to
+discredit the "House of the Hohenzollerns, and that the Kaiser by
+implication, being the living head of the Hohenzollern family,
+was thereby insulted." The Court further states that the
+defendant's article could not be regarded as a scientific or
+historical contribution since the <i>Volkswacht's</i> subscribers,
+consisting chiefly of workingmen, had neither any understanding
+of nor interest in dynastic intrigues of the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Even those Americans who have expressed themselves freely about
+the Kaiser will, after the war is over, be compelled to take
+their "cures" in some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> country other than Germany, for in one
+case it was held that an American citizen was rightfully
+convicted in Baden of l&egrave;se-majest&eacute; because of statements made by
+him in Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>The Court held that the judgment of the Lower Court must be
+sustained, since the German Imperial Laws have precedence over
+any treaties engaged in by the Grand Duchy of Baden and the
+United States and "that the fact that the defendant had become a
+citizen of the United States does not exempt him from prosecution
+in the German Imperial Courts."</p>
+
+<p>In another case a newspaper editor criticised a speech delivered
+by the Kaiser before the Reichstag on December 6th, 1898. The
+defendant did not refer to the person of the emperor himself, but
+simply attacked and ridiculed the propositions and proposals made
+by His Imperial Majesty. The defence pointed out that the
+Kaiser's speech was not an act of the Kaiser's own personal will,
+but only an act of government for which the Imperial Chancellor
+should be responsible, and that the defendant was not conscious
+of the fact that the criticism contained in his article could be
+an insult to the person of the Kaiser.</p>
+
+<p>It was held, however, by the Court that a criticism of the
+Kaiser's speech at the opening of the Reichstag is <i>always</i> to be
+regarded as a criticism of the Kaiser's person, and that the plea
+that the Imperial Chancellor should be responsible for acts of
+government of this sort is not sustained.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In other words it is, in Germany, a crime to criticise or
+ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred lips of the
+Kaiser.</p>
+
+<p>If the Kaiser announces that two and two make five, jail awaits
+the subject who dares to ridicule that novel arithmetical
+proposition.</p>
+
+<p>It is because of these convictions for l&egrave;se-majest&eacute; that the
+Berliners, when discussing the Emperor at their favourite table
+or "Stammtisch" in the beer halls and caf&eacute;s, always refer to him
+as "Lehmann."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>WHEN THE KAISER THOUGHT WE WERE BLUFFING</h4>
+
+
+<p class="section"><i>An Unpublished Diary</i></p>
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">K</span>aiserdom</span> is an institution with which the American people are
+really unacquainted&mdash;a complex institution the parallel of which
+does not exist elsewhere. How it sought to play double with the
+United States is in a general way familiar to Americans, but I
+think the record of what happened in the eighteen months
+preceding our break with Germany will illustrate exactly the
+currents and cross-currents of official opinion which led the
+United States to be scrupulously cautious in its course before
+entering the war. As I talked with the Emperor or the Chancellor
+or the Foreign Minister, I jotted down from time to time notes of
+their conversation as well as brief summaries of the information
+available to me from other sources. Naturally I cabled to the
+Department of State the most significant news, but much of this
+was not published because our Government was proceeding
+cautiously and did not wish to be embarrassed by publicity of its
+negotiations. There is every reason now, however, why the facts
+should be known. I am reproducing here the diary I kept from
+June,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> 1915, to the end of January, 1917, when unrestricted
+submarine warfare was resumed and our break with Germany came. I
+did not have the idea then of ever publishing my memoranda, so my
+comments were written without restraint. They show, I am sure,
+what the general trend of sentiment was in Germany for and
+against submarine warfare and disclose, too, that while the
+Emperor was often in the background and seemingly not the most
+powerful factor in the situation, it was his system that
+dominated Germany, his spirit that bred the lust for military
+gain at whatever cost&mdash;even the respect of the whole civilised
+world. Here are the notes as I penned them at the time:</p>
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>June, 1915.</i> Lincoln never passed through a crisis greater than
+that with which the President is contending. He is fighting,
+first, for humanity and some decency in war, and, second,
+determining whether a European Emperor shall or shall not dictate
+the political attitude of certain of our citizens.</p>
+
+<p>It is regrettable to be compelled to think that the German nation
+knows no treaty or law except the limit of its own desires.</p>
+
+<p>We are still awaiting the second <i>Lusitania</i> note and I fear that
+Germany will never consent to abandon its present hideous method
+of submarine war. It is extraordinary to hear Germans of all
+classes extoll mere brute force as the only rule of international
+life. It is a warning to us to create and increase our fleet and
+coast defences.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans not only do not fear war with us,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> but state frankly
+they do not believe we dare to declare it, call us cowardly
+bluffers and say our notes are worse than waste paper. Breaking
+diplomatic relations means nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Von Wiegand, the newspaper correspondent, is just back from
+Przemysl and says the Russians were defeated by woful lack of
+artillery and ammunition. Their power for offence is broken for
+many months. From the West I hear the French are rather
+discouraged.</p>
+
+<p>Germany has ample food and gets all copper, etc., necessary for
+war purposes through Sweden in exchange for potash and other
+commodities.</p>
+
+<p>An officer of the war ministry, who comes to see me about
+prisoners, etc., told me last night that because the French have
+kept several hundred Germans as prisoners in Dahomey and other
+places in Africa, fifteen thousand French prisoners will be sent
+to work in the unhealthy swamps of Holstein. I have cabled the
+State Department often about this Dahomey business, transmitting
+the request of Germany that these prisoners be sent to Europe.
+Germans cannot be beaten on reprisals.</p>
+
+<p class="newsection">Two or three German-Americans have attacked the President,
+Secretary Bryan and our Government, some publicly. I have ordered
+their passports taken away and hope to be sustained. To permit
+them to continue poisoning the atmosphere would be taken as a
+sign of weakness here. No one who abuses his own country, its
+government or its Chief is entitled to protection from that
+country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We have the visiting of British prisoners in good shape now, that
+prohibition put on our visiting and inspecting the camps was
+abolished in March by the "treaty" I arranged between England and
+Germany. It was not until March twenty-ninth that we finally got
+passes to visit camps under the "treaty." The prisoners say they
+are badly treated when they are first captured, but we know only
+of their treatment in the camps.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe all the atrocity stories; but one of our
+servants in this house came back from the East front recently and
+said the orders were to kill all Cossacks. Our washerwoman
+reports that her son was ordered to shoot a woman in Belgium and
+I myself have heard an officer calmly describe the shooting of a
+seven-year-old Belgian girl child, the excuse being that she had
+tried to fire at an officer.</p>
+
+<p>If the <i>Lusitania</i> business settles down, I hope the suggestion
+made to me by the authorities here and cabled to the State
+Department, will be carried into effect. This was that each
+American and Spanish Ambassador, having charge of prisoners in
+belligerent countries, should meet in Switzerland and discuss the
+whole prison situation. Each Ambassador would be accompanied by
+representatives of whatever authorities deal with prisoners (here
+the War Ministry) in the country to which he is accredited. To
+prevent unseemly discussions the actual talking would be done by
+the Ambassadors (coached by those representatives). In addition
+to doing away with many misunderstandings and helping the
+prisoners, there are great possibilities in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> such a meeting. We
+could all give each other useful "tips" on the caring for
+prisoners, inspections, camps, package delivery, mail, etc.</p>
+
+<p>There is plenty of food in Germany now and enough raw materials
+to carry on the war. Raw materials for peaceful industries are
+needed.</p>
+
+<p>A suggestion&mdash;why not start a great government chemical school or
+give protection for a certain number of years to dyestuffs,
+medicine, chemical, and cyanide material? All these industries
+are run here by the trustiest trusts that ever trusted, and by
+their methods keep American manufacturers from starting the
+business. A Congressman represents one of the best firms, hence
+his statements that it is impossible to start such manufactures
+in America. Our annual tribute to these trusts is enormous. One
+dyestuff company here employs over five hundred chemists. Only
+big or protected business can compete. This war has shown that we
+should not be dependent on other countries for so many
+manufactures.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Gifts from America within the last week have been refused in
+Saxony.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I fear that Germany will not give up its present method of
+submarine war. Each month new and more powerful submarines are
+added.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Perhaps it is worth a war to have it decided that the United
+States of America is not to be run from Berlin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Germans in authority feel that our "New Freedom" is against their
+ideas and ideals. They hate President Wilson because he embodies
+peace and learning rather than war.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">In regard to prisoners, Mr. Harte reports prisoners in Russia and
+Siberia better treated than was reported.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I hear for the first time of growing dissatisfaction among the
+plain people, especially at the great rise in food prices.
+Germany is getting everything she wants, however, through Sweden,
+including copper, lard, etc. Von Tirpitz and his Press Bureau
+were too much for the Chancellor; the latter is not a good
+fighter. Zimmermann, if left to himself, would, of course, have
+stopped this submarine murder.</p>
+
+<p>I hope the President never gives in on the embargo on arms; if he
+ever gives in on that, we might as well hoist the German Eagle on
+the Capitol.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>July, 1915.</i> I think that the firm tone of the President's note
+(of June 9, 1915) will make the Germans climb down. There seems a
+general disposition to be pleased with the note and an
+expectation that matters can be arranged. The great danger is
+that the Germans may again get the idea that we do not dare to
+declare war. In such case they will again become difficult to
+handle.</p>
+
+<p>Zimmermann and von Jagow are both quite pleased with the tone of
+the note.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They both talk now of keeping Belgium, the excuse being that the
+Belgians hate the Germans so that if Belgium again became
+independent it would be only an English outpost. Meyer Gerhard,
+Bernstorff's special envoy, has arrived and has broken into print
+over the sentiment in America. I am afraid he makes it too
+peaceful, and, therefore, the Germans will be encouraged to
+despise America.</p>
+
+<p>While the authorities here think the idea of freedom of the seas
+good, they think the idea of freedom of land too vague. They want
+to know exactly what it means and say the seas should be free
+because they belong to no one, but that land is the private
+property of various nations. They compare the situation to a city
+street, where every one is interested in keeping the streets free
+but would resent a proposal that private houses also should be
+made common meeting ground if not common property. Unfortunately
+for Germany and the world, the German armies are winning and this
+will be considered a complete vindication of the military and
+caste system and everything which now exists. As Cleveland said,
+we are confronted by a condition, not a theory. <i>Germany, unless
+beaten, will never directly or indirectly agree to any freedom of
+land or disarmament proposal.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Emperor probably will see me soon. He has been rabid on the
+export of arms from the United States to the Allies, but like all
+Germans, when they see we cannot be scared into a change of
+policy, he is making a nice recovery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="newsection">Was told by a friend at the Foreign Office that the German note
+would contain a proposition that regular passenger ships should
+not be torpedoed without notice, but must carry no cargo other
+than passengers' baggage. Have heard Marine Department rather
+opposes this, but may favor proposition as to ships inspected and
+certified to carry no arms or ammunition. No note until after
+July fourth, they say at Foreign Office, on tip from Washington.
+(Note&mdash;German note was delivered to me July 8, 1915.)</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Chancellor and von Jagow have been in Vienna, probably over
+Balkan question. The situation there hinges on Bulgaria. Germany
+wants a direct strip of territory for itself or Austria to
+Constantinople. Thirteen million pounds in gold sent recently by
+Germany to Turkey to keep the boys in line. Principal Socialist
+paper, the <i>Vorwaerts</i>, has been suppressed because it spoke of
+peace; reason given is that this kind of talk would encourage
+enemies of Germany.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Germans are becoming more strict, even women now entering
+Germany must strip to the skin and take down their back hair. The
+wife of Hearst's correspondent here had to submit to this the
+other day.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">At first, newspaper correspondents had to promise they would not
+go to enemy territory, next that they would not go to neutral
+territory (after one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> correspondent went to Denmark and sent out
+dispatches about the movement against annexing Belgium). Now the
+correspondents must promise not to go home. This is to keep
+secret the internal conditions. The women stormed a butter shop
+here the other day and our Consul reports, in Chemnitz, quite a
+serious food riot. The military were called out and the fire
+department turned hose on the crowd.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">In Austria, I hear men up to fifty-five are being called to the
+colours and even the infirm taken for the army. There are said to
+be seven German and five Austrian army corps invading Servia. The
+losses of the invaders are reported to be heavy. To date, the
+German dead in this war number about seven hundred thousand.
+People who offered private hospitals at the beginning of the war
+and who were told these were not needed, have been requested to
+open them. I was told the remaining civil population of Vouziers,
+France (in German hands), had been removed to make room for
+German wounded.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The note of July 21, 1915, in which the President said he would
+regard the sinking of ships without warning as "deliberately
+unfriendly," is received with hostility by press and Government.
+Of course, the party of frightfulness has conquered those of
+milder views, owing largely to the aggressive newspaper campaign
+conducted by von Tirpitz, Reventlow and Company. The Germans
+generally are, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> present, in rather a waiting attitude, perhaps
+anxious to see what our attitude toward England will be&mdash;but this
+will not affect their submarine policy. The Foreign Office now
+claims, I hear, that I am hostile to Germany, but that claim was
+to be expected. Of course, I had no more to do with the American
+note than they did, but it is impossible to convince them of
+that, so I shall not try.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Germany has the Balkan situation well in hand. Roumania can do
+nothing in the face of recent Russian defeats and has just
+consented to allow grain to be exported to Austria and Germany,
+but has, I think, not yet consented to allow the passage of
+ammunition to Turkey. The pressure, however, is great. If not
+successful, perhaps German troops will invade Servia so as to get
+a passage through to Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>A minister from one of the Balkan States told me the situation of
+Roumania, Greece and Bulgaria was about the same, each state can
+last in war only about three months, so all are trying to gauge
+three months before the end and then come in on the winning side.</p>
+
+<p>The Bulgarian Minister of the Public Debt got in here by mistake
+the other day, insisting he had an appointment; he <i>had</i> an
+appointment with the Treasurer, Helfferich, whose office is
+nearby. This shows, perhaps, that Bulgaria is getting money here.</p>
+
+<p>Also the Germans are sending back to Russia, Russians of
+revolutionary tendencies, who were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> prisoners here, with money
+and passports in order that they may stir up trouble at home.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans are making a great effort to take Warsaw, even old
+Landsturm men are in the fighting line; I think they will get it,
+and then they hope to turn two million men and strike a great
+blow in France&mdash;thus they expect to end the war by October.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I notice now a slight reaction from annexation toward giving up
+all or part of Belgium; but I must say I hear very little of
+popular dissatisfaction with the war. Everything seems to be
+going smoothly; but they are scraping the bottom of the box on
+getting men for the army.</p>
+
+<p class="newsection">It is not pleasant to be hated by so many millions. The Germans
+naturally make me the object of their concentrated hate. I
+received an anonymous letter in which the kindly writer rejoices
+that so many Americans were drowned in the Chicago disaster. This
+shows the state of mind.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Emperor is at the front, "Somewhere in Galicia." They keep
+him very much in the background, I think, with the idea of
+disabusing the popular mind of the idea that this is "his war."
+After all, accidents may happen, and even after a victorious war
+there may be a day of reckoning. The Chancellor went to the front
+yesterday, probably to see the Emperor about the American
+question.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>August, 1915.</i> I had a conversation last week of one hour and a
+half with the Chancellor. He sent for me because I had written
+him to take no more trouble about my seeing the Emperor. He
+explained, of course, first that he did not know I wanted to see
+the Emperor, and second that it was impossible to see the
+Emperor. They keep the Emperor well surrounded. <i>Now</i> I do not
+want to see him. He is hot against Americans and the matters I
+wanted to talk of are all settled&mdash;one way. I cabled an
+interesting report on the Emperor's conversation re America.</p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor is still wrong in his head; says it was necessary
+to invade Belgium, break all international laws, etc. I think,
+however, that he was personally against the fierce Dernburg
+propaganda in America. I judge that von Tirpitz, through his
+press bureau, has egged on the people so that this submarine war
+will continue. <i>An official confessed to me that they had tried
+to get England to interfere, together with them, in Mexico, and
+Germans "Gott strafe" the Monroe Doctrine in their daily prayers
+of hate.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Warsaw, as I predicted officially, long ago, will soon fall.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">No great news&mdash;we are simply waiting for the inevitable submarine
+"accident."</p>
+
+<p>Unless there is a change of sentiment in the Government I think
+the submarine commanders will be careful.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor talked rather freely but again said it was
+impossible to leave Belgium to become an outpost of the English,
+but possibly with Germans in possession of the forts, the
+railways and with commercial rights in Antwerp it might be
+arranged.</p>
+
+<p>There is a faction here led by deputy Bassermann, Stresemann,
+Fahrmann, etc., who are attacking the Chancellor. They represent
+great industrials who want to annex Belgium, Northern France,
+Poland and anything else that can be had, for their own ultimate
+advantage. A man named Hirsch is hired by the Krupp firm to
+"accelerate" this work. Krupps also pay the expenses of the
+"Oversea Service" which is feeding news to America.</p>
+
+<p>A paper against annexation of Belgium has been signed, I am told,
+by Dernburg, Prince Hatzfeld and others, and will be presented to
+the Chancellor to-day. I believe many are to sign it; but of
+those who have signed are Hatzfeld, who is one of the three big
+Dukes of Prussia; Prince Henckel-Donnersmarck, who is the second
+richest subject in Germany&mdash;(85 years old, he was in 1870 first
+Governor of Lorraine)&mdash;von Harrach, who is a man of great
+ability, highly respected, as is also Professor Delbr&uuml;ck.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Reichstag meets in a few days. The Socialists are holding
+daily caucuses, but have not yet decided on any party action.
+Undoubtedly they will vote for the new ten milliard loan, with
+Liebknecht<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> and a few others dissenting. Probably a split will
+also develop in the National Liberal Party; Bassermann and others
+have been attacking the Chancellor, but I think other members
+will dissent. It is quite probable that there will be a
+discussion about the <i>object</i> of the war, and permission will be
+asked for public discussion, the Socialists perhaps claiming that
+they have consented to a defensive war only, and that now that
+the war is on enemy territory peace should be at least discussed.
+There may also be talk about the annexation of Belgium and food
+prices. The Socialists are greatly incensed at those who are
+holding food for high prices.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Personally, I think that Germany now wants peace but does not
+want to say so openly.</p>
+
+<p>A relative of a Field Marshal told me to-day that Germany's
+killed to date were 600,000 and 200,000 crippled for life.</p>
+
+<p>I must say that the plain people still seem perfectly tame and
+ready to continue the war. However, there may also be a protest
+in the Reichstag about the treatment by non-commissioned officers
+of Landsturm men who have never served but who now, in the
+process of scraping the box, are called to the colors.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans hope by a great movement to capture a great part of
+the Russian army; probably they will fail. They also entertain
+hopes that in such case Sweden will enter Finland and two Balkan
+States declare for them. Balkan Ministers here tell me the defeat
+of Russia makes it impossible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> for Roumania to enter, but they
+fear an invasion by the Germans. All diplomatic work is now
+centred in the Balkans.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Successes in Russia have made the people here very cocky. Hence,
+probably, the torpedoing of the <i>Arabic</i>. Also great hope of
+Bulgaria coming in with Germany; there is no more dissatisfaction
+heard over the war. I have as yet received nothing from
+Washington regarding the <i>Arabic</i>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I have just spent four half days at Ruhleben, where civilian
+Britishers are interned, so as to give every prisoner a chance to
+speak to me personally.</p>
+
+<p class="newsection">There is much talk of creating an independent Poland. The
+Reichstag session has developed no opposition.</p>
+
+<p>A fac-simile of that infernal advertisement<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> of the Cleveland
+Automatic Tool Company in the <i>American Machinist</i> was laid on
+the desk of every member of the Reichstag; and the papers are
+full of accounts of great deliveries of war munitions by America,
+possibly preparing people for a break. If Bulgaria comes in,
+Germany will undoubtedly take a strip in Servia and keep a road
+to Constantinople and the East. The new Turkish Ambassador has
+just arrived. The old one was not friendly to Enver Bey and so
+was bounced; he remains here, however, as he fears if he went to
+Turkey he would get some "special" coffee. The hate for Americans
+grows daily.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> This was an advertisement in an American newspaper
+about machines for the manufacture of particularly deadly shells
+and was much used in Germany to show how America was helping the
+Entente.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p></div>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">All rumours are that in the recent council at Posen the
+Chancellor, advocating concessions in submarine war, won out over
+von Tirpitz. But von Tirpitz will die hard, and there will be
+trouble yet, as the Navy will be very angry if the present
+methods are abandoned. Members of the Reichstag have telegraphed
+backing up the Chancellor; but it is hard for any civilian idea
+to prevail against Army or Navy.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the Admiralty will say that the submarine which
+torpedoed the <i>Arabic</i> was lost, in order to avoid disgracing an
+officer.</p>
+
+<p>If the <i>Arabic</i> question is not complicated with the <i>Lusitania</i>
+a solution will be easier. The common people have been aroused by
+von Tirpitz's press bureau and it will be simpler for the
+Chancellor to "back track," taking as an example a case like the
+<i>Arabic</i> when the ship was going West and carried no ammunition.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The defeat of the Russians is undoubtedly crushing. Is England
+waking up too late? There will be a big offensive soon against
+the West lines.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I have heard nothing up to to-day from the State Department re
+the <i>Arabic</i>, except one cable asking me to request a report.</p>
+
+<p>A correspondent has just been in and says that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> the General Staff
+people threaten to expel him because he went to Copenhagen and
+sent out news about the petition to the Chancellor not to annex
+Belgium. The Foreign Office had no objection; this shows how the
+line is forming between the Chancellor and the Military. All
+correspondents to-day say the Germans are trying to dragoon them
+into sending only news which the General Staff wants sent, and
+the Military have added their censorship to that of the Foreign
+Office.</p>
+
+<p>An official told me that Bernstorff, while not exactly exceeding
+his instructions in his "<i>Arabic</i> Note" (of Sept. 1, 1915), had
+put the matter in a manner they did not approve.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Orders have now, apparently, been given to all German officials
+to say that the war will last a long time&mdash;at least a year and a
+half.</p>
+
+<p>It is expected that Persia will come in under German leadership
+and attack India.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Our Military Attach&eacute;, Colonel Kuhn, was finally presented to the
+Kaiser and had a pleasant chat with him. Colonel Kuhn says all
+fighting on the West is with artillery and hand grenades. Rifles
+are thrown aside.</p>
+
+<p>Germans have spies "piking off" our Embassies in Paris, London
+and Petrograd.</p>
+
+<p>Great airship attacks on London may be expected. In one of the
+recent attacks nine thousand eight hundred bombs (fire and
+explosive) were dropped. I get this from good authority.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Foreign Office quite elated over their Balkan triumph.
+Personally, I think it was one of the most effective bits of
+German "diplomacy" in the history of the Empire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE INSIDE OF GERMAN DIPLOMACY</h4>
+
+
+<p class="section"><i>The Diary Continued</i></p>
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap"><i>O</i></span><i>ctober</i></span>, <i>1915.</i> There is a tendency here to say Bernstorff went
+too far. But this is all for the public, von Jagow told a
+correspondent so to-day; but, of course, he did not know about
+the note of Austria to Servia either! The Marine people are
+positively raging. The paper which Reventlow writes for, the
+<i>Tages Zeitung</i>, was suppressed yesterday; I hear on account of
+an article on this <i>Arabic</i> settlement, but I am not yet sure.</p>
+
+<p>There is talk now of marching to Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>More and more men are being called to colours. But Germany seems
+to be able to take care of all fronts. The Emperor is now in the
+West. The Foreign Office leads the rejoicing over the Entente's
+invasion of Greece and the violation of its neutrality and says
+that talk about Belgium is now shown to be <i>cant</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Weather is rotten and we shall have a melancholy winter. Feel the
+war more&mdash;deaths and prices. Six hundred and eighty thousand
+killed to October first, and many crippled. Food way up, but they
+cannot starve Germany out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Suppression of the <i>Tages Zeitung</i> means that the Chancellor has
+at last exhibited some backbone and will fight von Tirpitz. The
+answer of Germany depends on the outcome of this fight. It is
+possible that von Falkenhayn and the army party may sustain the
+Chancellor as against von Tirpitz. It is quite likely that a sort
+of safe conduct will be offered in the note for ships especially
+engaged in passenger trade. Much stress will be laid on English
+orders to merchant ships to ram submarines.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Kaiser is at Pless, a castle of Prince of Pless, in Silesia,
+near Breslau, where he moved after the attempt of French fliers
+to bombard him at Charleville on the West Front. The Germans
+probably will have Lemberg in a few days. This may prevent
+Roumania coming in. There is talk here of an attempted revolution
+in Moscow. There is said to be jealousy of Hindenburg and on
+account of this, Mackensen was put forward to be the hero of the
+Galician Campaign. Captain Enochs, one of our observers in
+Austria, was forced out of Austria because of German pressure and
+our other military observers will follow soon.</p>
+
+<p>Many commercial magnates have arrived in town to argue with the
+government against war with America; but some are in favor of the
+continuance of bitter submarine war, notably one who sees his
+Bagdad railway menaced by possible English success in the
+Dardanelles.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>November, 1915.</i> A man who saw Tisza tells me the Serbs inquired
+if they could get peace and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> retain their territories. They were
+answered, "No."</p>
+
+<p>It is said that Italy has also felt out for peace, but was
+answered that she must deal with Austria alone&mdash;and Austria says
+that she will not include Italy in any general peace but will
+wallop her alone after general peace is made.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I am working hard to get British prisoners properly clothed.
+Winter is already here. Efforts to starve Germany will not
+succeed. We shall be on meat and butter cards, but that is only a
+precaution. The people still are well in hand. Constant rumours
+of peace keep them hopeful. Men over forty-five not yet called.
+They seem to have plenty of troops. The military are careless of
+the public opinion of neutrals; they say they are winning and do
+not need good opinion. I am really afraid of war against us after
+this war&mdash;if Germany wins. We had snow, ice, and cold weather at
+the end of October.</p>
+
+<p>There have been uneasy movements among the people in Leipzig, a
+great industrial centre, and the <i>Volkzeitung</i>, a Socialist paper
+there, has been put under permanent preventive censorship.</p>
+
+<p>All these movements start with the question of the price of food.</p>
+
+<p>The Prussian Junkers, however, are really benefited by the war.
+They get, even with a high "stop price," three times as much as
+formerly for their agricultural products and pay only a small
+sum, sixty pfennig daily, for the prisoners of war who now work
+their fields. They may, in addition, have to pay the keep of the
+prisoners, but that is very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> small. Camp commanders are allowed
+sixty-six pfennig per head per diem.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">There is much talk of peace. The shares of the Hamburg-American
+Line and the shares of the Hamburg-South American Line have risen
+enormously in price from fifty-six to one hundred and forty in
+one case. This may be caused by an advantageous sale of some
+shares of the Holland-American Line or by promise of a subsidy,
+or by hopes of peace.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">There is no question but that every man under forty-five that can
+drag a rifle has been drafted for the army, with the possible
+exception of men working in railways, munitions, etc.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday I noticed many women working on the roadbed of the
+railway.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The new Peruvian Minister is named von der Heyde; his father was
+a German.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek Minister still thinks Greece will stay out of the war.
+His father is one of the cabinet.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Germans are very glad to get rid of Brand Whitlock. For some
+time they have been looking for an excuse to expel him.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The dyestuff and other chemical manufacturers are getting quite
+scared about possible American competition. I hope the Democrats
+will give protection to these new industries and will also enact
+some "anti-dumping" legislation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="newsection">The German cities are adding to the general weight of debt by
+incurring large debts for war purposes, such as relief of
+soldiers' families, etc.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The former Turkish Ambassador, who is against the Young Turks, is
+living here. He is afraid to go back and also the Germans are
+keeping him in stock in case the Young Turks go out of power, and
+possibly to stir up trouble in Egypt, as his wife is a daughter
+of one of the Khedives.</p>
+
+<p>There are lots of suspicious looking Spaniards about, possibly
+cooking up an attack on Gibraltar.</p>
+
+<p>Any German peace talk includes payment of a large subsidy by
+England, Russia, and France; Italy to be left to Austria to
+finish.</p>
+
+<p>The export of gold has now been formally forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>There is no doubt whatever that the population in the conquered
+portion of Poland has been for a long time in need of food.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Our Military Attach&eacute;, Colonel Kuhn, just back from Servia, says
+the Germans have, literally, stacks of ammunition and had begun
+preparing last spring for the present attack, even little
+mountain wagons and new harness being all ready. Only about six
+German corps are there.</p>
+
+<p>The hate against Americans here is deep-seated and bitter. Hans
+Winterfeldt, a prominent German banker, with American
+citizenship, just came in to tell me that at the annual meeting
+to-day of the great Allegemeine Electricit&auml;ts Gesellschaft a
+fight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> was started against him because of his American
+citizenship, and he was not, therefore, re-elected a director. He
+thinks of resigning from all banks, etc., and returning to
+America.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>December, 1915.</i> Red Cross Doctor Schmidt just in from Servia
+says Belgrade was completely plundered.</p>
+
+<p>Having lots of difficulty getting the Germans to give the English
+prisoners clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Hate of Americans worse than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Germans are not resentful when I fight to get things for English
+prisoners; they only say they hope our Ambassadors are doing the
+same for Germans.</p>
+
+<p>Much disappointment at Dr. Snoddy's mission not yet being
+permitted to work in Russia.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Last Tuesday night I ran into quite a peace demonstration, called
+by placards the night of the Peace Interpretation in the
+Reichstag. Soon disbanded by the police with many arrests. One
+man told me that they were tired of a silly war and days without
+meat. There has been nothing in the papers about these
+demonstrations; of course, each arrest makes an anarchist for
+life.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to get butter. The women storm the butter shops and
+market.</p>
+
+<p>In a new building (where the Consulate is) they are taking off
+the <i>copper</i> roof.</p>
+
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="order" id="order"></a><a href="images/illo085.jpg"><img src="images/illo085_th.jpg"
+alt="Facsimile" title="FACSIMILE OF AN ORDER ISSUED BY COMMANDER OF
+GERMAN PRISON CAMP OF DOEBERITZ." /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%">FACSIMILE OF AN ORDER ISSUED BY COMMANDER OF
+GERMAN PRISON CAMP OF DOEBERITZ. MANY CAMP COMMANDERS, WITHOUT
+AUTHORITY, UNDERTOOK TO MAKE PRISONERS SUFFER FOR ALLEGED AND
+UNPROVED MISDEEDS OF THE BRITISH. I HAD GREAT TROUBLE IN WATCHING
+FOR ORDERS OF THIS CHARACTER AND SECURING THEIR ANNULMENT</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot" style="margin-bottom: 4em"><p class="center" style="font-weight: bold">ORDER.</p>
+
+<p>The unheard-of and rough treatment, which,
+according to reliable information, has been
+accorded to civilian prisoners, and particularly
+German women and children who remain in England,
+has caused the withdrawal of all privileges
+formerly granted to English Prisoners of War. On
+this account, permission for all kinds of
+amusements and games has been cancelled.</p>
+
+<p>The time for bathing has been limited to 10
+minutes.</p>
+
+<p>The English Prisoners of War, Mc Lachlan, was shot
+dead early on the 7th. August, whilst attempting
+to escape.</p>
+
+<p>The English Prisoner of War, Orton, has been
+summoned to a Military Trial owing to resistance
+agairest to Authority.</p>
+
+<p class="right" style="letter-spacing: 0.15ex; margin-right: 16%">Alberti</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="right" style="margin-right: 10%">Oberst und Kommandant<br />
+des Gefangenenlagers D&ouml;beritz.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Of a sudden&mdash;peace talk. The Chancellor is waiting to address the
+Reichstag, waiting to get the sentiment of the members who are
+all in Berlin,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> and then swim with it. Many members, who are not
+Socialists, favour peace, and the Chancellor will be forced to
+make some sort of a declaration on why they are fighting and for
+what.</p>
+
+<p>A Reichstag member told me the Reichstag will say and do things
+it did not dream of doing six months ago. There are many quiet
+meetings of members going on.</p>
+
+<p>Hindenburg is out with an interview saying it is not yet time for
+peace. This is a Government measure to stamp out peace talk among
+the Reichstag members.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Am having a hard fight to get the British prisoners properly
+clothed for the winter. Of course, the Germans have rather a
+difficult time with so many prisoners, but that is no excuse if
+men die of cold. The weather is and has been bitterly cold.</p>
+
+<p>Saw von Jagow lately, but only on business and commercial
+questions. Zimmermann lunched here to-day. Roeder, of the
+<i>World</i>, is here making a study of German industrial conditions.
+I introduced him to Gutmann, of the Dresdner Bank; Rathenau, head
+of the Allegemeine Electricit&auml;ts Gesellschaft; Dr. Solf, Colonial
+Minister, and others. I think his report will be very sound and
+worth reading.</p>
+
+<p>There is no question but that there is a deep-seated hatred of
+America here, <i>which must be reckoned with sooner or later</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I don't expect things to be easy, but I wish to goodness all
+Americans would stay at home.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Greek Minister still thinks Greece will remain neutral.</p>
+
+<p>Probably greatest need of Germany is lubricating oil for
+machines, etc. Germans claim to have a copper mine in Servia. I
+never heard of one there.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Dr. Ohnesorg, U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;N., and Osborne back from inspecting camps.
+They report bad conditions; they were not allowed (contrary to
+our "treaty") to talk out of hearing of camp officers to the
+prisoners in Lemburg Camp. These prisoners are 2,000 Irish, and
+the reason, of course, for the refusal of the usual permission is
+that the Germans, through the notorious Sir Roger Casement, have
+been trying to seduce the Irish, and do not want the soldier
+prisoners to tell us about it. I have learned, through other
+sources, that the Germans seduced about 30 Irish. I told von
+Jagow what I had learned and asked what the Germans had done with
+these victims&mdash;whether they were in the German army or not. He
+said, "No, most of them had been sent to Ireland to raise hell
+there." I suppose they were landed from submarines.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I think the German press has received orders to step softly on
+the von Papen-Boy-ed recall. The greatest danger now lies in
+Austria, and over the <i>Ancona</i> note. There is a large body of
+manufacturers, ship-owners, etc., here who at the last moment
+declare themselves against war with the U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A. and use their
+influence to that end, but in Austria no such interests exist to
+help toward peace. However, pressure from Germany may be brought
+to bear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I think Germany will not send successors to von Papen and Boy-ed
+even with safe conduct; whether they will ask the recall of our
+attach&eacute;s is another question not yet decided.</p>
+
+<p>An official tells me confidentially that Rintelen was sent to
+America to buy up the product of the Dupont Powder Company, and
+that if he did anything else he exceeded his instructions.</p>
+
+<p>Shop people in Berlin with whom I have talked are getting sick of
+the war.</p>
+
+<p>I hear rumours that Germany is trying, through its Minister in
+China, to come to an understanding with Japan and Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The banks are sending circulars to all safe-deposit box holders,
+trying to get them to give up their gold.</p>
+
+<p>An American clergyman has just told me the German church body has
+refused to receive an American Church deputation and has written
+a very bitter letter.</p>
+
+<p>An official has told me that no new Military Attach&eacute; will be sent
+to America. The naval people have not yet decided.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I am very glad to hear Colonel House is coming over. There are
+many things I want to tell the President but which I do not dare
+to commit to paper.</p>
+
+<p>A newspaperman supposed to be of the <i>New York</i> &mdash;&mdash; had an
+interview with Zimmermann the other day, and Zimmermann sent some
+messages by him to the President. I do not know what the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+messages are. We all suffer much from amateur diplomats.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Anthony Czarnecki, a very intelligent Chicagoan, an American of
+Polish descent, is here representing Victor Lawson and the
+<i>Chicago Daily News</i>. He informs me that the Spy Nest is
+contemplating an attack on the Administration because of the
+taking away of Archibald's and others' passports.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">My impression is that the Austrians, owing to pressure from here,
+will eventually give in on the <i>Ancona</i> business. I think the
+present a good time to force the settlement of the <i>Lusitania</i>
+question.</p>
+
+<div class="note">
+<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span> I do not suppose that any Ambassador ever
+suffered as much from amateur "super Ambassadors"
+as I did.</p>
+
+<p>The German Foreign Office, trying to be modern and
+up-to-date at times, paid more attention to the
+tales of pro-German American correspondents than
+they did to the utterances of President Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the Germans succeeded in taking many of
+those correspondents in their camp. In the Hotel
+&mdash;&mdash; in Berlin an agent of the German Government
+who possessed American citizenship was always
+ready to arrange trips to the front or to make an
+advance of money to an American correspondent who
+would promise to be "good."</p>
+
+<p>Some received cash, some were paid in interviews
+with prominent officials, some received both,
+before all was continually dangled the blue
+ribbon&mdash;the hope of an interview with the
+Kaiser&mdash;and some, thank God, were real Americans
+and refused all the offered temptations&mdash;news or
+money.</p>
+
+<p>An American gentleman who lived for a time at this
+hotel has given me a written statement which
+throws a light on the activities of certain of
+these gentry and which I may some day use. In this
+he states how one of these gentlemen claimed that
+the Imperial Chancellor always sent for him to
+consult him on his attitude towards America and
+that he had advised him to make a bold front and
+bluff. Hence, perhaps the note of January
+thirty-first which suddenly announced the ruthless
+submarine war.</p>
+
+<p>I have proof that one of this traitorous gang went
+about Berlin personating me. What scheme he was
+cooking up I do not know.</p>
+
+<p>Zimmermann was particularly weak in being advised
+by one of these shady individuals.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>I think the German Government will allow Ford or any of his
+angels to come here, but the Peace Ark seems pretty well wrecked.</p>
+
+<p>Provincial and small newspapers are much more bitter against
+America than the larger ones.</p>
+
+<p>Von Jagow told me the other day that he thought the feeling here
+against America was so bitter that, eventually, war would be
+inevitable.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Received following anonymous letter:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am enabled to-day to give your Excellency news
+of the utmost importance, Germany is at the end of
+its forces and the Imperial Government is inclined
+to make peace cost what may! One of the most
+prominent and influential members of the Reichstag
+has assured me, that the general conviction of the
+parliament is dominated by the absolute necessity,
+to pull back and to strive for peace as soon as
+possible. The financial aspect given by Dr.
+Helfferich is disastrous, the military situation,
+taken in the whole, unsatisfactory and the
+confidential information, given by Herr von Jagow
+in the committee with regard to the Egyptian
+expedition, discouraging if not hopeless. The
+Government and particularly Herr von Bethmann wish
+for peace, but believe themselves restrained by
+public opinion and by the fear of the
+Pan-Germanists. It's now the psychological moment
+for intervention by the United States and there
+can be no doubt, that it should and will be
+exercised in favour of humanity, culture and
+freedom, in favour of the prevalence of the
+Anglo-Saxon race and the future development of the
+new world against Prussian barbarity, Imperial
+despotism and Teutonic slavery!</p>
+
+<p>
+22. XII. 1915.<br />
+<span style="float: right; padding-right: 8ex;" class="smcap">Old Gentleman."</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>GERMANY'S PLAN TO ATTACK AMERICA</h4>
+
+
+<p class="section"><i>The Diary Continued</i></p>
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap"><i>J</i></span><i>anuary</i></span>, <i>1916.</i> Many of the intelligent rich are expressing the
+fear that after this war the Socialist high price system,
+governmental seizure of food, control of raw materials, etc.,
+will be continued and also that the owners of large landed
+estates will be compelled to subdivide them.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">We are getting vague and conflicting reports in the newspapers
+here about the sinking of the <i>Persia</i>. There seems to be no end
+to this business. Perhaps it is best to have the inevitable <i>come
+now</i>. The hate of America has grown to such an extent under
+careful Government stimulus that I am quite sure we will be the
+first attacked after the war. Therefore, if it is to come, it had
+better come now when we would start with a certain fleet in
+command of the seas, making it impossible for agitators,
+dynamiters, and spies to be sent to Mexico and South America and
+into the U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A. through Canada and Mexico. From the highest to
+the lowest I get intimations that at the first chance America
+will be attacked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is still a spirit of confidence in ultimate success, amply
+justified, it would seem, by the military situation.</p>
+
+<p>A lot of dyestuffs mysteriously left Germany recently in spite of
+the embargo, and got to Holland, billed to America, where it
+remains, awaiting a permit from the British. Perhaps the Germans
+are getting worried about the possible building-up of the
+industry at home. The profits of the German dyestuff "trust" are
+certainly great enough to tempt the trust to do anything to keep
+the monopoly. Hardly a company pays less than 24 per cent.
+dividends.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Kaiser is still laid up with a boil on his neck.</p>
+
+<p>I am waiting the arrival of Colonel House, who, I suppose, will
+be here in ten days or so.</p>
+
+<p>S.&nbsp;S. McClure of the good ship <i>Nutty</i> (Proprietor Ford), Herman
+Bernstein and Inez Milholland Boissevain, likewise of the crew,
+have been here. Their stories are most amusing. Apparently, now,
+the nuttiest have voted to remain a permanent committee at The
+Hague; salary (five thousand suggested) to each to be paid by
+Ford&mdash;with washing and expenses.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Reichstag, sitting in "Budget Commission," is getting quite
+worked up over the censorship and the Socialists are demanding
+the freedom of the press.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday one member said he thought it would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> do the U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A.
+good if they knew what the Germans really thought of Americans.</p>
+
+<p>The spy system here is very complete and even the President and
+Cabinet at home in America are surrounded. Heydebrand, leader of
+the Conservative Party, called the uncrowned King of Prussia,
+said yesterday in the Prussian Chamber that "America was among
+the worst enemies of Germany." I am convinced that Germany, as
+now advised, either will attack America or land in South America,
+if successful in this war. Falkenhayn, Chief of the General
+Staff, said, referring to America, "It is hard to stop a
+victorious army."</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I have just returned from three days in Munich. I visited two
+prison camps and the American Red Cross Hospital in Munich and
+conferred with Archdeacon Nies (of the American Episcopal
+Church), who is permitted to visit Bavarian prison camps, talk to
+prisoners, and hold services in English. These Bavarian camps are
+under Bavarian, not Prussian, rule.</p>
+
+<p>Munich seems lively and contented. I saw great quantities of
+soldiers there and at Ingolstadt.</p>
+
+<p>I expect Colonel House about the 26th, and shall be very glad to
+see him.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Morgenthau was here for a day. I took him to see von Jagow, where
+we talked for an hour. Later, through some Germans, he met
+Zimmermann, who asked him if he did not think the
+German-Americans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> in America would rise in rebellion if trouble
+came between Germany and America.</p>
+
+<p>Von Jagow was very explicit in saying that Germany had made no
+agreement with us about submarine commanders. He said distinctly
+that Germany reserved the right to change these orders at any
+time. On the general question, he again said that the submarine
+was a new weapon and that the rules of international law must be
+changed, apparently claiming the right for Germany to change
+these rules at will and without the consent of any other power
+involved.</p>
+
+<p>Morgenthau sailed Sunday, the sixth, from Copenhagen. The
+newspapers to-day and last night print articles to the effect
+that the negotiations are taking a more favourable course.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>February, 1916.</i> I dined last night at von Jagow's. He said I
+would get a note to-day which would accept all Bernstorff's
+propositions except, as he put it, one word, viz.: Germany will
+acknowledge liability for the loss of American lives by the
+sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>, but will not acknowledge that the act
+of sinking was illegal. He said that international law had to be
+changed, that the submarine was a new weapon, and that, anyway,
+if a break came with America, that they had a lot of new
+submarines here and would make an effective submarine blockade of
+England. To-day a cipher from the German Foreign Office came in
+to be forwarded to the State Department for Bernstorff, so I
+suppose this is what he referred to. Probably the Germans are in
+earnest on this proposition. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> is now squarely up to the
+American people to decide.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I am very much disturbed at the turn of affairs, but I
+am doing nothing except repeating to Lansing what is said to me,
+and trying to convince the Germans that we are in earnest.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I was very glad to see Colonel House in Berlin, for many reasons,
+and, especially, that the President may get his view of the
+situation here. He had long talks with the Chancellor, von Jagow,
+and Zimmermann, and also met Dr. Solf, the Colonial Minister; von
+Gwinner, head of the Deutsche Bank; Gutmann, of the Dresdner
+Bank; and Dr. Rathenau, head of the Allegemeine Electricit&auml;ts
+Gesellschaft and many corporations, who is now engaged with the
+General Staff in providing raw materials for Germany.</p>
+
+<p>I think the Germans are getting short of copper and nickel,
+especially the latter. Copper lightning rods of churches have
+been taken and an effort was made to take the brass reading desk
+in the American Church and the fittings in the Japanese Embassy.</p>
+
+<p>I think from underground rumours that the Germans and the
+propagandists will endeavour to embroil us with Japan.</p>
+
+<p>Baroness von Schroeder, a von Tirpitz spy, stated the other day
+that Japan would send a note to the United States of America
+making demands on the U.&nbsp;S. in regard to the Japanese immigration
+question.</p>
+
+<p>There was a well-defined report that Germany<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> would issue a
+manifesto stating that enemy merchant ships would be fired on
+without notice and this because of orders alleged to have been
+found on British ships ordering merchant ships to fire on
+submarines at sight.</p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor told me he was ready for peace but that all his
+emissaries had met with a cold reception in the Allied countries
+of France, England and Russia.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">A fight against the Chancellor has been started in the home of
+the Junkers&mdash;the Prussian Chamber. The powerful liberal papers
+are jumping hard on the disturbers and the Chancellor hit back
+quite hard. These Junkers are demanding unlimited submarine war
+and are stirred up by von Tirpitz. It is one of their last kicks
+as soon a real suffrage will have to be introduced in Prussia.
+The Chancellor foreshadowed this in opening this Prussian
+Chamber; hence the tears!</p>
+
+<p>The visit of Colonel House here was undoubtedly, from this end, a
+success; and I am glad that he can give the President a fresh and
+impartial view.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">March first we go on a milk and butter card regime. I have put
+the Polish question (food) up to Zimmermann, and asked informally
+whether proper guarantees against the direct or indirect taking
+of food and money from Poland will be stopped, if relief is sent;
+no answer yet.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">In spite of what I was told by certain exalted personages last
+autumn, I think that if the war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> continues much longer the
+President will be welcomed as a mediator. In fact, there are a
+number of cartoons and articles appearing in the newspapers
+which, in tone, are against the President because he does not
+insist on peace.</p>
+
+<p>I think that we may soon look for a very strong German attack on
+the West Front, an endeavour to break through before the time
+when the French and English are contemplating their offensive,
+which is probably some time in March.</p>
+
+<p>At or about the same time there will probably be great Zeppelin
+attacks on London and on other English centres. It is reported
+that in their next offensive the Germans will use a more deadly
+form of poison gas.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I had the grippe, went to Partenkirchen for a few days, but the
+first night in country air since July, 1914, was too much for me
+and filled me with such energy that I tried skiing, fell down and
+broke my collar-bone, came to Berlin and can sit at my desk, but
+am very uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>I think Germany was about to offer to sink no merchant ships
+without notice and putting crews, etc., in safety, if England
+would disarm merchant ships, but now, since the President's
+letter to Stone, both the Chancellor and von Jagow say they are
+convinced that America has a secret understanding with England
+and that nothing can be arranged.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Persius points out in to-day's <i>Tageblatt</i> that it is not
+submarines alone that are now, without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> notice, going to sink
+armed merchant ships, but cruisers, etc., will take a hand.</p>
+
+<p>It is reported that the Kaiser went to Wilhelmshafen to warn
+submarine commanders to be careful and that submarines will hunt
+in pairs, one standing ready to torpedo while the other warns.
+The German losses at Verdun are small as artillery fire
+annihilated enemy first. I think an attack will be made now in
+another part of the front.</p>
+
+<p>Germany has forbidden the <i>import</i> of many articles of luxury;
+this is to keep exchange more normal and keep gold in the
+country. This probably will continue after the war.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Some newspaper men just in from Verdun report the Germans saving
+men&mdash;losses small&mdash;going at it with artillery, probably over
+1,000 guns, and making a slow and almost irresistible push. Some
+military attach&eacute;s think there may be a strong attack somewhere
+else on the front.</p>
+
+<p>This Verdun attack was undoubtedly made to keep Roumania out.</p>
+
+<p>I think the food question here is getting very serious, but
+before they are starved out they will starve six million
+Belgians, eleven million Russians and Poles and two million
+prisoners; so that, after all, this starvation business is not
+practical.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">There was a Grand Council of War last week at Charleville to
+determine whether von Tirpitz's proposition, to start an
+unlimited submarine blockade of England, should be started or
+not&mdash;i.e., sink all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> ships, enemy and neutral, at sight.
+Falkenhayn was for this, the Chancellor against, and von Tirpitz
+lost. The decision, of course, was made by the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>Great advertising efforts are being made on the question of the
+Fourth War Loan. It will, of course, be announced as successful.</p>
+
+<p>There are undoubtedly two submarine parties in Germany and there
+may be an unlimited blockade of England.</p>
+
+<p>I think Germany, as at present advised, is willing, if merchant
+ships are disarmed, to agree to sink no boats whatever without
+warning and without putting passengers and crew in safety. The
+Admiralty approves of this.</p>
+
+<p>One of the American correspondents publishes an article in the
+<i>Lokal Anzeiger</i> on America, in which he makes some statements no
+loyal American should make just now.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The "illness" of von Tirpitz is announced. I think it means his
+resignation, and have just cabled, although it is possible that
+his resignation may never be publicly announced. For one thing,
+the Kaiser and army people began to think it was a bad innovation
+to have any officer or official appealing to cheap newspapers and
+the "man in the street" in a conflict with superior authority.</p>
+
+<p>I heard that at Charleville conference both the Chancellor and
+von Jagow said they would resign if von Tirpitz's policy of
+unlimited submarine war on England was adopted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="newsection">The food question is becoming really acute&mdash;the village people
+are about starving in some sections and are not as well off as
+the people in the big towns; it is the policy to keep the people
+in the cities as content as possible in order to prevent riots,
+demonstrations, etc.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Some Germans have asked me if the sending of a German "Colonel
+House" to America would be agreeable to the President. Probably
+the Envoy would be Solf, and he could talk informally to the
+President and prominent people. If sent he would require a safe
+conduct from England and France.</p>
+
+<p>I hear the submarines now are mostly engaged in mine laying, at
+the mouth of the Thames.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Events are beginning to march. At first von Tirpitz's "illness"
+was announced, then came his resignation. Yesterday was his
+birthday and a demonstration was expected; there were many police
+out, but I could see no demonstrators. The row may come in the
+Reichstag.</p>
+
+<p>There are two sources of danger; first, a failure at Verdun and
+the new food regulations may make people ready to accept
+Tirpitz's guarantee that if he is allowed his way the war can be
+won and ended. He has a large following already who favour this
+plan; second, there are some Reichstag members and others who
+think the Tirpitz people can never be reconciled unless there is
+a new Chancellor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor sent for me Friday. I think the Chancellor wants
+to keep peace with America and also wishes to make a general
+peace. He talked, or rather I talked, a little about terms. He
+still wants to hang on to Belgium, but I think will give most of
+it up; but is fixed for an indemnity from France. The loss of
+life here is affecting every one, the Chancellor is a very good
+man, and I think honestly desires an honourable peace.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Potatoes are restricted from to-day, 10 pounds per head in 12
+days, not much, bacon and lard practically not to be had, butter
+only in small quantities and meat out of reach of the poor.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I told the Chancellor I thought a great source of danger to the
+good relations of Germany and U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A. was in Mexico, that if we
+had trouble there, had to raise a large army and rouse the
+military spirit at home, the President might find it hard to hold
+the people. This struck him as a new view, as most Germans think
+that Mexican troubles are to their advantage, and I am sure
+Villa's attacks are "made in Germany."</p>
+
+<p>I shall not come home; both the Chancellor and von Jagow have
+begged me not to go.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I sent a cable about the possible stirring up of our coloured
+people by propagandists. I notice that there are great fires in
+many cities of the South.</p>
+
+<p>It is reported that Prussian State Railways were given the banks
+as additional security for the last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> loan, but I do not see how
+this could be, as the railways are Prussian and the Loan
+Imperial.</p>
+
+<p>Several South American diplomats here think that in case of war
+between U.&nbsp;S. and Germany public opinion in their countries will
+demand the seizure of the German ships and possible war.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>April, 1916.</i> I am just off to the Reichstag where the
+Chancellor is to speak. I have no news here and none from
+America, but it seems to me five boats sunk almost at once will
+rather strain things at home. Here they do not want war with
+America. Perhaps von Tirpitz before leaving gave these submarine
+commanders these orders to sink at sight.</p>
+
+<p>I think the Germans will eventually encircle and take Verdun,
+mostly now for moral effect.</p>
+
+<p>Von Jagow will shortly give Conger (<i>Associated Press</i>) an
+interview disclaiming any intention on Germany's part of
+attacking America after the war. "A guilty conscience, etc.," and
+"Qui s'excuse, s'accuse."</p>
+
+<p>Every night fifty million Germans cry themselves to sleep because
+all Mexico has not risen against us.</p>
+
+<p>Part of Germany goes soon on meat ration. The food question is
+becoming acute, but they will last through here.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I think that the Germans would now, in spite of previous
+statements by a high authority, welcome the intervention of the
+President looking toward peace. Colonel House is so relied on
+here that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> would be doubly welcome as the bird with the olive
+branch.</p>
+
+<p>It looks more and more as if the issue of the campaign would be
+peace or war! On this issue the Germans at the last moment will
+have to side with the President.</p>
+
+<p>The recent sessions of the Reichstag have been lively. Liebknecht
+caused a row on several occasions. Once by interrupting the
+Chancellor to imply that the Germans were not free, next to deny
+that the Germans had <i>not</i> wished the war, and another time by
+calling attention to the attempts of the Germans to induce
+Mohammedan and Irish prisoners of war to desert to the German
+arms, the Irish being attacked through Sir Roger Casement.
+Liebknecht finally enraged the Government by calling out that the
+loan subscription was a swindle.</p>
+
+<p>The German-American spies and traitors are hard at work at 48
+Potsdammer Strasse and also at the Oversea News Service, a
+concern paid for by Krupps. Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, in addition, gains money by
+getting permits for goods to go out of Germany, capitalising his
+"pull" as it were. Some of the money for their dirty work is
+given them by Roselius of Bremen, proprietor of the "Caffee Hag."
+&mdash;&mdash;, a traitor, who also writes against the President, also
+works with the gang.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">This cry in America that German babies have not sufficient milk
+is all rot. One of our doctors has reported on the subject. The
+cry is only raised to get a hole in the British blockade.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Germans are going at Verdun carefully, and an imitation of
+each French position or trench they wish to take&mdash;planned from
+airmen's and spies' reports&mdash;is constructed behind the German
+lines and the German soldiers practise taking it until they are
+judged letter perfect and are put to work to capture the
+original.</p>
+
+<p>It is said the Germans have developed a submarine periscope so
+small as to be almost invisible, which works up and down so that
+only at intervals, for a second or so, does it appear above the
+water. Also, it is said the wireless vibrations by means of
+copper plates at each end are transmitted through the boat, and
+every member of the crew learns the wireless code, and no matter
+where working can catch the vibrations.</p>
+
+<p>Note about the <i>Sussex</i> and other four ships just in. I think
+Germany is now determined to keep peace with America as the plain
+people are convinced that otherwise the war will be lengthened&mdash;a
+contingency abhorrent to all.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>May, 1916.</i> I delivered the last American note to von Jagow
+to-day. He said they probably would not answer, and then engaged
+me in gossipy conversation.</p>
+
+<p>These people want peace and will gladly accept the President as
+mediator.</p>
+
+<p>The Pope, they think, will want brokerage&mdash;a "Makler Lohn"&mdash;as
+they call it&mdash;concessions for the church, such as the return of
+the Jesuits, etc.</p>
+
+<p>If they get good and sick of war here, perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> they may not feel
+like revenge after all&mdash;but there is an ever-present danger we
+must prepare for.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The fact that I was given detailed instructions as to leaving,
+etc.&mdash;which they undoubtedly learned, with their wonderful spy
+system&mdash;helped the <i>Sussex</i> settlement.</p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor and I became great friends as a result of my stay
+at the Hauptquartier. The League of Truth gang attacked me
+lately. The Government published a certificate in the <i>Official
+Gazette</i> to the effect that I was their fair-haired boy,
+etc.&mdash;very nice of them. I really think they recognise that the
+propaganda was an awful failure and want to inaugurate the era of
+good feeling.</p>
+
+<p>I did not go to the front at the Hauptquartier as reported. I had
+enough to do in Charleville, but did witness the splendid relief
+work being done by the Americans who are feeding 2,200,000 of the
+population of Northern France. Twenty thousand of the inhabitants
+of Lille, Roubaix-Tourcoing, are being sent under circumstances
+of great barbarity to work in the fields in small villages. I
+spoke to the Chancellor and he promised to remedy this.</p>
+
+<p>Germans say they will take Verdun. A military treaty with Sweden
+is reported; a large Swedish Military Commission is now here,
+receiving much attention.</p>
+
+<p>While at Charleville, in connection with American work, I asked,
+at one village, to see the German Army stores so as to convince
+myself that the German Army was not using the stores from
+America.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> I saw that one-half the stores came from <i>Holland</i>.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I think the psychological moment is approaching when Colonel
+House should appear as the President's White Emissary of Peace.</p>
+
+<p>While the food question here is pressing, the harvest will be
+good, if present indications continue. Rye is the principal crop
+and this is harvested about July 12th. I think, however, Germany
+can last, and in very desperation may try a great offensive which
+may break the French lines and change the whole position. The
+people here, although tired of war, are well disciplined and will
+see this thing through without revolution.</p>
+
+<p>We are rather in calm after the last crisis. The Chancellor sent
+for me and said he hoped we would do something to England or
+propose a general peace, otherwise his position here will become,
+he thinks, rather hard. Delbr&uuml;ck, vice-chancellor, very hostile
+to America, is out&mdash;failure as Minister of Interior to organise
+food supply is the real reason.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Yesterday I had a talk with the Chancellor. The occasion was the
+Polish Relief question which I shall now take up direct with
+Helfferich, who, as I predicted, is the new Minister of the
+Interior and Vice-Chancellor. He is a very business-like man and
+did much for the favourable settlement of our last crisis.</p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor seemed rather downcast yesterday, without apparent
+cause. He says that Germany from now on will have two months of
+hardship<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> on the food question, but that after that things will
+be all right. The crops, as I have seen on my shooting place, are
+magnificent and the rye harvest will probably begin even before
+July 15th.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gerard has just returned from a week in Budapest with her
+sister. The Hungarians are once more gay and confident. The
+Italians, their hereditary foes, are being driven back, and on
+the Russian front there seems to be a sort of tacit truce&mdash;no
+fighting and visiting in trenches, etc.&mdash;terms of great
+friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>(This was the beginning of the fraternisation which led, a year
+later, to the collapse of Russia.)</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">At the races here last Sunday there was an absolutely record
+crowd and more money bet than on any previous day in German
+racing history. The cheaper field and stands were so full of
+soldiers that the crowd seemed grey, which goes to show that the
+last man is not at the front.</p>
+
+<p>State Socialism makes advances over here. A proposition is now
+discussed to compel the young men who are earning large wages to
+save a part thereof.</p>
+
+<p>On the <i>Sussex</i> question, I got a colleague to ask about the
+punishment of the Commander and to say at the Foreign Office,
+after he had once been refused any information, that I had heard
+that the people at large in America believed the Commander has
+received "Pour le M&eacute;rite." Von Jagow said that he was sure that
+this was not so, but that he did not know the name of the
+Commander, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> that it was not "usual" to tell what punishment
+had been given. So that I suppose the matter will rest, unless I
+get orders to ask formally about the punishment.</p>
+
+<p>The German military people and ruling Junker class are furious at
+the settlement with America, and abuse America, the President and
+me indiscriminately.</p>
+
+<p>Anything the President says about peace is prominently placed in
+the newspapers.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Yesterday in a debate in the Reichstag over the censorship,
+member Stresemann, National Liberal (the party which now holds
+the balance of power), violently abused President Wilson and said
+he was not wanted as a peace-maker. All applauded except the
+Socialists&mdash;so I think the President had better say nothing more
+about peace for the present. What he has said has done much good
+and has pleased the Government here, if not the Reichstag.
+Although von Jagow is a Junker of Junkers, the Junkers are
+against him and claim he is too weak. He may be bounced.</p>
+
+<p>The crops are very fine.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly we shall have another crisis when the extremists here
+demand a "reckless" U-boat war because we are doing nothing to
+England.</p>
+
+<p>Germany will last through on the food question.</p>
+
+<p>I have heard reports that the Turks are tired of German rule and
+almost ready to flop.</p>
+
+<p>I am to meet Prince Buelow, ex-Chancellor, to-morrow and may fish
+up something interesting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Kaiser has gone to the front, probably Russian. Next war loan
+will be 12 milliards.</p>
+
+<p>Helfferich lunched here last Sunday. He speaks English fairly
+well. Zimmermann is laid up with the gout.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">In the Reichstag debate yesterday, Stresemann, applauded by all
+except Socialists, said that Germany threw away Wilson as a
+peace-maker. However, the Government is pleased with President's
+peace talk, as it keeps the people from thinking of food and
+U-boat crises.</p>
+
+<p>U-boat question will come up again, when Pan-Germanists and
+Conservatives demand a reckless U-boat war because we have done
+nothing against England.</p>
+
+<p>Harden's paper has been confiscated again.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>June, 1916.</i> I am sorry to lose Ruddock, who is sent to Belgium,
+but it is a good appointment, as his knowledge of German and
+relations here will help matters.</p>
+
+<p>The debates in the Reichstag have been quite interesting
+yesterday and the day before. The Chancellor, irritated by the
+anonymous attacks on him in pamphlets, etc., made a fine defence.
+In the course of the debate allusions were made to President
+Wilson and the U-boat question. The U-boat question may break
+loose again any day.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that either Austria or Germany wishes President
+Wilson to lay down any peace conditions. There may possibly be a
+Congress after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> the Peace Congress, but meanwhile all parties
+here feel that America has nothing to do with peace conditions.
+America can bring the parties together, but that is all. The
+speech about the rights of small peoples has, I hear, made the
+Austrians furious, as Austria is made up of many nationalities
+and the Germans say that if the rights of small peoples and
+peoples choosing their own sovereignty is to be discussed, the
+Irish question, the Indian question and the Boer question, the
+Egyptian question and many others involving the Entente Allies
+must be discussed. I think that generally there is a big change
+in public opinion and the Germans are beginning to realise that
+the President is for peace with Germany.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans expect that by September preparations will be
+finished and that the Suez Canal will be cannonaded, bombed and
+mined so that it will dry up, and then the Indian-Afghan troubles
+will begin.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>June, 1916.</i> The President's peace talks carried over the
+dangerous moment after the submarine submission. Von Jagow told
+me that because of debates in Reichstag the President must not
+think he is not welcome as mediator.</p>
+
+<p>Crops look well.</p>
+
+<p>The break on Austro-Russian front is reported to have been caused
+by wholesale desertions of Ruthenian troops to Russians.</p>
+
+<p>The editor of the <i>National Zeitung</i>, responsible for the fake
+interview with me, has been "fired"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> from that paper which has
+published a notice to that effect.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Grand Admiral von Koester made a speech implying that reckless
+submarine war should be taken up and England thus defeated. He is
+retired, but is head of the Navy League, a concern backed by the
+Government, possessing a million members and much political
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>Apropos of hyphenated Americans, a friend tells me that when he
+was secretary here some years ago, a certain Congressman tried
+for six years to get presented at Court, insisting that he be
+presented as a "German-American." The Kaiser turned him down,
+saying he knew no such thing as a "German-American," and the
+Congressman finally consented to be presented as an American.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The U-boat question will come up again, say in three months,
+unless we get in serious trouble in Mexico, when it will come up
+sooner.</p>
+
+<p>Edwin Emerson has been sent out of the country, I think to serve
+in the Turkish Army in some capacity, perhaps paymaster or some
+such job.</p>
+
+<p>The Foreign Office continues to protect these American
+mud-slingers&mdash;such as the "League of Truth" which is run by a
+German named Marten, posing as an American and a dentist
+(American citizen) named Mueller&mdash;these circulate a pamphlet
+entitled, "What Shall We Do With Wilson," etc., and are the gang
+who insulted the American flag by putting it wrapped in mourning
+on a wreath on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> the statue of Frederick the Great with a
+placard, "Wilson and his Press do not represent America."</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="pamphlet" id="pamphlet"></a><a href="images/pamphlet.jpg"><img src="images/pamphlet_th.jpg"
+alt="The Pamphlet" title="COVER OF THE PAMPHLET FEROCIOUSLY ABUSIVE OF
+PRESIDENT WILSON. ISSUED BY THE EX-TRAVEL LECTURER, JOHN L.
+STODDARD" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 28%; margin-right: 28%">COVER OF THE PAMPHLET FEROCIOUSLY ABUSIVE OF
+PRESIDENT WILSON. ISSUED BY THE EX-TRAVEL LECTURER, JOHN L.
+STODDARD</p>
+
+<p class="newsection">Letters, codes, etc., for Bernstorff and individuals are sent to
+America as follows: the letters are photographed on a reduced
+scale so that a letter a foot square appears as an inch and a
+half square. These little prints are put in the layers of a shoe
+heel of a travelling American or elsewhere, book cover, hat band,
+etc., and then rephotographed and enlarged in America. Also
+messengers travel steerage and put things in the mattress of a
+fellow passenger and go back to the ship after landing in New
+York and collect the stuff.</p>
+
+<p>A German friend, just returned from Austria, says the feeling
+there against America is very strong on account of the Dumba
+incident.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday I was told by a German that the German army had
+aeroplanes which develop 300 H.&nbsp;P., and would soon have some of
+1000 H.&nbsp;P.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>July, 1916.</i> Every one in this Embassy is getting to the
+breaking point. Nerves do not last forever, and the strain of
+living in a hostile country is great. The Germans, too, are on
+edge. They are going to take away our privilege of speaking to
+prisoners alone; this because they think I learned of the
+shooting of the second Irishman at Limburg from prisoners. As a
+matter of fact I did not, but cannot, of course, say how I did
+learn.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian prisoners are being slowly starved, the French and
+English get packages from home.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are rumors that a Bavarian regiment which was ordered a
+second time to take a position, which the Prussians lost at
+Verdun, refused and was ordered to be decimated, and that then
+the Crown Prince of Bavaria threatened to march all the Bavarian
+troops home unless the order to decimate was rescinded. I do not
+believe the rumour, but its circulation and other events such as
+the refusal of the Bavarians lately to adopt a common postage
+stamp, shows there is a little irritation growing between Prussia
+and Bavaria. For years before the war the Bavarian Comic papers
+cartooned the Prussians, common and royal, but like every other
+movement nothing will result.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">There is much underground work for the resumption of reckless
+submarine war going on, all part of a campaign to upset the
+Chancellor. Von B&uuml;low, Ex-Chancellor, is working hard. He,
+however, since his row with the Emperor over the "Telegraph"
+interview, which he passed as correct, will never be accepted by
+His Majesty. Nevertheless, he is becoming a focal point for
+opposition.</p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor and his party are very timid about attacks. For
+instance, they will do nothing against Emerson, Mueller and that
+crew, which insults indiscriminately our flag, our President, the
+Chancellor, Zimmermann and me, because, as Zimmermann frankly
+told me, they are afraid of attacks. Mueller on the 4th of July
+hung out the American flag in mourning and circulated copies of
+the Declaration of Independence charged with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> bloody hand and a
+black cross. I have filed in vain affidavits with the Foreign
+Office, by people who say he has threatened to shoot me at sight.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Germans seem to fear the Russian attacks more than the
+English and French. They claim to have the measure of the
+English, and not to fear their offensive.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. John R. Mott has been here. He made a great impression. I had
+him at lunch with the Chancellor, Zimmermann, and officials of
+the prisoner department and War Ministry.</p>
+
+<p>Mass feeding of the people has begun. They pay a few pfennigs per
+meal.</p>
+
+<p>I have heard rumours lately of actual dissatisfaction among
+soldiers at front and of many being transferred, but this unrest
+also will have no definite result.</p>
+
+<p>Constant rain lately will damage the harvest and rot the potatoes
+to some extent. Nevertheless, as I have often said, the Germans
+will last. Holland has allowed more food in lately.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The long confinement will make many prisoners insane. Many old
+men at Ruhleben, living six in a horse's stall or in dim hay
+lofts, simply turn their faces to the wall and refuse even to
+complain.</p>
+
+<p>The statement in the American papers that our National Guard
+could not mobilise for Mexico because of lack of sleeping cars
+caused much ridicule here, where they go to the front in cattle
+cars.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>July, 1916.</i> A committee called the National Committee for an
+Honourable Peace has been formed. Prince Wedel is at the head.
+Most of the people are friends of the Chancellor. One is an
+editor of the <i>Frankfurter Zeitung</i> which is the Chancellor's
+organ. On August 1st, fifty speakers, of this Committee will
+begin to speak, probably the opposition will come into their
+meetings and try to speak or break up the meetings.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Lokal Anzeiger</i>, also a government organ, prints an
+editorial to the effect that Germany may take up ruthless
+submarine war again. Great numbers of U-boats are being built and
+in September operations will be on a big scale, though the
+Chancellor will try to keep them to cruiser warfare.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner question on all sides is growing acute. The Germans
+sent me a note to-day threatening stern reprisals if the alleged
+bad treatment of their prisoners in Russia does not stop.</p>
+
+<p>We can no longer talk to prisoners alone. Von Jagow told me that
+after the visit of Madam Sasenoff, or Samsenoff, to a Russian
+prisoners' camp, there was a riot, but the real reason is that
+the Germans have much to conceal. The prison food now is a
+starvation ration.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Alliance of the Six, really an organization fostered by big
+iron business in Westphalia, is very active for annexation. This
+wants to get the French iron mines and coal, and so control the
+iron business of the Continent and perhaps Europe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A man from Syria passed through here recently and gave me most
+interesting accounts of the state of affairs there. The Turks are
+oppressing the Arabians and the revolt of the Grand Sheriff of
+Mecca may have great effects in this war. This man says that the
+English are building two railroads from Suez into the desert and
+the Germo-Turks are building toward the canal from the North. For
+the Canal attack there are, at present, principally Austrian
+troops assembled. The Turks are beginning to take Greeks from the
+Coast cities into the interior of Asia Minor and are oppressing
+the Syrian Arabian cities, such as Beirut, where thousands are
+dying of starvation. At the Islahje-Aleppo R.&nbsp;R., 30 Turkish
+soldiers a day die from cholera. The Germans, by their
+precautions, escape. He passed 147 German auto trucks in the
+Cilician mountains bound for Bagdad. Also saw the British
+prisoners from Kut el Amara, who are dying of dysentery, being
+compelled to walk in the hot sun from Kut. He thinks the English
+and the Grand Sheriff will transfer the title of head of the
+religion from the Sultan at Constantinople to either the Sultan
+of Egypt or some new Sultan to be established as an Arabian
+Sultan, perhaps at Bagdad if the Russians and English take it, or
+at Mecca, and he considers this movement of Arabians against
+Turks may assume great proportions.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">There is still talk here of a resumption of reckless submarine
+war which question is complicated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> and involved in the eternal
+efforts of the Conservatives to get the Chancellor out.</p>
+
+<p>The recognition of the "merchant submarine" has made a very good
+impression here.</p>
+
+<p>The plain people are eager for peace but those interested in
+carrying on the war have the upper hand.</p>
+
+<p>The harvest is good, and is now being gathered.</p>
+
+<p>A number of navy and (which is significant) army officers visited
+von Tirpitz, lately in his Black Forest Retreat and gave him a
+testimonial.</p>
+
+<p>There is prospect that what is called here a "Burg Frieden"
+(Peace of the City) will be declared between the Chancellor and
+the principal Conservative newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>One of the American correspondents back from Verdun says that a
+corps commander said his corps took no prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>I think many of the Hungarians are for peace. I get this from
+Andrassy's son-in-law who is also a member of the lower house.
+Tisza, however, is still in full control.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Leopold's (he is a brother-in-law of the Kaiser) stags
+have destroyed vegetables of the plain people (as in the days of
+William Rufus) and people dare write letters, and Liberal papers
+dare publish them complaining of these depredations.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>GERMANY'S EARLY PLOTS IN MEXICO</h4>
+
+
+<p class="section"><i>The Diary Concluded</i></p>
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap"><i>A</i></span><i>ugust</i></span>, <i>1916.</i> Count Andrassy, leader of the opposition to Tisza
+in Hungary, has been here for some time. He lunched with us one
+day and I had a talk with him in German. Andrassy is rather old
+and tired. Andrassy's father, the Prime Minister, was originally
+a great friend of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that Andrassy through German influence may be made
+Minister of Foreign Affairs instead of Burian. This is to be the
+first step in a German coup d'&eacute;tat to take place on the death of
+Francis Joseph&mdash;the throne successor to be given Austria alone,
+and Prince Eitel Fritz, the Kaiser's favourite son, to be King of
+Hungary with possibly a Czech kingdom in Bohemia.</p>
+
+<p>Andrassy had an audience with the Kaiser here. Andrassy is
+apparently friendly with America and is also for peace.</p>
+
+<p><i>Von Tirpitz is out with a statement practically demanding war
+with America.</i> I am surprised that the newspapers are allowed to
+publish it. Very likely it will not be permitted to go out but it
+ought to be known in America.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Germany probably will come out with a strong note about Poland,
+refusing help and saying harvest is sufficient. This is not true
+as to food for babies who cannot live on rye and wheat, but need
+condensed milk.</p>
+
+<p>The treatment of prisoners is going from bad to worse. The
+Chancellor and Foreign Office can do nothing against the military
+party.</p>
+
+<p>Hoover, Professor Kellog, and I are all very much discouraged
+about Polish and other relief questions. The Germans are getting
+more and more disagreeable about these matters, even though they
+are for the benefit of Germany. Warwick Greene, of the
+Rockefeller Foundation, being a new arrival is more hopeful, but
+that will soon wear off.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans are getting a blacklist of their own. One Barthmann,
+an American, who sells American shoes in Germany, wanted to get
+his pass stamped to go to America, and permission to come back,
+and was told that would only be done if the Chamber of Commerce
+(Handels-Kammer) consents; you see the connection&mdash;no American
+goods for Germany.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews here are almost on the edge of being "pogrommed." There
+is a great prejudice against them, especially in naval and
+military circles, because they have been industrious and have
+made money. Officers openly talk of repudiating the War Loan
+which they say would only mean a loss for the Jews.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Germans say they have new and horrible inventions which will
+end the war soon.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I supposed that because I had some acquaintance with German
+watering places and German-Americans I knew a little about
+Germany. I was wrong. No casual traveller ever gets to know the
+military caste nor do the members of that caste travel except on
+"business."</p>
+
+<p>The members of the military caste live like Spartans and are
+consoled by the fact that they rule the country and look down on
+the merchant class. They feel that they have created modern
+industrial Germany. The military caste (of which the naval and
+all government bureaus are branches) has organised the nation for
+war with the efficiency of the managers of a great American
+corporation. The government is an absolutism. No Jew can become
+an officer. Officers of crack regiments do not go to the homes of
+persons in any kind of business. A business man is called a
+"Kaufmann," as we speak of a house painter. Some tame professors
+are paid by the State to give an impression of "Kultur."</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">This war is now a war for conquest or money. All people tell me
+that we must have "pay for so much blood." "If we don't keep
+Belgium there will be a revolution. Who is to pay for the War?" A
+Socialist who referred yesterday in the Reichstag to the Kaiser's
+speech of the beginning of the war which stated this was not a
+war to get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> territory, was well sat upon. Even the Socialists are
+all for war against Italy.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">None of the German colonies is fit for Europeans. <i>Germany last
+year proposed joint intervention in Mexico to England.</i> If
+successful Germany will try to get a foothold in the Western
+Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is like a red rag to a bull to
+every German.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Relations with members of the Government here are quite agreeable
+but there is not an effective government at present. The
+Chancellor will take no decisive action and leaves matters to
+department heads who fight with other department heads. The
+Emperor saw fit to follow the traditions of 1870 and go to the
+field taking the Chancellor and heads of many departments with
+him, hence great governmental confusion, but this does not affect
+military organisation. He is bored by the Chancellor, a good man,
+but of no action or decision. Von Falkenhayn is the Emperor's
+favourite. He is the chief of the General Staff. Von Tirpitz and
+von Mueller (also naval) have great weight. The Kaiser is thus
+surrounded by military influences.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Saw summaries of the news published by the General Staff and
+given to the Emperor to read. He gets only German-American news
+from America and no bad news from anywhere. On the <i>Lusitania</i>
+case there is a disposition to think, because we were not warlike
+over Mexico, we will stand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> anything. <i>The Kaiser will not see me
+because of the delivery of arms by Americans to the Allies and
+has so stated.</i></p>
+
+<p>There is no shortage of food supply. I was told yesterday they
+did not need our Polish Relief Committee for German Poland as
+Germany can take care of this alone. The hate of Americans is
+intense. But this hate can be turned off and on by the
+Government. The people believe everything they see in the papers.
+The monetary situation is not bad. All the money for war supplies
+has been spent in Germany, except perhaps for a few horses, etc.,
+from Scandinavia.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Chancellor and von Jagow have been in Vienna. Von Jagow told
+me only on current business, but this was a diplomatic statement.
+I believe they went to settle the fate of Poland. I hear Prussia
+wants an independent Poland and Austria wants to make it part of
+the Austrian Empire. In any event I think Prussia will secure the
+organising of the army which will soon be raised. A prominent
+Pole told me two days ago that the peasants were coddled by
+Russia, whose motto in Poland was "divide et impera," and that
+they will violently resent being drafted into the Prussian army.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The bitter attacks on the Chancellor continue. At a recent
+meeting in Bavaria resolutions were passed that the first
+objective of the war was to get rid of the Chancellor and the
+second to "clean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> out the Anglophile Foreign Office," which
+prevented Germany from resorting to "reckless" methods for the
+swift winning of the war.</p>
+
+<p>As a son-in-law of a high official told me to-day, the break
+between the military and navy on one side and the Civil
+Government on the other has widened almost into civil war. The
+same man told me that the Kaiser has lately become quite
+apathetic and lets events take their course.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">One of my attach&eacute;s has broken down completely, cries when spoken
+to; living in a fiercely hostile atmosphere is not agreeable and
+I wonder how long the rest of us can hold out.</p>
+
+<p>The harvest is very good, but does not provide fat, and as yet,
+meat. But the starving out business I have always said was an
+"iridescent" dream.</p>
+
+<p>New men, 80,000 in this vicinity alone, are being called to the
+colours.</p>
+
+<p>Every one here is getting more on razor edge, prisoners are
+treated more roughly and get worse food. Bavaria is getting
+restless and dissatisfied, this will not amount to anything
+definite but is a sign of the times.</p>
+
+<p>I went to Herringsdorff for a few days of swimming. At a concert
+in the evening a man recited a poem he said he had written about
+"having bled enough." He was vehemently applauded. Quite a
+contrast to the days when the best actors in Germany were not
+ashamed to spout the "HYMN OF HATE"!</p>
+
+<p>The military people use the censorship even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> against papers
+friendly to the Chancellor and Germans certainly can hate each
+other as thoroughly and scientifically as they do most other
+nations. Dr. Alonzo Taylor thinks that in peace times some one
+fed this nation too much meat.</p>
+
+<p>The newspapers are preparing the people for the entry of
+Roumania.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Professor &mdash;&mdash;, a school friend of Tisza's and Burian's who was
+recently in Austria, saw Burian and says Burian is ready and even
+anxious to make an arbitration treaty with America and also send
+an Ambassador in Dumba's place to Washington. This is out of my
+jurisdiction. He says that to-morrow or next day there will be an
+interpellation in the Hungarian Chamber about sending an
+Ambassador to America.</p>
+
+<p>The National Liberals probably will unite with the Conservatives
+and demand a strong hold on Belgium, if not actual possession of
+that country, as one of the objects of the war.</p>
+
+<p>This Union of National Liberals and Conservatives is dangerous
+and may mean a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The entry of Roumania took every one by surprise. Beldiman, the
+Roumanian Minister here, was visiting the reigning Prince of
+Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, brother of the Roumanian King, and
+apparently knew nothing of the danger of a break.</p>
+
+<p>To-day Hindenburg is named Chief of the General Staff, and his
+Chief of Staff, Ludendorff, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> made Quartermaster General,
+Falkenhayn, former Chief of Staff is bounced without even the
+excuse of a diplomatic illness. This is all a great concession to
+popular opinion. I do not know where Hindenburg stands with
+reference to America, but have heard that he is a reasonable man.
+Of course, here the Army has as much to say in foreign affairs as
+the Foreign Office, if not more. When I was at the Great General
+Headquarters, Falkenhayn, although I knew him, did not call on
+me, and dodged me. He did not even appear at the Kaiser's table
+when I lunched there. From all this I judge he was against
+America on the submarine question. I also have heard that when
+Helfferich was talking before the Kaiser, in favour of peace with
+America, Falkenhayn interrupted him, but was told by the Kaiser
+to "stick to his last" or words to that effect.</p>
+
+<p>These people here are now nervous and unstrung and actually
+believe that America will now enter the war against them. It is
+impossible to conceive of the general breakdown of nerves among
+this people.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>I have heard lately of men as old as 47 being taken for the
+Army.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Zimmermann has now gone on a vacation, his place being
+temporarily filled by von Treutler, Prussian Minister to Bavaria,
+who since the commencement of the war has been with the Kaiser. I
+judge this means the Kaiser is looking personally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> into matters
+at the Foreign Office. Von Treutler is, I think, against the
+resumption of reckless submarine war. He is lunching with me
+to-day. He is rather the type of intelligent-man-of-the-world and
+sportsman, and has little of the Prussian desire to "imponieren"
+by putting his voice two octaves lower and glaring at one like an
+enraged bullfrog.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. William Bayard Hale, of Mexican fame, who is in Berlin
+representing the Hearst papers, has become very thick with
+officials here. Von Jagow and Zimmermann are much impressed by
+him.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Germans may hate the President, but there are in America
+hundreds of thousands of Czechs from Bohemia, Poles from Poland,
+Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croatians and Slavs from Hungary,
+Roumanians, Italians, Greeks, Russians, Scotch, Belgians, and
+French who <small>HATE</small> the Germans.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I believe the Germans want an excuse to resume reckless submarine
+war and an American correspondent has taken the job of making bad
+feeling to justify such a course.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>September, 1916.</i> As these people get desperate the submarine
+question gets deeper and deeper under their skin. I really think
+that it is only a question of time.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, from what I learn here Greece is sure to come in and
+this is expected here.</p>
+
+<p>As the Consul General at Hamburg has reported,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> serious riots
+have occurred there, two by the poor classes, mostly women, and
+one by students. The crowd shouted "Down with the Kaiser," called
+for an end of the war, calling for unlimited submarine war
+against England.</p>
+
+<p>The hate of Americans grows daily, if indeed it is possible to be
+greater.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Ira Nelson Morris, American Minister to Sweden, was here. He and
+his wife are charming people. He is very popular in Sweden. Elkus
+is also here on his way to Constantinople. If any one can "get
+away" with that difficult post he can. I took Elkus to see von
+Jagow and had him at lunch with von Treutler, the man in
+Zimmermann's place. I talked with Elkus to von Jagow about Syrian
+Relief. A Syrian, whose name I cannot give away, says the Turkish
+Government reported to our Embassy in Turkey that the harvest in
+Syria was the best in years, whereas, in truth this year's
+harvest, on account of drought and last year's on account of
+locusts, are the worst in 35 years. Missionaries have told me
+that Syrians are starving.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">A fact for the Russian born&mdash;Germany does not recognise the
+American citizenship or naturalisation of a person born in
+Russia.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Yesterday there was a conference of all party leaders at the
+Chancellor's. I understand nothing was said about America or
+submarine question. I doubt this. The Press here and certain
+other agencies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> are trying to convince America that all is
+peaceful, but Baron Mumm two days ago told Elkus, in this house,
+that the ruthless submarine war undoubtedly would be resumed.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">In general conversation with von Jagow, recently, he said that
+the offensive on the Somme could not continue without the great
+supply of shells from America. He also said that recently a
+German submarine submerged in the Channel had to allow 41 ships
+to pass, and that he was sure that each ship was full of
+ammunition and soldiers but probably had some protecting American
+angels on board, and, therefore, the submarine did not torpedo
+without warning. He seemed quite bitter.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The wife of an American newspaper correspondent was recently
+attacked in the street. Of course, the husband will not cable
+this to America. Two stenographers from this Embassy were
+recently slapped on coming out of a theatre because they were
+speaking English.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Reventlow's paper was recently suppressed and Reventlow forbidden
+to write without special permission. This is a good sign from the
+Chancellor.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Hale was recently given a special trip to the West front, and
+allowed to talk to the Crown Prince, etc.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>December, 1916.</i> The Germans are simply delighted with the
+President's peace note. Only a few cranks or conservative papers
+are against it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I saw Zimmermann the day after my arrival. He was most friendly
+and said he hoped he and I would be able, as usual, to settle
+everything in a friendly manner.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday he lunched here and gave me the German reply after
+lunch. He told me at the first talk that he, the Chancellor,
+Hindenburg and Ludendorff were all working together. Most people
+here say that Hindenburg and Ludendorff are at present the real
+rulers of Germany. Zimmermann remarked that there was no danger
+from "reckless" submarine war.</p>
+
+<p>Zimmermann said he regretted the sending of the Belgians to
+Germany but it was hard now to go back on what they had done. I
+have some hope that a retreat may be arranged&mdash;possibly by
+sending the Belgians back gradually and saying nothing about it.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The American Chamber of Commerce are to give a big dinner January
+sixth to welcome me back. Zimmermann and von Gwinner, head of
+Deutsche Bank, have agreed to speak and many prominent Germans
+have accepted.</p>
+
+<p>The Press department of the Foreign Office has been reorganised
+by Zimmermann, and Hammann, the former head, fired. The new head
+is Major Deutelmoser, formerly of the General Staff, a personal
+friend of mine.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Emperor is at Potsdam and consulted with Zimmermann, General
+von Kessel, etc., as to the reply to the President's peace note.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Berlin is much more melancholy than when I left. General von
+Kessel came to our American Colony Christmas tree for poor Berlin
+children. It was very pathetic. One little kid got up and prayed
+for peace and every one wept. I hope to get to see Ludendorff and
+Hindenburg soon and see how they feel toward America.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I went to Ruhleben, the British civilian camp, yesterday to tell
+the prisoners that all over 45 go home. It was quite a Christmas
+gift as 700 there are over that age. (Note: don't think this
+agreement of Germany and England ever went into effect!)</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>January, 1917.</i> Germany wants a peace conference in order to
+make a separate peace on good terms to them with France and
+Russia, then hopes to finish England by submarines, then later
+take the scalp of Japan, Russia and France separately. The Allies
+ought to remember what Ben Franklin said about hanging together
+or separately. I get the above scheme from very good authority.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The weather is most depressing; dark, and rain every day. All
+hands seem cross. Zimmermann, I think, finds it much more
+difficult to be the responsible first than the criticising
+second. It is not as easy as it looked to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Kaiser stated the other day that he did not expect peace now,
+that the English would try a great offensive in the spring and
+would fail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Herbert Hoover writes me that the Germans are violating all
+their pledges in Belgium.</i> He expects a year of great
+difficulties. I hear this confirmed on best authority and that
+even the German official who is supposed to see that food is not
+sent from Belgium to Germany in violation of Germany's pledges
+sends out butter to his family; that there is an absolute reign
+of terror in Belgium, sudden and arbitrary arrests, etc. I think
+the Germans want to see all foreign diplomats out of Bucharest
+and Brussels and the charges against Voypicka should be
+considered in that light.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The greatest danger from submarine war is that unthinking persons
+in the U.&nbsp;S. may start a crusade against the President's policy,
+encourage the Germans in the belief that we are divided and lead
+them to resume reckless acts in that belief. The continuance of a
+strong front is the very best way to keep the peace.</p>
+
+<p>Both Zimmermann and the Chancellor asked me about Bernstorff, and
+returning good for evil, I said that he was O.&nbsp;K., on very good
+terms with the Government, well liked (<i>sic</i>) and that no one
+could do better!</p>
+
+<p>A friend just returned from a week's visit in Hungary reports a
+great desire for peace. Persons who, a year ago, said that the
+President could have nothing to do with peace or negotiations,
+now say he is the only possible mediator. This comes from high
+government circles there.</p>
+
+<p>The historic crown of St. Stephen was much too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> large for the
+King, but the little crown prince made a great hit with the
+populace.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">An Armenian woman came through here the other day. Her husband
+had been captured or killed and her tale of the treatment of the
+Armenians by the Turks was heartrending.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Everything points to a coming crisis in the matter of food, how
+serious it will be even the officials themselves do not know, as
+there is much concealed food and much smuggling over the various
+frontiers.</p>
+
+<p>In some parts of Germany, the country police or gendarmes are
+searching the farm houses thrice weekly.</p>
+
+<p>I have secured permission to visit and inspect the enslaved
+Belgians, have named as inspectors all members of our staff
+speaking French, but as yet have not received passes.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Here is a copy of a letter I have just received from a German:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The hypocrisy of the German Government is really
+disgusting! It is a well-known matter of fact,
+that by hints and approbation, nay even by express
+orders of the German military authorities the
+troops in France and Belgium have been stimulated
+to give no quarter at all in the case of British
+adversaries, and that in Russia even whole
+regiments and brigades have been annihilated by
+grapeshot, although the poor wretches delivered
+themselves on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> mercy and raised their hands, to
+prove their submission. Both the Prussian and the
+Bavarian crown-prince have expressly ordered to
+make no prisoners, to spare ammunition and to
+despatch the surviving by steel and bayonet. Has
+the order been forgotten, issued by the Kaiser in
+the beginning of the German China-Expedition, to
+deal with the Chinese like the Huns, to destroy
+and annihilate every human creature both men and
+women and even innocent children!</p>
+
+<p>
+Quis Aulerit Gracchos de seditione quaerentes?<br />
+<span style="padding-left: 30ex">Unus pro multis.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>P.&nbsp;S.</p>
+
+<p>The war would be decided and peace restored as
+soon as the U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A. Government would intervene in
+favour of humanity, liberty and civilisation. Down
+with the Prussian Tyranny!"</p></div>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Germans will do nothing about Belgium. The deportations were
+a military measure, demanded by Ludendorff, who constantly fears
+a British landing on the Belgian coast.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">A man who called on von Tirpitz recently was told by von Tirpitz
+that he, von Tirpitz, was watched like a spy and all his letters
+opened. Von Tirpitz said that Hindenburg was the real ruler of
+Germany, that anything Bethmann said was censored by Hindenburg
+and that Hindenburg was now against reckless submarine war but
+that any substantial defeats in the field would make him change
+his mind. Von Tirpitz said that the Kaiser was losing his mind
+and spent all his time praying, and learning Hebrew.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="courtyard" id="courtyard"></a><a href="images/illo135.jpg"><img src="images/illo135_th.jpg"
+alt="The courtyard of the embassy" title="PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN COURTYARD OF EMBASSY, AUGUST,
+1916" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%"><span style="padding-left: 2em">PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN COURTYARD OF EMBASSY, AUGUST,
+1916</span><br /><br />
+
+<i>Left to right</i>&mdash;Lanier Winslow; Albert B. Ruddock; Percival
+Dodge; Grafton Minot; von Gwinner, head of the great Deutsche
+Bank; Surgeon Ohnesorg, U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;N.; Ernest Bicknell of Red Cross;
+Ambassador Gerard; Mr. Wilmeth of Treas. Dept.; Assistant
+Secretary of War Breckenridge; Roland Harvey; Charles Russell;
+Hugo Ballin, head of Hamburg-American Line; Major Ryan and First
+Secretary Grew.]</p>
+
+<p class="newsection">The food situation grows worse. Potato cards must now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> be
+presented in restaurants and hotels. I doubt if potatoes can last
+beyond April. There is food in Roumania but much will go to the
+troops; Austrians and Turks: the railways are so used by troops,
+etc., that it is doubtful if any food from there can reach
+Germany for months.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">All apartment houses in Berlin are closed at nine, and lights in
+halls extinguished. Theatres close at ten and movies also. There
+is want of coal due to lack of transportation.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The President's address to the Senate yesterday (Jan. 22, 1917)
+is splendid. I don't know yet how it will be taken here. If it is
+published it will give the German people something to consider.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Postcards showing Zeppelins in the act of murdering the sleeping
+babies of an enemy city are distributed here with pride.</p>
+
+<p>All Germans of my acquaintance have impressed on me lately the
+renewed danger of submarine warfare. The American correspondents
+are not allowed to send out the hate of America speeches and
+articles. Cyril Brown of the <i>World</i> says that last week fifty
+per cent of the matter he sent was cut out by censor here.</p>
+
+<p>The new U-boat campaign will go along the armed merchantman lines
+and an endeavour will be made to force or get us in some way to
+recognise that an armed merchantman is the same as a warship<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+and, therefore, may be fired on without notice. It is the old
+story, but more subtly presented.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Food situation more and more serious, riots lately in two markets
+in Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>Have not yet received passes to see the Belgians.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly Ludendorff is the real dictator of Germany to-day.
+What he thinks about America may be judged from the circumstances
+before Colonel Kuhn's recall.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The nearer I get to the situation the more I consider the
+President's peace note an exceedingly wise move. It has made it
+very difficult for the terrorists here to start anything which
+will bring Germany into conflict with the U.&nbsp;S.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Chancellor, Zimmermann, Stumm, have all ridiculed the idea
+that Germany will go back on her "Sussex" pledges; but if she
+does, then the peace note makes it easier for America to enter
+the war on the Allies' side with a clear conscience and the
+knowledge on the part of the people at home that the President
+did everything possible to keep us out of the mess.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE KULTUR OF KAISERDOM&mdash;THE GERMAN SOUL</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> older I grow the more it seems to me that all men are alike
+and that they have been alike at all periods of history, capable
+of the same development and differing only because of
+environment.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe, for example, that any mystery is concealed
+behind the faces of the peoples of the East. Once I asked
+Soughimoura, my colleague in Berlin, Ambassador of Japan, whether
+the Japanese were as much subject to nerves as western peoples.
+He answered in the affirmative but said they were taught from
+infancy to control their nerves. I asked him how, and he said the
+principle of the system was deep abdominal breathing with a slow
+release of the breath as soon as nervousness came on. Japanese
+wrestlers practised this, he added, and when a man took deep
+breaths it was almost impossible to throw him.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, social life and customs change with climate. But
+education is the most powerful factor of all. The Aztecs of
+Mexico offered human sacrifices, but the letter of the Aztec
+mother to her daughter, giving advice and counsel, mentioned by
+Prescott in his history, might have been written<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> by a New
+England mother to-day. Somewhere in the world is a savage eating
+human flesh, persuaded that in so doing he is acting in
+accordance with the tenets of his religion.</p>
+
+<p>These are the extremes.</p>
+
+<p>But the German or rather the Prussian, has been moulded into the
+extraordinary person that he is to-day by a slow process of
+education extending through several generations. At Marienburg,
+on the Baltic shore of Germany, stands the ancient castle of the
+Teutonic Knights recently restored by the German Kaiser. The
+Knights at one time conquered and occupied much of the territory
+that is now modern Prussia. A military religious order, they
+attracted adventurers from all lands and their descendants
+constitute many of the noble families of Prussia. It is this
+tradition of conquest for gain that still animates the ruling
+class of Prussia and therefore all Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Later through the middle ages and as the central power of the
+Emperor grew weaker and weaker, what is to-day Germany became a
+nest of dukedoms and principalities. Before the French Revolution
+these numbered hundreds. After the Thirty Years' War which
+ravaged Germany from 1615 to 1645 extreme poverty was often
+conspicuous at these petty courts. War was an industry and the
+poor German peasants were frequently bartered as slaves to the
+war-god, as the Hessians were sold by their ruler to the British
+in our War of the Revolution. The Germans were then the
+mercenaries of Europe, savages skilled in war, without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> mercy
+towards the towns unfortunate enough to be given to their
+pillage. There is no more horrible event in all history than that
+of the sack of Rome by the German mercenaries in the year 1527.
+Under General George von Frundsberg, who joined forces with the
+recreant constable Bourbon of France and the Spaniards, these
+lawless Germans invaded the fertile plains of Italy and took Rome
+by assault.</p>
+
+<p>The most awful outrages were perpetrated. Prelates were tortured
+after being paraded through the streets of the Eternal City,
+dressed in their sacred pontificals and mounted on donkeys.
+Altars were defiled, sacred images broken, vestments and services
+and works of art taken from the plundered churches and sacred
+relics insulted, broken and scattered. For nine months the orgy
+continued, the inhabitants being tortured by these German
+soldiers in their effort to find hidden treasure. In fact
+conditions in Belgium to-day had their counterpart centuries ago
+in the treatment of Roman Catholic Priests and the people of
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The great change in the feeling of the country towards Prussia
+since the latter's conquest of the rest of Germany in 1866, is
+still exemplified by one quotation from Goethe. He said, "The
+Prussian was born a brute and civilisation will make him
+ferocious." We all have seen how prophetic was this sentence.
+Skilled in chemistry, in science, well educated, made rich by
+manufacturing and foreign commerce, the Prussians of to-day have
+shown themselves far more bloody, far more cruel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> than the German
+lansquenet of the middle ages who sold himself, his two handed
+sword, his military experience and his long lance to the highest
+bidder.</p>
+
+<p>Tacitus tells of how the ancient Germans when drawn up in battle
+array used to sing a sort of war song to terrify their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>It was Goethe incidentally who remarked "Amerika, du hast es
+besser." (America, you are better off.) The poet who died in 1832
+foresaw, indeed, the coming power of the free democracy across
+the seas.</p>
+
+<p>It was interesting to note the psychological development of the
+Germans during the war. For the very short time while war hung in
+the balance there was a period almost of rejoicing, among the
+singing crowds in the streets&mdash;a universal release of tension
+after forty years' preparation for war.</p>
+
+<p>Next came the busy period of mobilisation and then, as the German
+armies swept through Belgium and France, stronghold and fortress
+falling before them, there came a period of intense exaltation, a
+period when the most reasonable Germans, the light of success and
+conquest in their eyes, declared German Kultur would now be
+imposed on the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>The battle of the Marne ended this period of rejoicing and,
+through the winter of 1914-1915, when it became apparent that
+Germany would not win by a sudden assault, the temper of the
+people began to change to an attitude of depression.</p>
+
+<p>It has been at all times the policy of the German<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> autocracy to
+keep the people of Germany from amusing themselves. I know of no
+class in Germany which really enjoys life. The Counts and Junkers
+have their country estates. Life on these estates, which are
+administered solely for profit, is not like country life in
+England or America. The houses are plain and, for the most part,
+without the conveniences of bath rooms and heating to which we
+are accustomed in America. Very few automobiles are owned in
+Germany. There are practically no small country houses or
+bungalows, although at a few of the sea places rich Jews have
+villas.</p>
+
+<p>The wealthy merchant takes his vacation in summer at Carlsbad or
+Kissingen or in some other resort where his physical
+constitution, disorganised by over-eating and over-drinking, can
+be regulated somewhat. Many Germans take their families to
+Switzerland where the German of all ages with knapsack and Alpine
+stick is a familiar sight.</p>
+
+<p>Earnestness is the watchword. For should the people once get a
+taste of pleasure they might decide that the earth offered fairer
+possibilities than life in the barracks or the admiring
+contemplation of fat and complacent grand dukes and princes.</p>
+
+<p>Much of this sycophancy is due to the poverty of the educated
+classes. Salaries paid to officials are ridiculously small. The
+German workingmen both in wages and living are on a lower scale
+than those of other western nations with the possible exception
+of Russia, Italy and the Balkan States. The professional and
+business classes earn very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> little. The reason for the
+superiority of the German in the chemical industry is because a
+chemist, a graduate of the university, can be hired for less than
+the salary of an American chauffeur.</p>
+
+<p>And this earnestness of life was insisted upon even to a greater
+degree by the autocracy with the opening of war. The playing of
+dance music brought a visit from the police. The theatres at
+first were closed but later opened. Only plays of a serious or
+patriotic nature were originally permitted. Dancing was tabooed,
+but in the winter of 1915-16 Reinhardt was allowed to produce a
+ballet of a severely classical nature and at the opera
+performances the ponderous ballet girls were permitted to cavort
+as usual.</p>
+
+<p>I saw no signs of any great religious revival, no greater
+attendance at the churches. Perhaps this was because I was in the
+Protestant part of Germany where the church is under the direct
+control of the government and where the people feel that in
+attending church they are only attending an extra drill, a drill
+where they will be told of the glories of the autocracy and the
+necessity of obedience. In fact, religion may be said to have
+failed in Germany and many state-paid preachers launched sermons
+of hate from their state-owned pulpits.</p>
+
+<p>Always fond of the drama and opera I was a constant attendant at
+theatres in Berlin. The best known manager in Berlin is
+Reinhardt, who has under his control the Deutsches Theatre with
+its annex, the Kammerspiel and also the People's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> Theatre on the
+B&uuml;low Platz. I made the acquaintance of Mr. Reinhardt and his
+charming wife who takes part in many of his productions. I dined
+with them in their picturesque house on the Kupfer Graben. In the
+Deutsches Theatre the great revolving stage makes change of scene
+easy so that Reinhardt is enabled to present Shakespeare, a great
+favourite in Germany, in a most picturesque manner. He manages to
+lend even to the most solemn tragedy little touches that add
+greatly to the interest and keep the attention fixed.</p>
+
+<p>For instance in his production of "Macbeth," when Lady Macbeth
+comes in, in the sleep-walking scene, rubbing her hands and
+saying, "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" the actress
+taking this part in Berlin gave a very distinct and loud snore
+between every three or four words: thus most effectively
+reminding the audience that she was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>As the war continued the taste of the Germans turned to sombre,
+tragical and almost sinister plays. Only a death on the stage
+seemed to bring a ray of animation to the stolid bovine faces of
+the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season
+was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, whose "Spring's Awakening,"
+given in New York in the spring of 1917, horrified and disgusted
+the most hardened Broadway theatregoers. The principal female
+r&ocirc;le was played by a Servian actress, Maria Orska&mdash;very much on
+the type of Nazimova. In this play, presented to crowded
+audiences, only one of the four acts was without a death.</p>
+
+<p>Another favourite during war-time, played at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> Reinhardt's
+theatre, was "Maria Magdalena." The characters were the father,
+mother, son and daughter of a German family in a small town and
+two young men in love with the daughter. In the first act the
+police arrest the son for theft, giving the mother such a shock
+that she dies of apoplexy on the stage. In the second act, the
+two lovers have a duel and one is killed. In the third act, the
+surviving lover commits suicide, and, in the fourth act, the
+daughter jumps down the well. The curtain descends leaving only
+the old man and the cat alive and the impression is given that if
+the curtain were ten seconds later either the cat would get the
+old man or the old man would get the cat!</p>
+
+<p>The mysterious play of Peer Gynt was given in two theatres during
+each winter of the war. All of Ibsen's dramas played to crowded
+houses. Reinhardt, during the last winter I was in Berlin,
+produced Strindberg's "Ghost Sonata," in quite a wonderful way.
+The play was horrible and grewsome enough, but as produced by
+him, it gave a strong man nightmare for days afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>The German soul, indeed, seems to turn not towards light and gay
+and graceful things, but towards bloodshed and grewsomeness,
+ghosts and mystery&mdash;effect doubtless of the long, dark, bitter
+nights and gray days that overshadow these northern lands.</p>
+
+<p>I think the only time I lost my temper in Germany was when a
+seemingly reasonable and polite gentleman from the Foreign Office
+sitting by my desk one day, in 1916, remarked how splendid it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+was that Germany had nearly two million prisoners of war and that
+these would go back to their homes imbued with an intense
+admiration of German Kultur.</p>
+
+<p>I said that I believed that the two million prisoners of war who
+had been insulted and underfed and beaten and forced to work as
+slaves in factories and mines and on farms would go back to their
+homes with such a hatred of all things German that it would not
+be safe for Germans to travel in countries from which these
+prisoners came, that other nations had their own Kultur with
+which they were perfectly satisfied and which they did not wish
+to change for any made-in-Germany brand!</p>
+
+<p>Certain Germans have prated much of German "Kultur," have boasted
+of imposing this "Kultur" on the world by force of arms. What is
+this German "Kultur"? A certain efficiency of government obtained
+by keeping the majority of the people out of all voice in
+governmental affairs, a certain low cost of manufactured products
+or of carrying charges in the shipping trades made possible by
+enslaving the workmen who toil long hours for small wages&mdash;a
+certain superiority in chemical production because trained
+chemists, willing to work at one semi-mechanical task, can be
+hired for less than a Fifth Avenue butler is paid in America, and
+a certain pre-eminence in military affairs reached by subjecting
+the mass of the people to the brutal, boorish, non-commissioned
+officers and the galling yoke of a militaristic system.</p>
+
+<p>Subtract the German Jews and in the lines of real<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> culture there
+would be little of the real thing left in Germany. Gutmann,
+Bleichroeder, von Swabach, Friedlander-Fuld, Rathenau, Simon,
+Warburg in finance; Borchardt and others in surgery, and almost
+the whole medical profession; the Meyers, the Ehrlichs,
+Bamberger, Hugo Schiff, Newburger, Bertheim, Paul Jacobson, in
+chemistry and research; Mendelssohn, and others, in music;
+Harden, Theodor Wolf, Georg Bernhard and Professor Stein in
+journalism.</p>
+
+<p>But why continue&mdash;about the only men not Jews prominent in the
+intellectual, artistic, financial, or commercial life of Germany
+are the pastors of the Lutheran Churches. And the Jews have won
+their way to the front in almost a generation. Still refused
+commissions in the standing army (except for about 114 since the
+war), still compelled to renounce their religion before being
+eligible for nobility or a court function, still practically
+excluded from university professorships, considered socially
+inferior, the Jews of Germany until a few years ago lived under
+disabilities that had survived from the Middle Ages. They were
+not allowed to bear Christian names. The marriages of Jews and
+Christians were forbidden. Jews could not own houses and lands.
+They were not permitted to engage in agriculture and could not
+become members of the guilds or unions of handicraftsmen. When a
+Jew travelled he was compelled to pay a tax in each province
+through which he passed. Jews attending the fair at Frankfort on
+the Oder were compelled to pay a head tax, and were admitted to
+Leipzig and Dresden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> on condition that they might be expelled at
+any time. Berlin Jews were compelled to buy annually a certain
+quantity of porcelain, derisively called "Jew's porcelain" from
+the Royal manufactory and to sell it abroad. When a Jew married
+he had to get permission and an annual impost was paid on each
+member of the family, while only one son could remain at home,
+and the others were forced to seek their fortune abroad. The Jews
+could worship in their own way, in some states, provided they
+used only two small rooms and made no noise.</p>
+
+<p>The reproach that the Jew is not a producer, but is a mere
+middleman, taking a profit as goods pass from hand to hand, is
+handed down from the time when Jews were forbidden by law to
+become producers and, therefore, were compelled to become traders
+and middlemen, barred from the guilds and from engaging in the
+cultivation of the soil.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The German newspaper in size is much smaller than ours. If you
+take an ordinary American newspaper and fold it in half, the fold
+appearing horizontally across the middle of the page and then
+turn it so that the longer sides are upright, you get an idea of
+the size. There are no editorials in German newspapers, but
+articles, usually only one a day, on some political or scientific
+subject, one contributed by a professor or some one else
+supposedly not connected with the newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>The editor of the German newspaper in his desire to poison and
+colour the news to suit his own views does not rely upon an
+editorial, but inserts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> little paragraphs and sentences in the
+news columns. For instance, a note of President Wilson's might be
+printed and after a paragraph of that, a statement something like
+this will be inserted in parentheses. "This statement comes well
+from the old hyprocrite whose country has been supplying arms and
+ammunition to the enemies of Germany. The Editor." A few
+sentences more or a paragraph of the note and another
+interlineation of this kind. Small newspapers have a news service
+furnished free by the government, thus enabling the latter to
+colour the news to suit itself. It is characteristic of Germany
+and shows how void of amusement the life of an average citizen is
+and how the country is divided into castes, that there is no
+so-called society or personal news in the columns of the daily
+newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>You never see in a German newspaper accounts common even to our
+small town newspapers, of how Mrs. Snooks gave a tea or how Mrs.
+Jones, of Toledo, is visiting Mrs. Judge Bascom for Thanksgiving.
+If a prince or duke comes to a German town a simple statement is
+printed that he is staying at such and such a hotel.</p>
+
+<p>German newspapers, as a rule, are very pronounced in their views,
+either distinctly Conservative or Liberal or Socialist or Roman
+Catholic. The <i>Berliner Tageblatt</i> is nearest our idea of a great
+independent, metropolitan, daily newspaper. Other newspapers
+represent a class and many of them are owned by particular
+interests such as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> Krupps and other manufacturers or munition
+makers.</p>
+
+<p>There is little that is sensational in the German newspaper. I
+remember on one occasion that two women murderers were beheaded
+in accordance with German law. Imagine how such an occurrence
+would have been "played up" in the American newspapers, with
+pictures, perhaps, of the executioner and his sword, with
+articles from poets and women's organisations, with appeals for
+pardon and talk of brainstorms and the other hysterical
+concomitants of murder trials in the United States. But in the
+German newspapers a little paragraph, not exceeding ten lines,
+simply related the fact that these two women, condemned for
+murdering such and such a person, had been executed in the
+strangely medieval manner&mdash;their heads cut off on the scaffold by
+a public executioner.</p>
+
+<p>The German newspapers in reporting police court and other
+judicial proceedings often omit names and it is possible in
+Berlin for a man to prosecute a blackmailer without having his
+own name in print.</p>
+
+<p>When a German victory was announced flags were displayed, but as
+the war progressed so many victories announced turned out to be
+nothing wonderful or decisive that little attention was paid to
+the vain-glorious flaunting of German triumphs. Following an old
+custom ten or fifteen trumpeters climbed the tower of Rathhaus or
+City Hall and there quite characteristically blew to the four
+quarters of Heaven; but again as these official and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> brazen
+blowings were not always followed by the confirmation in fact,
+trumpetings were gradually discontinued.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans cleverly kept back the announcement of certain
+successes in order to offset reverses. For instance, on a day
+when it was necessary to tell the people of a German retreat the
+newspapers would have great headlines across the front of the
+first page announcing the sinking of a British cruiser (sunk,
+perhaps, a month before) and then hidden in a corner would be a
+minimised announcement of a German defeat.</p>
+
+<p>To us in Germany there was at the time no battle of the Marne. So
+gradually was the news of the retreat of the German forces broken
+to the people that to-day the masses do not realise that the fate
+of the world was settled at the Marne!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE LITTLE KAISERS</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">A</span>s</span> the king idea seems inseparably connected with war there is no
+country in the world where kings and princes have been held in
+such great account as in the Central Empires.</p>
+
+<p>I believe there are only two Christian kings in the world&mdash;the
+kings of Italy and of Montenegro&mdash;who are not by blood related to
+some German or Austrian royalty.</p>
+
+<p>For remember that while we think of Germany as ruled by the
+Kaiser and while it is his will that is certainly imposed upon
+the whole of that territory which does not exist politically or
+even geographically but which we call Germany, there are houses
+of royalty in it almost as numerous as our big corporations.
+There are the three kings of Bavaria, W&uuml;rtemburg and Saxony,
+grand dukes and dukes, and princes, all of them taking themselves
+very seriously and all of them residing in their own domains;
+jealously keeping away from the Emperor's court and jealously
+guarding every remnant of rule which the constitution of the
+German Empire has bequeathed to them.</p>
+
+<p>Once I asked one of these princelings what his older brother, the
+reigning prince, did with his time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> in the small provincial town
+which is the capital of the principality. The brother looked at
+me with real surprise in his eyes and answered, "Why he reigns!"</p>
+
+<p>Before the constitution of the German Empire, many of these
+poverty-stricken little courts were centres of kindly amusement,
+even of intellectual life.</p>
+
+<p>The court of the Grand Duke Charles-Augustus, of
+Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach at Weimar where Goethe resided and where he
+was entrusted with responsible state duties, was renowned in
+Europe as a literary centre.</p>
+
+<p>Many of these princelings, however ridiculous their courts may
+have seemed, exercised despotic power. To-day the inhabitants of
+the two Mecklenburg duchies are protected by neither constitution
+nor bill of rights. The grand duke's power is absolute and he can
+behead at will any one of his subjects in the market-place or
+torture him to death in the dungeons of the castle and is
+responsible to God alone.</p>
+
+<p>Here is an example from history. George Louis, Duke of
+Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle, married his mistress, a Huguenot girl
+called Eleanore d'Olbreuze. They had one daughter, Sophia
+Dorothea, who married the Elector of Hanover, who was also George
+I of England. Sophia Dorothea was supposed to have been involved
+in a love affair with a Swedish Count, Philip Konigsmarck.
+Konigsmarck was murdered by order of George I, and Sophia
+Dorothea incarcerated in Ahlden where she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> died in 1726.
+Konigsmarck's sister went to Saxony to beg the aid of the Saxon
+King, Augustus the Strong. She failed to get news of her brother,
+but became one of the mistresses of Augustus the Strong and the
+mother of the celebrated Marshal Saxe. I say one of the
+"mistresses" of Augustus the Strong because he boasted that he
+was the father of 365 illegitimate children!</p>
+
+<p>The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was the mother of Frederick the
+Great and his brothers, and therefore, an ancestor of the present
+German Kaiser. Any one writing about her in a disparaging manner
+is subject to be imprisoned, under the decisions of the Imperial
+Supreme Court, for "l&egrave;se-majest&eacute;" or injuring the person of the
+present monarch in daring to slander his ancestors. And, I
+suppose, any one referring to Augustus the Strong may be shut up
+in Dresden for insulting a predecessor of the present King.</p>
+
+<p>Every year the nobles of the Central Empires hold a convention at
+Frankfort, where the means are discussed by which their
+privileges may be preserved. No newspaper prints an account of
+this Convention of the highest Caste.</p>
+
+<p>The German peasants, as far as I have seen, are not so much under
+the dominion of feudal tradition as are the peasants in Austria
+and Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>I was shooting once with a Hungarian Count who stationed me in
+one corner of a field to await the partridges, which driven by
+the beaters were expected to fly over my head and as I stood
+waiting for the beaters to take up their positions two peasant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+girls walked past me. One of them, to my surprise, caught hold of
+my hand, which she kissed with true feudal devotion. As a guest
+of the Count I was presumably of the noble class and therefore
+entitled by custom and right to this mark of subjugation. And it
+became quite a task in walking through the halls of the castle to
+dodge the servants, all of whom seemed anxious to imprint on me
+the kiss of homage.</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray in the "Fitzboodle Confessions" gives a most amusing
+account of life in one of these small, sleepy, German courts and
+relates how he left Pumpernickel hurriedly, by night, after the
+court ball where he had discovered not only that his German
+fianc&eacute;e had eaten too much, but that she had a taste for bad
+oysters.</p>
+
+<p>All of these small kings and princes are jealous of the King of
+Prussia and of his position of German Emperor and show their
+jealousy by avoiding Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>In October, 1913, when in London on my way to Germany, I met the
+young Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz in the Ritz Hotel where
+he was dining with an English earl and his beautiful wife. As I
+happened to have a box for the Gaiety Theatre, we all went there
+together and paid a visit to George Grossmith behind the scenes
+and talked with Emmy Wehlen, the Austrian actress, who was
+appearing in the comic opera then running. But in all the time
+that I was in Germany I never once saw or heard of the young
+Grand Duke who rules<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> the subjects of his duchy with autocratic
+rule without even the semblance of a constitution.</p>
+
+<p>Formerly our minister used to be accredited to some of these
+courts and, on inquiring informally through a friend, I learned
+that the American Minister is still accredited to Bavaria on the
+records of the Bavarian Foreign Office, no letters of recall ever
+having been presented. The fact that the American Ambassador is
+accredited to none of these courts is a distinct disadvantage
+because without letters of credence he does not come into contact
+with any of the twenty-four rulers of Germany who control the
+Bundesrat in which their representatives sit, voting as they are
+told by the kings, grand dukes and princes. A number of these
+kings and princelings, combining in the Bundesrat, can outvote
+the powerful king of Prussia. But they don't dare!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>ROYALTY'S RECREATION</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">I</span>&nbsp;had</span> a shooting estate about twenty miles from Berlin, one that
+I could reach by automobile in forty-five minutes from the door
+of the Embassy. Because of the strict German game laws I had
+better shooting there than within two hundred miles of large
+cities in America.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be something to shoot there almost every day of
+the year. On the sixteenth of May the season opened for male
+roe&mdash;a very small deer. About the first of August the ducks,
+which breed in northern Germany, can be shot. These were mallards
+and there were about two thousand or more on a lake on my
+preserve. We usually shot them by digging blinds in the oat
+fields, shooting them after sunset as they flew from the lake to
+feed in the newly harvested grain. The season for Hungarian
+partridge opened on August 20th. These were shot over dogs in the
+stubble and in the potato fields. After a few weeks partridges
+became very wild and we then shot them with a kite. When we had
+put up a covey out of range and marked where they went down in a
+potato patch or field, perhaps of lucern or clover, a small boy
+would fly a kite made in the form of a hawk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> over the field. This
+kept the partridges from flying and they would lie while the dogs
+pointed until we put them up.</p>
+
+<p>By October 1st pheasants could be shot; English pheasants become
+wild. These roosted in the trees at night and so escaped the
+plentiful foxes. Later on came shooting at long ranges, after
+they had collected in bands, of the female roedeer and also the
+hare shooting. Rabbits were shot at all times, and in November
+and December and January on foggy days it was not difficult to
+get a wild goose.</p>
+
+<p>The hares were shot in cold weather, after the snow was on the
+ground, by walking in line of ten or fifteen beaters with two or
+three guns at intervals along the line and later, when the hares
+were very wild and the weather very cold, by what is called by
+the Germans "kessel-jagd" or kettle-hunt. For this hunt the head
+keeper would collect a number of beaters, as many as a hundred,
+from the neighboring towns and villages, mostly small boys and
+old men. On the great, flat plain the keeper would send out his
+beaters to the right and the left, walking in a straight line at
+about twenty-yard intervals. After each side had gone perhaps
+half a mile they would then turn at right angles, walk a mile,
+and then turn at right angles until the two lines met, so that
+perhaps a square mile of territory would be enclosed by the
+beaters with the ten to fifteen men with guns at intervals in the
+line. When the square had been formed the head keeper blew a
+blast on his bugle and all turned and walked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> slowly towards the
+centre and the hares were shot as they attempted to break through
+the line.</p>
+
+<p>On one day just before I left Germany, I and members of the
+Embassy shot more than two hundred hares on one of these hunts.
+The German hare is an enormous animal with dark meat, almost
+impossible to distinguish from venison.</p>
+
+<p>After these hare drives, besides, of course, paying the beaters
+their regular wages, I used to hold a lottery, giving a number of
+these hares as prizes or distributing hares to the magnates of
+the village, such as the pastor, the school teacher, the
+policeman and the postmaster.</p>
+
+<p>When we were shooting in the summer and autumn the peasants were
+working in the fields and one had to be very careful in shooting
+roebuck with a high-powered rifle. It is customary to hunt
+roebuck on these flat plains from a carriage. In this way a
+bullet, travelling at a downward angle, if the buck is missed,
+strikes the ground within a short distance. If one were to shoot
+lying down, kneeling or standing, the danger to peasants in the
+fields would be very great. The pheasants were sometimes shot
+over dogs, but usually as the beaters drove small woods. A
+pheasant driven and flying high makes a difficult mark. One
+getting up before the dogs is almost too easy a shot.</p>
+
+<p>We shot the rabbits by using ferrets, little animals like weasels
+wearing little muzzles and bells upon their necks. In the woods
+where the rabbits had their holes four or five ferrets would be
+put in the rabbits' holes and it was quite difficult to shoot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+rabbits as they came out like lightning, dodging among the trees.
+In the early spring the "birkhahns" were shot, a variety of black
+and white grouse. There were some blinds or little huts of twigs
+erected near places where the ground was beaten hard and on these
+open, beaten spots early in the morning the "birkhahns" waltz,
+doing a peculiar backward and forward dance in some way connected
+with their marriage ceremonies. There were also on this estate
+numbers, at times, of a curious bird found only in Spain,
+Roumania, Asia Minor, and these plains of the Mark of
+Brandenburg, a large bustard called by the Germans "trappe."
+These birds were very shy and hard to approach. Although I had
+several shots at them with a rifle at four or five hundred yards
+I did not succeed in getting one.</p>
+
+<p>In talking with the Chancellor he almost always opened the
+conversation by asking if I had yet killed a "trappe." As a rule
+the German uses for shooting deer and roebuck a German Mauser
+military rifle, but with the barrel cut down and a sporting stock
+with pistol grip added. On this there is a powerful telescope.
+Many Germans carry a "ziel-stock," a long walking stick from the
+bottom of which a tripod can be protruded and near the top a sort
+of handle piece of metal about as big as a little finger. When
+the German sportsman has sighted a roebuck he plants his aiming
+stick in the ground, rests the rifle on the side projection,
+carefully adjusts his telescope, sets the hair trigger on his
+rifle and finally touches the trigger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the commencement of the war the Duke of Ratibor collected all
+these sporting rifles with telescopes and sent them to the front.
+These were of the same calibre as the military rifles and took
+the military cartridge, so they proved enormously useful for
+sniping purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Going one day to a proof establishment to try a gun I opened by
+mistake a door which led to a great room where thousands of
+German military rifles were being fitted with telescopes. These
+telescopes have crossed wires, like those in a surveyor's
+instrument, and it is only necessary in aiming to fix the centre
+of the crossed wires on the game and pull the trigger. A clever
+arrangement enables the wires to be elevated for distant
+shooting.</p>
+
+<p>So great is the discipline of the German people that game on
+these estates is seldom, if ever, touched by the peasants. There
+is no free shooting in Germany. The shooting rights of every inch
+of land are in possession of some one and the tens of thousands
+of game keepers constantly killing the crows, hawks, foxes and
+other birds and animals that destroy eggs and game make the game
+plentiful. The keeper has the right by law to shoot any stray dog
+or cat found a hundred yards from a village. I paid the head
+keeper a certain sum per month and in addition he received a
+premium called "shot money" for each bird or roebuck shot. He
+also received a premium for each fox or crow or hawk he
+destroyed, bringing, on the first of the month, the beaks and
+claws of the hawks, etc., to prove his claim. Foxes are very
+plentiful in Germany<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> and in one winter on this estate, only
+twenty miles from Berlin, the keeper trapped or killed twelve
+foxes.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="medal" id="medal"></a><a href="images/illo162.jpg"><img src="images/illo162_th.jpg"
+alt="Commemorative medal" title="EXAMPLE OF THE COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OFFERED FOR
+SALE" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">EXAMPLE OF THE COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OFFERED FOR
+SALE. ON THE OBVERSE IS THE PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE. ON THE
+REVERSE IS &quot;YOUNG SIEGFRIED&quot; ATTACKING A CHIMERA-LIKE MONSTER
+WITH FOUR HEADS: A BEAR FOR RUSSIA, A UNICORN FOR ENGLAND, A LION
+FOR BELGIUM, AND A COCK FOR FRANCE</p>
+
+
+<p>The Emperor is very fond of fox shooting. Foxes are driven out of
+the forest past his shooting stand by beaters and one of the
+reasons why Prince F&uuml;rstenberg was such a favourite of the
+Emperor was that he provided him with splendid fox shooting,
+although it is whispered that he bought foxes in boxes in all
+parts of Germany and had them turned loose for the Emperor's
+benefit.</p>
+
+<p>In the more thickly forested portions of Germany deer as well as
+roedeer are shot and in many districts wild boar. In Poland and
+in a few estates in Germany on the eastern border, moose, called
+elk (elch in German), are to be had. These, however, have very
+poor horns.</p>
+
+<p>Talking to the keepers and beaters on this shooting estate gave
+me a very good idea of the hardships suffered in rural Germany,
+of the way in which the people in the farming districts are kept
+down by the lords of the manor and by the government, and it was
+from this village and the neighbouring town that I got some idea
+of the number of men called to arms in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>By a custom dating from the devastating wars of the Middle Ages
+there are practically no farms in Germany, but inhabitants of the
+agricultural districts are collected in villages and the few
+farms have, characteristically, a military name. They are called
+"vorwerk" or outposts. In the village on my estate there are
+almost exactly six hundred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> inhabitants, men, women and children,
+and of these at the time I left Germany one hundred and ten had
+been called to the Colours. In the neighbouring town of
+Mittenwalde, of almost three thousand inhabitants, over five
+hundred had joined the army. At the commencement of the war the
+population of the German Empire was about 72,000,000, or
+something over, and applying these same proportions it will be
+seen what a vast army was created.</p>
+
+<p>In the industrial districts where men are required for munition
+work perhaps not as great a proportion has been called. The name
+of the village on my estate was Gross Machnow, the road from
+Berlin to Dresden ran through it and only a few miles east was
+the shooting place of Wusterhausen where the favourite shooting
+box of the father of Frederick the Great was and where he was
+accustomed to hold his so-called tobacco parliament, when, with
+his cronies, over beer and long pipes, the affairs of the nation
+were discussed with great freedom.</p>
+
+<p>The horse races in Germany are excellent. There are several
+tracks about Berlin. The Hoppegarten, devoted almost exclusively
+to flat racing; the Grunewald, the large popular track nearest to
+Berlin where both steeplechases and other races are held; and
+Karlshorst, devoted exclusively to steeplechasing and hurdle
+racing.</p>
+
+<p>The jockey club of Berlin is the Union Club, which owns the
+Hoppegarten track. Its officers are men of the highest honour and
+in no country in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> the world are the races run more honestly, more
+"on the level," than in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing makes for mutual international understanding more than
+sport. Even during the most bitter crises between Germany and
+America I felt that I could go absolutely alone to the crowded
+race tracks and, while I know the Germans differed emphatically
+with the American views of the war, the gentlemen in charge of
+the races and the members of the Union Club treated me with the
+kindest consideration and the most graceful courtesy.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">I am sorry that I never attended any of the Court hunts which
+took place in the vicinity of Potsdam. A pack of hounds is kept
+there and boars hunted. The etiquette is very strict and no one,
+not presented at court, can appear at these hunts. As I did not
+have an opportunity to present my letters of credence until a
+month or more after my arrival in Berlin in the autumn of 1913,
+the winter rains had set in before I was eligible for the hunts
+and in addition I had not taken the precaution to order the
+necessary costumes.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The first time that a man appears at one of these hunts he must
+wear a tall silk hat, a double-breasted red coat, with tails like
+a dress coat, white breeches and top boots. After he has once
+made his appearance in this costume he may, thereafter,
+substitute for it a red frock hunting coat, white breeches and
+top boots and a velvet hunting cap, the same shape as the caps
+worn by the jockies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> There are no jumps on these hunts. When the
+boar has been brought to bay by the dogs, the right to despatch
+him with a long hunting knife is reserved for the most
+distinguished man present. If a royalty is present at one of
+these hunts he distributes small sprigs of oak leaves to every
+one at the hunt, cherished ever after as valued souvenirs.</p>
+
+<p>When I first arrived at Berlin, having brought horses with me
+from America, I used to ride every morning in the Tiergarten.
+Because so many Germans are in the army, riding is a very
+favourite sport and in peace times the Tiergarten is crowded with
+Berliners. Most of the riding was done between seven and ten in
+the morning. The early rising is compensated for, however, by the
+siesta after lunch, a universal custom.</p>
+
+<p>Shooting is almost more of a ceremony than a sport. The letters
+exchanged between Emperor William and Czar Nicholas, lately
+discovered in the Winter Palace, show what a large part shooting
+played in their correspondence. One or the other is continually
+wishing the other "Weidmanns-Heil," which is the German
+expression for "good luck" as applied to shooting. All royalties
+must ride and keep in practice, especially because of military
+service. Indeed, all the sports of the Kaiser and his people
+converge toward a common object&mdash;military efficiency and war.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE ETERNAL FEMININE</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">E</span>ven</span> the women, many of whom are honorary colonels to regiments,
+must keep in trim for the great parade days of autumn and spring.
+Many of these female colonels appear in uniform, riding at the
+head of their regiments. They sit on side saddles, however, and
+wear skirts corresponding somewhat in colour with the uniform
+coat and helmet of the regiment of which they are the honorary
+proprietors.</p>
+
+<p>German female royalties are rather inclined to set an example of
+quietness in dress. They seldom wear the latest fashion and never
+follow the exaggerated modes of Paris. Even their figures are of
+the old-fashioned variety&mdash;pinched at the waist. While in the
+Tiergarten in the morning I saw many good horses, but only one
+fashionably cut riding habit. Many of the others must have been
+at least twenty years old, as the sleeves were of the Leg of
+Mutton style, fashionable, I believe, about that number of years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>Many German noblewomen shoot and are quite as good shots as their
+husbands. I was quite surprised once on a shooting party to meet
+an elderly princess whose grey hair was in short curls and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> who
+wore a coat and waistcoat like a man's. She shot with great skill
+and smoked long Havana cigars!</p>
+
+<p>When German women get out of the country they very quickly
+imitate foreign fashions and extravagances of dress. The Czarina
+of Russia, for example, a German Princess, is very fond of
+fashions, and a friend of mine who had three audiences with her
+during the war tells me that on the occasion of his first
+audience she was dressed in black and received him in a room
+where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was
+in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her
+dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white.</p>
+
+<p>There is one good thing about the king and aristocratic system.
+The position of women in the social scale is fixed by the
+husband's rank. There is, therefore, none of that striving, that
+vying with each other, which so often exhausts the nerves of the
+American woman and the purse of the husband. The German women
+give their time and attention to the "Four K's" that, in a
+German's eyes, should bound a woman's world, "Kaiser, Kinder,
+Kirche, Kuche" (Emperor, children, church and kitchen).</p>
+
+<p>The successful business man of New York or Chicago or San
+Francisco is surprised to find how docile and domestic the German
+woman is&mdash;no foolish extravagance, but a real devotion to husband
+and home, a real mother to her many children. She matches that
+short epitaph of the Roman matron&mdash;"She spun wool; she kept the
+house."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When I came to Germany I found, on studying the language, that
+there was no word in German corresponding to "efficient." I soon
+learned that this is because everything done in Germany is done
+efficiently, and there is no need to differentiate one act from
+another in terms of efficiency. But the German man could not be
+as efficient as he undoubtedly is, without the whole-hearted
+devotion of the German woman.</p>
+
+<p>German girls are given a good, strong, sound education. They
+learn languages, not smatterings of them. They are accomplished
+musicians. Domestic science they learn from their mothers. They
+are splendid swimmers, hockey players, riders and skaters.</p>
+
+<p>During our first winter in Berlin we spent many afternoons at the
+Ice Palace in the Lutherstrasse, an indoor ice rink much larger
+than the one in the Freidrichstrasse, the Admirals Palast, where
+the ice ballets are given and the graceful Charlotte used to
+appear. The skating club of the Lutherstrasse was under the
+patronage of the Crown Prince and was one of the very few meeting
+places of Berlin society. The women were taught to waltz by male
+instructors and the men by several young women&mdash;blonde skaters
+from East Prussia. I tried to improve my skating and spent many
+hours making painful "Bogens" or circles under the efficient eyes
+of a little East Prussia instructress. Afternoon tea was served
+during the interval of skating and one afternoon a week was
+specially reserved for the Club members.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of my young secretaries used to go occasionally to Wannsee,
+near Berlin, to play hockey with a German friend; as the young
+men were nearly all in the war, girls made up the majority of
+each team. My secretary reported that those German girls were as
+strong, as enduring and as skilful as the average young man.</p>
+
+<p>Girls of the working classes, instead of flirting or turkey
+trotting at night, make a practice of going to the Turnvereins,
+to exercise in the gymnasiums there. If the members of the German
+lower classes only had the opportunity to rise in life what would
+they not accomplish! So many of them are very ambitious,
+persistent, earnest and thrifty.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, female suffrage in Germany or anything approaching it
+is very distant. First of all, the men must win a real ballot for
+themselves in Prussia, a real representation in the Reichstag. In
+the Germany of to-day, a woman with feminist aspirations is
+looked on as the men of the official class look on a Social
+Democrat, something hardly to be endured. And this is in spite of
+the fact that the nations to the North, in Scandinavia, freed
+women even before America did.</p>
+
+<p>The most beautiful woman in Berlin society is Countess
+Oppersdorff&mdash;the mother of thirteen children. She is not German,
+but was born a Polish Princess Radziwill.</p>
+
+<p>The chief lady of the Imperial Court is Countess Brockdorff. She
+is rather stern in appearance and manner, and rumour has it that
+she was appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the
+Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away
+from the traditional rigidity of the Prussian royal house.</p>
+
+<p>Countess Brockdorff is a most able woman. I grew to have not only
+a great respect, but almost an affection for her. At court
+functions she usually wears a mantilla as a distinguished mark
+and several orders and decorations. We had three women friends
+from America with us in Berlin whom we presented at Court. All
+were married, but only the husband of one of them could leave his
+work and visit Germany. The two other husbands, in accordance
+with the good American custom, were at work in America. Countess
+Brockdorff spoke to the lady whose husband was with her, saying
+to her, "I am glad to see that your husband is with you," an
+implied rebuke to the other ladies and an exhibition of that
+failure to understand other nations so characteristic of highly
+placed Germans. With us, of course, a good-natured American
+husband, wedded as much to his business as to his wife, permits
+his wife to travel abroad without him and neither he nor she is
+reproved in America because of this.</p>
+
+<p>Among the other ladies attendant on the Empress are Fr&auml;ulein von
+Gersdorff, whose cousin is a lawyer practising in New York, and
+Countess Keller. There are other ladies and a number of maids of
+honour and all of them are overworked, acting as secretaries,
+answering letters and attending various charitable and other
+functions, either<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> with the Empress or representing her. One of
+the charming maids of honour, Countess Bassewitz, was married
+during the war to Prince Oscar, the Kaiser's fifth son. This
+marriage was morganatic, that is, the lady does not take the
+name, rank and title of her husband. In this case another title
+was given her, that of Countess Ruppin, and her sons will be
+known as Counts Ruppin, but will not be Princes of Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>There is much misunderstanding in America as to these morganatic
+marriages. By the rules of many royal and princely houses, a
+member of the house cannot marry a woman not of equal rank and
+give her his name, titles and rank. But the marriage is in all
+other respects perfectly legal. The ceremony is performed in
+accordance with Prussian law, before a civil magistrate and also
+in a church, and should the husband attempt to marry again he
+would be guilty of bigamy.</p>
+
+<p>I gave away the bride at one of these morganatic marriages, when
+Prince Christian of Hesse married Miss Elizabeth Reid-Rogers, a
+daughter of Richard Reid Rogers, a lawyer of New York. Prince
+Christian has an extremely remote chance of ever coming to the
+throne of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, but nevertheless and because
+of the rules of the House of Hesse-Barchfeld, he cannot give his
+rank and title to a wife, not of equal birth. The head of the
+House, therefore, the Grand Duke of Hesse, conferred the title of
+Baroness Barchfeld in her own right on the bride, and her
+children will be known as Barons and Baronesses Barchfeld.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Prince Christian and his wife go out to dinner in Berlin, he
+is given his rank at the table as a member of a royal house, but
+his wife is treated on a parity with the wives of all officers
+holding commissions of equal grade with her husband in the army.
+As her husband is a Lieutenant, she ranks merely as a
+Lieutenant's wife. On the same day that Miss Rogers and Prince
+Christian were wedded, Miss Cecilia May of Baltimore married
+Lieutenant Vom Rath. I acted as one of Miss May's witnesses at
+the Standesamt, where the civil marriage was performed, while the
+religious marriage took place in our Embassy. Lieutenant Vom Rath
+is the son of one of the proprietors of the great dye works
+manufactories known as Lucius-Meister-Farbewerke at Hoehst, near
+Frankfurt a.&nbsp;M., where salvarsan and many other medicines used in
+America are manufactured, as well as dyestuffs and chemicals.</p>
+
+<p>In my earlier book I described presentations at the Royal
+Prussian Court in Berlin, especially the great court called the
+"Schleppencour," because of the long trains or Schleppe worn by
+the women. All the little kingdoms and principalities of the
+German Empire have somewhat the same ceremonies. In Dresden, the
+capital of Saxony, a peculiar custom is followed. The King and
+Queen sit at a table at one end of the room playing cards and the
+members of the court and distinguished strangers file into the
+room, pass by the card table in single file and drop deep
+courtesies and make bows to the seated royalties, who,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> as a
+rule, do not even take the trouble to glance at those engaged in
+this servile tribute to small royalty. I suppose that the excuse
+for this is that it is an old custom. But so is serfdom!</p>
+
+<p>There are in Germany many so-called mediatised families,
+so-called because at one time they possessed royal rank and
+rights over small bits of territory before Napoleon changed the
+map of Europe and wiped out so many small principalities.</p>
+
+<p>At the Congress of Vienna these families who lost their right of
+rule, in part compensation, were given the right to marry either
+royalties or commoners; so that the marriage of a Prince of
+Prussia with a daughter of one of these mediatised houses would
+not be morganatic. The girl would take the full rank of her
+husband and the children would inherit any rights, including the
+rights to the throne possessed by him.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the beautiful young Countess Platen, shortly before we left
+Berlin, was married to von Stumm, the very able Under Secretary
+of State for Foreign Affairs. While she became on her marriage
+Baroness von Stumm, nevertheless, if she had married the son of
+the Kaiser, she would have taken his rank and her children would
+have inherited all rights and titles possessed by their father.
+This is because the Platens, although bearing only the title of
+Counts, are a mediatised family.</p>
+
+<p>It is noteworthy that in Berlin women of that blonde type with
+regular features, which we believe is the German type, are very
+rare. This type is to be found perfected in Scandinavia,
+although<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> a few specimens exist in Germany. Looking over a Berlin
+theatre I have often noticed the predominance of brown and black
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>There is always some one higher up to whom German women must
+curtsy. All women, whatever their husband's rank, must curtsy to
+a Royal Prince. Unmarried girls curtsy to married women and kiss
+their hands. Men, on meeting women, always kiss their hands.</p>
+
+<p>Berlin is certainly the gossip headquarters of the world. Some
+years ago the whole town was invaded by a mania for anonymous
+letter writing, and when the smoke had cleared away few were left
+with unriddled reputations.</p>
+
+<p>It is the fashion of the present court, however, to be very
+puritanical. No such little affairs are going on publicly, as
+have occurred in the annals of the Hohenzollern family. For even
+the old Emperor William, grandfather of the present Kaiser, had
+numerous love affairs. The tree is still pointed out near the
+Tiergarten where he met Princess Radziwill every day.</p>
+
+<p>And the Chancellor's palace was once the home of another royal
+"friend."</p>
+
+<p>The Foreign Office was at one time the home of the Italian
+dancer, La Barberini, the only woman who ever for a time enslaved
+Frederick the Great. I discussed affairs of state with von Jagow
+and Zimmermann in the very room where she gave her supper
+parties.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>HOME LIFE AND "BRUTALITY" OF THE PEOPLE</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> apartments of Berlin are designed for outward show for which
+the Berliners have a weakness. They have great reception and
+dining-rooms called "representation rooms," but very little
+comfort or space in the sleeping quarters.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to think of dropping in suddenly on a Berliner
+for a meal. The dinners are always for as many people as the
+rooms will hold and are served by a caterer.</p>
+
+<p>Only two very distinguished guests may be invited. The host and
+hostess sit opposite each other at the sides of the table, with
+the guests tapering off in rank to right and left of them, the
+ends of the tables being filled up with aides and secretaries.
+When a great man is invited his aide or secretary must be asked
+also. These come usually without their wives.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner men and women leave the table together and smoke in
+the other rooms of the house, going from group to group. And,
+although perhaps ten kinds of wine are served during dinner, as
+soon as the guests leave the dining-room, servants make their
+appearance with trays of glasses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> of light and dark beer and
+continue to offer beer during the remainder of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans talk much of food and spend a greater part of their
+income on food than any other nation. They take much interest in
+table furnishings, china, etc., and invariably turn over the
+plates to see the marks on the under side.</p>
+
+<p>Whipped cream is an essential to many German dishes, and in the
+season a Berliner will commit any crime to obtain some plover's
+eggs.</p>
+
+<p>The weiss bier of Berlin, served in wide goblets, is rather going
+out of fashion. It often is drunk mixed with raspberry juice.</p>
+
+<p>The restaurants of Berlin are not gay, like those of Paris. There
+is, however, a rather rough night life created for foreign
+consumption. I did not take in any of these night restaurants and
+dancing cabarets, warned by the case of an Ambassador from &mdash;&mdash;
+who was reproved by von Jagow for visiting the "Palais de Danse."</p>
+
+<p>In peace time few automobiles are to be seen on the Berlin
+streets. There are many millionaires in the city, but the old
+habits of German thrift persist.</p>
+
+<p>The modern architecture of Germany is repulsive. The man who
+builds a new house seems to want to get something resembling as
+nearly as possible a family vault. Ihne, court architect and
+Imperial favourite, has produced, however, some beautiful
+buildings, notably the new library in Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>Munich pretends to be more of a centre of art and music than
+Berlin. Artists have their headquarters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> there, but the disciples
+of the awful "art nouveau" and kindred "arts" have produced many
+horrors in striving for new effects.</p>
+
+<p>The opera in Munich is better than in Berlin. One of the Bavarian
+Princes plays a fiddle in the orchestra in the Royal Opera House.</p>
+
+<p>The Berlin hospitals are better than ours, except for the caste
+system which prevails even there, and there are first, second and
+third class wards.</p>
+
+<p>The underground road is built at about the same depth as the New
+York subway. There are two classes, second and third; there are
+no guards on the trains, only the motorman in the first car. The
+passengers open the side doors themselves and these are shut
+either by passengers or station guards. Accidents are rare, all
+showing the innate discipline of the people. The charge is by
+distance. You buy a ticket for five or eight stations and give up
+the ticket as you go out of the station. If you have travelled
+farther than the distance called for by your ticket you must make
+the additional payment. This requires that each ticket be
+inspected separately when taken up.</p>
+
+<p>The tramways have different routes. These routes are shown by
+signs and by numbers displayed on the car. Women motormen in the
+war period caused many accidents.</p>
+
+<p>For those Germans who cannot afford to ride or shoot, walking is
+the principal recreation. There are a few golf courses in the
+German Empire, mostly patronised by foreigners and American
+dentists.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Military training is always in view and the use of the knapsack
+on walking tours is universal, even school children carry their
+books to school in knapsacks and so become accustomed, at an
+early age, to carry this part of the soldier's burden.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, in summer, bands of girls or boys are to be seen on
+walking tours. In addition to the usual knapsack, they carry
+guitars or mandolins. These young people are known as "Wander
+vogel" (wandering birds), and sing as they walk. But they don't
+sing very loud. They might break some regulation.</p>
+
+<p>Outside of the large cities and even in the cities vacant lots
+are occupied by "arbour colonies" (lauben colonie)&mdash;tiny little
+houses of wood erected by city workingmen and surrounded by
+little gardens of vegetables and flowers. Here the city workman
+spends Sunday and often the twilight hours and the night in
+summer time. Of course, these are possible only in a country
+where the workingman is in a distinct social class and where he
+is compelled to be content with the amusements and occupations of
+that class alone.</p>
+
+<p>There is no baseball or substitute for it&mdash;the clerks get their
+diversion in a country excursion or at the free bath on the Wann
+or Muggel Lake.</p>
+
+<p>These "free baths," so-called, are stretches of sandy lake shore
+where the populace resort in hot weather, undressing with the
+indifference of animals on the beach, men and women all mixed
+together, the men wearing only little bathing trunks and the
+women scanty one-piece bathing suits.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> There is a bathing tent
+where two cents is charged for the privilege of undressing, but
+most prefer the open beach. Few swim or go in the water, but the
+majority lie about the beach, often sleeping in affectionate
+embrace, all without exciting any comment or ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>The boy scout movement was taken up enthusiastically in Germany
+with the cheerful support of the military caste, who look on the
+activity as a welcome adjunct to military training. The boys
+certainly are given a dose of real drill. On one occasion I saw a
+boy company at drill march straight into the Havel river, no
+command to halt having been given at the river bank!</p>
+
+<p>The workingmen of Germany are more brutal than those of England,
+France and America, but this is because of the low wages they
+receive, and because they feel the weight of the caste system.</p>
+
+<p>In a speech in December, 1917, I said that a revolution in
+Germany would come after the war and that a fellow Ambassador in
+Berlin had said to me that because of the great brutality of the
+workingmen in Germany this uprising would make the French
+Revolution look like a Methodist Sunday School picnic. A
+newspaper reported me as saying this on my own authority and
+added that I had said the Germans were the most "bestial" people
+on earth.</p>
+
+<p>I only want to be responsible for what I actually say. I did not
+call the Germans "bestial," although unfortunately it is a fact
+that many officers of the army and others have been guilty of a
+brutality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> which has helped turn the face of the world from the
+whole German people.</p>
+
+<p>Not all the Germans are brutal. I received many letters revealing
+evidence to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the protest of a German soldier, an eye-witness of the
+slaughter of Russian soldiers in the Masurian lakes and swamps:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was frightful, heart-rending, as these masses
+of human beings were driven to destruction. Above
+the terrible thunder of the cannon could be heard
+the heart-rending cries of the Russians: 'Oh,
+Prussians! Oh, Prussians!' But there was no mercy.
+Our Captain had ordered: 'The whole lot must die;
+so rapid fire.'</p>
+
+<p>"As I have heard, five men and one officer on our
+side went mad from those heart-rending cries. But
+most of my comrades and the officers joked as the
+unarmed and helpless Russians shrieked for mercy
+when they were being suffocated in the swamps and
+shot down. The order was: 'Close up and at it
+harder!'</p>
+
+<p>"For days afterward those heart-rending yells
+followed me, and I dare not think of them or I
+shall go mad. There is no God, there is no
+morality and no ethics any more. There are no
+human beings any more, but only beasts. Down with
+militarism!"</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">This was the experience of a Prussian soldier. At present
+wounded; Berlin, October 22, 1914.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"If you are a truth-loving man, please receive
+these lines, from a common Prussian soldier."</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">Here is the testimony of another German soldier on the East
+front:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Russian Poland, Dec. 18, 1914.</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of Christianity I send you these
+words. My conscience forces me as a Christian
+German soldier to inform you of these lines.</p>
+
+<p>"Wounded Russians are killed with the bayonet
+according to orders, and Russians who have
+surrendered are often shot down in masses
+according to orders in spite of their
+heart-rending prayers.</p>
+
+<p>"In the hope that you, as the representative of a
+Christian State, will protest against this, I sign
+myself, '<i>A German Soldier and Christian.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"I would give my name and regiment, but these
+words could get me court-martialed for divulging
+military secrets."</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">The following letter is from a soldier on the Western Front:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"To the American Government, Washington, U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A.:</p>
+
+<p>"Englishmen who have surrendered are shot down in
+small groups. With the French one is more
+considerate. I ask whether men let themselves be
+taken prisoner in order to be disarmed and shot
+down afterward? Is that chivalry in battle?</p>
+
+<p>"It is no longer a secret among the people; one
+hears everywhere that few prisoners are taken;
+they are shot down in small groups. They say
+na&iuml;vely, 'We don't want any unnecessary mouths to
+feed. Where there is no one to enter complaint,
+there is no judge.' Is there, then, no power in
+the world which can put an end to these murders
+and rescue the victims? Where is Christianity?
+Where is right? Might is right.</p>
+
+<p class="right" style="padding-right: 10ex">
+<i>"A Soldier and Man Who Is No Barbarian."</i><br />
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">The first two letters refer to the battle of the Masurian Lakes,
+when the troops of Hindenburg, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> checking the invading
+Russians, indulged in a needless slaughter of prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>I heard in Berlin of many cases of insanity of both German
+officers and men who were driven insane by the scenes of
+slaughter at this battle and especially by the great cry of
+horror and despair uttered by the poor Russians as they were shot
+down in cold blood or driven to a living death in the lakes and
+marshes.</p>
+
+<p>An American newspaper said this could not be true, asking why did
+I not publish the letters in my first book. But my first book did
+not contain all I have to relate, and the letters in question
+were sent by me to the State Department early in the war, and
+were not at hand on the publication of my other series.</p>
+
+<p>But speaking of anonymous letters, shortly before I left Germany
+I received a package containing a necklace of diamonds and pearls
+with a letter, which, translated, reads as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The enclosed jewelry was found in the fully
+destroyed house of Monsieur Guesnet of 36 Rue de
+Bassano, Paris. It is requested that this jewelry,
+which is his property, be returned to him."</p></div>
+
+<p>The package was addressed to the Embassy of the United States. I
+took it with me on leaving Germany and restored it to the family
+of the owner in Paris. The Guesnet country house lay within the
+German lines and the sending of the jewelry to me shows
+conscience somewhere in the German army.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>AIMS OF THE AUTOCRACY</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">I</span>&nbsp;have</span> shown how the Kaiser is imbued with a desire of conquest,
+how, as he himself states, he dreamed a dream of world empire in
+which his mailed fist should be imposed upon all the countries of
+the earth.</p>
+
+<p>But the Kaiser alone could not have driven Germany into war. His
+system could.</p>
+
+<p>The head of one of the great banks of Germany told me in the
+first few weeks of the war that the Kaiser, when called upon at
+the last moment to sign the order for mobilisation by the General
+Staff, hesitated and did so only after the officers of the
+General Staff had threatened to break their swords over their
+knees.</p>
+
+<p>If this story is true, what a pity that the Kaiser did not allow
+the officers to break their swords! What would have happened?
+Would the military have seized the power and deposed the Kaiser,
+putting the Crown Prince in his place? I believe it might have
+happened had he refused to sign the order. The Kaiser, after
+leaving Kiel, attended a council at Potsdam where war was decided
+upon, and I really doubt whether at the last moment he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> did not
+shrink before the awful responsibility or hesitate to sign the
+mobilisation order.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate cause of Germany's going to war was the feeling on
+the part of the autocracy that the people would not much longer
+bear the yoke of militarism. That this fear had justification was
+shown by the enormous vote of lack of confidence in the Reichstag
+after the Zabern affair. At all costs the autocracy must be
+preserved, and if in addition the world could be conquered, so
+much the better.</p>
+
+<p>With modern improvements on the outside the heart of the
+government of Germany is that of the Middle Ages. The nobles as a
+rule are poor, the returns from their landed estates small, and,
+in peace times, the army general, the Prussian noble, and the
+Prussian official is overshadowed in display and expenditure by
+the rich merchant.</p>
+
+<p>Army officers, nobles and governing class felt this and believed
+that war would restore what they regarded as the natural
+equilibrium of the country, the officers, the officials and the
+nobles at the top and the merchant class back in its place below.</p>
+
+<p>With war, retired generals living on small pensions in dingy
+towns once more became personages, rushing about the country in
+automobiles attended by brilliant staffs and holding almost the
+power of life and death. His lands worked by prisoners at six
+cents a day, and their products sold at five times the original
+price with no new taxes on either land or incomes, the Prussian
+Junker is enjoying the war.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And this autocracy can make no peace which is not a "German
+peace," which does not mean that the Emperor and the generals can
+ride through the Brandenburger Thor to celebrate the conclusion
+of what may be thought a victorious war.</p>
+
+<p>For the plain people of Germany, while they can make no
+revolution now, on returning to their homes maimed and broken
+after four years in the trenches, will revolt at last, if a peace
+has been concluded which does not spell success for Germany. They
+will say to their government,&mdash;to the autocracy,&mdash;"We had no
+political power. We left everything in your hands. We had nothing
+to say either about the declaration of this war or its conduct.
+In return for our submission you promised efficiency and you
+promised us more, the conquest of the world. You have failed and
+we are going to overthrow you."</p>
+
+<p>It is the knowledge of this that makes the Emperor and the
+autocracy ready to take any chance, anxious to continue the war
+in the hope that some lucky stroke, either of arms or of
+propaganda, will turn the scale in their favour, because they
+know that any peace that is not a German peace will mean the end
+of autocracy and probably of the Hohenzollerns.</p>
+
+<p>And all the while the people are told that the war is a defensive
+war, although the German armies fight far in enemy territory in
+France, in Russia, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Roumania. They
+always are told, too, that it is Germany who is desirous of
+making peace and that the Allies refuse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Last summer (1917) when an interview I had with the Chancellor in
+which he named the peace terms of the autocracy was published,
+the interview was repudiated by the Chancellor, who stated that
+these terms were not his. I am sure that they are not his and
+were not his, but I am equally sure that they are the terms and
+were the terms of the autocracy of Prussia as stated by him.
+Shortly after this the newspapers confirmed part of these terms,
+telling of the talk in Germany of the guarantees to be exacted in
+case Belgium was surrendered by the Germans, which guarantees
+amounted to the absolute control of that unfortunate country and
+"rectification of the frontiers" demanded by Germany on the
+Eastern Front.</p>
+
+<p>Outside of Germany the propagandist and the pacifist and other
+agents of the Central Empires have proclaimed that this war is
+not a war of conquest or aggression.</p>
+
+<p>But the evidence is to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>Kaiser and pastors, Reichstag members and generals, orators and
+journalists, have all at different times during the war declared
+themselves in favour of conquest.</p>
+
+<p>And it is extraordinary as showing the masterful manner in which
+the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making
+these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to
+cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented
+from making peace only by the wicked Allies.</p>
+
+<p>The King of Bavaria, speaking early in 1915 at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> a banquet, said,
+"I rejoice because we can at last have a reckoning with our
+enemies and because at last we can obtain a direct outlet from
+the Rhine to the sea. Ten months have gone by. Much blood has
+been poured out. But it shall not be poured in vain, for the
+fruit of the war shall be a strengthening of the German Empire
+and <i>the extension of its boundaries</i>, so far as this is
+necessary in order that we may be assured against future
+attacks."</p>
+
+<p>Duke John Albert of Mecklenburg, who is the gentleman who slapped
+his chest and cried out to me on one occasion that Germany would
+never forget the export of arms and ammunition to her enemies by
+America and that some day Germany would have her revenge,
+declared also in 1915 that the war would give Germany not only a
+mighty African Colonial Empire but a sufficiency of strongholds
+on earth for their navy, commerce, coaling and wireless stations.</p>
+
+<p>The Kaiser, himself, speaking in July, 1915, in his call to the
+German people issued from the Great General Headquarters, said
+"that Germany would fight until peace came, a peace which offered
+the necessary military, political and commercial guarantees for
+the future."</p>
+
+<p>Vice-President Paasche of the Reichstag, in April at Kreuznach,
+said, "We are not allowed to speak about conditions of peace. But
+the wish must be given expression that lives in the heart of
+every German that we will not give up enemy land conquered with
+so much German blood."</p>
+
+<p>A sentiment also expressed in April, 1915, by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> National
+Liberal Reichstag member, Wachhorst de Wente, was to this effect:
+"Our fatherland must be larger. We must not allow it to be taken
+from us. Otherwise we will have obtained nothing except victory.
+We desire also to have the reward of victory. We will not give
+back all."</p>
+
+<p>Von Heydebrand, the Conservative Leader, the uncrowned King of
+Prussia, as he is called, demanded as a condition of peace "a
+stronger and larger Germany."</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, the Conservative leaders are for conquest and
+annexation. Numerous articles in the Centrist Cologne
+<i>Volkzeitung</i> were published protesting against giving Belgium
+her independence again. In April, 1916, this newspaper approved
+the statement of Leader Spahn of the Centrum party that the war
+must not end without "tangible results," and also the statement
+of Stresemann, another member of the Reichstag: "We demand and
+expect a larger Germany." In February, 1916, <i>Germania</i>, the
+Berlin organ of the Catholic party, demanded also a tangible
+prize of war as one of the conditions of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Countless examples can be given from speeches in the Reichstag
+and from leaders and newspapers of virtually all parties in
+Germany, showing this desire for conquest, showing that Germany
+will not be content to go back to the situation before the war.
+Even Maximilian Harden, who is respected all over the world
+because of his fearlessness and reason, has written since the war
+in favour of a greater Germany, thus:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We wage the war from the rock of conviction that
+Germany after its deeds has a right to demand
+broader room on the earth and greater
+possibilities of action and these things we must
+attain."</p></div>
+
+<p>Dr. Spahn, to-day the leader of the Centrum party, answering in
+December, 1915, Scheidemann, who had argued against annexation,
+and speaking in the name of 254 members of the Reichstag
+representing the citizens' parties said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We wait in complete union, with calm
+determination, and let me add, with trust in God,
+the hour which makes possible peace negotiations,
+in which forever the military, commercial,
+financial and political interests of Germany must,
+in all circumstances and by all means, be
+protected, including the widening of territories
+necessary to this end."</p></div>
+
+<p>Ludendorff is now perhaps the man of most weight and influence,
+barring no one, in all Germany. When only Chief of Staff of the
+East Army he wrote: "The Power of Middle Europe will be
+strengthened, that of the Great Russians pushed back towards the
+East, from whence it came, at a time not very distant."</p>
+
+<p>These quotations simply show that the great majority of
+Germans&mdash;those outside the social democratic party&mdash;of the
+Germans, indeed, who rule the country, conduct its commerce, and
+officer its army and navy&mdash;all have been infected with a
+dangerous microbe of Pan-Germanism and of world-conquest.</p>
+
+<p>Every one who professes a knowledge of German life and character,
+every one who writes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> the origin of the war, talks of
+Treitschke, Nietzsche and Bernhardi.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing made the Germans angrier than to find in foreign
+newspapers that on this triumvirate was placed the burden of the
+responsibility for the war. And I agree with the complaining
+Germans. Bernhardi, who, during the war, was given a command
+behind the fighting front at Posen, was not considered a skilful
+general by the military or a great or even popular writer by the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>How many people in our country or in France or in England are
+influenced by the lectures or writings of one college professor?
+And yet, according to many out of Germany, Treitschke, the deaf
+professor of Heidelberg, is the one man who transmuted the soul
+of Germany and incited the Empire to a cruel war.</p>
+
+<p>In America you can find any brand of professor, from a professor
+in a Virginia College who recently boasted that he would not
+subscribe to American Liberty war bonds, but would send the money
+to the Socialist, pacifist candidate for Mayor of New York, to
+the Professor in the University of Chicago who based his claim to
+fame on the fact that he had never been kissed. What professor of
+history has had any great political influence beyond his own
+college?</p>
+
+<p>And it is equally absurd to think of a Prussian Junker, sitting
+by the fire in the evening, deeply absorbed in the philosophy of
+Nietzsche. All Germans, as a matter of fact, through pride of
+conquest in 1864, 1866 and 1870 and great industrial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> success,
+had come to believe themselves to be supermen delegated by Heaven
+to win the world. Treitschke and Nietzsche were simply affected
+in their writings by this universal poison of overweening vanity.
+They but reflected the fashion of the day in thinking; they did
+not lead the nation's thought. Nietzsche himself wrote in one of
+his letters shortly before his death which occurred in 1900,
+"Although I am in my forty-fifth year and have written fifteen
+books, I am alone in Germany. There has not been a single
+moderately respectful review of one of my books."</p>
+
+<p>I never found a German of the ruling class who had read anything
+written by Treitschke, Nietzsche or Bernhardi.</p>
+
+<p>Tannenberg had more readers and a greater following, although he,
+of course, expresses only the aspirations of the Pan-Germans. But
+he presents concrete positions which any one can understand.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, the German merchant looking at Tannenberg's book
+and seeing the map of South America coloured with almost
+universal German domination, smiles and approves, for he thinks
+German trade will swallow that rich continent and clever laws and
+regulations will exclude the imports of all other nations.</p>
+
+<p>In some aspects Tannenberg foresaw what is happening to-day when
+he says, "The Finns have been waiting a long time to detach
+themselves from the Great Russians, their hereditary enemies."</p>
+
+<p>But in the main, in his sketch of the war to which he looked
+forward, he failed to predict accurately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> the attitude of the
+world. His predictions represent many of the dead hopes of the
+Pan-Germans, those Germans who believe it is the right and duty
+of Germany to conquer all.</p>
+
+<p>Prophesying war between Germany on one side and France and Russia
+on the other, Tannenberg believed that more confusion and
+resistance to war than actually occurred would come in Bohemia
+and Poland following the order for mobilisation in the Slav parts
+of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He mistakenly wrote also that
+Japan would declare war on Russia, a belief shared by the
+torchlight paraders of Berlin in August, 1914.</p>
+
+<p>Tannenberg thought Italy would declare war on France. He was
+wrong in his confidence that France was decadent, wrong in
+believing that England and the United States would only talk but
+would not fight, yet right in his belief that revolution would
+break out in Russia. In fact, I think that for years after the
+Franco-Russian Alliance, Germany was preparing a Russian
+revolution to break out on whatever day the Russian troops were
+ordered to their colours. He says that France will be so
+thoroughly defeated that the "war ought not to leave her more
+than eyes to cry with."</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid that while many eyes will cry in France, through the
+breadth of Germany there will be but few homes where eyes will
+not weep over the casualties of war, for which cruel, crazy
+dreamers of world empire, like Tannenberg, are largely
+responsible.</p>
+
+<p>For Tannenberg's dream, the dream of the autocracy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> and of the
+Pan-Germanists, is to give to Germany most of South America, a
+great part of Africa, of Asia, the great islands north of
+Australia, including those of the Dutch; with Holland and Belgium
+part of the German Empire as well as the Baltic provinces, and a
+share of the French colonies to be divided with England.</p>
+
+<p>The share of the United States for standing by and agreeing to
+the robbery was to be, according to Tannenberg, a protectorate
+over Mexico and Central America.</p>
+
+<p>Mexicans who were offered Texas and New Mexico by Zimmermann
+should read this Pan-Germanistic book in which all of Mexico is
+generously bestowed on us.</p>
+
+<p>And I wish that Tannenberg's book could be read by every public
+man in South America&mdash;that South America in which the Argentine,
+Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, the southern parts of Brazil and
+Bolivia are, according to Tannenberg, to come under the
+protectorate of Germany. Latin-American publicists should inquire
+from the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina how long it is
+before a "protectorate" is transmuted into a conquered country.
+Tannenberg does speak for a great party in Germany. The
+children's school books show German "colonies" in Southern
+Brazil.</p>
+
+<p>As Sainte Beuve said, there is a fashion in intellect. The German
+to-day is essentially practical, cold, cynical, and calculating.
+The poetry and the Christmas trees, the sentiment and
+sentimentality, remain like the architectural monuments of a
+vanished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> race, mere reminders of the kindlier Germany that once
+was, the Germany of our first impressions, the Germany that many
+once loved. But that Germany has long since disappeared, buried
+beneath the spiked helmets of Prussianism, and another intellect
+is in vogue.</p>
+
+<p>That older, kindlier Germany was the nation tempered and softened
+by the suffering of the Napoleonic wars. After the battle of
+Jena, where Napoleon rubbed the face of Prussia in the mud of
+defeat, there came on Germany that period of privation which left
+its impress so deeply on the German as to make thrift his first
+characteristic. A spirit of lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism
+imbued the whole people. Young girls cut off their long golden
+hair to be sold for the Fatherland. Jewels were given by all who
+possessed them. "Gold gab ich f&uuml;r Eisen" (I gave gold for iron)
+became a saying based on the readiness with which the rich made
+sacrifices to the cause of country. And with this patriotism, and
+with this penury, came into every home a more intimate family
+life, a greater earnestness, a deeper religious sentiment, a
+turning towards the idealistic side of life; but all was changed
+by the successful wars of Prussia that gave Prussia the
+leadership, the right to rule Germany. Then, with the end of the
+Franco-Prussian war, came a period of material prosperity, the
+rush of the population to the cities, and the building of great
+manufactories, of enormous shipping interests, of powerful
+banking institutions, of trusts and combinations which marked the
+Germany of 1914.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The fashion in intellect had changed, and the grasping,
+successful Prussian of 1914 was far removed from the ruined,
+chastened Prussian of 1810.</p>
+
+<p>Nations, like individuals, change in character with the stress of
+life. From 1810, the period of a sorrowing Germany, to 1914 is
+one hundred and four years. The same number of years subtracted
+from the year 1796, when our new Republic was firmly established,
+and when George Washington made his noble farewell address,
+brings us to 1692, when nineteen persons were legally hanged,
+charged with witchcraft in Massachusetts, and when in that State
+Giles Cory perished under the awful torture, judicially applied,
+known as the "peine forte et dure."</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that weak voices against annexations have been
+heard.</p>
+
+<p>Dernburg and Professor Hans Delbr&uuml;ck (the latter not to be
+confused with the disgraced, pig-slaughtering,
+ex-Vice-Chancellor), in their petition against the annexation of
+Belgium, showed a most reasonable spirit, and signing this
+petition with them were many of the great men and great minds of
+Germany. But their movement was a failure in Germany itself.
+Their campaign of reason could make no headway against the
+"League of Six"&mdash;the six great iron and steel companies of the
+West, who, with their paid lansquenets of the press and hired
+accelerators of public opinion, clamour for annexation so that
+they may rivet the chains of their industrial monopoly on the
+whole continent of Europe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Conservatives and Junkers, on the other hand, favour
+annexations to the East; especially do they eye greedily the
+Baltic provinces where great estates are in the hands of
+landowners of German blood. What a reinforcement to the
+conservative cause would these Junkers of the Baltic be and, in
+the Conservative view, if there are to be annexations in the West
+which would increase the number of industrial subjects and,
+undoubtedly social democrats, there must be a balancing accession
+of agricultural interest on the Eastern frontier.</p>
+
+<p>The only cloud in the serene blue sky of Junker hopes is the fact
+that annexations in Poland would add to the number of Roman
+Catholics and, therefore, to the power of the Centrum or Roman
+Catholic party. Hence the desire to make of Poland an independent
+kingdom, but one controlled by the Central Empires.</p>
+
+<p>The Poles are more at ease, having been given more liberty, under
+Austrian than under Prussian rule, and hence the tendency is to
+put Poland under Austrian rule. The Prussians do not object to
+this because it does not matter whether Prussia controls Poland
+directly or through Prussia's control of Austria, now, alas, only
+too apparent.</p>
+
+<p>But the principal aim of the nobles and the landed aristocracy of
+Germany, followed by their host of office-holders and dependents,
+is to keep the "graft," to hold the offices, civil and military,
+filled so long by these old Prussian families.</p>
+
+<p>The von Lachnows, to imagine a typical Junker family, hold one
+thousand acres of land in Brandenburg.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> The head of the house,
+Baron von Lachnow, was Minister to Sweden. After having held as a
+young man a position of Secretary of Legation, he left the
+diplomatic service to fight with his old regiment, the Gleiwitz
+Hussars, through the Franco-Prussian War. He then returned to the
+diplomatic service in which he finally attained the rank of
+Minister to Sweden. He now lives on his estate of Lachnow, with a
+pension as ex-minister. On great occasions he appears at the
+Royal Palace, resplendent in uniform, wearing the Orders of the
+Red Eagle and Prussian Crown with the Cross of the Johannis
+Order. His total income from pensions and estate is about ten
+thousand dollars a year. The oldest son, Baron Karl Friederich,
+after serving in his father's regiment, resigned and entered the
+diplomatic service and is now second secretary of the legation in
+Buenos Aires. He married there the daughter of a rich cattle
+owner. The second son, Baron Johann, is now Police President of
+the city of Schelsau, after having been district attorney in an
+industrial district where he distinguishes himself by his
+prosecution of the social democrats. He married the daughter of
+the rich manufacturing proprietor Schulz, who sells, wholesale,
+little statuettes on the Ritterstrasse in Berlin. Baron August is
+in the army, detailed to the General Staff and with a great
+future before him. Baron Max is now out of a job. While on his
+vacation the colony, in which he was secretary to the Governor,
+was captured by the British, and so at the outbreak of the war he
+assumed his old uniform of First Lieutenant in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> Gleiwitz
+Hussars and was given command of the prison camp at
+Schluttenberg, where he has won distinction for his severity with
+British prisoners. Baron Ernst is in the navy. This is considered
+rather a come-down by the family, as the navy, unlike the army,
+is not aristocratic. He has great hopes of marrying the only
+daughter of Von Blitz, who owns a splendid estate in Silesia. One
+of the daughters, Hilda, is married to Count Wenharp, owner of a
+beautiful estate in Pomerania, and the other to Hochlst, who is
+judge of the law court in Holstein and who owns the Rittergut (or
+manor) of Klein Spassberg, near Kiel.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="holstein_home" id="holstein_home"></a><a href="images/illo199.jpg"><img src="images/illo199_th.jpg"
+alt="Holstein country home" title="VIEWS OF A TYPICAL HOLSTEIN COUNTRY HOME OWNED BY
+A JUNKER COUNTRY NOBLEMAN" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">VIEWS OF A TYPICAL HOLSTEIN COUNTRY HOME OWNED BY
+A JUNKER COUNTRY NOBLEMAN</p>
+
+<p>The estate of Lachnow is perfectly flat ground. The road to
+Brandenburg runs through the estate and village, the houses of
+which front directly on the road. This road in the village is
+paved with rough cobblestones. The house of the von Lachnows
+almost touches the road, from which it is separated by an old
+stone wall. One side is on a square, cobblestoned courtyard,
+formed by the great barns, stables and sheds which surround the
+other three sides of the square. The house and all the barns are
+built of rough stone. The house is built on the plan of a piece
+of Castile soap, walls and roof and nothing more. Inside there
+are a dining-room, two parlours and an office-den for the master,
+upstairs bedrooms, opening on a long hall; no bathrooms, no
+conveniences, even the water is brought in by the maids from the
+well in the centre of the court. The furniture is old and plain.
+The family does not keep an automobile, but two horses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> draw a
+dog cart to the station and take the family on visits to the
+neighbouring aristocracy. The driver is the sexton of the village
+church on these occasions. On the two sides of the house away
+from the main road and the square of barns there is a park of
+about ten acres. Here are a few evergreens and gravel paths and a
+pond where some enormous carp excite the wonder of the village
+children.</p>
+
+<p>Baroness Lachnow is renowned for her devotion to the four K's. No
+one has a better stock of household linen, all made by her, her
+daughters and her maids, in the whole Mark. She superintends
+every household detail and holds the keys to closets and wine
+cellar.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the family does not associate with the schoolmaster
+and the Lutheran minister of the village, but they speak very
+kindly to them and the Baron once interested himself in obtaining
+a long service decoration for the schoolmaster.</p>
+
+<p>The von Lachnows live on their estate the year round, except for
+two weeks in February when they go to Berlin to a cheap hotel and
+attend one of the court balls. The Baroness never spends more
+than three hundred and fifty dollars a year on her clothes,
+although when in Sweden, as a Minister's wife she spent more. The
+Baron and Baroness sometimes condescend to dine with the
+father-in-law of their son, a manufactory proprietor, at his
+handsome apartment on the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, but Schultz,
+in spite of his four million marks and growing business, is made
+to feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> the wide gulf that separates him from the nobility.</p>
+
+<p>Baron Lachnow farms his own estate. His farm superintendent is
+von Treslow, once an officer in the Gleiwitz Hussars, who was
+compelled to resign because of a crippled arm, badly broken in a
+steeplechase. This taciturn, soured individual, on the outbreak
+of war, was given a place as commander of a village way station
+near the West Front, where his cruelties to the French
+inhabitants will long be remembered.</p>
+
+<p>Food is very simple. The family drink beer except on great
+occasions, but the Baron drinks Moselle at the midday meal and a
+red wine in the evening. The recreation is shooting and visits to
+the neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>Such a visit is a great event, arranged by letter beforehand. The
+von Lachnows drive to visit the von Seltows eighteen miles away.
+They arrive in time for lunch, when much wine is drunk. After
+this the women gossip over their fancy work and the men visit the
+stable, discuss crop prices and inspect the host's collection of
+horse flesh. The family photographs are inspected and Count
+Reventlow's latest article abusing the Americans is discussed and
+the belief suggested that a democratic people without King or
+Kaiser or nobility cannot be organised for war. The Social
+Democrats are condemned and the story gleefully told of how the
+son of von Seltow cut down a Social Democrat who was slow in
+getting out of his way.</p>
+
+<p>I can understand the feelings of the von Lachnows, the imaginary,
+typical Prussian family of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> the ruling class which I have
+pictured for you. If Germany should be democratised, what place
+would be left for them? The offices of the government thrown open
+to all classes in fair elections, places in the army and navy and
+diplomacy open to competition in great academies like West Point
+and Annapolis. Deprived of the aroma of power given now by
+diplomatic or military place and noble birth in the caste system,
+the sons and daughters could no longer make rich marriages with
+the sons and daughters of the rich business men and
+manufacturers. No more would the civil offices of Prussia be open
+only to appointments among the noble or Junker class.</p>
+
+<p>I do not blame the von Lachnows because they fight tooth and nail
+for the retention of their old privileges&mdash;because they endeavour
+to hold the common people in a serfdom almost as complete as that
+of the Dark Ages. The dawn of constitutional government will be
+their twilight, the twilight of the Gods of militarism, of
+privilege, and of caste. Prussian autocracy made the war in a
+last desperate endeavour to bribe the people into continued
+submission.</p>
+
+<p>The only excuse for the existence of the Prussian ruling class
+to-day, as much out of place as chain armour or robber barons, is
+its supposed honesty and efficiency; but no class which has
+brought this war on the German people can be described as
+competent; no sane governing class would have plunged into
+disastrous war a country that by peaceful penetration, by thrift
+and manufacture,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> and financial and commercial ability was in
+process of acquiring much of the wealth of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>first</i> aim of German autocracy is to keep its own political
+position at home.</p>
+
+<p><i>Second</i>&mdash;To obtain as much of the territory of other nations, as
+great an influence in unconquered lands, as possible.</p>
+
+<p><i>Third</i>&mdash;To make peace now, but only if that peace is a German
+peace, a peace which can be called and advertised and proclaimed
+as a German victory.</p>
+
+<p>More particularly, Germany now looks to the East. In the
+so-called Baltic provinces of Russia the lands to a great extent
+are owned by Russian subjects of German blood. The peasants are
+poor, servile, without education or property, an ideal field for
+the advance of autocracy. It is hoped to either annex these
+provinces boldly or to establish protectorates, which, sooner or
+later, at an opportune moment, will fall into German hands&mdash;just
+as Austria gained the consent of Europe to a protectorate over
+Bosnia and Herzegovina and then suddenly added them to the
+domains of the Hapsburgs.</p>
+
+<p>The German propagandists have long been working on the people of
+that part of Russia known as the Ukraine. If the Ukraine can be
+made a separate protectorate or a semi-independent state, some
+day it will be easily absorbed. The autocracy has the same hope
+about Lithuania, at one time semi-independent. There, too, the
+propagandists have worked on Lithuania&mdash;all these provinces, of
+course, differing slightly from the races surrounding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> and all
+with a semi-independent history, as, for instance, Courland.</p>
+
+<p>But all these races should think twice before they accept a
+momentary independence, if that autonomy is to lead them under
+the Prussian yoke. Whether that yoke is easy to bear or not is
+best answered by the Danes, Alsatians, Poles and Lorrainers who
+have been forcibly incorporated in the Kingdom of Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>But greatest prize of all is the commercial control of Russia
+which the autocracy hopes to win for its merchant class. Time and
+again I was told in Germany that a separate peace with Russia was
+near and that the exploitation of Russia by the enterprising
+German merchants, in a short time, would repay Germany for all
+the losses of the war.</p>
+
+<p>Would it not seem extraordinary if the language of business and
+commerce of the United States were French? But to-day in Russia
+and for years back the language of commercial business
+intercourse has been German. A great beginning, a great
+foundation it is for the eventual control, not only of the
+business, but the political structure of Russia. If the Germans
+at war with Russia have been able to split, revolutionise and
+divide it and put their representatives in control, what will
+they not be able to accomplish when peace shall bring them full
+liberty to circulate freely in that rich but ignorant country.</p>
+
+<p>In the end, all classes in Russia will demand a strong
+government, and if no military dictator, no Russian Napoleon has
+taken in his hands the reins<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> of government, then the German
+Kaiser will stand by ready to whisper to the torn people of
+Russia, as Napoleon III did to the French, "My Empire is Peace!"</p>
+
+<p>But even if Germany evacuates France and restores the complete
+independence of Belgium, even if no territories are gained to the
+East, or protectorates or independent states carved from the body
+of Russia to be a later prey of Germany, Germany will have
+won&mdash;if from Bremen to Bagdad German influence or actual German
+rule is predominant in Middle Europe, the Great Central State,
+where the cotton of Mesopotamia, and the coal and iron of
+Westphalia, the copper of Servia, the oil and grain of Roumania
+all will contribute to the manufacturer of Germany, who, in turn,
+will sell his goods in that vast territory. And best of all in
+autocratic view, the man power of the Central Empires will be so
+increased that at a propitious moment, in a characteristic sudden
+assault, the armies of the Central Empires will invade and
+conquer Palestine, Egypt and India, and take what they will in
+Africa and Asia, while British, Japanese, and American and French
+navies impotently rage in useless control of the high seas.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>AUSTRIA-HUNGARY&mdash;THE KAISER'S VASSAL STATE</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">F</span>ew</span> people in America perhaps realise how completely
+Austria-Hungary is under the domination of Germany and Kaiserism.
+There are those who think that the hand of the Vienna Government
+was forced by Berlin when the ultimatum to Serbia was answered so
+reasonably by the little country to the south, but there can be
+no doubt that Austria has been ever since under the yoke of the
+German General Staff.</p>
+
+<p>And because the first break, the first glimpse of reasonable
+peace will in turn be forced on Germany by sorely tried
+Austria-Hungary, bent by war and bowed by debt, it is well to
+study a little the races and assess the influences of that
+unfortunate land.</p>
+
+<p>My wife's sister married a Hungarian Count, a member of the
+Hungarian House of Lords, and I have met many of the political
+leaders and magnates of that country on my trips there.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans of Austria are handsomer, more attractive but far
+less efficient than their bloody brethren from the cold,
+wind-swept plains of Prussia. They have acquired a slight touch
+of the Oriental and something of the ma&ntilde;ana (to-morrow)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> of the
+Spaniards, a heritage, perhaps, of the days when Spain and
+Austria were so closely connected by Hapsburg rule.</p>
+
+<p>In the presence of an Austrian one feels his charm instead of the
+aggressive personality which is Prussian. Undoubtedly the
+Prussians counted on the good nature of the southern Germans,
+Hungarians, Poles and Slavs in their insidious campaign to make
+these peoples, practically, if not in name, subject and tributary
+to Prussian rule. The Prussian propagandist has brought them face
+to face with a new Kaiserism.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the war a great number of Austrian professors of
+German blood issued a manifesto demanding closer union with
+Germany&mdash;a prelude to the plots being hatched in Berlin against
+Hapsburg rule.</p>
+
+<p>The Court of Austria is quite different from that of Berlin; no
+modern ideas during the reign of Francis Joseph disturbed his
+medieval outlook.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful Empress of Austria, who was assassinated by an
+anarchist in Switzerland, was probably insane. At any rate, for
+many years she lived apart from the Emperor, devoted to hunting
+and horses, going often as far as Ireland for her favourite sport
+and seldom appearing in Vienna. Francis Joseph, however, was
+consoled by an ex-actress, Frau Kathie Schratt, whom he visited
+daily and who occupied a position in Vienna almost as powerful as
+that of the mistresses of Louis XIV. Even in this very war when
+Frau Schratt established a hospital, she was photographed in the
+centre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> of a group of women all occupied at this hospital and all
+holding the highest rank at the Austrian Court. The instant the
+old Emperor died, however, her power, influence and prestige
+disappeared and I imagine that her titled and high born helpers
+were not long in deserting the hospital wards over which she had
+presided.</p>
+
+<p>That extraordinary Empire known as the Austrian Hungarian Dual
+Monarchy is less an Empire or a Kingdom or a State than the
+personal property of the Hapsburgs, whose hereditary talent for
+the acquisition of land is recorded on the map of Europe to-day.</p>
+
+<p>For centuries this royal family by treaty, by intrigue, by war,
+purchase and marriage has been adding to its dominions, bringing
+under its personal rule races who do not understand each other's
+language and who differ widely in customs, intellectual
+attainments and religion.</p>
+
+<p>The last acquisition of territory by the house of Hapsburg was in
+the year 1908, when the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office boldly
+declared that Bosnia and Herzegovina, placed under the
+protectorate of Austria-Hungary by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878,
+had been annexed to the Empire. The German Kaiser, standing by
+like a watching accomplice while the burglary was in progress,
+threatened a general European war if any nations protested.</p>
+
+<p>At a time when Prussia was a struggling state, Austria was the
+dominant power in Central Europe, but the one battle of Sadowa in
+1866 settled for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> ever the question of supremacy and the German
+States like Bavaria, Saxony, W&uuml;rtemburg, etc., which stood with
+Austria in that war, after receiving a sound beating, ranged
+themselves on the side of the victor and, in 1870, joined in
+acclaiming the King of Prussia as the First German Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>That event settled the question of leadership in Central Europe
+and the dream of the Emperor Frederick who died about the time of
+the discovery of America. It was he who wrote the famous anagram
+on the vowels A, E, I, O, U.</p>
+
+<table summary="Anagram">
+<tbody><tr class="anaind"><td>ustria</td><td>st</td><td>mperare</td><td>rbi</td><td>niverso</td></tr>
+<tr><td>A</td><td>E</td><td>I</td><td>O</td><td>U</td></tr>
+<tr class="anaind"><td>lles</td><td>rdreich</td><td>st</td><td>esterreich</td><td>nterthan</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="5" style="text-align: center">"It is the fate of Austria to rule the world."</td></tr>
+</tbody></table>
+
+<p>In upper and lower Austria, so-called, there are about twelve
+million German Austrians. This territory is comparatively small
+and in it lies the city of Vienna. To the north and northeast lie
+Bohemia and Moravia, the country of the Tchechs or Szechs of
+Slavic blood. These people together number about six million.
+Prague is the capital of Bohemia, while in Moravia there is no
+great city. For centuries these peoples have been oppressed by
+the Austrians and in the Hussite rebellion the lands of Bohemia
+and Moravia were parcelled out to the Austrian nobles as well as
+to the warlike adventurers who had joined the Austrian armies.</p>
+
+<p>With extraordinary obstinacy and patriotism these peoples cling
+to their old language and customs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> They have suffered much
+during this war and many tales are told of the shooting of all of
+the officers of Tchech regiments and the execution of every tenth
+man among the privates.</p>
+
+<p>It is a bit of poetic justice that the town of Bethlehem in
+Pennsylvania, where my friend Schwab is making so much war
+material to be used against the Central Powers, was founded by
+fugitives, who, rebelling against oppression, left Moravia in
+search of liberty.</p>
+
+<p>North of the Carpathians lies Galicia, a Polish country, with
+Lemberg and Krakow as its capitals, and in the eastern part the
+Ruthenians, a race identical with the Russians. These Ruthenians
+number upwards of four million.</p>
+
+<p>It is a peculiar fact that in the curious Dual Monarchy each race
+oppresses some other. The Ruthenians complain that they are
+oppressed by the Poles. The kingdom of Hungary lies to the east
+of Austria containing in its twenty million inhabitants about ten
+million Magyars, who are the dominant race and who in turn rule
+over a population of one and one-half million Ruthenians, two and
+one-half million Slovacks or Tchecks, three million Roumanians in
+the southeastern portion and about three million of the race now
+known as Jugo-Slavs. Of these Jugo-Slavs about two million are in
+that part of the Dual Monarchy under Austrian rule. These are the
+principal divisions of peoples. A Slavish race differing somewhat
+from the others is in the mountains to the east of Hungary where
+much fighting has taken place in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> the last war known as
+Boukovina. In the southeastern part of Hungary there is a German
+speaking country, known as Siebenburgen, where live the
+descendants of a German colony planted about two centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>In Styria, in the mountainous districts of Austria to the west of
+Hungary, lives a race differing again from all the others, a
+mountain race supposed to be eaters of arsenic, a drug which they
+believe gives them a good complexion and stamina for mountain
+climbing. It is said that the bodies of these arsenic eaters
+remain undecomposed for a long time. And from this part of the
+world comes the curious superstition of the existence of human
+vampires.</p>
+
+<p>Slovenes, and Jews, Carinthians and inhabitants of Carniola,
+Serbs living like Moslems in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italians
+in Trieste and the Trient&mdash;all make up the strange
+Austro-Hungarian monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>The union between Austria and Hungary is a personal union. The
+Emperor of Austria is King of Hungary. Only in four particulars
+are the Empire and the Kingdom united, namely, a joint
+administration of the army and navy, of diplomatic affairs and of
+such finances as are connected with joint expenditures for these
+purposes.</p>
+
+<p>In 1848 Hungary sought to break away from Austria. Kossuth
+heroically led the Hungarians against their Austrian masters,
+only to be beaten in the end because of the advent of the
+Russians, because one autocrat came to the aid of another.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Since then, by superior political talents and taste for intrigue,
+the Magyars have not only held the Slovaks, Roumanians, etc., of
+their own country in political subjection, but have held much of
+the power in the Dual Monarchy. Their danger lies, however, in
+the predominance of German influence; and some day the gay,
+easy-going, pleasant Hungarians may awake to find the Prussian
+Eitel Fritz seated on their throne and to learn what Prussian
+efficiency means when applied to those whom Germans consider an
+inferior people.</p>
+
+<p>The twelve million Austrian Germans differ much in character from
+the Prussians. They are far more polite, far more agreeable, far
+more fond of amusement of all kinds. Indeed it is because of
+their pleasant personal characteristics that so many other
+nations have been content to remain under their rule. In no city
+of the world is the mass of the population as fond of pleasure as
+in Vienna. The best light operas come from that city. Vienna is
+the original home of the waltz. The "Blue Danube" was composed on
+the shores of the river which flows through the Austrian capital.</p>
+
+<p>The dominant religion of the German Empire is Protestant, but in
+the Dual Monarchy it is Roman Catholic among the ruling Germans
+in Austria and Magyars in Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>In Austria and in Hungary most of the land is held in great
+estates. The peasants, as in Germany, sometimes own a few strips
+of land near their miserable villages. Possession of land is
+necessary to the standing of any noble. In Hungary, for example,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+no noble sits in the house of Magnates or House of Lords unless
+he is the owner of a certain amount of land.</p>
+
+<p>Once across the Hungarian border, one sees the people taking a
+certain delight in refusing to understand German. The names of
+the railway stations are in Hungarian, and the uniforms of
+station officials, conductors, etc., differ from those in
+Austria. Every effort is made by the population to emphasise the
+fact that Hungary is an independent kingdom, joined to Austria by
+personal rule alone.</p>
+
+<p>There is no melting pot in this part of the world. In the Lower
+House of the Hungarian parliament sit forty-three Croatian
+delegates, Croatia being that part of southwestern Hungary near
+the Adriatic where the inhabitants are of Slav blood. By the
+Hungarian constitution those delegates have the right to speak in
+the Hungarian parliament in their own language and so from time
+to time a Croatian delegate arises in his place and delivers an
+ambitious harangue in Croatian, understood by no one except his
+fellow delegates who already know what he intends to talk about.
+This is only one example of how these peoples cling tenaciously
+to their language and national rights.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to find in Hungary an Hungarian village, a German
+village, a Slav village and a Roumanian village, all within a
+short distance of each other. Men from each of these villages
+after one month in the United States throw aside their national
+costume and buy their clothes in the same Bowery shop, eat the
+same food and send their children<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> to the same public school not
+only without protest, but with eagerness, whereas, in Hungary,
+not one of the inhabitants of these different villages would
+think of abandoning his national traits to learn the language of
+his German neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>Because commands are given in German in the armies of the Dual
+Monarchy all the male population, at least during the term of
+their military service, have been compelled to learn some German.
+But this they forget as soon as possible when they return from
+their period of military service.</p>
+
+<p>Many members of these races go to America and after working there
+a short time amass enough money to return to Austria-Hungary and
+purchase a small piece of land,&mdash;the ambition of every one born
+of the soil.</p>
+
+<p>One of the sons of Prince Lichtenstein told me that a friend who
+was running for the Hungarian Lower House in a district of
+Hungary largely inhabited by Slavs, spoke in Hungarian and,
+finding that his audience did not understand him, tried German.
+Finally, when matters had come to a standstill, some one in the
+back of the room called out to him, asking if he spoke English.
+The candidate answered that he did. Whereupon the crowd told him
+to speak English which nearly all understood, and so the
+Hungarian, a candidate for parliament in Hungary, was forced, in
+order to be understood, to address his Hungarian electors in the
+language which they had learned in America.</p>
+
+<p>Franz Ferdinand, whose murder at Sarajevo was used by the Central
+Powers as a pretext for a war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> determined on long before that
+time, was the heir to the throne of the late Francis Joseph. He
+was a romantic character. He visited frequently at the house of
+Archduchess Isabella, where Countess Chotek, of a Bohemian noble
+family, was a lady in waiting. Franz Ferdinand fell violently in
+love with the fair Bohemian, and in his desire to marry, enlisted
+the aid of Koloman Szell, Premier of Hungary. Szell told friends
+how Franz Ferdinand loved mystery and how, when he wanted to talk
+to him about marriage plans, instead of meeting somewhere openly
+in Vienna, would arrange that Szell's train should stop in the
+open fields. Szell, on alighting and following directions, would
+find Franz Ferdinand hiding behind a designated haystack.</p>
+
+<p>In a country where one royal family not only rules but owns the
+land, this attempt of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then heir to the
+throne, and mad with love, to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, lady
+in waiting to Archduchess Isabella, caused a palace revolution.
+By the aid of Szell he at last succeeded in carrying out the
+marriage. But this was only after he and his wife had been
+required to submit to the most humiliating conditions and
+subscribe to a marriage contract or promise which was not only
+enacted thereafter as a statute in Hungary, but was formally put
+on record by the Austrian parliament.</p>
+
+<p>In this declaration, Franz Ferdinand declared it to be "his firm
+and resolute resolve to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, that he had
+sought, in accordance with the laws of the house, to obtain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+consent of the Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, the Emperor
+and King, Francis Joseph I, gloriously reigning, that the most
+serene, supreme head of the Arch house had deigned graciously to
+grant this permission and that Franz Ferdinand, however
+(describing himself as 'We'), recognise the house laws and
+declare them binding on Us particularly with regard to this
+marriage declaration, that our Marriage with Countess Chotek is
+not a marriage of equal birth, but a morganatic one and is to be
+considered as such for all time, and that in consequence neither
+our wife nor our issue or descendants is entitled to possess or
+claim those rights, titles, armorial bearings and privileges that
+belong to wives of equal birth and to children of archdukes or
+marriages of equal birth." Franz Ferdinand, further, recognised
+that his children from this marriage would have no right to
+succeed to the throne in the kingdoms and lands of Austria nor,
+consequently, to the lands of the Hungarian Crown and that they
+were excluded from the order of succession.</p>
+
+<p>He further agreed and promised not only for himself but for his
+wife and children, that none of them would ever attempt to revoke
+this declaration.</p>
+
+<p>The old Emperor gave the wife of Franz Ferdinand the title of
+Princess Hohenberg and later raised her to the rank of duchess
+which, in the Central Empires, is a higher rank than that of
+princess. She was also created a Serene Highness after the birth
+of her third child, Prince Ernest, in 1904. The first child,
+Princess Sophie, was born in 1901,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> and the second, Prince
+Maximilian Charles, in 1902.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the rank thus granted to her, the Duchess of
+Hohenberg was frequently slighted by Archdukes and Archduchesses
+of the House of Hapsburg, and when the present Emperor, the
+Archduke Charles Francis Joseph, married Princess Zita of
+Bourbon-Parma, in 1911, and this marriage was followed by the
+birth of a son, on November 20, 1912, it was plain to Franz
+Ferdinand and his wife that the hostility of the old Emperor and
+the other members of the House of Hapsburg, aided by events, had
+succeeded in definitely excluding his children by Countess Sophie
+from the throne.</p>
+
+<p>These slights to his wife, so marked as to cause the publication
+of articles inspired by himself in a newspaper devoted to his
+interests, and the birth of the heir to Carl, must have had a
+profound influence on melancholy Franz Ferdinand.</p>
+
+<p>In all Europe there was one monarch clever enough to take
+advantage of the situation, to win Franz Ferdinand to him by the
+honours he paid to the Duchess of Hohenberg,&mdash;the German Emperor.
+Kaiser Wilhelm invited the pair to Potsdam and there both were
+made to feel that in one court, at least, the honours due to a
+wife of equal birth were paid to the ex-Countess Sophie. This
+Potsdam visit was in 1909, and I believe that, thereafter, the
+German Emperor and Franz Ferdinand met on other occasions.</p>
+
+<p>In the chapter on Emperor Wilhelm, I have stated the belief
+prevalent, even in Germany, that he intended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> as his first step
+towards his openly expressed ambition for world dominion, to make
+himself, on the death of Francis Joseph, Emperor of a Great
+Continental Empire in which the German Princes, his sons, should
+occupy the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia, the heir of the House
+of Austria to rule as king or grand duke of Austria with possibly
+another German ruled kingdom touching the sea on the south.</p>
+
+<p>There are some who believe that when the Kaiser, accompanied by
+von Tirpitz, visited Franz Ferdinand at Konopisht in June, 1914,
+before the Kiel week, that a great conspiracy was entered into,
+in which it was arranged that a great Central Empire should be
+created with one of the sons of the Duchess of Hohenberg on the
+throne of Bohemia and the other provided for by some newly carved
+out kingdom made from Bosnia, or a portion of Serbia. And it may
+have been part of this plot that Eitel Fritz and other sons of
+the Kaiser should be provided with thrones derived from Balkan
+territory.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that as Franz Ferdinand and his wife fell
+under the assassin's bullet at Sarajevo he called out: "Sophie,
+live for our children!" His devotion to his wife and to their
+children was extraordinary. He was continually sparing from his
+income so that on his death his sons would have a large sum of
+money, saved from the income of estates which they could not
+inherit.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to believe that such a crime against the House of
+Hapsburg and against his own country<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> was contemplated from the
+inside of royalty. But one event seems a confirmation of this
+theory. The dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were buried with
+such lack of honour, almost with such contempt, as to lead to the
+belief that the head of the House of Hapsburg, Emperor Francis
+Joseph himself, without whose directions the Chamberlain, Count
+Montenuovo, would not have dared to act, discovered his heir in
+some act against the laws or fortunes of the Imperial House.</p>
+
+<p>For the funeral arrangements were such, that the Austrian and
+Hungarian aristocracy were moved to protest and as a result a
+belated order was issued directing that the troops of the Vienna
+Garrison should take part in the funeral ceremonies. About one
+hundred and fifty members of the leading families of Hungary and
+Austria, without invitation, entered the funeral procession and
+followed the bodies to the railway station. The <i>London Times</i>
+correspondent called attention to this in cables to his newspaper
+at the time.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I do not incline to this view, but I do believe that
+at Konopisht the war of 1914 was finally agreed on. Too many bits
+of evidence point to this and from something said to me at Kiel
+by a very high personage, before the assassinations at Sarajevo,
+I would have guessed that war was coming, had it not been
+impossible for me to believe that the world was to be plunged
+into war simply because the German people were restless under the
+rule of the autocracy.</p>
+
+<p>When the murders occurred at Sarajevo, all plans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> had been laid
+for war and the death of Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of
+Hohenberg merely gave another excuse to begin hostilities, after
+Austria, in the Council of Potsdam, had ratified all the
+arrangements made by the Emperor Wilhelm and Franz Ferdinand for
+the European war. Undoubtedly the German Emperor used his
+influence with Franz Ferdinand and his wife in order to secure
+the former's aid in dragging Austria into the war,&mdash;a war begun
+to win the dominion of the world.</p>
+
+<p>How many in America have heard the name of Sophie Chotek? Yet the
+ambitions of this woman have done much to send to war the
+splendid youths who from all the ends of the earth gather in
+France to fight the fight of freedom.</p>
+
+<p>The clever German Emperor, playing upon her ambitions, induced
+the gloomy, hated Franz Ferdinand to consent to the world war,
+and matters had gone so far that even the death of the Archduke
+Franz Ferdinand could not change the situation nor turn the war
+party of Hungary and Austria from their programme of blood.
+Eighty-four years of age, the old Francis Joseph could only offer
+a weak defence to the martial insistence of Tisza, Premier of
+Hungary, and his able understrapper, Forgotsch, who represented
+him in the Foreign Office at Vienna and who undoubtedly is the
+man who drafted the forty-eight hour ultimatum to Servia.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="stairway" id="stairway"></a><a href="images/illo222.jpg"><img src="images/illo222_th.jpg"
+alt="The stairway" title="MAIN STAIRWAY IN THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BERLIN" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 28%; margin-right: 25%">MAIN STAIRWAY IN THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BERLIN</p>
+
+
+<p>Berliners say that although the German Emperor gave the Duchess
+of Hohenberg all the honours due to the wife of an Austrian
+Archduke, heir to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> the throne of the Austrian Empire, he was
+careful not to bring her claims in direct conflict with any
+Prussian female Royalty and that on the first visit of Franz
+Ferdinand and his wife to Potsdam, when the doors of the banquet
+room were thrown open, it was seen that the Kaiser had skilfully
+placed all the guests at small tables, sitting at one with the
+Empress and his two guests. In this way he prevented a conflict
+of precedence and a possible scene with some Prussian royal
+princess.</p>
+
+<p>After one of these Potsdam visits, the Austrian government
+appropriated three hundred millions for new Skoda cannon and a
+great and unexpected increase of the navy was voted. In Austria
+itself it was seen that the German influence was dragging
+Austria-Hungary nearer and nearer to war.</p>
+
+<p>Ferdinand disliked the Hungarians and in turn was hated by them.
+If he had attained the throne of the Empire, as his children
+could not inherit, he would have endeavoured first to remove that
+obstacle, but if he had not succeeded he intended, as I have
+said, either to restore the kingdom of Bohemia and place his son,
+child of a Bohemian mother, on the newly created throne, or
+create, possibly from conquered lands, another kingdom over which
+his heir could reign.</p>
+
+<p>The Magyars, the real Hungarian ruling race, are most skilful
+politicians. Their elections often are corrupt and all the tricks
+of the politician are in use in Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>In many families political talent seems hereditary. Tisza, the
+Premier of Hungary for the period<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> for some time before the war,
+was the son of Tisza, who was Premier of Hungary about the year
+1875. Kossuth, son of the great Kossuth, has been active in
+politics. The father of Count Julius Andrassy was Premier about
+1866 and favoured Germany, a policy which has been inherited by
+his son. One of the sons-in-law of Count Andrassy's wife, Marquis
+Pallavicini, came to America to act as best man when my wife's
+sister married Count Sigray.</p>
+
+<p>Andrassy came to Berlin during the war where I had several long
+talks with him. The one desire of Hungarians and Austrians alike
+is for peace, but surrounded by the armies of their German
+masters, they have lost their independence of action, a bitter
+blow to the Magyars, who are not fond of the Germans.</p>
+
+<p>Count Stephen Tisza is an obstinate and able man, so many sided
+that it is related of him that he fought a duel, rode a
+steeplechase and made a great speech in Parliament, all in one
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Duelling is still a custom in Hungary, Austria and Germany. Once
+when I was in Hungary I took supper with a Count who had been
+second in a duel that day. One young Magnate was at a restaurant
+with an actress who wore a wide brimmed hat. Another young
+Magnate of his acquaintance looked under the hat brim to see who
+the girl was. Result: a duel with sabres in a riding school. On
+this occasion, as the insult was not deadly, the use of sharp
+points was forbidden. The duel was stopped after one young
+Magnate received a cut on the forehead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stephen Tisza, on first taking office, was permitted by the old
+Emperor to obtain some apparent concessions for Hungary in order
+to make his premiership popular. It was arranged that Hungarian
+flags should be carried by Hungarian regiments, and that the
+officers of those regiments all should be Hungarians, but German
+was to be used as the military language and language of command
+even in the Hungarian regiments.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Tisza became premier for the first time, Count Apponyi
+left the Liberal party and lately Count Julius Andrassy and his
+wife's sons-in-law, Count Karoli and Marquis Pallavicini, have
+been in violent opposition to Tisza, Pallavicini even fighting a
+duel with the Prime Minister.</p>
+
+<p>In a country where the majority of the inhabitants are Roman
+Catholics it is rather strange that Tisza and his father, both
+strong Protestants, should have attained the Premiership. The
+father of Count Stephen Tisza was even more obstinate than his
+son and greatly oppressed the Slovaks and Roumanians within the
+borders of Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>A great responsibility lies at the door of Stephen Tisza. He
+allowed the Germans to use him in bringing on the world war.
+Doubtless he believed that Russia and the Powers would not move,
+that Austria-Hungary could seize or invade Serbia, while Germany
+terrorised the world as in 1908 when Bosnia and Herzegovina were
+added to the Imperial dominions. But his failure to read the
+intentions of Russia and the other Powers is no excuse for the
+calamity he brought on Hungary and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> the world, no excuse for the
+fact that his country is now overwhelmed by Kaiserism, its armies
+surrounded by the armies of Germany and its very independence
+threatened by the subtle influence and intrigues of the master
+intriguer of the world,&mdash;the German Kaiser.</p>
+
+<p>The franchise in Austria and in Hungary is like that given
+grudgingly to the Prussian, a mere ghost of suffrage. Autocracy
+rules. In Hungary, particularly the Magyars, seeking to keep the
+political power in their hands, oppose a broadening of the
+franchise. Tisza has always been against any letting down of the
+bars, but when the young and brilliant Count Esterhazy was made
+Premier, many looked for a change&mdash;a change which has, however,
+not yet come.</p>
+
+<p>The new Emperor Carl at first seemed to exhibit Liberal
+tendencies, but only for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>The events in Russia will have a grave effect in Austria-Hungary.
+More than a million Russians are prisoners in the Dual Monarchy,
+nearly a million of whose subjects are in Russia&mdash;and of these at
+least fifty thousand Czechs are fighting the Austrians and
+Germans in the ranks of the Roumanian army. Many more will refuse
+to leave Russia, but the coming back of one-half, after having
+witnessed the winning of liberty by the Russians, will influence
+their countrymen in no small degree. Just as the French soldiers
+under Lafayette and Rochambeau, after helping us gain our
+independence, returned from the free fields of America to a
+France where the burdens of the plain people were almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+unendurable and brought on the great French Revolution, the
+soldiers and prisoners who return to Prussia and to
+Austria-Hungary from the strange scenes of the Russian Revolution
+may, perhaps, leaven the inert slave masses of the Central
+Empires with a spirit of revolt for liberty.</p>
+
+<p>We should institute a great propaganda from the Italian front.
+For instance, I have been told by a man who has been on that
+front, a man who should know, that if a few American troops were
+sent there and signs erected stating "Come over and surrender to
+the Americans, you will be taken to America well fed and paid a
+dollar per day when you volunteer to work," there would be a
+great rush of Austro-Hungarian troops eager to be taken prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>The losses of Austria and Hungary have been enormous&mdash;men up to
+fifty-five have been drafted for the army, and the troops have
+often suffered defeat and the horrors of retreat at the hands of
+Russians, Serbians, and Italians.</p>
+
+<p>And all the time the iron hand of the German Kaiser grasps more
+and more of the power. Cheerless prospect it is for the once gay
+Hungarians, the once happy Austrians, if to financial ruin and
+the killing of the flower of their youth is to be added the iron
+horror of Prussian domination.</p>
+
+<p>Our citizens of Austrian and especially of Hungarian descent have
+been loyal to their new flag. And our great President with
+enlightened wisdom has eased the enemy alien regulations so as to
+favour those born in the Dual Monarchy. America<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> will never
+forget the loyalty, ungrudgingly given by those of her people
+born under the double eagle of the Hapsburgs.</p>
+
+<p>In my many visits to Hungary I grew to like and admire the
+Hungarians. Natural in manners, hospitable, polite, there is
+something in them that wins Americans. How different the open
+hospitality and friendliness in Budapest from the stern, cold
+formality of the Prussian capital!</p>
+
+<p>And with all friends of Hungary I hope that that country will
+soon throw off the trance of Prussianism, which has led the Dual
+Monarchy into a Dance of Death.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>GERMAN INFLUENCE ON THE NORTHERN NEUTRALS</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">J</span>ust</span> as I had the opportunity to study conditions in Austria, so
+also I came in contact with the politics and diplomacy of the
+nations contiguous to Germany on the north.</p>
+
+<p>My grandfather, Benjamin F. Angel, was American Minister to
+Sweden and Norway and on leaving received from the King the Order
+of St. Olaf. I have always taken a deep interest in Scandinavian
+affairs and it behooves the American people to regard closely
+what is happening nowadays in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.</p>
+
+<p>The outbreak of the European War in 1914 served to bring the
+three northern nations close together. Their Kings met in
+conference and a peace monument was erected on the boundary of
+Norway and Sweden as if to proclaim to the world that in spite of
+their recent separation, Norway and Sweden were sister countries.</p>
+
+<p>The people of these three countries are of the same blood and
+their languages are somewhat similar. Norwegian and Danish
+written are practically the same. But there is quite a difference
+in pronunciation. Swedish is more like German and the
+pronunciation is not as difficult to learn as that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> of Norwegian
+and Danish. In Norway, there are older dialects, differing from
+Danish, and there has lately been a great movement in favour of a
+more national language. Many Norwegians regard the official
+Danish-Norwegian as a reminder of old subjection to Denmark and
+not at all fitted for the new independent Norwegian kingdom. The
+new national language is called "Landsmaal."</p>
+
+<p>Sweden and Norway were both under one king from 1814 to 1905. In
+that year after a peaceful secession, Prince Charles of Denmark,
+the son of the King of Denmark, was made the King of Norway, with
+the title of Haakon VII. Although both have kings, Denmark and
+Norway may be termed democratic countries.</p>
+
+<p>Copenhagen is lively since the war. The population of Denmark is
+only 2,500,000 and the whole country is only 14,829 square miles,
+which means an area about the size of Maryland. The country was
+once larger but in 1864 Prussia went to war with Denmark and,
+finally, after the war with Austria in 1866, added to the Crown
+of Prussia the two Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As
+the city and port of Kiel were included in this territory
+annexed, it is easy to see why the Germans engaged in this
+enterprise against Denmark.</p>
+
+<p>Denmark possesses the Faro Islands which lie far to north of
+Scotland, the great island of Iceland and Greenland, relics of
+the times when the Viking ships brought such terror to the other
+countries of Europe, that the Litany used to read: "From plague,
+pestilence and famine, from battle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> and murder, from sudden death
+and from the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us."</p>
+
+<p>In Christiania we saw on our trip out two graceful Viking ships
+dug out of the clay shores of the coast in a state of fair
+preservation&mdash;one of them a Princess's ship on which it was easy
+to imagine some blonde princess of the North, her long braids of
+golden hair flying in the wind, urging on her Scandinavian
+oarsmen.</p>
+
+<p>The Danes are a sturdy race, the women more independent than
+those of other countries. On the <i>Frederick VIII</i>, when we sailed
+from Denmark, September 28, 1916, for the United States, were two
+handsome girls, nineteen and twenty-one years of age, the
+daughters of the proprietor of the largest department store in
+Copenhagen. They were going to America to find employment in
+department stores in the different cities of the country,
+travelling entirely alone, and expected to return to Denmark
+after a year's experience in America with many new ideas of
+management and advertising for their father in Copenhagen. These
+girls were wonderfully educated, speaking in addition to Danish,
+French, German and English with hardly a trace of accent. They
+lived a short distance out of Copenhagen and told me that every
+morning of the year they jumped into the sea at six-thirty in the
+morning, something that I should not care to do even in August in
+that cold northern land.</p>
+
+<p>Danish farmers learned early that in order to be prosperous they
+must practise intensive farming. I believe that Denmark, which
+even before the war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> enjoyed a high degree of prosperity, is the
+only country in the world where there are pig sties steam-heated
+and electric lighted while the farmer himself does not have these
+luxuries.</p>
+
+<p>Our farmers have much to learn from the farmers of Denmark both
+in agricultural methods and in co-operation for the marketing of
+products. The reclamation of the Danish moors in Jutland has made
+surprising progress: it is in Jutland that a park has been
+preserved in its primeval state&mdash;the Danish-American Park, bought
+with money subscribed by Danish emigrants to America who
+prospered in their adopted land.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since the conquest of Denmark by Germany, there has been a
+deep hatred of all things German in Denmark on account of the
+treatment of those Danes, numbering between one hundred and two
+hundred thousand, who were living in Schleswig and Holstein and
+were unfortunate enough to be turned over as property to the King
+of Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>I found the Danes agreeable people. Of the same race as the
+Germans, living like them in the dark North, this difference in
+behaviour is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the Danes are
+free, while the Germans are oppressed by the weight of an ever
+present autocracy.</p>
+
+<p>While the Danish people hate the Germans, officially Denmark is
+careful to conceal this hate and even, apparently, to lean
+towards the German side, through fear of the German troops, which
+could easily overrun Denmark in thirty hours.</p>
+
+<p>Denmark, during the war, received oil cake from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> America, which
+was fed to cattle later sold to Germany. A great tonnage of fish
+has also been sent from Denmark to Germany while salt and potash
+have been imported. There is no question but that supplies of all
+kinds and in great quantities have found their way across the
+Danish border.</p>
+
+<p>And the Danes have prospered enormously since the war. Many
+people have become millionaires through the sale of food and
+other supplies to the Germans. A great deal of this food supply
+was sent in the form of canned meat, popularly known as goulash,
+and so to-day whenever an automobile passes on a Danish road, the
+small boys call out "goulash Baron," in the belief that the
+occupant is a new-made millionaire, enriched by trade with
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard for us to realise how far north the Scandinavian
+countries lie. Christiania, the capital of Norway and in its
+southern part, is in the same latitude as the south point of
+Greenland; and is it not difficult to imagine a modern city
+situated in Greenland?</p>
+
+<p>In Christiania it is not fairly daylight in December until ten in
+the morning and dark early in the afternoon. The ample water
+power of Norway and Sweden furnishes electric light, a godsend in
+the short dreary winter days.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Norway, in many respects, is one of the most advanced countries
+in the world. Having been ruled by Denmark for four hundred
+years, it was united to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, in 1814,
+with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> approval of all the Powers, but against the
+inclinations of the Norwegians, who knew that they were given to
+Sweden to compensate that country for the loss of Finland,
+annexed to Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The ambitious Bernadotte arranged to govern Norway as king of
+that country, which was theoretically to retain its independence
+and be united to Sweden only through the personal rule of the one
+monarch.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, the Norwegian Constitution provided that no more
+personal privileges should be granted and since then the progress
+of Norway towards a real democracy has been rapid. It was the
+conflict over the right demanded by the Norwegians to establish a
+separate consular service that led to the dissolution of the
+union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, Norway voting for
+separation 368,211 to 184.</p>
+
+<p>There are now no nobles in Norway. Shortly after the union it was
+decided that those who had titles of nobility could hold them for
+life, but that their descendants could not inherit.</p>
+
+<p>Legislation for the protection of child workers, women, for
+insurance, etc., is of an advanced character. For instance, no
+child under fourteen is permitted to work and no woman for six
+weeks after her confinement&mdash;women receiving full sick benefit
+pay during this period. Many of the railways are state owned.</p>
+
+<p>Norway is a land of little farms, the shipping and fishing
+industries occupy many men, but with the exception of the water
+power driven nitrate plants,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> on the coast, and the wood-pulp
+factories, there is little manufacturing.</p>
+
+<p>The mass of the people are with the Allies. Last winter, when it
+was proposed that a German concert troupe should play and sing in
+Christiania, the people threatened to burn the theatre if the
+performance was permitted.</p>
+
+<p>But, as in Sweden, the German propagandists are at work in
+Norway. Here again, unless we present our case, the people may be
+turned from the Allies.</p>
+
+<p>King Gustavus V, who occupies to-day the throne of Sweden, has a
+German wife. All the sympathies of the court, which copies the
+little courts of Germany, of the aristocracy and of the army are
+strongly with Germany.</p>
+
+<p>In Sweden, although the king has not much more power than the
+kings of Denmark and Norway, there is an aristocracy which
+inclines to imitate the manners of the German aristocracy and to
+seize, if possible, the privileges enjoyed by that body. The
+officers in the army in Sweden are devoted to German ideals and,
+since the war, great bodies of them have been invited to Germany,
+where there has been much ado over them.</p>
+
+<p>The people, however, do not sympathise with Germany, knowing what
+the triumph of Germany means for them and how the court and the
+army and the aristocracy would be thereby encouraged to put the
+Swedish people in what the Germans would call "their place."</p>
+
+<p>The Swedes fear the domination of Germany<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> and the domination of
+an aristocracy and army imbued with German ideas. They know that
+if Germany wins, the king business will take on a new lease of
+life. The ground was ripe for the Allies but the German
+propaganda, cleverly managed, spending money without stint, is
+gradually bringing the people to a point where, if the blockade
+is tightened, they may consent to Sweden's entering the war as an
+ally of the Central empires.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the dislike of the people for the German cause, I
+think that the aristocracy and the court and the army would have
+forced Sweden into the war but for one thing. After some months
+of war, an arrangement was made whereby the so-called "heavily
+wounded" were exchanged with prisoners between Russia and
+Germany. The German who was a prisoner of the Russians and had
+lost an arm or a leg, was sent home. These wounded prisoners on
+their way to their home countries, were compelled to travel the
+whole length of Sweden and it was the sight of these poor stumps
+of humanity, as the trains stopped at the various stations in
+Sweden, that kept the Swedish people out of war. Many pictures of
+them printed in the Swedish papers caused profound dismay in
+Sweden and developed an inexpressible abhorrence of war.</p>
+
+<p>Since hostilities commenced, on the other hand, the Government,
+army and aristocracy of Sweden not only have been consistently
+opposed to the Allies, but of the utmost service to Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Swedish iron ore goes into German cannon and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> makes the best
+steel for aeroplane engines, and the imports into Sweden from
+America of foods and fats from America increased one thousand per
+cent almost immediately. These imports, with great quantities of
+copper and other supplies, found their way to Germany to the
+great profit incidentally of Swedish business men. For the plain
+people of Sweden the cost of living increased without a
+corresponding increase in salaries and wages, so that the new
+prosperity was confined to the "goulash barons."</p>
+
+<p>There is no question but that, just as in Argentina, the Swedish
+diplomatic pouch was in all countries at the service of Germany,
+and that the orders to the German spies in Russia were sent by
+this means. In fact, it is believed German prisoners in Russia
+found their way to Petrograd, there to participate in revolution
+and counter-revolution under orders sent through the Swedish
+officials.</p>
+
+<p>Smuggling is winked at and at Lullia on the Swedish coast near
+the head of the Gulf of Bothnia great quantities of rubber, block
+tin and oil arrive from Russian Uleaborg across the gulf.</p>
+
+<p>The French wanted to send a consul to Lullia, but their request
+was refused, doubtless because the Swedish authorities did not
+care to have any official foreigners see this traffic.</p>
+
+<p>Cleverest of all has been the work of the German financial
+agents. Warburg, the Hamburg banker, is attached to the German
+legation in Stockholm. So skilfully has he managed his task, that
+Swedish firms and Swedish banks have been induced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> to take German
+paper money, commercial paper and securities instead of gold, in
+return for copper, rubber, tin, food, fats, wool and supplies and
+in this way the Swedish business men, by the touch of
+self-interest, have been made to favour Germany.</p>
+
+<p>I confess that it is hard to bring about, but as each nation has
+the right to choose with whom its citizens shall do business, we
+must mercilessly blacklist those firms which assist Germany by
+accepting, in lieu of the gold which would thus be drained from
+Germany, what amounts to the promise of Germany to pay if
+successful in war.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen of Sweden, herself a German and an admirer of the
+German Emperor, has great influence over her husband and the
+Court.</p>
+
+<p>At a time when she was visiting her family in Karlsruhe (for she
+is a Princess of Baden) a reprisal attack made by Allied
+aeroplanes narrowly missed the royal palace and, consequently,
+the Queen. This has added to her prejudice against the Allies.
+The Crown Princess of Sweden was a Princess of Connaught, the
+sister of "Princess Pat," but she does not dare take any stand
+against the anti-ally propaganda.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that President Wilson appreciates the gravity of the
+situation and that means are being taken to place our position
+not only before the Swedish people but those of Swedish birth and
+descent in the United States whose influence should be brought to
+bear on their friends and relatives in the old country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The crew of every Swedish ship that lands here should be given
+our viewpoint; every Swede who returns to Sweden should go as a
+missionary&mdash;we must not permit Sweden, whose people are bound to
+us by ties of blood and friendship, by the hospitality which we
+offered to every Swedish immigrant, to be ranged among our
+enemies by the German-admiring aristocrats of Sweden who by
+birth, training and education are opposed to democracy, who hope,
+if Germany wins, to gain as great an ascendancy in the government
+as the Prussian Junkers possess in Germany.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The Finns who occupy that part of Russia nearest to Sweden have
+quite a sympathy for the Swedes, Finland having been at one time
+a part of Sweden. The races, however, are not the same. The Finns
+are a Mongolian race and certain similarities of language make it
+plain that the Finns and the Hungarians came from the same
+mysterious place of origin somewhere in the great mountains and
+highlands of Central Asia.</p>
+
+<p>Three languages, three influences, fight for mastery in Finland.
+The official Russian, the language of the government; Finnish,
+now receiving a new lease of life; and Swedish, the language of
+those who once conquered and held Finland, and who so imposed
+their civilisation on the more ignorant Finns, that to-day
+Swedish is the language of the more prosperous classes and of
+most of the business men.</p>
+
+<p>The women of Finland received the suffrage in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> 1906, all voting
+who are over twenty-four and who have been for five years
+citizens of Finland. Many women thereafter were elected to the
+Finnish parliament.</p>
+
+<p>In two Scandinavian countries the women vote. Norway was the
+first sovereign state of Europe to give full citizenship rights
+to women. In 1913, all Norwegian women of twenty-five and
+citizens for five years were put on a voting equality with men,
+and the only positions under the national government for which
+women are not eligible are in the army and navy, the diplomatic
+and consular service and the Supreme Court.</p>
+
+<p>The Danish women received the full franchise in 1915, but in
+aristocratic Sweden only the women paying income taxes have
+rights in the communal councils.</p>
+
+<p>In 1908, in Norway, a law was passed providing that women doing
+the work of men shall receive equal pay.</p>
+
+<p>Military service in all three northern nations is universal and
+compulsory.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly on a "tip" from Berlin to a fellow autocrat, there
+occurred in February, 1914, an extraordinary political event,
+arranged and "accelerated" by the Government, when thirty
+thousand farmers, meeting in Stockholm for the purpose, marched
+in procession to the Royal Castle to address the King and tell
+him that they were ready to bear any extra taxes imposed for the
+purpose of providing for national defence.</p>
+
+<p>Russia was the power particularly feared by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> Sweden who thought
+she desired to annex a part of Northern Sweden and Norway in
+order to get an outlet to the sea on the Norwegian coast.</p>
+
+<p>But recent events in Russia have ended this fear and the only
+question for the Swedes is the same, one with which the whole
+world is faced&mdash;Kaiserism or Democracy.</p>
+
+<p>Sven Hedin, the explorer, who was the leader in this movement for
+national defence, has appeared as a German propagandist so
+violent as to have become popular with the Germans. It is hard to
+understand why so intelligent a man should range himself on the
+side of autocracy. Now that the Russian danger, if danger there
+was, is past it is to be hoped that this celebrated man will be
+found in the ranks of those opposed to the autocracy which
+ordered the murders of many Swedish seamen.</p>
+
+<p>Norway, although it has often met the submarine of the Kaiser,
+which, defying all law, has sent to death so many Norwegian
+sailors and fishermen, suffers also from German propaganda and a
+certain self interest because of the forty-five million kronen
+sale of fish this last year to German buyers.</p>
+
+<p>Germany works, too, in Denmark with the Socialists and deliveries
+of coal are used to obtain food from that country.</p>
+
+<p>The jolly, free, brave Scandinavians are naturally opposed to all
+that Pan-Germanism and German rule means. It is necessary for us,
+especially our citizens of Scandinavian descent, not to lose this
+initial advantage.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>SWITZERLAND&mdash;ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">F</span>ree Switzerland</span>! You cannot imagine the feeling of relief I
+experienced as I passed from the lands of the Hohenzollerns and
+Hapsburgs to a free republic.</p>
+
+<p>It was February 11, 1917. To go into the railroad station
+restaurant and order an omelette and fried potatoes without a
+food card and with chocolate on the side seemed in itself a
+return to liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Our Minister, Mr. Stovall, gave us a dinner and evening reception
+so that we could meet all the notables and we lunched with the
+French Ambassador (for France maintains an Embassy in
+Switzerland) and dined with the British Minister, Sir Horace
+Rumbold, a very able gentleman who had been Chancellor of the
+British Embassy in Berlin before the war.</p>
+
+<p>As war had not yet been declared between Germany and the United
+States the correspondents of German newspapers waylaid me. Some
+seemed to think that in spite of the insulting blow given us by
+Germany, we nevertheless, scared to whiteness by the U-boat
+ultimatum, would lend all our energies to bring about a German
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>I received a letter from one of the editors of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> Swiss newspaper
+published in Berne, probably inspired by the German Legation
+there, asking me if President Wilson, in spite of the break in
+relations, would not continue his work for peace.</p>
+
+<p>We all know that Switzerland is a republic but even those of us
+who have travelled there, probably because we were on a holiday,
+gave little thought to the Swiss political system. Indeed before
+this war we cared little about the government of any country
+except our own.</p>
+
+<p>The present constitution of Switzerland was adopted in 1848 and
+in many particulars is modelled after that of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>There are the same three great Federal powers, the Federal
+Assembly, representing the legislative branch, the Federal
+Council, representing the executive branch, and the Federal
+Court, representing the judicial branch.</p>
+
+<p>The lower Chamber is made up of representatives elected directly
+by the people, and the other Chamber of members elected, as in
+our Senate, two by each canton or state. The Bundesrat or Federal
+Council which has all the executive powers, is elected by the
+Federal Assembly and it is the Chairman of this body who is known
+as the President of Switzerland. In reality he does not possess
+the powers of our President, but it is the Bundesrat as a whole
+which exercises the powers. Each member of this Council is
+minister or head of some separate department, such as Military,
+Justice and Police, Foreign Affairs, Posts and Railways, etc. The
+Swiss Cantons have much power, and there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> a distinct jealousy
+by each canton of states' rights.</p>
+
+<p>It is in Switzerland that we encounter two little friends,
+sponsored by William Jennings Bryan&mdash;the Initiative and
+Referendum&mdash;means by which the Swiss people are given a direct
+voice in their government. By the Initiative a certain number of
+voters may propose new legislation and when the requisite number
+sign a petition the proposed law must then be submitted to
+popular vote. This rule applies both in the separate cantons and
+in the Republic as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>The Referendum, more often used, provides that if the requisite
+number of signers be obtained any law passed by a cantonal
+legislative body or by the Federal Assembly shall be submitted to
+the voters. In certain cantons the Referendum is obligatory and
+every law is thus submitted to the people. In practice the
+Referendum has acted as a check to advanced legislation.</p>
+
+<p>The Swiss have reason to fear the designs of Prussia. As late as
+1856, Prussia and Switzerland were on the edge of war. Prior to
+1815 Neuch&acirc;tel acknowledged the King of Prussia as its overlord;
+the Congress of Vienna, however, included this territory in the
+Swiss Confederation as one of the Swiss Cantons. But Prussia, in
+spite of this formal arrangement, with its usual disregard of
+treaties, continued to claim Neuch&acirc;tel.</p>
+
+<p>In 1848 the revolutionary influence resulted in more democratic
+rule in Neuch&acirc;tel but the Prussian propagandist of that day was
+at work and, in 1856, Count Pourtales' plot was discovered and
+several<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> hundred prisoners seized by the Swiss government. All
+but a score were released. Frederick William IV of Prussia
+demanded their instant pardon and release and ordered the
+mobilisation of his army but, finally, through the intervention
+of Napoleon III, the affair was settled, the prisoners released
+by way of France, and the Prussian King renounced all rights over
+Neuch&acirc;tel.</p>
+
+<p>The Kulturkampf of Bismarck, his contest against the Roman
+Catholics, had its echoes in Switzerland and it probably was due
+also to German influence that until 1866 full freedom was
+withheld from the Jews.</p>
+
+<p>The Red Cross had its origin in Switzerland and the Geneva
+Conventions have done much to bring about the adoption of better
+rules of war. The Geneva Cross is the badge of international
+charity and help.</p>
+
+<p>Switzerland always has opened her doors to the politically
+oppressed. Over ten thousand revolutionists from Baden took
+refuge in Switzerland in 1848. Austria, in 1853, as a reprisal
+for the alleged actions of Italians in Switzerland in conspiring
+against Austria, drove thousands of Swiss citizens from that part
+of Italy occupied by Austria. Also in the Franco-Prussian war the
+French General Bourbaki and his army of nearly one hundred
+thousand men sought an asylum in Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>The army of Switzerland is a true citizen army&mdash;an army of
+universal service&mdash;and it is due to the existence of this force
+that Switzerland remains an independent state in the midst of
+Europe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To stand apart in Europe is the very essence of life for
+Switzerland. It is regrettable therefore that German money and
+German propaganda and some sympathy for Germany among the
+officers of the army should have touched the fine flower of Swiss
+neutrality. A triumphant Prussia and a free Switzerland cannot
+exist in the same Europe.</p>
+
+<p>In Switzerland, it is in the military that we find the greatest
+sympathy for Germany. In 1915, Swiss officers were discovered
+working out the ciphers of other nations for the benefit of the
+German armies and the punishment given, at the ensuing Court
+Martial, was not only incommensurate with the offence, but was a
+plain indication of the early sympathies of the Chiefs of the
+Swiss Staff.</p>
+
+<p>The food question between the United States and Switzerland
+requires delicate handling. We like the Swiss and do not wish
+them to suffer, but the Swiss must understand that our food is
+our own and that we do not propose it shall go to nourish Germans
+or that it shall take the place, in Switzerland, of Swiss food
+sold by the Swiss to our enemies.</p>
+
+<p>The President of Switzerland related to me the difficult position
+in which Switzerland found herself. Iron and coal, necessary to
+the industries of Switzerland, to keep the population warm and to
+cook the food, came, he said, from Germany, while food was
+shipped to the French Mediterranean port of Cette from America
+and the Argentine, and transported across part of France to
+Switzerland, so that since the war Switzerland, as the President<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+explained, has been dancing about; first on one side, then on the
+other, in the attempt to get food through France and coal and
+iron through Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Everything in the office of the President was the extreme of
+republican simplicity. He questioned me about the situation in
+Germany, especially from the food standpoint. And I learned of
+the difficulties of the Swiss. It must not be forgotten that in
+Switzerland about seventy per cent of the people speak German,
+twenty-three per cent, French, and seven per cent, Italian. Many
+of the German-speaking Swiss, of course, sympathise with Germany.
+They are the farmers, dairymen, etc., but in French-Switzerland,
+in the neighbourhood of Geneva and Lausanne, the industrial
+population sides with the Allies. Millions of the delicate fuses
+used on shells have been manufactured in that part of Switzerland
+for the Entente. In retaliation for this the Germans boycotted
+Swiss watches.</p>
+
+<p>The usual German-paid propaganda newspapers operate in the
+principal towns. The army officers are the first to be
+influenced. It is the same in Switzerland as with the officers of
+many armies, solely because of the past reputation of the German
+military machine.</p>
+
+<p>We and the civil authorities of South America must not forget
+that Japan copied German military methods, that the armies of
+Argentina and Chili have been trained, for years, by German
+officers sent there on temporary leave of absence from the German
+army.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Von Below, a German officer in Berlin who had been in the
+Argentine, used to make merry over the Argentine soldiers and
+said that they objected to drilling when it rained. I do not
+believe this officer, but I should like to have the brave
+Argentine officers hear his jokes and gibes.</p>
+
+<p>We left, after three or four days in Berne, on the evening train,
+for the French frontier. In the train corridors, outside the
+compartments, spies stood staring at us, spies pretending to read
+newspapers came into each compartment; police spies, betrayed by
+heavy boots; general staff spies, betrayed by a military
+stiffness; women spies; spies assorted and special. And these
+gentry had followed me all over Berne&mdash;for in the neutral
+countries of Europe as well as the belligerents are we constantly
+reminded of the insidious methods of Kaiserism.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">A</span>t</span> Pontarlier, on the French frontier, a special train was
+waiting for my party and into this train a German-American
+inserted himself after first mixing his baggage with mine. I went
+through the train and this enterprising gentleman and another
+German-American were detained for some days at Pontarlier. One of
+them, later, on reaching Spain, reported immediately to the head
+of the German secret service there, thus justifying my
+suspicions. Fortunately when he subsequently arrived in Spain we
+had already sailed, so that if he bore any sinister message from
+Berlin to the German agents in Spain to hinder our voyage, he was
+too late.</p>
+
+<p>The night trip to Paris was uneventful. At the Gare St. Lazare we
+were met by our Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, with several of his staff
+and a representative of the French Foreign Office.</p>
+
+<p>Paris was indeed a changed Paris since I had last seen it in
+October of 1913. The pavement in the Place Vend&ocirc;me, in front of
+the Hotel Ritz, where we stopped, was full of holes, but
+taxicabs, almost as extinct as the dodo in Berlin, rushed merrily
+through the crowded streets. The boulevards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> were lively, full of
+soldiers looking far more cheery, far more snappy, than the heavy
+footed German soldiers who so painfully tramped down Unter den
+Linden. Many soldiers were to be seen without an arm or leg,
+something impossible in Germany where, especially in Berlin, it
+has been the policy of the Government to conceal those maimed by
+war from the people at home. Although constantly walking the
+streets of Berlin I never saw a German soldier without an arm or
+leg. Once motoring near Berlin I came upon a lonely country house
+where, through the iron rails of the surrounding park, numbers of
+maimed soldiers peered out, prisoners of the autocratic
+government which dared not show its victims to the people.</p>
+
+<p>At night in Paris the taxicabs and autos rushed dangerously
+through streets darkened to baffle the Zeppelins. In the hotel
+there was little heat, only wood fires in one's room. In the
+homes a single electric light bulb was permitted for each room;
+violation of this rule meant loss of electric light from that
+apartment for three weeks.</p>
+
+<p>In the Ritz Restaurant there were lights on the table only. And
+the gloomy dining room, where a few Americans and British
+officers and their families conversed in whispers, resembled but
+little the gay resort so often filled, before the war, with
+American millionaires. Olivier, the head waiter, appeared only at
+night, absent during the day on war duties. No lights, no music,
+it is hard to think of Paris without these, Paris which calls
+itself the "Ville Lumi&egrave;re"&mdash;the City of Light.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On our first Sunday in Paris a grand concert was held in the
+Trocadero&mdash;a great government owned auditorium on the banks of
+the Seine,&mdash;under Canadian auspices. When Ambassador Sharp and I
+entered the centre box the vast audience rose and cheered&mdash;a new
+sensation for me to be so welcomed after my war-years in Berlin,
+where I had been harried and growled at, the representative of a
+hated people, of a people at once envied for their wealth, hated
+because they had dared to keep their rights and treaties and sell
+goods to the enemies of Germany, and despised because the Germans
+believed them too rich and cowardly, too fat and degenerate, to
+fight in the great war for the mastery of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Esher called on me at the hotel and invited me on behalf of
+Field Marshal Haig, to visit the British line. I am sorry that I
+did not have time to accept this invitation, especially as in
+Germany I had not even heard the distant firing of cannon.</p>
+
+<p>The Great General Headquarters at Charleville-M&eacute;zi&egrave;res where I
+had visited Emperor William at the end of April, 1916, was only
+about seventy kilometres from the battle front near Rheims. I was
+naturally anxious to inspect, if not the front trenches, at least
+the vicinity of the front, but the army officers attached to the
+German Foreign Office, who had accompanied me, informed me that
+the Chancellor had telephoned all the Generals in the vicinity to
+ask permission for me to visit the lines but that not one of them
+would permit me to visit his sector. This was a fairly certain
+indication<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> that sooner or later the hate for America must lead
+to war or that the U-boat settlement made at the time was only a
+stop gap until the increased number of submarines would enable
+Germany to commence ruthless U-boat war once more in defiance of
+law and humanity, and with a greater hope of military success.</p>
+
+<p>Compared to Berlin, Paris seemed a land of abundance. In the
+restaurants, however, the customer was limited to two courses,
+but with the privilege of a second helping.</p>
+
+<p>I called on Lord Bertie, the British Ambassador, to ask him to
+convey my acknowledgments to the Honourable Arthur James Balfour,
+from whom I had received a most complimentary communication. I
+found him in the beautiful home of the British Embassy on the Rue
+St. Honor&eacute;, a house so cold for want of coal that I was compelled
+to make my visit short for fear of pneumonia.</p>
+
+<p>With Mrs. Gerard we lunched with our friends from Berlin, Jules
+Cambon, a former French Ambassador there, and his family, at the
+La Rue restaurant, opposite the Madelaine. Cambon seemed as game
+as ever, but fatigued.</p>
+
+<p>Briand, who was then Premier, invited me to breakfast at the
+Minister of Foreign Affairs. The other guests included our
+Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, Cambon and the Ambassadors of Britain,
+Italy, Russia and Japan and several distinguished Frenchmen.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="ambassadors" id="ambassadors"></a><a href="images/illo253.jpg"><img src="images/illo253_th.jpg"
+alt="The two ambassadors" title="AMBASSADORS WILLIAM G. SHARP AND JAMES W. GERARD
+FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN PARIS, FEBRUARY, 1917" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 30%">AMBASSADORS WILLIAM G. SHARP AND JAMES W. GERARD
+FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN PARIS, FEBRUARY, 1917</p>
+
+
+<p>I did not sit next to Briand as I ranked after the Ambassadors
+accredited to France, but after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> lunch I sat alone with him
+before the fire in one of the large and beautiful salons and
+there we had a long talk, as, naturally, he wanted to know about
+the situation in Germany. He impressed me as a strong man, with
+the vigour of an orator, a man of temperament, a man endowed by
+nature to become a leader of the French&mdash;as the French were
+before the war.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Esher, at the request of General Lyautey, then at the head
+of the military force of France, took me to see that General. I
+had to wait for him some time, as he was appearing before a
+committee of the Chamber of the Senate. His inability to agree
+with the Chamber caused his resignation not long afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>I was struck in France by the fact that the leaders, civil,
+military and naval, seemed older than those in similar positions
+in other countries.</p>
+
+<p>The present Premier, Clemenceau, is an example of this fondness
+of the French for government by old men. Clemenceau is
+seventy-six years old, but is a vigorous fighter.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gerard and I lunched with Gabriel Hanotaux and his
+attractive wife at their home. Cambon was there, and Ribot, since
+become Premier of France, a good old man; also the Secretary of
+the Navy and several learned French philosophers and members of
+the Academy and one of the heads of the Credit Lyonnais, perhaps
+the greatest financial institution of France.</p>
+
+<p>War, war&mdash;who could talk of anything else? Hanotaux said that in
+our time we had been unusually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> fortunate, unusually free from
+war, that there was underneath France, underneath even the fair
+city of Paris, under the smiling sunlit fields, another France, a
+France of caves and catacombs, excavated by the poor people, the
+plain people who, during the One Hundred Years' War, had sought
+in marching armies, the far-riding plunderers and the depths of
+the earth refuge from the harassing, camp followers, the roving
+bands of "White Companies," the robber barons who, English and
+French, Gascon and Norman, harried the lands of France.</p>
+
+<p>I said that I had heard the statement made, and there seemed no
+reason to doubt it, that since the birth of Christ the world has
+only in one year out of every thirteen enjoyed a rest from war.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fabre-Luce, Vice-President of the Credit Lyonnais, told us of
+an interesting book written by a Russian and published before the
+war which predicted much that has happened in this war with
+almost the foresight of a Cassandra. I was so impressed that I
+secured a copy.</p>
+
+<p>This book, "The Future War," by Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch,
+counsellor of the Russian Empire, and published in 1892, had so
+great an effect on the Czar of Russia that it was the reading of
+it which impelled him to call the Peace Conference at The Hague.
+In the course of his book the author explains that it is
+impossible for the Powers to continue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> longer in the path of
+armaments and that they ought to look each other in the face and
+demand where these great armaments and this extension of forces
+are conducting them. He writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"How can one believe it possible to solve
+international questions by means of the veritable
+cataclysm which will constitute, with the present
+means of destruction, war waged between the five
+great Powers, by ten millions of soldiers?... In
+this war explosives so powerful will be employed
+that every grouping of troops on the flat country
+or even under the protection of fortifications
+will become almost impossible and that, therefore,
+the preparations of this character made in
+expectation of the war will become useless....</p>
+
+<p>"The future war will see the use of a great
+quantity of new aids to war, bicycles, pigeons,
+telegraph, telephones, optical instruments and
+photographic instruments for the purpose of
+mapping from a great distance the positions
+occupied by the enemy and means to observe the
+movements of the enemy such as observing ladders,
+balloons and so on....</p>
+
+<p>"In the future war every body of troops holding
+itself on the defensive or found taking the
+offensive, when it is not the question of sudden
+assault, will have to fortify itself in a chosen
+position and the war will be confined principally
+to the form of a series of combats in which the
+possession of fortified positions will be
+disputed, and in which the assailant will have to
+meet the accessory defensives in the neighbourhood
+of the fortifications such as barricades, barbed
+wire, etc., the destruction of these objects
+costing many victims.... The infantry, when on the
+defensive, will dig itself in. The conduct of the
+war will depend, in a large measure, on the
+artillery."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>According to our author, who foresaw "No Man's Land" between the
+two opposing forces, "there will be formed a certain zone
+absolutely impassable in consequence of the terrible fire with
+which it will be inundated from a short distance from each side."
+Bloch adds: "This war will last a long time and entire nations
+will be seen in arms or rather the flower of each nation. Germany
+will begin the war by throwing itself on France and then, using
+the many German railroads, will turn against Russia. By virtue of
+its military force Germany will take the initiative of operations
+and will make the war on the two fronts."</p>
+
+<p>His prophetic eye saw even the submarine war of the future. "It
+will happen, possibly, that the future war will produce engines
+of war completely unknown and unexpected up to the present time;
+in any event one can foresee the advent in a short time of
+submarines destined to carry below even ironclads, torpedoes
+powerful enough to wreck the strongest ships."</p>
+
+<p>He quotes the opinions of Jomini, who says that future armies
+will not be composed of troops recruited voluntarily but of
+entire nations called by a law to arms and who will not fight for
+a change of frontier but for their existence. Jomini states "that
+this state of affairs will bring us back to the third and the
+fourth centuries, calling to our minds those shocks of immense
+peoples who disputed among themselves the European continent,"
+and "that if a new legislation and a new international law do not
+come to put an end to these risings of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> whole peoples that it is
+impossible to foresee where the ravages of future war will stop.
+It will become a scourge more terrible than ever, because the
+population of civilised nations will be cut down, while in the
+interior of each nation the normal economic life will be
+arrested, communications interrupted and if the war is prolonged
+financial crises will come with a fearful rise in the price of
+everything and famine with all its consequences."</p>
+
+<p>Bloch, in depicting the future war, says that "in 1870, the
+struggle was between two Powers, while in the war of the future
+at least five great nations will take part without speaking of
+the intervention of Turkey and England.... The comparing of the
+coming war with any war of the past is impossible because the
+increase in the effective fighting forces has been of a rapidity
+so unexampled and this increase brings with it so great an
+augmentation of expenditures and of victims that the future war
+will have the character of a struggle for the existence of
+nations.... It is true that the war of 1870 gave us something of
+an example of this character. That was a war without mercy,
+brought on by secular hate, a war of revenge on the part of the
+Germans because of the ancient victories of the French, a war
+where volunteers were shot and villages burned and where unheard
+of exactions were imposed on the conquered whom the conqueror
+sought to wrong and weaken for a long period of time. A new war
+in Central Europe will be a second edition of the same struggle
+but by how much will it not surpass the former wars by its
+magnitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> and by its length and by the means of destruction
+employed."</p>
+
+<p>Does not Bloch give a better prediction of this war than the
+often quoted Bernhardi?</p>
+
+<p>The table conversation at Hanotaux's was in French; few Frenchmen
+and hardly any public men in France speak English.</p>
+
+<p>At this lunch, Ribot, since Premier, said to me, "In men, in
+fighting, we can hold out, but we must have help on the credit
+side."</p>
+
+<p>How much more than credit have we sent since to help beloved,
+beleaguered France!</p>
+
+<p>My interview with President Poincar&eacute; of France was set for
+five-thirty in the Elys&eacute;e Palace. I had to wait some minutes in
+an ante-room, hung with splendid tapestries, where the secretary
+in charge introduced me to Deschanel, the Secr&eacute;taire perp&eacute;tuel of
+the Academie Fran&ccedil;aise, with whom I had a few minutes' talk.</p>
+
+<p>The President sat in a small, beautifully decorated room in this
+historical Elys&eacute;e Palace. A small fire burned in the grate, a bit
+of grateful warmth in almost coalless Paris. He, too, plied me
+with questions, but not as closely as others, about the land I
+had left behind. He spoke of a great gift of money made by James
+Stillman, a fund to help the families of members of the Legion of
+Honour.</p>
+
+<p>Poincar&eacute; is a man of fifty-seven, wears a small beard growing
+grey, and is a little under medium height (of this country) and
+has much the manner of an American lawyer. What a contrast those
+polite, agreeable Frenchmen were to the stiff, formal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+overbearing Germans. There are "well born" Germans with charming
+international manners and the lower classes in Germany have
+kindly, natural manners, but the manners of the minor members of
+the merchant class and of the lesser officials is rude to
+boorishness.</p>
+
+<p>And here I want to say a word about the democracy of my own
+countrymen. Before the war and during it we entertained countless
+Americans in the Embassy; all sorts and under a variety of
+conditions, Jew and Gentile, business men and students,
+travellers and musicians. They carried themselves with ease,
+whatever the occasion. I was proud of them always and of our
+system of education that had given them such pleasant equality.</p>
+
+<p>After my arrival in Berlin a magnificent darkey, named George
+Washington Bronson, called in search of a job. Over six feet four
+and well built, I thought he would make an impressive appearance
+opening carriage doors or taking hats in the hall. So I engaged
+him. But he did not get on well with the other servants, and his
+discharge followed. Great consternation was caused shortly
+afterwards at our Lincoln day reception when Mrs. Gerard and the
+ladies of the Embassy were receiving the American Colony, by the
+report that George Washington, dressed up to the nines,
+accompanied by a coloured friend, presenting the appearance of a
+new red buggy, was on his way up stairs. I decided that on
+Lincoln's birthday all were welcome; so George Washington and his
+friend, resplendent, received<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> the same greeting accorded all
+Americans and the manners of George Washington excelled those of
+a Grand Duke. But although one could see his mouth water, he did
+not approach the table where our local Ruggles presided over the
+refreshments. There was "that" about Ruggles' eye which told
+George Washington he would have to "go to the mat" before his
+former superior officer would serve him with champagne.</p>
+
+<p>The cold in Paris was bitter, biting into the very bones, and all
+classes of the population suffered intensely from the lack of
+coal. In the theatres, for instance, there was absolutely no
+heat. Theatrical performances were permitted in each theatre
+three times a week. Evening dress was prohibited. I went to the
+Folies Berg&egrave;res, arriving so late that the crowded house had
+warmed itself and it was possible to stay until the end in spite
+of the want of ventilation.</p>
+
+<p>At one of the theatres I arrived early, but the cold was so
+bitter that even sitting in fur overcoat and with my hat on I was
+so chilled I had to leave after twenty minutes. This play was a
+<i>revue</i>, the actresses appearing in the scanty costumes peculiar
+to that form of entertainment, but the cold was of such intensity
+that they had added their street furs, presenting a curiously
+comical effect.</p>
+
+<p>I spoke to many of the soldiers in the streets. All were animated
+by a new spirit in France, an obstinate calm, a determination to
+see this thing through, to end forever the fear of Prussian
+invasion which for so many years had impended. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> any sign of
+weakness was apparent it was among the financiers; not among the
+poor and the men of the trenches.</p>
+
+<p>At the railway station I talked with a blue-clad French soldier,
+calm, witty, but determined. He said, "My family comes from the
+East of France, my great grandfather was killed by the Prussians
+in 1814, my grandfather was shot in his garden by the Prussians
+in 1870, my father died of grief, in 1916, because my two sisters
+in Lille fell into Prussian hands and were taken as their slaves
+with all that that means. I have decided that we must end this
+horror once and for all, so that my children can cultivate their
+little fields without this constant haunting fear of the invading
+Prussian."</p>
+
+<p>We left Paris on the evening train for the Spanish border.
+Newspaper men taking flashlights and "poilus" in uniform crowded
+the station platform as the train with our still numerous party
+pulled out.</p>
+
+<p>How France has disappointed German expectations! France to-day is
+not the France that calls out, "We are betrayed," and runs away
+after the failure of its first assault. France to-day is a calm
+France that seeks out its traitors, and deliberately punishes
+them, that organises with an efficiency we once thought a
+Prussian monopoly, a France that bleeds but fights on, a France
+that, standing with its back to its beloved, sunny fields, with
+many of her dearest sons dead, facing the Kaiser across No Man's
+Land, cries boldly, bravely to the world, the war cry of Verdun,
+"They shall not pass!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But even while war goes on, even while the French poilus hold
+fast the long battle line, the French people are beset within by
+agents of the Kaiser. Face to face they are with the secret
+agents, the spies, the informers, the buyers of newspapers and of
+public men, the traffickers in honour who, behind French
+citizenship or neutral passports, seek to divide France, to make
+the soldier at the front feel that he is betrayed by traitors at
+home, to render the French distrustful and suspicious of each
+other and thus to strike as mortal a blow at the French defence
+as was attempted at Verdun.</p>
+
+<p>Bolo Pasha and all his tribe slip past trench and barbed wire and
+do more damage than a German army corps to the cause of Liberty.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>MY INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF SPAIN</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">N</span>eutrals</span>&mdash;how obsolete the word seems!</p>
+
+<p>Yet there are some nations in Europe which will remain neutral no
+matter how great the hardship. How much this is due to inherent
+weaknesses of government, fears that the people may acquire too
+much of the infectious spirit of liberalism that war brings and
+thereby overthrow royalty, is hard to judge. But I must say that
+Kaiserism has omitted no word or act to impress upon the royalty
+of those countries, which might otherwise be inclined to aid the
+entente, the advantages to them of keeping out of the war unless
+they become allies of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>You will meet Kaiserism in Spain and the other neutral countries
+of Europe as much as you will in Austria or Bulgaria or Turkey. I
+do not mean that Spain, for instance, is by any means an ally of
+Germany, but I do mean that the German propagandist has had free
+rein.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never forget the fact that the King of Spain, during my
+talk with him, remarked: "Remember that while I am King of Spain,
+I am also an Austrian Archduke."</p>
+
+<p>And not only is the King of Spain by descent and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> in the right of
+his father an Archduke of Austria but his mother was an Austrian
+Princess of the House of Hapsburg. Study, for the moment, the
+genealogy of the King and Queen of Spain and you will see how
+royalty is inter-related in this war.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen of Spain was brought up at the court of the late Queen
+Victoria of England and is a Battenberg princess. In 1823,
+Alexander, Prince of Hesse and the Rhine, took in morganatic
+marriage a Countess von Hauke. He made her Countess of Battenberg
+and in 1858 she was given the title by the ruler of Hesse, of
+Princess Battenberg, her children and their descendants to take
+the same title. One of these Battenbergs, descendants of Countess
+von Hauke, married Beatrice, daughter of Queen Victoria, and the
+daughter of the marriage is the present Queen of Spain, who just
+before her marriage to Alfonso was created a Royal Highness by
+King Edward VII. Queen Victoria Eugenia has become quite Spanish.
+With a mantilla on her head, she attends bull fights and is very
+popular.</p>
+
+<p>The father of Alfonso XIII, Alfonso XII, was very intimate with
+the German Court. In 1883, he visited the old Emperor William I
+in Germany and accepted the colonelcy of a Uhlan regiment then in
+garrison in Strassburg, one of the towns taken from France in
+1870. On his return journey he stopped in Paris and was the
+object of a popular demonstration so violent that the President
+of France and his ministers called in a body to apologise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Shortly thereafter the Crown Prince (later Emperor) Friedrich
+paid a visit to Spain and an intimacy was maintained between the
+two courts.</p>
+
+<p>It is the inclination of those in the king business to keep
+together and a tradition of Prussia that fellow Kings must be
+sustained and, if possible, maintained against democracy. That's
+why the Kaiser finds reciprocal sympathy in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Our popular Ambassador, Mr. Willard, and his staff, with a
+representative of the Spanish Foreign Office, met us at the
+station at Madrid on my arrival from Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Madrid is a handsome city, comparatively modern. From its highest
+point the great Royal Palace dominates the capital and from the
+palace the royal park stretches unbroken to the Guadarrama
+mountains sixty miles away.</p>
+
+<p>In many respects Spain seems a land upside down. We arrived at
+Madrid just at the close of the Carnival season. Masked balls
+began at three in the afternoon and many theatres not until ten
+or even eleven at night. Madrid sleeps late. The rich people get
+up only in time for lunch. The streets are full of noise and
+people until four in the morning, the sellers of lottery tickets
+making special efforts to swell the volume of night sounds.</p>
+
+<p>My visit to the King of Spain was at eleven in the morning.
+Ambassador Willard went with me. As we entered the palace and
+waited at the foot of an elevator, the car descended and one of
+the little Princes of Spain, about eight years old, dressed in a
+sailor suit, stepped out. Evidently he had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> trained in royal
+urbanity for he immediately came up to us, shook hands and said,
+"Buenos dias."</p>
+
+<p>And as we strolled down a long corridor where Palace guards in
+high boots and cocked hats stood guard with halberds in their
+hands another little Prince, about eleven, also in a sailor suit,
+came out of a room and walked ahead of us; behind followed two
+nuns, walking side by side at a respectful distance. As he
+appeared in the corridor one of the guards stamped his halberd on
+the floor, calling out in Spanish, "Turn out the guard&mdash;the
+Infant of Spain." And in the guardroom at the end of the corridor
+the guards, forming in line, clashing their arms, did honour to
+the baby Prince.</p>
+
+<p>Ambassador Willard and I waited in the great, splendid room of
+the Palace. Inside, priests and officers, ladies, officials,
+diplomats, were waiting to present petitions or pay homage to
+their King. Outside in the court yard, the guard was being
+changed, infantry, cavalry and artillery all being represented. A
+tuneful band played during the ceremony of guard mount, which was
+witnessed by crowds of poor folk who are permitted to enter the
+Palace precincts as spectators.</p>
+
+<p>While waiting I was presented to the Archbishop of Toledo, head
+of the Spanish Church, resplendent in his gorgeous ecclesiastical
+robes. Finally a court official came and said that I was to go
+into the King alone; that Mr. Willard was to see him later.</p>
+
+<p>I found King Alfonso in a small room about twenty by fourteen
+feet. He wore a brown business<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> suit, a soft shirt and soft
+collar fastened by a gold safety pin&mdash;quite the style of dress of
+an American collegian. He is tall and well built.</p>
+
+<p>The King speaks perfect English&mdash;without a trace of accent. After
+we had talked a few moments, I noted the difference between
+Teuton and Latin, the vast abyss which separates the polite and
+courteous Spaniard, thinking of others, anxious to be hospitable,
+and the rough, conceited, aggressive Junker of Germany. How often
+have I found that we ourselves, although good hearted and easy
+going, in comparison with our friends in South and Central
+America, do not measure up to the standards of Castilian
+courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>Some one knocked at the door and King Alfonso rose and answered.
+He returned with odd looking implements in his hands which I soon
+discovered to be an enormous silver cocktail shaker and two
+goblets. After a dexterous shake, the King poured out two large
+cocktails, saying, "I understand that you American gentlemen
+always drink in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>I had not had a cocktail for years and if I had endeavoured to
+assimilate the drink so royally prepared for me I should have
+been in no condition to continue the conversation. I think King
+Alfonso himself was quite relieved when, after a sip, I put my
+cocktail behind a statue. I noticed that he camouflaged his in a
+similar manner.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, as Maximilian Harden said, the Germans think of us
+as a land of dollars, trusts and corruption; and other nations
+think of us as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> devotees of the cocktail and of poker. Their
+school boys dream of fighting Indians in Pittsburg and hunting
+buffalo in the deserts of the Bronx.</p>
+
+<p>The characteristic of Alfonso which impresses one immediately is
+that of extreme manliness. He has a sense of humour that will
+save him from many a mishap in his difficult post. He has a wide
+knowledge of men and affairs and, above all, as the Spaniards
+would put it, is <i>muy espa&ntilde;ol</i> (very Spanish), not only in
+appearance but in his way of looking at things, a Spaniard of the
+best type, a Spaniard possessing industry and ambition and
+bravery, a Spaniard, in fact, of the days when Spain was supreme
+in the world. His favourite sport is polo, which he plays very
+well. Indeed, the game, which requires dash, quickness of
+thought, nerve and good riding, is particularly suited to the
+Spanish character. The King showed at the time of the anarchistic
+outbreaks, that he was a brave man. Yet he must be careful at all
+times to remember that he is a constitutional king, that in a
+country like Spain leadership is dangerous, that he should always
+rather stand aside, let the representatives of the nation decide,
+thus taking no definite position himself. A king who abandons the
+council table to shoot pigeons or play polo is often acting with
+far more wisdom than a constitutional ruler who attempts by the
+use of his strong personality and lofty position to force upon
+his councillors a course which the majority of them do not
+recommend.</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniards are politically an exacting people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> But it is to
+be hoped that they will not turn the heavy artillery of their
+criticism upon a king who serves them so gracefully and well.</p>
+
+<p>The king has a natural desire to take a prominent part in the
+negotiations for peace, but here again is dangerous ground for
+him. He should be given a part, if possible, in the preliminaries
+of peace, but while I believe that he sympathises with one of the
+Entente countries, the Allies are forced to recognise the fact of
+which he himself reminded me, that he is not only King of Spain,
+but Archduke of one of the Central Empires, the son of an
+Austrian Archduchess.</p>
+
+<p>The king told me that he was most desirous that American capital
+should become interested in the development of Spain. He did not
+tell me the reason for this desire but perhaps he fears that if
+German capital should take a great part in the development of
+industrial Spain that the tentacles of the German propaganda and
+spy system which go hand in hand with her commercial invaders
+would wrap themselves around the commercial, social and political
+life of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps King Alfonso, when he wishes capital other than German to
+become interested in Spain, is thinking of the occurrences of
+1885, when Spain and Germany so nearly clashed. In that year the
+crew of a German warship hoisted the flag of the German Empire on
+the island of Yap, one of the Carolina group, an island long
+claimed by Spain. The act so stirred the people of Spain that a
+great meeting was held in Madrid, attended by over one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> hundred
+thousand people. Later the mob attacked the German Embassy and
+Consulate, tore down the shield and flag staff of the Consulate
+and burned them in the principal square of Madrid. In the end,
+Spain was compelled to humbly apologise to Germany for the insult
+to the German Ambassador.</p>
+
+<p>Some years before the war the King sent to this country a special
+emissary to interest American capital in Spain. Means of
+transportation are very meagre. Great mineral districts are as
+yet undeveloped and many other opportunities for foreign capital
+present themselves.</p>
+
+<p>I asked the Spaniards why Spain was not developed by Spanish
+capital and they told me that the rich put all their money in
+government bonds and lived as gaily as possible on the interest.</p>
+
+<p>Our own Government, whether Democratic or Republican, must always
+be careful to see that taxes are not so high as to prevent the
+naturally enterprising American from risking part of his capital
+in new ventures and such protection must be given to American
+citizens that they will continue to try their luck at business in
+foreign countries for the immediate benefit, of course, of
+themselves, but also for the commercial supremacy of the United
+States.</p>
+
+<p>The American who goes to Mexico and there develops a railroad or
+a plantation, a commercial business, a bank or a mine, is not
+only adding to the wealth of Mexico, but any money which he makes
+after paying his due share of taxes there, is brought back by him
+to the United States, is subject to taxation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> and by just so
+much not only lightens the tax burden of other Americans, but
+adds to the power in trade of the whole country.</p>
+
+<p>A business man who is taxed too much on any profits that he makes
+will, like the Spaniard, invest his capital in Government bonds.
+He will stop taking up new enterprises because if he loses no one
+compensates him for his loss, while if he wins most of his profit
+is taken in taxes by the State.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that the Spanish harbour any spirit of revenge
+against us because of the events of the Spanish-American war.
+There was nothing in that war to arouse particular resentment. No
+one used poison gas, or enslaved women or cut off the hands of
+babies. On our side, at least, there was an intense admiration
+for the splendid, chivalrous bravery of our enemies. Spain was,
+in reality, benefited by the loss of Cuba and the Philippines; in
+fact, they were practically lost to her before we entered the
+war. Thinking Spaniards believe the war with America benefited
+Spain; and the lower classes rejoice because their sons and
+husbands are not forced to serve in the Spanish Army in the
+fever-laden swamps of the tropics.</p>
+
+<p>On the war Spain is hopelessly divided: Conservative, against
+Conservative; Liberal, against Liberal. The usual German
+propaganda is furiously at work, all the paraphernalia, bought
+newspapers&mdash;bribes. Roman Catholic prejudice against former
+French Governments is a great stumbling block in the way of the
+Allies in Spain, for that country became the refuge of many
+orders and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> priests driven from France. Many of the Spanish
+Catholics still resent the action of previous French Governments
+towards the Catholic Church.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may be the faults of the French Government in this
+particular, whether it or the teaching orders went too far&mdash;the
+Roman Catholics of Spain sooner or later will realise that, after
+all, the bulk of the French and Italian and Belgian people are
+their co-religionists, and they will recall the attempts of
+Bismarck to master the Roman Catholics of Germany and to bind its
+priests to the will of the Imperial Government, attempts recent
+enough to keep the Catholics of Germany still organised in the
+political party which they created in the dark days of Bismarck's
+"war for Civilisation," as he dared call his contest with the
+great Roman Catholic Church.</p>
+
+<p>Spanish and other Catholics throughout the world will remember
+this and will remember, too, that from every valley of the
+Protestant section of the German Empire the eye can see a
+"Bismarck Thurm," or Bismarck Memorial Tower, erected on some
+commanding height by the admirers of the dead Iron Chancellor.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that after the war the Roman Catholic Church in France
+and Belgium will be on a healthier, sounder basis, that it will
+have more and more influence with the people, that it will be
+more popular and respected than before, unless some act on the
+part of the Pope should lead the French and Belgians to believe
+that he favours Germany. Priests are not exempt from military
+service in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> France and these Abb&eacute;s, fighting, dying, suffering
+wounds and privation, working cheek to cheek with the soldiers of
+France, will do much to bring about the change. I met a number of
+these priest-warriors in the prison camps of Germany. They are
+doing a great work and have earned the respect and love of their
+countrymen&mdash;their fellow prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>Several of these soldier Abb&eacute;s were prisoners in Dyrotz, near
+Berlin, and I remember how they were looked up to by all the
+soldiers. What a consolation were these noble warriors who fought
+a two-fold winning fight&mdash;for their country and their faith.</p>
+
+<p>Spain has suffered much from the war. In the northeast part
+called Catalonia are located the manufacturing industries of
+Spain, cloth weaving, cotton spinning, etc. In Barcelona, the
+principal industrial town, are many manufacturing industries. If
+these plants cannot obtain raw materials or a market for their
+finished products, then industrial depression ensues and
+thousands are thrown out of employment.</p>
+
+<p>So in the north, where iron ore is produced, the submarine
+blockade of England, chief buyer of iron ore and the seller of
+coal, has made itself felt in every province; and in the south,
+the land of sun and gypsies, oranges and vines, the want of sea
+and land transportation, the diminished exports of wine and
+fruits to other countries have brought many of the inhabitants to
+the verge of ruin.</p>
+
+<p>In the coast cities sailors and longshoremen are out of
+employment, and this condition&mdash;these hundreds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> of thousands
+without work through disturbance of industry,&mdash;has ripened the
+field for the German propagandist and agent who threatens the
+King with revolution, should he incline to the Allies.</p>
+
+<p>In no country of the world has the German agent been so bold and
+no neutral government has been more forcibly reminded in its
+policy and conduct of the fact that it is always face to face
+with Kaiserism.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>GERMAN SPIES AND THEIR METHODS</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">G</span>erman</span> spies who looked like "movie" detectives hung about and
+followed us on the journey from Berlin to Switzerland, France and
+Spain. There were even suspicious characters among the Americans
+with German accent who came on our special train from Germany to
+Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>Berne is now the champion spy centre of the world. Switzerland, a
+neutral country, bordering on Germany, France, Italy and Austria,
+is the happy hunting ground and outfitting point for myriads of
+spies employed by the nations at war. The Germans, however, use
+more spies than all the other nations together.</p>
+
+<p>Bismarck said that there are male nations and female nations, and
+that Germany was a male nation&mdash;certainly the German has less of
+that heaven-sent feminine quality of intuition than other
+peoples. The autocrat, never mingling with the plain people of
+all walks of life, finds the spy a necessity.</p>
+
+<p>Spy spies on spy&mdash;autocracy produces bureaucracy where men rise
+and fall not by the votes of their fellow citizens but by back
+stairs intrigue. The German office-holder fears the spies of his
+rivals. I often said to Germans holding high office<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> during the
+war, "This strain is breaking you down,&mdash;all day in your office.
+Take an afternoon off and come shooting with me." The invariable
+answer was, "I cannot&mdash;the others would learn it from their spies
+and would spread the report that I neglect business!"</p>
+
+<p>While in Spain I met the then Premier, Count Romanones, a man of
+great talent and impressive personality. He told me of the
+finding of a quantity of high explosives, marked by a little
+buoy, in one of the secluded bays of the coast. And that day a
+German had been arrested who had mysteriously appeared at a
+Spanish port dressed as a workman. The workman took a first class
+passage to Madrid, went to the best hotel and bought a complete
+outfit of fine clothes. Undoubtedly the high explosive as well as
+the mysterious German had been landed from a German submarine.
+Whether the explosive was destined as a depot for submarines or
+was to help overturn the Spanish government was hard to guess,
+but Count Romanones was worried over the activity of the German
+agents in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>It has been very easy for German agents in America to communicate
+with Germany through this submarine post from Spain to Germany,
+the letters from America being sent to Cuba and thence on Spanish
+boats to Spain.</p>
+
+<p>At all times since the war the Germans have had a submarine post
+running direct from Germany to Spain. Shortly after our arrival
+in Spain Mrs. Gerard received mysteriously a letter written by a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+friend of hers, a German Baroness, in Berlin. This letter had
+undoubtedly been sent through the very efficient German spy
+system.</p>
+
+<p>Sometime in 1915 a German soldier, in uniform, speaking perfect
+English, called one day at the Embassy. He said that his name was
+Bode and that he had at one time worked for my father-in-law, the
+late Marcus Daly. Of course, we had no means of verifying his
+statements and Mrs. Gerard did not remember any one of that name
+or recall Bode personally. He said that he was fighting on the
+East front and that he had a temporary leave of absence. I gave
+him some money and later we sent him packages of food and tobacco
+to the front, but never received any acknowledgment.</p>
+
+<p>In Madrid one of my assistants, Frank Hall, while walking through
+the street, ran across Bode, who was fashionably attired. His
+calling cards stated that he was a mining engineer from Los
+Angeles, California. He told Hall a most extraordinary fairy
+story, saying that he had been captured by the Russians on the
+East front and sent to Siberia, that from Siberia he had escaped
+to China and from there he had gradually worked his way back to
+America and thence to Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, without any definite information on the subject it is
+impossible to say exactly what he was doing in Spain. But I am
+sure that it is far more likely he had landed from a German
+submarine on the coast of Spain and that he was posing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> as an
+American mining engineer for a particular purpose.</p>
+
+<p>I told certain people in Spain about Bode and of his intention to
+visit the mining districts of Spain where numbers of men are
+employed. Bode must have suspected that I had given information
+about him, for Hall and I received several postcards of a
+threatening character, evidently from him.</p>
+
+<p>My cables to and from the State Department passed through our
+legation at Copenhagen, and, of course, if the Germans knew our
+cipher these messages were read by them. On special occasions I
+made use of a super-cipher the key to which I kept in a safe in
+my bedroom and which only one secretary could use. The files of
+cipher cables sent and received were kept in a large safe in the
+Embassy. But before leaving Germany, knowing the Germans as I
+did, and particularly what they had done in other countries and
+to other diplomats, knowing how easy it would be for them to
+burglarise the safe after we left, when the Spaniards and Dutch
+were out of the building at night, I tossed all these despatches
+as well as the code books into a big furnace fire. Commander
+Gherardi and Secretary Hugh Wilson stood by and personally saw
+that the last scrap was burned. Of course, copies of all the
+cables are in the State Department.</p>
+
+<p>German spies are adepts at opening bags, steaming letters&mdash;all
+the old tricks. The easiest way to baffle them is to write
+nothing that cannot be published to the world.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time after the beginning of war I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> too busy to
+write the weekly report of official gossip usually sent home by
+diplomats. I suppose the Germans searched our courier bags for
+such a report vainly. Anyway, its absence finally got on the
+nerves of Zimmermann so much that one day he blurted out, "Don't
+you ever write reports to your Government?"</p>
+
+<p>Sealed letters are opened by spies as follows:</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/illo280.jpg" width="350" height="267" alt="Opening envelopes" title="How to open an envelope" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">by inserting a pencil or small round object in the envelope,
+steamed a little, if necessary; the envelope is opened at the end
+flap and the contents pulled out without disturbing the seal, the
+contents are then read, put in their place again, the end flap
+re-inserted, a little gum used and the envelope is as intact as
+before.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The only safe way to seal an envelope is thus:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/illo281.jpg" width="300" height="138" alt="Sealed envelope" title="Properly sealed envelope" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Even then a clever spy can open the letter, read the contents and
+seal it again. This is done by cutting through the seals with a
+hot razor&mdash;the divided seals are then united by pressing the hot
+razor against each side of the cut and then pressing the two
+parts of the cut seal together. This is, however, a very delicate
+operation and doesn't always work.</p>
+
+<p>From the outbreak of war we sent and received our official mail
+through England, and couriers carried it between Berlin and
+London through Holland via Flushing and Tilbury.</p>
+
+<p>On account of the great volume of correspondence between
+Ambassador Page and myself on the affairs of German prisoners in
+England and English prisoners in Germany, there were many pouches
+every week. These were leather mail bags opened only by duplicate
+keys kept in London and Berlin and, for the American mail, in
+Berlin and Washington. Our couriers did their best to keep the
+numerous bags in their sight during the long journey but on many
+occasions our couriers were separated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> I am sure with malicious
+purpose, from their bags by the German railway authorities and on
+some occasions the bags not recovered for days.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly at this time the Germans opened and looked over the
+contents of the bags. Later in the war our courier while on a
+Dutch mail boat, running between Flushing and England, was twice
+captured with the boat by a German warship and taken into
+Zeebrugge. Undoubtedly here, too, the bags were secretly opened
+and our uncoded despatches and letters read.</p>
+
+<p>German spies were most annoying in Havana and one of them, a
+large dark man, followed me about at a distance of only six feet,
+with his eyes glued on the small bag which I carried from a thick
+strap hanging around my shoulder. I brought it from Germany in
+that way. I never let it out of my hands or sight.</p>
+
+<p>What was in that bag? Among other things were the original
+telegrams written by the Kaiser in his own handwriting,
+facsimiles of which appear in my earlier book, "My Four Years in
+Germany," and the treaty which the Germans tried to get me to
+sign while they held me as a prisoner. Under the terms they
+proposed the German ships interned in America were to have the
+right in case of war, to sail for Germany under a safe conduct to
+be obtained from the Allies by the United States. Somewhat of a
+treaty! And quite a new, bright and original thought by some one
+in the Foreign Office or German Admiralty. There were also in
+this mysterious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> bag many other matters of interest that may some
+day see the light.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">Poisonous propaganda and spying are the twin offspring of
+Kaiserism.</p>
+
+<p>There is in Mexico, for instance, one force that never
+sleeps,&mdash;the German propaganda. It is the same method as that
+used by the Teutons in every country, the purchase or rental of
+newspaper properties, bribing public men and officers of the army
+and the insidious use of Germans who are engaged in commerce.
+This propaganda is backed by enormous sums of money appropriated
+by the German government which directs how all its officers and
+agents, high and low, shall participate in the campaign.</p>
+
+<p>In the long run a paid propaganda always fails. It is like paying
+money to blackmailers. The blackmailer who has once received
+money becomes so insatiable that even the Bank of England will
+not satisfy him in the end. Sometimes the newspapers which are
+not bought, but are equally corrupt, become vehement in their
+denunciation of the country making the propaganda in the hope of
+being bought and in the hope that their bribe money will be in
+proportion to their hostility. Corrupted public men who are not
+bribed often become sternly virtuous and denunciatory with a
+similar hope. Those who have received the wages of shame, on the
+other hand, become more insistent in their demands, crying,
+"Give! Give!" like the daughter of the horse-leech.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The blows of war must be struck quickly. Delays are dangerous and
+the temporary paralysis of one country by propaganda may mean the
+loss of the war. The United States has been at a great
+disadvantage because our officials have not had the authority,
+the means or the money to fight the German propaganda with
+effective educational campaigns, both offensive and defensive.</p>
+
+<p>Bernstorff in this country disposed of enormous sums for the
+purpose of moulding American public opinion. I, in Berlin, was
+without one cent with which to place America's side before the
+German people. It is a conflict of two systems. In Berlin I did
+not even have money to pay private detectives and on the rare
+occasions when I used them as, for instance to find out who was
+connected with the so-called American organisation, the League of
+Truth, which was engaged in a violent propaganda against America
+inside Germany, I was obliged to bear the expense personally.</p>
+
+<p>South of the Rio Grande the Germans are working against us, doing
+their best to prejudice the Mexicans against the United States,
+playing upon old hatreds and creating new ones and, in the
+meantime, by their purchase of properties and of mines creating a
+situation that will constitute for us in the future a most
+difficult and dangerous problem.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans cannot understand why we do not take advantage of
+conditions in Mexico in order to conquer and hold that
+unfortunate country. They could not believe that we were actuated
+by a spirit of idealism and that we were patiently suffering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+much in order really to help Mexico. They could not believe that
+we were waiting in order to convince not only Mexico but the
+other States of Central America and the great friendly republics
+of South America, that it was not our policy to use the
+dissensions and weakness of our neighbours to gain territory.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion before the war I and several other Ambassadors
+were dining with the Kaiser and after dinner the conversation
+turned to the strange sights to be seen in America. One of the
+Ambassadors, I think it was Cambon, said that he had seen in
+America whole houses being moved along the roads, something of a
+novelty to European eyes where the houses, constructed of brick
+and stone, cannot be transported from place to place like our
+wooden frame house. The Emperor jokingly remarked: "Yes, I am
+sure that the Americans are moving their houses. They are moving
+them down towards the Mexican border."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>EN ROUTE HOME&mdash;KAISERISM IN AMERICA</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">O</span>ur</span> party was so numerous that we were compelled to charter a
+special train to take us from Madrid to La Coru&ntilde;a, the port in
+the extreme northwestern corner of Spain from which the <i>Infanta
+Isabela</i> was to sail.</p>
+
+<p>Just before the train started, a Spanish gentleman from the
+Foreign Office, who had courteously come to see us off, said to
+me, "Do you know you have a Duke as engineer?" "The Duke of
+Saragossa is going to take out your train." So we ran forward to
+the engine and I shook hands with the Duke who was in blue
+overalls.</p>
+
+<p>This Duke of Saragossa, Grandee of Spain, often drives the engine
+of the King's train. Why he engineered our train I do not know,
+unless it was because of the rumours that German agents would try
+to stop my journey home.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate the Duke proved a most competent engineer, guiding us
+with velvet touch through the steep inclines and sharp turns of
+the Guadarrama mountains. At Venta de Ba&ntilde;os his turn at the
+engine ended and on my invitation he came to dine with us in the
+dining car. He proved a most charming gentleman, speaking English
+well. He said that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> his great ambition was to visit America and
+see the big locomotives and the pretty girls. At dinner he was,
+of course, dressed in his overalls and carried out the
+professional touch by using clean cotton waste instead of a
+pocket handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at La Coru&ntilde;a in the morning, carriages sent by the
+Spanish government met us and the Mayor and the other officials
+were most polite. The Mayor accompanied us on board ship next
+day, giving to Mrs. Gerard a beautiful basket of flowers entwined
+with ribbons of the colours of the City of La Coru&ntilde;a.</p>
+
+<p>We found the <i>Infanta Isabela</i> a clean splendid ship&mdash;her Captain
+competent and kind. I cheerfully recommend her to any who wish a
+safe voyage across the Atlantic during the war.</p>
+
+<p>My stay in Havana was brief and I was soon en route northward
+from Key West.</p>
+
+<p>As our train came north through Florida there were crowds and
+bands at the stations and at St. Augustine my eyes were delighted
+by the sight of Frank Munsey and Ex-Senator Chauncey Depew.</p>
+
+<p>At the station in Washington Secretary McAdoo met me. What a
+splendid record of achievement is his since the war, and now with
+the burden of all the railways in the country added to that of
+finance I suppose in no country at war has one man so
+successfully undertaken such gigantic tasks.</p>
+
+<p>President Wilson was ill in bed but next day got up on purpose to
+hear my report. I was with him for over an hour.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="infanta" id="infanta"></a><a href="images/illo288.jpg"><img src="images/illo288_th.jpg"
+alt="Infanta Isabella" title="THE &quot;INFANTA ISABELLA,&quot; ON WHICH AMBASSADOR GERARD
+RETURNED FROM EUROPE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN HAVANA HARBOR,
+MARCH, 1917" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">THE &quot;INFANTA ISABELLA,&quot; ON WHICH AMBASSADOR GERARD
+RETURNED FROM EUROPE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN HAVANA HARBOR,
+MARCH, 1917</p>
+
+<p>The following day I arrived in New York, being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> met in Jersey
+City by a committee headed by the celebrated lawyer, John B.
+Stanchfield; Clarence Mackay, Herbert Swope (whose splendid
+articles in the <i>New York World</i> were the first warnings to
+America and other countries respecting the ruthless submarine
+warfare), United States Marshal Thomas D. McCarthy, State Senator
+Foley, James J. Hoey,&mdash;a faithful trio of good friends who saw me
+off for Denmark only a few months before. I was escorted to the
+City Hall where I was welcomed by the Mayor. In a speech on the
+steps of the City Hall I said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We are standing to-day very near the brink of
+war, but I want to assure you that if we should be
+drawn into the conflict it will be only after our
+President has exhausted every means consistent
+with upholding the honour and dignity of the
+United States to keep us from war. I left Berlin
+with a clear conscience, because I felt that
+during all my stay there I had omitted nothing to
+make for friendly relations and peace between the
+two nations.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad to-day to see on the list of this
+Reception Committee the names of people of German
+descent. It is but natural that citizens of German
+descent in the beginning of the war should have
+had a sentimental feeling toward Germany, that
+they should have looked back through rose-coloured
+glasses on that land which, however, they left
+because they did not have equality of opportunity.
+We read to-day in the newspapers for the first
+time that there is a prospect that after the war
+the Germans will be given an equal share in their
+own government. I believe that in our hour of
+trial we can rely upon the loyalty of our citizens
+of German descent, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> if they would follow me I
+would not be afraid to go out with a regiment of
+them and without any fear of being shot from
+behind.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>"The nation that stands opposite to us to-day has
+probably no less than 12,000,000 men under arms. I
+have seen the Germans take more prisoners in one
+afternoon than there are men in the entire United
+States Army.</p>
+
+<p>"Does it not seem to you ridiculous that the two
+States of New York and New Jersey should have more
+chauffeurs in them than there are soldiers in our
+army? My companions from the Twelfth Regiment that
+have honoured me by coming here to-day, and more
+men like them throughout the country, have done
+what they can. But they can't do it all. There
+must be a public sentiment if we are to maintain
+ourselves as a nation. If we had a million men
+under arms to-day we should not be near the edge
+of war.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen, I have tried in Berlin to be, as the
+Mayor has told you, an American Ambassador, and I
+thank you because you, an audience of patriotic
+Americans, by your presence here set your seal of
+approval upon my conduct during the last two and a
+half years."</p></div>
+
+<p>I have never been able to understand why so many people did not
+sooner realise what Kaiserism meant for us. But now, at last, the
+nation understands that we must fight on until this menace of
+military autocracy has vanished and that not until then will the
+world enjoy a lasting peace.</p>
+
+<p>Almost as soon as I was settled in New York I was drafted.
+Drafted by a public curiosity which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> insisted on knowing
+something about Germany and the war.</p>
+
+<p>And so for me began a new life&mdash;that of a public speaker&mdash;I spoke
+first in New York at a lunch at the Chamber of Commerce&mdash;war had
+not then been declared and I was compelled to be careful&mdash;for
+even then there seemed a fear of Germany, a foolish desire to
+surrender all manhood to a fat neutrality.</p>
+
+<p>On April 2nd came President Wilson's message demanding war. I was
+in the opera house that night. Between the acts extras appeared.
+I telephoned Swope of the <i>World</i> who confirmed the news. While I
+was receiving this information one of the directors of the
+Metropolitan Opera Company came in the room. I told him what had
+happened and asked if he was not going to do something&mdash;order the
+news read from the stage&mdash;for example, and the "Star Spangled
+Banner" played. He said, "No, the opera company is neutral."</p>
+
+<p>I returned to the box where I was sitting and stepping to the
+front called on the house to cheer President Wilson. There was,
+for a moment, surprise at such unconventional action, but the
+whole house soon broke into cheers.</p>
+
+<p>Conventionalism was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The opera was DeKoven's "Canterbury Pilgrims" and a few minutes
+after the curtain rose on the last act Frau Ober, a German
+singer, who was taking one of the principal parts, keeled over in
+a faint,&mdash;rage, perhaps, that the Yankees were at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> last daring to
+cheer, to assert themselves against the Kaiser!</p>
+
+<p>As I spoke in Albany, Buffalo, Harrisburg, Trenton and Boston, in
+Philadelphia, Providence and many times in New York and other
+places, I noted always an eagerness to learn about Germany, the
+war and foreign affairs. We Americans had travelled, but not with
+our eyes open&mdash;"seeing, we saw not."</p>
+
+<p>The first great, great question we faced was that of universal
+service for the war&mdash;or the selective draft&mdash;again how farsighted
+our President then proved himself. What would be our situation
+now if we had tried to go to war under the volunteer system? This
+question once solved, our President led us with a breadth of
+vision, an efficiency, and on a scale commensurate with the size
+of the undertaking in which we at last had become partners.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps we are a little over indulgent, however, in the treatment
+of the German enemy alien within our gates. No American singer or
+musician could travel about Germany at will, unwatched by the
+police, collecting money from Americans to be used in propaganda,
+or things much worse, against America. Americans in Germany are
+compelled to report twice daily to the police and cannot leave
+their homes at night. November 17, 1917&mdash;seven months after we
+went to war with Germany&mdash;I met Hugo Schmidt, a director of the
+Deutsche Bank, riding in Central Park. He lived at the German
+Club, saw whom he liked and only reported<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> to the police when he
+changed his residence. In January 1918, he was finally interned.</p>
+
+<p>Long before our break with Germany, American consuls and
+officials were insulted in the street and in opera houses because
+they made use of their own language, not at all because they were
+taken for British for every one knew that all British had been
+interned.</p>
+
+<p>The wife of our naval attach&eacute; attended a reception presided over
+by a German admiral's wife. She was presented to this high
+personage by the wife of a German naval officer, who, in making
+the presentation, spoke in English. The admiral's wife rebuked
+both the wife of our attach&eacute; and the officer's wife for daring to
+talk English. I am thankful to say that Mrs. Gherardi immediately
+left the house to receive later the officially ordered apologies
+of the admiral's wife.</p>
+
+<p>And while Americans did not dare use their own language in Berlin
+in time of peace between the two countries yet after the outbreak
+of war, newspapers in the United States, printed in German, owned
+by Germans and German sympathisers, dared to attack America and
+her President.</p>
+
+<p>The autocracy always hope to divide us, to make of us a Russia,
+torn by Maximalists and Minimalists, by Militarists and
+Bolsheviki and, consequently, impotent for war.</p>
+
+<p>In travelling through the United States in August and September
+of 1917, although I was on private business, I made speeches in
+many cities, such as Minneapolis, and Helena, Billings, Butte and
+Missoula<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> in Montana, Spokane, Seattle and Tacoma in Washington,
+Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and surrounding country, Los
+Angeles, San Diego and Pasadena and then Milwaukee, Chicago and
+Cleveland. In all this territory I found great enthusiasm, great
+patriotism and a sincere desire to learn about Germany and the
+war. But I found everywhere also the trail of Germany's poisonous
+propaganda.</p>
+
+<p>The great majority of our citizens of German-American descent
+have been splendidly loyal to their country in this crisis of its
+history. But the fact must be faced that there are those who, for
+some unknown reason, still sympathise with the German Kaiser in
+his war of aggression.</p>
+
+<p>More unfortunately there are politicians in America who seek the
+votes of those disaffected, and approach treason in doing so. In
+all the history of sordid politics, there is nothing more
+nauseating than the effort of these cheap politicians thus to
+gratify their personal ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>Their shameful identity is known to all. A generation from now
+their own descendants will be applying to the courts for a change
+of name.</p>
+
+<p>If, when the test comes, it is found that the votes of these
+disaffected citizens count for something in our elections, we
+must find some means to disenfranchise them rather than have our
+low politicians outbidding each other within the law in order to
+get these votes.</p>
+
+<p>Have we not had examples enough from Russia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> of what the slimy
+bribe and the snaky propaganda can do?</p>
+
+<p>In Chicago, where one Thompson is Mayor, there is a censorship of
+moving picture films. The chief censor is Major Funkhouser. When
+I was in Los Angeles, at the end of September, like all strangers
+there, I visited movie-land to see the pictures made.</p>
+
+<p>At the house of my college chum, Dr. Walter J. Barlow, I met the
+beautiful and celebrated Mary Pickford.</p>
+
+<p>In conversation she told me about Major Funkhouser, and how he
+had refused an exhibition permit for one of her films called "The
+Little American." Curious to see the film rejected by Chicago
+officialdom, I asked Miss Pickford if she would have it run off
+for my benefit. I could see nothing in the film that could hurt
+the susceptibilities of any except the Germans with whom we are
+now engaged in war!</p>
+
+<p>Later the Fox Film Company informed me that their film called
+"The Spy" and which deals with the adventures of an American who
+is supposed to go to Germany to get a list of German spies and
+agents in America, was refused the right of exhibition in Chicago
+by this same Major Funkhouser. In this case the Fox Company
+appealed in the courts and obtained from Judge Alschuler an
+injunction preventing any one from interfering with the
+exhibition of this film. The decision of Judge Alschuler was
+affirmed on appeal.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the mass of the people in Chicago are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> splendidly
+patriotic as the record of Chicago for enlistment and Red Cross
+and Liberty Loan shows.</p>
+
+<p>When I spoke in the great Medinah Temple under the auspices of
+the Hamilton Club, on October twenty-second, I was able to show
+to the audience two German text-books used in the Chicago public
+schools, stamped with the royal arms of Prussia. The books had
+been approved by Ella Flagg Young, Superintendent of Schools, in
+1914.</p>
+
+<p>These books were furnished me by my friend, Anthony Czarnecki of
+the <i>Chicago Daily News</i> whom I first met in Berlin where he came
+to do most excellent work for his paper. In one of these books is
+printed the German patriotic song, The Watch on the Rhine ("Die
+Wacht am Rhein"). What a howl there would have been if some
+public school superintendent had selected for the schools under
+her jurisdiction a text-book of English literature with the royal
+arms of England stamped on the cover and "Rule Britannia"
+prominently displayed inside!</p>
+
+<p>These text-books were cleverly compiled to impress children at a
+youthful age with a favourable idea of kings and emperors. In one
+of these was an anecdote about Frederick the Great and a miller,
+and in another, one about the Emperor Charlemagne and the
+scholar, of course, making Frederick and Charlemagne appear as
+good kindly people, and giving the impression that all kings and
+emperors are beneficent beings. But no word is there in these
+books quoting the present German Emperor's statement in which he
+puts Frederick in the same class as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> the four other bloody
+conquerors of history, Alexander, Julius C&aelig;sar, Theodoric and
+Napoleon, and says that where they failed in their dreams of
+world conquest, his mailed fist will succeed. Why was not
+Frederick the Great's statement printed in these books, his
+admission that he engaged upon the Seven Years' War "in order to
+be talked about"?</p>
+
+<p>These books contained quotations from Goethe. Why did they not
+contain Goethe's statement, "Amerika, du hast es besser."?
+(America, you are better off). Or his prophecy about the
+Prussians, "The Prussian was born a brute, and civilisation will
+make him ferocious."</p>
+
+<p>The only foreign language taught in the grammar schools of
+Chicago is German. Parents are compelled to sign a statement in
+which they answer the question as to whether they wish their
+children to be taught German or not.</p>
+
+<p>See how subtle this is! Doubtless if a Teuton parent answers that
+he does not desire to have his children taught German the paid
+agents of the German propaganda stir up feeling against these
+Germans who have dared to refuse to have their children taught
+the language of the fatherland.</p>
+
+<p>And when a parent has once elected that his children shall be
+taught German, not the principal of the school, not the district
+superintendent, but only the head of all the Chicago school
+system, on the application of the parent, can excuse the child,
+during his or her school course, from further study of German.</p>
+
+<p>Worst of all, however, is the Chicago official<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> school speller, a
+book printed under the direction and compiled by the school
+authorities of Chicago. In this speller there is just one piece
+of reading matter and that a fulsome eulogy of the present German
+Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>This is an account of an alleged incident of the Kaiser's school
+days and the author concludes that the facts set forth (probably
+untrue) show that the Kaiser as a boy had the "root of a fine
+character in him," possessed "that chivalrous sense of fair play
+which is the nearest thing to a religion" in boys of that age and
+hated "meanness and favouritism." The Chicago Board of Education
+end the eulogy by stating, "There is in him a fundamental bent
+toward what is clean, manly and aboveboard."</p>
+
+<p>"Chivalrous sense of fair play and hates meanness!" "Fundamental
+bent toward what is clean, manly and aboveboard!" How about the
+enslavement of women and girls in France, the use of poison gas,
+the deportations of the Belgians, the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>
+and the killing of women and babies by Zeppelins and
+submarines.&mdash;Sickening!</p>
+
+<p>A number of the books used in the public schools of New York have
+so much in them favourable to kings and emperors, have so much of
+German patriotism and fatherland, that the hand of the
+propagandist must have had something to do with the adoption of
+these books.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it is only in the books of the advanced courses that
+propaganda appears. It is not possible, however clever the
+author, to incorporate much propaganda in simple exercises, or in
+such sentences<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> as "Have you seen the sister of my cousin's
+wife?" or "The bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account
+of the rain."</p>
+
+<p>But the following extracts from books used in the public schools
+of New York should not be without interest to those who know that
+the impressions given to persons under the age of sixteen or
+seventeen are the impressions that often persist through life.</p>
+
+<p>For instance in the "Deutscher Lehrgang, First Year," by E.
+Prokosch of the University of Texas, "Die Wacht am Rhein" is
+printed with music.</p>
+
+<p>I should be very much surprised to hear that the "Star Spangled
+Banner," with music, had ever been printed in any school book in
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>On page 109, of this book, there is an article in German
+entitled, "The German Constitution." It begins with the sentence,
+"The German Empire is a union State like the United States of
+America." How far the German Empire is from the United States of
+America in political liberty can be answered by any German
+immigrant or Jewish merchant who has voted under the circle
+system or been denied access to court because of his religion!</p>
+
+<p>The second paragraph commences with the sentence, "The German
+Kaiser is not monarch of the Empire. He only is President of the
+Union." I am quite sure that if the Kaiser ever saw this sentence
+he would very soon convince the author that he was something more
+than the President. The article continues:</p>
+
+<p>"He is the over-commander of the army.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> Through him is war
+declared and peace made, but he can declare war only with the
+consent of the Bundesrath."</p>
+
+<p>The Bundesrath had nothing to say about the commencement of this
+war. They never voted on the question. The German Constitution,
+as a matter of fact, gives the Kaiser the right to declare war
+himself, providing that the war is a defensive war. In 1914, the
+Kaiser first announced, without presenting any evidence, that
+Germany had been attacked, and then declared war on the strength
+of this statement, never since substantiated.</p>
+
+<p>The text book writer adds: "The people are represented in the
+Reichstag as the American people are represented in Congress." If
+the American people were represented in Congress under the same
+unfair representation from which the German people suffer, there
+would soon be a revolution in this country. The districts which
+elect members to the Reichstag have not been changed since 1872,
+so that millions of Germans are not represented at all in the
+Reichstag.</p>
+
+<p>"Professor" Prokosch remarks: "The Bundesrath is like the Senate
+of the United States. It is composed of representatives of the
+particular States."</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the only <i>difference</i> is that our Senators are elected
+by the people and the members of the Bundesrath are appointed by
+the ruling kings and princes of the German states and vote
+exactly as they are told by these rulers.</p>
+
+<p>This is only to show how carelessly, if not maliciously,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+Professor E. Prokosch of the University of Texas and his helper,
+C.&nbsp;M. Purin of the State Normal School at Milwaukee, have handled
+the German Constitution, doubtless to give the impression to
+school children in America that the German empire instead of
+being a despotic autocracy, is ruled in very much the same manner
+as our own republic.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick the Great, who admitted that he went to war "in order
+to be talked about," who boasted that he had only one cook and a
+hundred spies, who was one of the most tyrannical kings of all
+history, has a whole book dedicated to him for use in the Public
+Schools of New York. Frederick Betz, head of the Department of
+Modern Languages in the East High School of Rochester, New York,
+is the author of a book called, "About a Great King and Others."
+The author in the preface states that the anecdotes which he
+prints do not narrate the story of the lives of these famous
+Germans, but, nevertheless, give glimpses of what they did and
+may help to show why the Germans held them in such high esteem.
+The book contains four anecdotes about King Frederick William I,
+the father of Frederick the Great, a villainous king who was
+prevented from executing his own son only by the protests of the
+other kings of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Then follow forty-nine anecdotes about Frederick the Great, all
+of them, of course, revealing him as a good king and a popular
+character; eight anecdotes about Beethoven, Mozart, Schiller, and
+Lessing, and the remainder of the book is made up of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> one
+anecdote about Queen Louise, one about Field Marshal Bl&uuml;cher,
+eighteen anecdotes about Bismarck, three about the Emperor
+William I, and three about the present Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The booklet entitled "German Poems for Memorizing," with music to
+some of the poems, edited by Oscar Burkhard, Assistant Professor
+of German in the University of Minnesota, contains a number of
+German patriotic poems and prints the "Wacht am Rhein" twice,
+once in the text and once with music. "Deutschland &uuml;ber Alles" is
+printed twice in the same way.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to be present at the trial in the secret court in
+Germany of a schoolmaster who dared to teach his pupils to sing
+the "Star Spangled Banner" or the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
+Prokosch and Purin seem to be popular with the Board of
+Education, for they are represented by another book called
+"Conversation and Reading Book," which is full of stories and
+patriotic anecdotes. Charlemagne, Barbarossa and Frederick the
+Great are all exhibited as great men to be emulated. There is a
+picture of the coronation of Charlemagne which represents the
+Pope about to place the iron crown on Charlemagne's head while
+the Deity, attended by seraphim and cherubim, floating on clouds
+overhead, lends his presence to the ceremony; only another
+example of how the Prussians believe that God is the tribal Deity
+of their nation who takes a personal interest in all their
+ceremonies and wars.</p>
+
+<p>A long article appears in these books entitled, "The Germans in
+the United States." It implies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> that William Penn had no success
+until he called in Dr. Daniel Pastorius of Frankfort. Among the
+bits of history set forth the author alleges that, in 1760, there
+were more than a hundred thousand Germans in Pennsylvania, and
+that on account of their importance in this State it was proposed
+to make German the official language, the proposition being
+beaten by only one vote! The article says further: "The only
+reason why the contentious Puritans succeeded in making English
+the language of the country and in impressing their character on
+its politics was because the German immigrants were poor,
+downtrodden people."</p>
+
+<p>But it is when we come to the description of the War of the
+Revolution and other wars that the authors really turn loose. We
+learn that Washington's bodyguard was composed of Germans and
+that Baron von Steuben apparently reorganised the American army,
+so that Washington moved Congress to name General von Steuben,
+Inspector General, and to make his position almost independent.
+The writers say that the siege of Yorktown and surrender of the
+English army was in a great part the work of Steuben.</p>
+
+<p>I think that other historians might have something to say on this
+subject. The authors fail to tell that Baron von Steuben, a
+soldier of fortune, who sold his services to the highest bidder,
+was hired to join the American army by a Frenchman, Beaumarchais,
+who sympathised with the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Attention is also called to the fact that 190,000<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> Germans fought
+against the South and the authors observe in conclusion:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"If to-day the United States of America is a power
+of world political importance, if its industry,
+agriculture and commerce betoken a powerful danger
+commercially over the old Europe, so have they to
+thank the political power and the methodical
+perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants from
+England as well as the industry, the bravery and
+the cheerfulness of the Germans who have placed
+themselves politically in the service of the Anglo
+Saxons."</p></div>
+
+<p>It is noteworthy that of the four books I have set forth as
+examples, three apparently have been produced since the
+commencement of the World War.</p>
+
+<p>Does not all this show the hand of the German propaganda&mdash;the
+same hand which sends from Berlin every year a large sum of money
+to the German colonists in the southern states of Brazil in order
+that the German schools may be maintained there, German ideas
+inculcated and the population prevented from losing its German
+identity?</p>
+
+<p>From the time of the visit of Prince Henry to this country the
+German system of propaganda has been at work smoothing out
+traditional differences and feuds between Germans and doing its
+best to make Germans from Bavaria, Saxony and Hanover and
+W&uuml;rttemberg, and Hesse forget that their countries were conquered
+by the Prussians in 1866.</p>
+
+<p>When Prince Henry was here on his trip through the country he
+spent very little time with Americans.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> He was chiefly occupied
+with German-Americans and German-American Societies.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Henry's visit to the United States in 1902 was primarily
+to attend the christening of the racing yacht of the Emperor
+which was being built in this country. One of the members of his
+suite was von Tirpitz, then secretary of state of the German
+Navy. After having been officially received by President
+Roosevelt he visited Annapolis, Brooklyn Navy Yard and West Point
+and then toured the middle west stopping at twenty cities between
+New York and St. Louis. During the entire trip he continually
+asked questions of all the delegates sent with him by the U.&nbsp;S.
+Government, such as for instance facts about the shops at
+Altoona, the coal mines, farms, factories and handsome women!</p>
+
+<p>At every station he was met by the Mayor of the city and the
+German Societies, and greeted with German music. The Deutscher
+Kriege Verein, a German Society consisting of military veterans,
+always had a place of honour in the celebrations. In many cities
+the German-American citizens gave the Prince albums or souvenirs
+in which were engraved pretty pledges of devotion to the
+Fatherland. For instance in Chicago, the German Roman Catholic
+Society presented the following address: "The German Roman
+Catholic Staats-Verband of Illinois begs your Royal Highness to
+permit it to express its great joy for your visit to the United
+States and to assure your Royal Highness of its respect and
+regard."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We extend to your Royal Highness our heartiest
+greeting as the illustrious guest of this country
+and <i>the envoy of the wise and noble ruler of our
+Fatherland</i>, whom the world recognises and
+respects as prince of peace and as the
+representative of a great and mighty nation that
+by its own power has united its people and
+achieved its present prominent position among
+nations of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>"May the Almighty grant that the visit of your
+Royal Highness bear a rich fruit, that rulers and
+their people may join together and thereby promote
+peace, harmony and good-will throughout the world!
+May God grant this prayer!"</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">Everywhere the Prince went he was surrounded by German-American
+and German influences. In St. Louis, where the Prince spent about
+three and a half hours, the German-Americans gave him a great
+reception in the Grand Hall and lunch at the St. Louis Club which
+was attended by many Germans. In Chicago, a reception was given
+after the Mayor's banquet, in the First Regiment Armory, and
+attended by ten thousand Germans. The following day in Chicago he
+went to a large luncheon at the Germania Club. In Milwaukee the
+officers of the Deutscher Kriegebund gave a reception at the
+Exposition where ten thousand German-Americans cheered the
+Prince, and also a luncheon at the Hotel Pfister where many
+German-American officials were invited.</p>
+
+<p>The speeches throughout had the same tone, those of the
+German-Americans expressing their respect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> for the Fatherland and
+those of the Prince spurring on loyalty in the hearts of the
+German-Americans. The Prince's speech in the Armory in Chicago is
+quite typical. In reply to a speech made by a German-American,
+the Prince said:</p>
+
+<p><i>"You have left your Fatherland, but if you still have some love
+for the Fatherland then I ask you to give three cheers for the
+one who has sent me here as the representative of Prussia to
+bring this greeting&mdash;the German Emperor and King of Prussia."</i></p>
+
+<p>In another speech which the Prince began with "Mr. Chairman and
+Fellow-Germans," he said: "I would like to say that the Germans
+in this country have done a great deal for the literature and
+science of this country and I hope they will continue in this
+good work." The whole attitude of the Prince seemed to be one of
+benevolence to his "Fellow-Germans" and personal interest in
+them. Wherever the Prince discovered a German wearing the Iron
+Cross in the crowd, he would ask an aide to bring the man up to
+him so that he could shake hands and converse with him.</p>
+
+<p>Talking with Prince Henry one day before the war he told me he
+regretted that on his trip to America he had seen so little of
+the Americans. He said: "You know the Ambassador kept me always
+with the Germans and German Societies." I suppose the poor Prince
+did not himself know what was the real object of his visit. But
+undoubtedly his shrewd trip manager and the clever propagandists
+who accompanied him knew only too well.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is hard to understand why any German-Americans should take
+sides with German autocracy. There are many merchants of
+Frankfort and Hamburg and Bremen and the great industrial towns
+of Germany who do not approve of the cruelties practised in this
+war and many of these will leave Germany as soon as peace is
+concluded.</p>
+
+<p>Any one had a right to sympathise, to side with Germany, before
+our entrance into the war. But now what the lawyers call "the
+time of repentance" has gone by, there is no middle course and
+every citizen must declare himself American or be thought a
+traitor.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to understand what the pro-Germans in our country
+want. They left Germany because of a lack of opportunity there,
+because of their dislike for military service under Prussian
+conditions, because of the caste system which kept them under the
+heel of autocracy and because here every avenue of business, and
+social and political advancement is thrown wide open for them and
+their children. And I am quite sure that if one of these
+prosperous Germans were deprived of the money that he has won
+here, given back the rags and wooden shoes in which he landed and
+told that he was on his way to Germany, no wild animal in all the
+mountains and swamps of the United States would scratch and bite
+and kick and squawk more vigorously than he would. These
+German-Americans do not want to be sent back to their Kaiser and
+their fatherland!</p>
+
+<p>Certainly we Americans will not stop the war nor surrender our
+rights nor invite the invasion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> our shores because of their
+stubborn devotion to a country which they were so glad to
+abandon. We must appeal to their sons and their daughters&mdash;to
+those who have become part and parcel of our nation, to see that
+these obstinate old codgers do not persist in an attitude which
+may end in creating a prejudice against those of German descent
+in America.</p>
+
+<p>Those of us who are of Scotch or Irish or English descent can
+urge this with greater insistence because our ancestors were much
+nearer, in 1766, to the English fatherland, than German-Americans
+are to the German Empire and these ancestors did not hesitate in
+that year to turn against Great Britain on a mere question of
+commerce&mdash;did not hesitate again, in 1812, to face Great Britain
+in arms on a question of sea rights; and on account of this we
+expect all those of German-American descent to stand unreservedly
+by their adopted country,&mdash;forced into war by an autocracy that
+not only murdered our women and children in defiance of
+international law and common humanity but which threatens, if
+successful in this war, to invade our shores.</p>
+
+<p>Do these stubborn German-Americans think that if a German force
+should occupy America their position would be any better than
+that of the other citizens of this country, that they would be
+put to rule over the rest of us and allowed to save their goods
+and houses from the indemnities that would be put upon this
+nation in case of our defeat?</p>
+
+<p>Let me tell them one thing and that is, if by any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> remote
+possibility the Germans did gain a foothold in this country
+through the aid of those of German descent here, before we, of
+other descent in this country submitted to German rule we would
+attend to every traitor!</p>
+
+<p>We did not lure any citizens of foreign nations to our shores.
+They came here to escape serfdom and starvation and forced
+military service in an army where they could never be officers.
+We sent them no excursion tickets when they came here as
+half-starved peasants. We opened to them the doors of hospitality
+and of opportunity, and we do not propose that they shall pay us
+like the frozen snake in &AElig;sop's fables.</p>
+
+<p>Some of our finest citizens came from Germany in 1848 after the
+failure of the revolution against autocracy. Where do you think
+that General Siegel and Carl Schurz would stand if they were
+alive to-day?</p>
+
+<p>The daughter of General Siegel has answered in giving her son, on
+whom she was dependent, to the army of the United States, saying,
+"His grandfather fought under Lincoln for liberty and he must
+take his place to-day in the great fight for freedom."</p>
+
+<p>We are too good-natured, too soft, too easy in this country. Our
+great ex-President, that splendid American and patriot, Theodore
+Roosevelt, said not long ago of one of our United States
+Senators, if that Senator were a German and acted in Germany the
+way he acted in America as an American he would be put at digging
+a trench. I do not like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> to differ with Theodore Roosevelt, but
+from my knowledge of German conditions during this war, I know
+that if this Senator acted as a German in Germany as he has been
+acting as an American in America, he would not be put by the
+Germans at digging a trench but that with the ten bullets of a
+firing squad in his chest he would be filling one!</p>
+
+<p>Are these Germans in America imbued with the belief that the
+German Kaiser has been sent by heaven to rule the German Empire
+and bend the world under German "Kultur"? President Wilson, in
+one of his notes in 1916, referred to the German government as
+"the mouthpiece of the people." A German conservative newspaper,
+I think the <i>Tages Zeitung</i>, commenting upon this said that "the
+German Emperor is not our 'mouthpiece' but our truly beloved
+Emperor sent to us by God."</p>
+
+<p>Does the German-American ever stop to consider how the
+Hohenzollerns obtained possession of the Mark of Brandenburg, the
+basis of modern Prussia? Five hundred years ago the Hohenzollerns
+were Counts of Nuremberg, then as now a rich trading city.
+Sigismund III wanted ready money and this was advanced by the
+Hohenzollerns, Counts of Nuremberg, on the security of the mark
+of Brandenburg pledged as collateral to the loan which totalled
+only $100,000. Later the Counts of Nuremberg foreclosed their
+mortgage and took possession of the Mark of Brandenburg and have
+held it ever since.</p>
+
+<p>Does a German-American in this country who has placed a mortgage
+on his house think when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> fails to pay the interest or
+principal of the mortgage that the man who has sold him out was
+sent by God?</p>
+
+<p>This calls to mind one of the great failures of the war&mdash;the
+failure of religion in the German Empire. I attended a great
+service, in the Protestant cathedral of Berlin, held to celebrate
+the five hundredth anniversary of the occasion when the first
+Hohenzollern, having foreclosed his mortgage, entered into
+possession of Brandenburg. The Emperor sat in an elevated gallery
+and across the great cathedral Dr. Dryander, the Court preacher,
+mounted the pulpit to deliver an eulogy on the Hohenzollern rule
+and the Hohenzollerns.</p>
+
+<p>What an opportunity then if Dr. Dryander, lifting an accusing
+finger, had spoken of the rivers of innocent blood sacrificed to
+the Prussian Moloch of conquest, if he had demanded in the name
+of Christianity that the barbarities of Prussian rule should
+cease, that the Belgian workingmen, dragged from their homes to
+manufacture shells to be used against their own brothers, sons
+and fathers in Prussian factories, should be sent back; if he had
+demanded that the twenty thousand women and girls driven into
+worse than slavery from Lille and Tourcoing and Roubaix in the
+North of France should be given their freedom once more; if he
+had spoken of the whole nation of the Armenians, of the Syrians,
+of the Jews, massacred by the Turks while the German Generals in
+command of the Turkish armies stood by; if he had denounced the
+invasion of Belgium, the breaking of treaties, the starvation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> of
+Poland, the horrors of poisoned gas and the cruelties exercised
+upon those of the opposing armies unfortunate enough to become
+prisoners of the Germans.</p>
+
+<p>But no, Dr. Dryander droned on. No pastor in Germany has dared to
+risk his state-paid salary to stand up for Christianity and the
+right.</p>
+
+<p>The Prussians cannot get away from the belief that they have a
+sort of personal God who takes a direct and kindly interest in
+their destinies, especially in the ordering of their bloody
+battles. Countless sermons were preached through Germany during
+the war, but the most ridiculous was that of a Protestant pastor
+in Berlin early in the war. He announced the title of his sermon
+as, "Is God neutral?", and in his fourteenthly proved to his own
+satisfaction, that the Deity, abandoning neutrality, had declared
+Himself unequivocally for the success of German arms!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THAT INTERVIEW WITH THE KAISER</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">A</span>fter</span> the appearance, in August, 1917, in the <i>Philadelphia
+Public Ledger</i> and other newspapers in America and the
+<i>Telegraph</i> in England of the message of the Kaiser to President
+Wilson, the official <i>North German Gazette</i>, evidently unaware of
+the fact that the original message of the Kaiser in his own hand
+was in my possession, published the following:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The <i>London Daily Telegraph</i> publishes from the
+memoirs of former Ambassador Gerard a telegram
+that His Majesty the Kaiser is alleged to have
+sent to President Wilson on August 10, 1914, and
+in which the events before the participation of
+England in the present war are set forth.</p>
+
+<p>"We are, in these circumstances, in the position
+<small>TO GIVE THE ASSURANCE THAT A TELEGRAM OF THE
+KAISER OF THIS NATURE DOES NOT EXIST</small>.</p>
+
+<p>"It is correct that an audience was granted to
+Ambassador Gerard on August 10, 1914, in order to
+give the opportunity to spread before His Majesty
+the peace mediation offer of President Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>"The personal message of President Wilson to the
+Kaiser runs as follows: 'As official head of one
+of the Powers which signed the Hague Convention, I
+feel according to Article III of this Convention
+it is my right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> and my duty to declare to you in
+the spirit of the truest friendship that I would
+welcome every opportunity to act in the interest
+of the peace of Europe whether now or at another
+more fitting time....'</p>
+
+<p>"This proposition came at a time when the opposing
+armies had already crossed the frontiers and when
+it seemed out of the question to halt the march of
+events.</p>
+
+<p>"His Majesty could, therefore, only transmit to
+the President his thanks for the mediation offered
+and to add thereto that it was too early for the
+mediation of a neutral Power, but that later the
+friendly proposition of President Wilson could be
+taken up again.</p>
+
+<p>"His Majesty, the Emperor, then talked for some
+time with the American Ambassador and set forth to
+him separately the events which led to the
+outbreak of the war. Particularly did the Kaiser
+call attention to the equivocal and unloyal
+position of England which had destroyed the hope
+of a peaceful issue.</p>
+
+<p>"The setting forth by Ambassador Gerard in his
+memoirs seems to be a contradiction of this
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"If the press of enemy countries sees revelations
+in this that only shows that they are not
+acquainted with the German White Book which sets
+forth these events.</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly, during the interviews, the Emperor
+wrote down notes for the Ambassador, in order that
+the latter should not send anything incorrect to
+Washington. In this case we have to do only with
+certain notes to aid the memory of the Ambassador,
+not with a communication of the Emperor to
+President Wilson."</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">The <i>Tageblatt</i> reprinted this lame and silly explanation in its
+issue of August 13, 1917, and complained that, although its
+correspondent at the Hague sent, on August 7, 1917, this part of
+my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> first book in a telegram, only on August 11, did the
+Government permit the delivery to the <i>Tageblatt</i> of this story
+from the correspondent. Then the newspaper despatch had to be
+submitted to the Censorship officials who only released it for
+publication at midnight. The <i>Tageblatt</i> says, "The form of the
+explanation which has now appeared in the <i>North German Gazette</i>
+can hardly be called very happy. What does this mean&mdash;'possibly
+during the interview the Kaiser wrote down notes for the
+Ambassador in order that the latter should not send anything
+incorrect to Washington'? Now, after a week the occurrence must
+have been fathomed and it was not necessary to make use of a
+'possibly.' Could Mr. Gerard consider these 'notes' in the
+handwriting of the Emperor as a draft for a telegram? And do
+these notes read, as a telegram of the Emperor to Wilson&mdash;as Mr.
+Gerard repeats them?"</p>
+
+<p>Does not the <i>Tageblatt</i> article give a glimpse not only of how
+the newspapers of Germany are hampered and censored, but of the
+positively glorious incompetency of the Government officials who
+denied the existence of an original document in the Kaiser's own
+hand which the most elementary inquiries in their own circle
+would have disclosed not only was in existence but in my
+possession?</p>
+
+<p>The redoubtable Reventlow writing in the Conservative <i>Tages
+Zeitung</i> commented as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Kaiser William had possibly for his answer
+written down notes and given them to Gerard, but
+these were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> only helps for Gerard's memory and it
+was not a question of a direct communication of
+the German Kaiser to the President. In accordance
+with the Gerard reports it now seems that
+nevertheless the Ambassador telegraphed the
+Imperial notes immediately and literally to
+Washington. Mr. Gerard has, therefore, again in
+this respect lied, which is not surprising."</p></div>
+
+<p>Reventlow, of course, had not then seen the facsimile of the
+Kaiser's telegram which is headed in his own hand "To the
+President, personally."</p>
+
+<p>Later the other German newspapers took the Foreign Office to task
+for making such a weak denial of an incontrovertible fact. And
+note the charming parliamentary language of dear old Reventlow!</p>
+
+<p>The article, which appeared in the <i>Tages Zeitung</i> of August 14th
+last, is interesting because Reventlow is without doubt the
+oracle and mouthpiece of the Prussian Conservatives. He continues
+to attack me in this article but much of the attack is in reality
+praise, and, as we say in expressive slang, "every knock is a
+boost." The article continues:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is very desirable to know if the former
+Chancellor was present at the audience; it is
+regrettably not inconceivable, but is a new proof
+of the incompetence of the Chancellor, that he did
+not, according to his duty, inform his Imperial
+Lord of the political personality and character of
+a man like Gerard.</p>
+
+<p>"In the U-boat crisis Mr. Gerard had been able to
+play a quite decisive part. He was like Mr. von
+Bethmann-Hollweg entirely of the view that the
+German Empire must give in to the demands of the
+United States and constantly showed himself
+wonderfully informed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> about what step each inner
+circle would for the moment take.</p>
+
+<p>"The influence of Mr. Gerard is all the more a
+shameful and heavy reproach for the official
+leadership of Mr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, since this
+American Ambassador, while an intriguer, was not a
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>"But when Gerard said anything, wished anything or
+threatened anything, that imported always a
+fear-exciting event, and he was finally sly enough
+to seize and use this halo to the limit. That a
+man like Gerard has been able through all these
+years to win and keep such a position and such an
+influence over German affairs is without example."</p></div>
+
+<p>But I must really put aside the halo which Reventlow so
+graciously hands me. While I was informed of what was going on, I
+certainly did my best to persuade Bethmann-Hollweg and von Jagow
+and Zimmermann as well as the Emperor and numberless others from
+defying America. If von Bethmann-Hollweg and any of the others
+were against ruthless submarine war, seeing that to adopt any
+other policy would bring America into this war, then they took
+this position because it seemed to them best for their country
+and history will prove them right.</p>
+
+<p>Reventlow says further:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the winter of 1916-17 one dreamed already of
+loans and imports from the United States during
+the peace negotiations. Mr. Gerard came back from
+America with alms for the wounded and the result
+of his sublime patience and of the sublime
+patience of Mr. von Bethmann-Hollweg<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> was
+pictured by the Gerard celebration in Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>"Then came the decision for ruthless submarine
+war. The first time in his ambassadorial service
+was Mr. Gerard surprised and the men who
+entertained him were also surprised for they
+dreamed of and wished for quite other things. It
+is incorrect, if it has been stated, that at the
+time of the Gerard celebration ruthless submarine
+war had already been agreed on. That came later."</p></div>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="banquet" id="banquet"></a><a href="images/illo319.jpg"><img src="images/illo319_th.jpg"
+alt="The Banquet" title="PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AFTER THE BANQUET GIVEN
+AMBASSADOR GERARD" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%">PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AFTER THE BANQUET GIVEN
+AMBASSADOR GERARD IN BERLIN ON JANUARY 6TH, 1917. PROBABLY THE
+ORDERS FOR THE RESUMPTION OF &quot;RECKLESS&quot; SUBMARINE WAR HAD BEEN
+GIVEN WHEN THIS LOVE-FEAST TOOK PLACE.<br /><br />
+
+<i>Sitting, left to right</i>&mdash;Von Wermuth, Mayor of Berlin;
+Ambassador Gerard; Zimmermann; Von Sydow, Minister of Commerce.
+<br /><br />
+<i>Standing, left to right</i>&mdash;Unknown; Consul General Lay; Commander
+Gherardi, U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;N.; First Secretary Grew; Unknown; Count
+Montgelas; Solf, Colonial Minister; General Friedrich, in charge
+of prisoners of war; Isaac Wolf, President of American
+Association of Commerce and Trade; John B. Jackson, former
+Minister to Cuba.</p>
+
+<p>But I did know that ruthless submarine war was coming, knew of
+the orders given, and this is proved not only by my reports which
+are still secret, but by what I told not only many people in
+America but several editors who with my full approval published
+articles showing this belief.</p>
+
+<p>I am obliged to Reventlow for what he says of me. I admire him as
+a powerful writer for whose ability I have a deep respect and
+perhaps if I were a Prussian Junker I would follow him as blindly
+and confidently as do the army and navy officers, the nobles,
+great and small, and the land-holding squires of Prussia, to whom
+his writings are as seductive as the pipings of the Pied Piper to
+the townsfolk of Hamlin.</p>
+
+<p>Reventlow's charge of lying was made in the line of his duty as a
+Prussian Junker, according to the best traditions of Prussian
+government and diplomacy but it is so thoroughly disproved and
+the authenticity of the Kaiser's telegram so universally admitted
+in Germany, even in official circles there, that I feel only
+sorrow for a Prussian nobleman and Junker and editor compelled by
+the exigencies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> of his position to make so ridiculous a
+statement.</p>
+
+<p>I think that the Germans just now are beginning to realise that I
+always told them the truth and treated them fairly, a procedure,
+I admit, far more disconcerting and disturbing to them than the
+most subtle wiles and moves of the old diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>Von Bethmann denied that the peace terms as set forth in my book
+were his (he did not deny that they are the terms of the Junkers)
+and criticised me for "unethically" publishing an account of my
+experiences in Germany. This is what he said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In his published report of this particular
+conversation Mr. Gerard attributed utterances to
+me which may have been made in other quarters in
+Germany and to which he frequently referred in the
+progress of our conversation but which were not my
+own. This applies especially to those references
+to Germany's alleged intentions to seize Li&eacute;ge and
+Namur, and of Germany's plans to take possession
+of the Belgian ports, the railways and to
+establish military and commercial dominion over
+that country.</p>
+
+<p>"I never unfolded such German war aims to Mr.
+Gerard. In the course of my several conversations
+with him as also in our discussion last January I
+invariably referred to my Reichstag speeches in
+which I stated that Germany would exact positive
+guarantees that Belgian territory and politics
+would not in the future be exploited as a menacing
+factor against us. I did not make any statement as
+to the nature of these guarantees.</p>
+
+<p>"In the progress of our conversation Mr. Gerard
+suggested that the realisation of far-reaching
+aspirations in Belgium would give King Albert
+merely a sham authority<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> and asked whether it
+would not be better for Germany to forego such
+plans and instead of them endeavour to acquire
+Li&eacute;ge which Mr. Gerard thought possible of
+achievement.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps this suggestion was a bait intended to
+provoke a reply from me. If so, the attempt
+failed. In all my discussions with the Ambassador
+on this subject I referred to my public utterances
+in which I emphasised that I was endeavouring to
+procure a peace that would permit us to live in
+cordial and neighbourly relations with Belgium.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gerard's memory would seem also to have
+served him faultily when he wrote down what was
+said about Russia. He dealt but superficially with
+Germany's eastern war aims, observing that the
+United States' interest in this direction was very
+limited and that Germany undoubtedly would have a
+free hand there. For Roumania and Serbia he also
+revealed very slender sympathy. Mr. Gerard did not
+obtain out of my mouth any of the statements
+concerning these countries which he attributes to
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"When diplomats undertake to exploit their
+official career for journalistic purposes they are
+very apt to be misled into putting into mouths of
+foreign statesmen utterances which either are the
+creation of an ample imagination or are based on
+faulty memory. Discussion of political opinions is
+bound to be transitory and fleeting.</p>
+
+<p>"You Americans are impetuous people. You do not
+seem to permit even your retiring diplomats to
+observe the traditional silences nor have you the
+patience to abide the post mortem publication of
+their memoirs. Sir Edward Goschen (former British
+Ambassador to Germany and Austria) or Jules Cambon
+(former French Ambassador to Germany, the United
+States and Spain) probably could excel Mr. Gerard
+in revelations of entertaining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> diplomatic history
+and gossip. Count von Bernstorff, former
+Ambassador to the United States, too, I imagine
+might startle us with a diary of his Washington
+experiences.</p>
+
+<p>"In Europe, however, it was seen that publication
+of such matters was best postponed by common
+consent to a later period when judgments are both
+calm and more mature. Mr. Gerard, however, may
+hold the special license conferred by shirtsleeve
+diplomacy, as you call it, and I shall not dispute
+his prerogatives. But he must not give his
+imagination the free rein."</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">And this was my answer: published in the <i>New York Times</i> for
+September 2, 1917:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dr. Hollweg apparently did not have the exact
+copy of my articles for if he had read them he
+would have seen clearly that I said the peace
+terms described were the German peace terms and
+not the opinions of the Chancellor. Dr. Hollweg
+said he himself was subject to the rule of the
+military party of Germany and could not follow his
+own desires.</p>
+
+<p>"In the second place, Dr. Hollweg admits that the
+German government intended to exact guarantees
+from Belgium and makes the admission himself after
+the interview in which he so sharply criticises
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"Thirdly, I ask if those terms as cited are not
+the German peace terms, then what are the German
+peace terms?</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Hollweg gives nothing different from these
+and so it might be assumed they are the German
+terms after all. I consider it a matter of great
+regret that the German government put Dr. Hollweg
+out of office and I feel that personally he is
+bitterly opposed to the ruthless submarine warfare
+of the German government and that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> only
+refrained from resigning his office out of
+deference to the wishes of Emperor Wilhelm.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume he was put out because his ideals were
+too liberal for the German authorities to endure.
+This liberality is shown in the interview. I am
+sorry to take issue with Dr. Hollweg on this
+subject because I have a great admiration for him
+and I think he is a fine old fellow.</p>
+
+<p>"The old-time diplomacy, which Dr. Hollweg
+advocated, has succeeded in plunging almost the
+whole world into the bloodiest war of history.
+When the people of a nation know what is going on
+in the seats of government such wars cannot
+happen.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not believe in backstairs diplomacy any more
+than Dr. Hollweg. I believe the people of a nation
+are entitled to know what is going on. This German
+diplomacy may be all right in a monarchy of the
+most limited type but it will not go at all in a
+modern democracy.</p>
+
+<p>"As to the ethics of publishing my memoirs now, I
+pass over the obvious repartee that to hear a
+German speak of ethics borders on the ludicrous
+and especially the man who openly in the Reichstag
+announced that necessity knows no law and that the
+German troops were at that moment deliberately
+violating the neutrality of Belgium.</p>
+
+<p>"But I believe that the old style diplomacy in the
+dark caused this war. Of course, it is hard for a
+German ex-official to conceive that the people
+have a right to be enlightened about this awful
+calamity. But I hope one of the results of this
+war will be the end of backstairs diplomacy. When
+the Germans with the Chancellor's approval
+violated the usage of all nations and times and
+kept me as a hostage after I had demanded my
+passports, I think to talk of ethics comes with a
+bad grace from the German side."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Understand that Bethmann-Hollweg is not a bad man, but for one
+who openly announced that necessity knows no law and defended the
+invasion of Belgium, failed to stop the cruelties of the prison
+camps and gave official, if not private, consent to the murder of
+women and babies not only on the high seas but in undefended
+towns, to talk of ethics because I dared to tell the world what
+was happening in Germany is more than ridiculous. It verges on
+the ludicrous&mdash;but why attack poor Bethmann? Opportunity knocked
+at his door, but the want of a backbone prevented his becoming a
+great figure.</p>
+
+<p>History will laud him for opposing ruthless submarine war so
+long, but will blame him for weakly yielding in the end. As for
+the "ethics," I have been careful to give only official
+conversations with the Emperor, interesting as the others are,
+and never shall disclose my private conversations with Bethmann,
+von Jagow, Zimmermann and others, including my talks with
+Bethmann and Zimmermann on the day I left Germany, because it was
+understood that these conversations should never be disclosed
+whatever happened.</p>
+
+<p>And as time goes on more and more do I believe that history will
+vindicate von Jagow and teach the Emperor and the people of
+Germany that a faithful and skilful servant should never be
+sacrificed to the intrigues of a few gossiping politicians. It is
+part of the strength of President Wilson that he backs up his
+officials and refuses to listen even to widespread popular
+clamour for their heads. It was the business of von Jagow to
+conduct the Foreign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> policy of Germany, but the intriguers
+demanded his removal because he was too occupied to waste time
+talking to amateur politicians, and because his voice did not
+charm the Reichstag.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE FUTURE KAISER&mdash;THE CROWN PRINCE AND HIS BROTHERS</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">I</span>n</span> a country where the supreme power swings between the Emperor
+and the impersonal General Staff, all are interested, since even
+an Emperor is mortal, in learning something about the heir who
+succeeds in case of death. And we who face with the rest of the
+world the forces of Kaiserism desire to know about this heir.</p>
+
+<p>The Crown Prince is about five feet nine, blond and slim. In
+fact, one of his weaknesses is his pride in an undeniably small
+waist which he pinches and his characteristic pose is with one
+foot thrown forward and one hand at the waist, elbow out and
+waist pressed in. He is well built, his face much better looking
+than his photographs show, nose rather long and eyes very keen
+and observing. Possessed of a great youthfulness of manner and a
+boyish liveliness and interest in life, his traits are somewhat
+American rather than German. He is a good sportsman and excels at
+many sports, is proud of his trophies but not afraid to meet
+other men in contest for them.</p>
+
+<p>His manners are open and engaging and because of this he is very
+popular in Germany. Unlike<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> his father on whom a pretty woman
+makes no impression whatever, he is a great admirer of female
+beauty, so much so that when he is playing tennis, for example,
+if there is a good looking girl watching he can hardly keep his
+eye on the game. This weakness for the feminine has been the
+foundation for countless stories linking his name with that of
+various women, in all countries and of all classes of life, but
+personally, I think these rumours are untrue and that he is fond
+of his lovely wife, who is not in the least disturbed by his
+frank and open admiration of other members of the fair sex. A
+brood of strong, good-looking children have been born to the
+Crown Prince and Crown Princess.</p>
+
+<p>A Prince so fond of a good time, one who loves dancing and
+racing, hunting and shooting, with a shrewd eye and cool head,
+might make an ideal king, but the one dark shadow in the
+background is the Crown Prince's real love for war. From his seat
+in the Royal Box in the Reichstag, he has applauded violently and
+ostentatiously utterances looking toward war: he had made himself
+the head of the war party, and the Militarists look to him as
+their chief. The great danger is that if this war ends in the
+defeat of Germany without the democratisation of Germany then the
+Crown Prince will lead the party of revenge, of preparation for
+war, and if the war ends in what the Germans can call a success
+or ends in a draw (which means German success) then the Crown
+Prince and the Militarists, crying that the military system has
+been justified, will seek new excuses to enter once more on a
+war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> of conquest. All paths or speculations turn to one gate; if
+the German people continue slavishly to leave the power to drive
+them into war in the hands of the Crown Prince, or the Emperor,
+or the General Staff, there will be no prospect of such a world
+peace as can justify a universal disarmament. Absolute monarchs
+and Emperors and Crown Princes and their attendant nobles, all
+spell war. They are the products of war and they can only
+continue to rule if the desire for war animates their people.</p>
+
+<p>While the Crown Prince has not set himself in direct opposition
+to his father or at any rate taken a part in public affairs with
+the view either to force his father's hand or take a dominant
+political part, nevertheless he has allowed no occasion to pass
+when he could encourage the army and war party even if this
+brought him into conflict with the policy of the Emperor, and so
+there have been periods of coolness between the Emperor and the
+Crown Prince son.</p>
+
+<p>Thus after one scene in the Reichstag when the Crown Prince
+applauded those in favour of aggression it was reported that he
+was banished to Dantzig. At any rate during the winter of 1913-14
+the Crown Prince and his family were at Dantzig, the headquarters
+of the regiment he commands, the famous "Death's Head Hussars."</p>
+
+<p>Some say that it is a tradition in the Hohenzollern family for
+the Crown Prince to appear to oppose the King. Then, when the
+King dies, the Crown Prince enjoys a certain popularity in the
+first years of his rule from those who have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> against the
+Government, and by the time this popularity has waned the new
+ruler is firmly seated on the throne.</p>
+
+<p>The Crown Prince, born in 1882, will be thirty-five in May next.
+His military education began long before he was ten years old. In
+accordance with Hohenzollern custom, on his tenth birthday, he
+became an officer of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards and on this
+birthday was introduced to the other officers and took part in a
+regimental dinner. Before this great event he had learned enough
+of military drill and usages to carry himself as an officer.</p>
+
+<p>In 1895, he and his brother Eitel entered as cadets at Ploen in
+Schwerin, where they were subjected to very strict discipline.
+After leaving Ploen the Crown Prince entered Bonn University, and
+there became a member of the "Borussia" student corps.</p>
+
+<p>I never heard that he took part in the corps duels. His face is
+not scarred, so I imagine as heir to the throne he was excused
+from a custom in which other corps members are compelled by
+public sentiment to take part. From photographs I have seen and
+from what I have heard I believe that the Crown Prince entered
+cheerfully into the student life of the place and lived on terms
+of college equality with his brothers of the "Borussia" corps.
+These corps members, however, hold themselves aloof from other
+students.</p>
+
+<p>The Crown Prince attended the Technical High School of
+Charlottenburg, that large building just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> across the canal which
+separates Berlin from Charlottenburg. Here he gained some
+knowledge of machinery, chemistry, etc. In 1909, he went to work
+in the Ministry of the Interior, where he learned something of
+government administration, how to manage the constabulary and
+their activities,&mdash;something quite necessary for an absolute
+ruler in a country where every citizen's acts is noted in the
+copy books of the police.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, his military activities continued. He was gradually
+promoted and finally, in 1911, became Colonel in command of the
+Dantzig Black Hussars. This regiment owes its black uniform and
+white death's heads to the thrift of Friedrich II who utilised
+the black funeral hangings at the elaborate funeral of his father
+to make uniforms for this regiment. It has been in existence
+about 175 years. The white death's heads and bones which appeared
+in the funeral trappings were used to make ornaments for the
+front of the regimental headgear.</p>
+
+<p>While stationed at Dantzig the Prince was taught agriculture so
+as to understand the needs of the Prussian Junkers. He even
+studied the methods of brewing beer in the Dantzig brewery. His
+education has been strenuous. He has not been coddled or spoiled
+and is far better fitted for the battle of life than most
+graduates of our colleges.</p>
+
+<p>The father of the Crown Princess was a Grand Duke of
+Mecklenburg-Schwerin and her mother a Russian Grand Duchess. In
+appearance the Crown Princess is very attractive, her face rather
+Russian,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> with an expression of good nature and cleverness.
+Although the Crown Prince is tall (about five feet ten), the
+Crown Princess overtops him, and on occasions when they appear
+together she wears shoes with very low heels and keeps her head
+bowed.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="prince" id="prince"></a><a href="images/illo332.jpg"><img src="images/illo332_th.jpg"
+alt="Prince and Princess" title="THE CROWN PRINCE AND CROWN PRINCESS." /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">THE CROWN PRINCE AND CROWN PRINCESS. FROM A
+PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN THEIR PALACE ON THE NIGHT OF A FANCY DRESS
+BALL. THE CROWN PRINCESS IS IN RUSSIAN COSTUME, AND THE CROWN
+PRINCE WEARS A UNIFORM OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO OF HIS REGIMENT,
+THE DEATH'S HEAD HUSSARS</p>
+
+<p>The marriage took place in 1905 and was undoubtedly a love match,
+the young couple having met in 1904 and become devotedly attached
+to each other.</p>
+
+<p>There is only one defect in the character of the Crown Prince and
+that is his fondness for war, his regard for war not as a horror,
+but as a necessity, an honourable and desirable state.</p>
+
+<p>I have long been apprehensive that when he came to the throne the
+world might again be hurried into a universal conflict and that
+vast military preparations would burden every State.</p>
+
+<p>The Crown Prince and I often talked over shooting in various
+parts of the world. He wishes to see America and especially to
+kill game in Alaska where the heavily horned heads and enormous
+bears make such magnificent trophies. When I told him once how my
+friend, Paul Rainey, had killed seventy-four lions in Africa he
+could talk of nothing else at that interview.</p>
+
+<p>The Crown Prince has been pictured as a libertine and a pillager.
+His face has been caricatured so often that people have the
+cartooned impression of him and believe him to be a sort of
+monstrous idiot.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, he is a good sport, a clever man, a charming
+companion, but the shadow of military<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span> ambition hangs over all
+and I doubt if the effect of his infernal military education,
+commencing when he was a child, can be entirely removed.</p>
+
+<p>If some day he learns the idiocy of war, if he recognises that
+the world has progressed, and allows the people some share in
+their own government, he will make a splendid constitutional
+ruler of Prussia and the German Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Should the German people fail to take unto themselves the
+war-making power, they will, before long, be decimated again for
+the amusement of the Crown Prince, or as he once put it, "for his
+fun."</p>
+
+<p>The favourite son of the Kaiser is presumed to be Prince Eitel
+Friedrich. A large, fat, healthy, good natured young man, married
+to the daughter of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, a rather pretty
+but discontented looking Princess. It is said of him that he has
+shown not only great bravery in this war but real military
+capacity. Ridiculous scandals have been circulated about him in
+Berlin, but this is only the usual gossip circulated about
+persons in prominent positions.</p>
+
+<p>Adalbert, the sailor Prince, is now married to a German Princess.
+He is the best looking of the Kaiser's sons, possessing all the
+charm, and vivacity of manners of the Crown Prince, but is
+without that Prince's absurd ideas about the necessity of war.
+Any one of those three sons of the Kaiser can give yards to any
+other young Royalty in Germany and win easily in capacity for
+administration and the King business.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly if the German people insist on being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> ruled by some one
+and on being occasionally dragged out to be shot or maimed in an
+unnecessary war, they could not find more capable rulers than the
+Hohenzollerns.</p>
+
+<p>Prince August Wilhelm is of a milder character. He, of course,
+wears the uniform of an officer, but has entered the civil
+service of the government. He is now a landrat or government
+official, and some day will be given charge of one of the
+provinces of Prussia such as Silesia or Posen. He is married to
+his first cousin, a niece of the Empress, the Princess Alexandria
+Victoria, daughter of H.&nbsp;H. Frederick Ferdinand, Duke of
+Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gl&uuml;cksburg. They have one son, a
+fine healthy specimen. The August Wilhelms live very simply in a
+palace in the Wilhelmstrasse, very plainly furnished. They are
+fond of amusements, riding, theatres and dancing. August Wilhelm
+has none of that desire of war so characteristic of the Crown
+Prince.</p>
+
+<p>Of Princes Oscar and Joachim, little is known. Oscar, during the
+war, married Countess Bassewitz, who has been a Maid of Honour in
+the Palace. The marriage was of course morganatic, and on
+marrying the young Countess was given the title of Countess
+Ruppin. Her children will be Count and Countess Ruppin and cannot
+inherit in any contingency, the Kingdom of Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>Adalbert had no resting place in Berlin, but perhaps now that he
+is married a palace may be assigned to him. Eitel Fritz and his
+wife occupy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> the Bellevue Ch&acirc;teau between the Tiergarten and the
+River Spree. His wife is childless.</p>
+
+<p>The Kaiser, the Crown Prince or some of the numerous Princes of
+Prussia are always rushing about the streets in motors, each one
+heralded by a blast on the cornet. Beside the chauffeur on each
+royal motor sits a horn player who plays the particular few notes
+of music assigned to that Prince. The Kaiser's call goes well to
+the words fitted to it by the Berliners, "celeri salade" (celery
+salad) and has quite a cheerful sound.</p>
+
+<p>On days of an outdoor function the streets ring with these calls
+as the royal automobiles whizz back and forth. It is forbidden by
+law for any one other than royalty to announce his coming by more
+than one note on a Gabriel horn, or other device. I do not know
+whether out of town or suburban royalties from
+Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Strelitz, Lippe, etc., are allowed this
+privilege when in Berlin; I think not, and that is perhaps one
+reason why they so consistently shun the capital of Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>When the Kaiser motors to Potsdam he usually sits in one of three
+motors which travel very fast, one behind the other. I do not
+know whether this is by design or not, but of course, it makes an
+attempt on his life more difficult.</p>
+
+<p>I used one of the Kaiser's motors in occupied France&mdash;a large
+Mercedes, run by a skilful driver at a great rate of speed.</p>
+
+<p>The Crown Prince is especially fond of horses and if he succeeds
+to the throne will undoubtedly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> keep up the Royal stable or
+Marstall. This is situated on the bank of the Spree across the
+square from the Royal Schloss in Berlin. There are kept the
+carriages of state, those sent to bring Ambassadors to the Palace
+when they first present their letters, two hundred splendid
+saddle and driving horses, with modern carriages, four-in-hand
+coaches, dog carts, etc. Most of the Foreign Ambassadors use
+state carriages for great occasions, with bewigged coachmen and
+standing footmen. I think Ambassador White was the last American
+who indulged in the luxury of a state carriage. As a plain dress
+suit did not exactly fit with a Cinderella coach, I went to
+functions, such as the Emperor's birthday reception, in a large
+automobile, retaining only of the former state the necessary body
+huntsman who acted as footman on these occasions and who wore a
+livery of hunting green, a cocked hat, with red, white and blue
+plumes and a long hunting dagger in his belt.</p>
+
+<p>Out of consideration for the feelings of others I retained the
+porter in his old finery, a Berlin institution. At state dinners
+the porter of a Royalty or Ambassador stands at the house
+entrance, clad in a long coat, wearing a silver belt diagonally
+across his chest, and crowned by an enormous cocked hat worn
+sideways. The porter carries also a great silver headed staff,
+like a drum major's baton, and when guests of particular
+importance arrive he pounds this stick three times on the
+pavement.</p>
+
+<p>It used to amuse the Berlin crowd lining Unter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> den Linden to see
+the Ambassadors and Ministers leave the Palace or Cathedral on
+the Kaiser's birthday, New Year's day, etc., to see the state
+carriages of the other Ambassadors overtaken by the modern
+automobile from America.</p>
+
+<p>The Berlin lower classes are renowned for their dry wit and they
+find much to amuse them in the tasteless statues and monuments of
+Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>In the square outside our house was a statue of one of Friedrich
+the Great's generals which seemed to afford the boys great fun.
+The General is shown in the act of reflectively feeling his chin
+and by chance is gazing uncertainly at the barber shop of the
+neighbouring hotel Kaiserhof.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody knows, of course, whether the present Crown Prince will
+succeed Emperor William&mdash;nobody knows the fortunes of war or the
+fate that this war has in store for the Hohenzollerns but while I
+personally like the Crown Prince, admire his skill in sports, his
+amiable ways, his smiles to the crowd, I know also of his crazy
+belief in war. And so long as a ruler persists in this, he is as
+dangerous to the peace of the world as a man with a plague to the
+health of a small community.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>WHEN GERMANY WILL BREAK DOWN</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">I</span>&nbsp;remember</span> a picture exhibited in the Academy at London, some
+years ago, representing a custom of the wars of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>A great fortress besieged, frowns down on the plain under the
+cold moonlight. From its towering walls the useless mouths are
+thrust forth&mdash;if refused food by the enemy, to die&mdash;the children,
+the maimed, the old, the halt, the blind, all those who cannot
+help in the defence, who consume food needed to strengthen the
+weakened garrison.</p>
+
+<p>Every country of the world to-day is in a state of siege, is
+conserving food and materials, but not yet has Germany sent forth
+her useless mouths, to Holland, to Scandinavia and to
+Switzerland, a sign that not yet is the pinch of hunger in the
+Empire imperative.</p>
+
+<p>Since I arrived in America in March, 1917, I have been like
+Cassandra, the prophetess fated to be right, but never believed.
+I said then Germany would never break because of starvation, or
+fail because of revolution, and that her man-power was great.</p>
+
+<p>We have not made sacrifices enough in this war, there are too
+many useless mouths. I believe that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> there are in the States of
+New York and Pennsylvania alone 175,000 professional chauffeurs,
+a great number of them employed on automobiles not used for
+business or trucking. And then think of the thousands of skilled
+mechanics employed in garages and factories repairing and making
+mere pleasure vehicles. If all these chauffeurs (nearly all with
+some knowledge of machinery) and mechanics were put at work
+building ships or making rifles there would be no loss to the
+country, but certain overfed women and their poodles would have
+to walk, greatly to the advantage of their health and figures.</p>
+
+<p>Private automobiles disappeared very quickly in Germany. At first
+a man who could not reach his business in any other way was
+allowed to use his own automobile but even these soon went out of
+commission and then bicycles were forbidden except for rides to
+and from business, work or school. A few ramshackle taxicabs
+still survive in Berlin at the railway stations, driven by benzol
+instead of gasoline and shod with spring tires. No one can keep a
+taxi waiting, it is subject when waiting to be commandeered by
+the first comer.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually as we realise the gravity of the conflict our lives
+will become more earnest and luxuries will be given up to meet
+the changed condition. There must be a committee who will tide
+over the workers in luxury industries and help them to learn new
+war trades. This was done in Germany by the great organisation of
+the Woman's Service. Already Fifth Avenue dressmakers have
+dismissed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> many of their workers, who, being without resources,
+should receive assistance and advice until they have learned
+other trades.</p>
+
+<p>Our farmers are entitled to cheaper labour. Why should not enemy
+aliens work our farms? We do not propose to make the Austrian and
+German and Hungarian women agricultural slaves as the Germans
+made the Russian women caught by the war within the borders of
+Germany, nor have we the right, I believe, to force civilian
+prisoners to work. But we can give these civilian men instead of
+meat twice a day, now given them, the same food which the Germans
+give their prisoners, until the enemy aliens volunteer to work in
+our fields. They should, of course, work as in Germany under
+guard. They should be used also in mines, factories, etc. The
+sooner we use every ounce of war energy, the sooner we shall beat
+Germany and obtain a lasting peace.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually forced by the hopelessness of the economic situation,
+the nerve of Germany will break. There is a suicide point in the
+German character. The German has been sustained since the war by
+victories somewhere. No defeats were brought home to the German
+people. Viewed from inside the German Empire what are the loss of
+a few villages on the West front or even of distant colonies
+compared to the conquest of Belgium, of the richest part of
+France, of thousands of square miles of Russia, of Roumania,
+Montenegro and Serbia? With the exception of a very small bit of
+Alsace the war is being fought far from German<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> territory. The
+German can swagger down the streets of the capitals of his
+enemies, in Brussels, Belgrade, Bucharest, Warsaw and Cettinje
+and Prussian greed exacts tribute from rich cities from Lille on
+the West to Wilna far within the frontiers of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Our President has never faltered. He will convince the Germans at
+last that we are unfaltering, in the war, that nothing can swerve
+us from our goal,&mdash;the destruction of the autocracy which looks
+on war as good and seeks the dominion of the earth. When the
+Germans grasp that, then will come the suicide point.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing in the war for the German who is not a noble or
+a junker, an officer or an official. German victory will only
+bend the collar of caste and servitude, low wages and militarism
+tighter on the German neck. Sooner or later the deceived German
+will discover this; revolution will not come during the war, but
+after it, unless it closes with a German peace, or unless in
+anticipation of revolt, rights are granted to the people.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot stop, we cannot bear the burden of the debts of this
+war and at the same time burden ourselves with future military
+preparation to meet a confident conquering Germany ready to carry
+the sword into South America. Whatever the sacrifice, we must go
+on.</p>
+
+<p>And for each country and for the Allies as a whole there is one
+word, Unity.</p>
+
+<p>When all had signed our Declaration of Independence, Benjamin
+Franklin said, "And now we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> must all hang together or we all
+shall hang separately."</p>
+
+<p>Russia has, for the moment, failed and unless she recovers
+herself she will pay the penalty by submission to German rule.</p>
+
+<p>Is there a defect in the Russian character? Is persistency
+lacking? In 1760, the Russian troops had taken Berlin. If Russia
+had gone on strongly with the war, the power of Frederick the
+Great might have been broken. But apparently the Russian troops
+simply turned around and went back to Russia. In 1854, in the
+Crimean War, after a long siege and bitter losses, the French,
+Turks, English and Sardinians succeeded in taking one Russian
+city, Sebastopol, in the extreme southern part of Russia. With
+this exception, Russian territory was intact and yet the Czar
+Alexander II, shortly after the death of Nicholas, begged for
+peace. As a result the Black Sea was made for a time neutral and
+no state could have warships or arsenals on it with the exception
+of small gunboats for police purposes.</p>
+
+<p>In 1878, after the Russo-Turkish war, when the Russian troops
+were in sight of the minarets of Constantinople, the Russians
+allowed themselves to be bluffed by the diplomats of Europe from
+obtaining the fruits of victory.</p>
+
+<p>Secretly or openly, Germany will propose to the world to take her
+pay from the skin of the Bear, from the conquered territories of
+Russia which remain in her possession. The inhabitants of those
+territories would have to become the slaves of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> Prussia as did
+the inhabitants of Belgium and Northern France. Prussians of
+Russia paid the agitators to talk about peace without
+indemnities. Germany, since the first days of the war, has been
+taking indemnities not only in money, but in property and in
+labour from the conquered countries. Belgium alone has been
+compelled to pay a tribute of forty-million francs a month
+(lately sixty million) to her conquerors and vast sums have been
+exacted from Lille and other conquered cities. Property,
+including machinery, has been seized and transported to Germany
+in the effort, not only to obtain a temporary advantage, but to
+destroy forever factories that compete with German manufacturers.</p>
+
+<p>Especially do the German autocrats hope to obtain the so-called
+Baltic provinces as a spoil of war. Of Courland, Livonia and
+Esthonia now largely occupied by the German invaders, Courland
+and Livonia were originally possessions of the Teutonic Knights,
+then became a part of Poland and finally passed to Russia. The
+three provinces were governed semi-independently, until 1876,
+when they became in all respects an integral part of the Russian
+Empire. The land in the provinces is held by great landowners,
+mostly of German blood&mdash;and the mass of the population belongs to
+the Lutheran Church. The peasants have been kept down by the
+lords of the soil, whose sympathies turn to Germany.</p>
+
+<p>In 1913-1914 I met in Berlin several landlords from these
+provinces who acted in Berlin and were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> treated in Berlin like
+Germans, although subjects of the Russian Czar. So backward were
+these provinces in liberty under their German landlords that it
+was not until 1848 that the infamous "right of the lord" (<i>droit
+du Seigneur</i> or <i>Jus prim&aelig; noctae</i>) was abolished.</p>
+
+<p>What Tannenberg has to say about Courland, Livonia and Esthonia
+is well worth studying. He writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The most precious portions for us of the Russian
+heritage are the German Baltic provinces,
+Courland, Livonia, Esthonia.</p>
+
+<p>"To the north in Esthonia and in the northern part
+of Livonia live the Esthonians. In the South, the
+Livonians of the Lithuanian branch. Esthonians and
+Livonians are Lutherans and form the principal
+part of the population. There are 250,000 Germans.
+But the civilisation is German and gives to the
+whole country a German stamp. In the rural
+districts, the great landlords, the ministers of
+the Gospel and the school masters are German. In
+the cities the middle classes are Germans. But the
+workingmen are Esthonians or Livonians. The
+Russians are only represented in the large cities
+by officials.</p>
+
+<p>"It was in the middle of the twelfth century that
+the first German settlements were made at the
+mouth of the Dina. In 1201, Riga was founded, and,
+in 1202, the Order of the Knights of the Sword. In
+1237 this Order was united with the powerful Order
+of the Teutonic Knights. There was no thought then
+of the Muscovites. From Marienburg to Riga it is
+five hundred kilometres, from Koenigsburg to Riga,
+three hundred and fifty, to Moscow eight hundred
+and fifty. Moscow was then going through a very
+difficult period. In 1225, the battle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> of the
+Kalka took place which put an end to the power of
+the great Russian Princes.</p>
+
+<p>"From Riga to Kalka, Dantzig, Stettin and Lubeck,
+there was sea communication. The all powerful
+merchant marine of the Hanseatic League was at its
+height...."</p></div>
+
+<p>Tannenberg describes how these provinces finally became part of
+Russia and adds:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Courland, Livonia and Esthonia became the model
+provinces of the whole Empire. The German nobility
+furnished Russia with its generals and its high
+officials: the University of Dorpat was founded
+and was the model of the high schools created
+later in Russia.... The University of Dorpat
+exchanged its professors with the other German
+high schools of the Russian Empire. The students
+of the Baltic provinces passed several terms in
+the German Universities of the South and East of
+Germany and then returned to Dorpat to undergo
+their examinations to enter in the service of the
+Baltic or Russian State.</p>
+
+<p>"One encounters constantly in our literature
+allusions to the Baltic provinces. Kant, the
+philosopher of pure reason, published his work at
+Riga.... In the time of Goethe students from
+Courland and Livonia visited the great of Weimar.
+Richard Wagner commenced at Riga his theatrical
+and musical career."</p></div>
+
+<p>Tannenberg speaks of the revolution after the defeat by the
+Japanese of the Russian troops in these provinces when the
+castles of the German Barons were besieged by the people and
+says, "The cry of indignation resounded through all Germany. A
+military German intervention was generally expected.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> Against all
+expectation nothing of the kind happened." ... "When the Russian
+Government finally got control the Russian troops treated the
+rebels mildly and it was finally the sparkling on the horizon of
+five million German bayonets that hastened matters so well that
+superficially, at least, order was re-established."</p>
+
+<p>Speaking on the annexation of those provinces to Germany he says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"There is no money to be seized in the East but
+there is something which is of more value than
+cash and that is lands, lands of colonisation for
+new German peasants." And he points out that the
+Baltic provinces are about the same size as
+Bavaria and W&uuml;rttemberg, but in Bavaria and
+W&uuml;rttemberg there are eight and a half millions of
+inhabitants while the Baltic provinces support a
+little over two millions.</p>
+
+<p>"The Baltic provinces have always occupied an
+important place in the thought and sentiments of
+the German people. The public as a whole does not
+inquire if it's true that only fifteen per cent of
+the population is German. For the public they are
+simply the German provinces of the Baltic and the
+German people are right, because since seven
+hundred years the proprietors of the land there
+are Germans and the civilisation has always been
+German."</p></div>
+
+<p>Should Germany be allowed to seize these provinces, to increase
+her population and man power enormously, a second great war like
+this one will not be far off and Russia, deprived of what Peter
+the Great called "His window on the Baltic," will lose her place
+as an European Power.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Germans will endeavour, during any peace negotiations, to
+keep their troops there in the hope that they will be permitted
+to occupy these provinces or that, if a vote should be taken to
+determine to which country the inhabitants wish to be annexed,
+the latter would be coerced through the German landlords, and by
+the use of money and terror made to appear as desirous of
+annexation to Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Prince M&uuml;nster, who had been in this section during the war, told
+me once how easy it was to observe that the more prosperous
+sections of the population were German and how anxious these
+people were to become Germans. In this case I think he was right
+to the extent that the feudal landlords of the Baltic provinces
+believe that as Prussian Junkers they would have a greater chance
+to continue to oppress the people than as Russian citizens,
+especially citizens of a new Russian republic.</p>
+
+<p>The Allies must guard against any move which can add to the man
+power of the Central Powers, and this reason alone is sufficient
+reason never to permit the Arabs and Syrians, who have been so
+oppressed by the Turks, to suffer again under the rule of the
+Young Turks.</p>
+
+<p>The world must not be disturbed again by Prussian dreams of world
+conquest, nor must Jerusalem and the Holy Land, towards which the
+eyes of all Christians have turned for twenty centuries, be
+voluntarily given back to the Turks.</p>
+
+<p>To allow the Germans access to Bagdad is to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> invite trouble&mdash;a
+second attempt of the Kaiser to don the turban and proclaim a
+Holy War in the interest of the fat merchants of Hamburg and
+Frankfort.</p>
+
+<p>If this were an old time war, when sly diplomats sat at a green
+table, exchanging territories and peoples like poker chips, we
+might consent to the partition and destruction of Russia as most
+natural. But this war is between two systems, and wars either
+will be continued or cease hereafter. We who hope for the end of
+war cannot permit Germany to add to her man power any part of the
+rapidly multiplying population of that great territory which we
+now call Russia.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that Russia will go through the stages of the
+great French Revolution. We have had already the revolution made
+by the whole nation, Duma, army, and the control of the
+respectable moderate Republicans. The period of the Jacobins, the
+extremists, has come, too, and we must in the end expect the
+appearance of the military leader, a strong man who will bring
+order. That is what will happen, for Russia cannot remain a
+nation under the control of any government which cheerfully
+consents to dismemberment of her territory. Perhaps Trotzky will
+be clever enough to transform himself into a patriotic militant
+leader, if not, then he will not long remain at the head.</p>
+
+<p>All these movements of lesser so-called nationalities are
+fostered by Prussian propagandists.</p>
+
+<p>The region of the Ukraine, in Southern Russia, is supposed to be
+clamouring for freedom and independent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> existence. Long before
+the Russian revolution, I and all the diplomats of Germany were
+flooded with newspapers, pamphlets and literature about the
+longing of the Ukraine&mdash;all as plainly issued by the Germans as
+if they had been stamped with the Royal arms of Prussia and the
+seal of the General Staff.</p>
+
+<p>The Lithuanians, too, stir uneasily. There is, perhaps, more in
+their claim; they request the world not to confuse them with the
+Poles and they protest against incorporation with Poland. But
+should a number of little states be created, sliced from the map
+of Russia, they would enjoy but a short independence before
+falling, one by one, into the maw of Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>Every one sympathises with the Poles and hopes for the
+establishment of a really free and independent Poland, and not a
+Poland under the rule or protection of either Austria or Germany.
+It will be a great experiment, because in the past the great
+state of Poland, one of the greatest in Europe, was broken
+because of the incapacity of the Poles to rule themselves. Their
+armies showed great bravery, the Polish cavalry, winged like
+angels, terrified enemy cavalry horses and charged often to
+victory; but the Polish aristocrats, camped with thousands of
+retainers at the place where the King was elected, sat patiently
+waiting for the highest bidder before giving their votes.</p>
+
+<p>And the King once elected, the Polish diet accomplished nothing,
+because any noble who voted against a proposition could defeat
+it. This was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> so-called "liberum veto" so fatal to Poland.
+Katharine of Russia, that clever, wise, dissolute but great
+German Princess, placing a puppet favourite on the Polish throne,
+insisted on the retention of the "liberum veto" in the Polish
+Constitution, because she knew that by the mere existence of this
+asinine institution Poland could be counted on to commit suicide
+for the benefit of the watching spoilers, Russia, Prussia and
+Austria.</p>
+
+<p>But a new, real Poland would not be governed by its aristocracy,
+and under a democratic government the splendid Polish race could
+be trusted to work out successfully their political salvation.</p>
+
+<p>Should the strong man fail to appear in Russia and the Bolsheviki
+continue to rule, then the confusion of Russia may not prove an
+immediate help to Germany.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, no one now works in Russia; the population
+will be in want of food and will not have any great surplus to
+export; and it will be a long time before Germany can draw any
+material help from the Steppes of incompetency. Had Russia
+immediately settled down to a new form of government, the case
+might have been different, but now Germany or some power in
+Russia must first organise that vast country for production under
+new conditions before Germany can begin to profit from the
+withdrawal of Russia from the war except, perhaps, in that
+important factor&mdash;the release of German troops from the Eastern
+frontier. But as time passes the Germans may use food from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+Russia to bribe northern neutral nations into an alliance with
+the Central Empires.</p>
+
+<p>Revolutions are contagious. In 1848, the movement started in
+France spread all over Europe. The burdened horse on the road
+evinces a tendency to get out of hand at the mere sight of
+another horse cavorting about a pasture. The Germans are in
+blinders and driven by heavy hand, but forgotten as liberty is in
+Germany, the German Michael, the peasant chained to the soil, the
+hard-driven, poorly paid worker of the cities, at least, will
+exhibit a spirit of uneasiness, when across the line he sees
+Ivan, the Russian moujik, capering about, free from restraint and
+running things at his own sweet will. The yoke fits tight to
+Michael's neck, the German Kaiser drives hard from his All
+Highest Place; but no Emperor seemed more secure than the head of
+the Romanoffs, and the very fact that the chains of the yoke seem
+so strong may make the driven cattle all the more ready to toss
+the yoke aside when knowledge of power comes to the lower castes
+of Germany and Austria.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">On the question of war Prussia is a civilisation as different
+from that of France, Great Britain and America as is China.</p>
+
+<p>Ministers of the Gospel, professors, poets, writers, teach war;
+the necessity, the glory, the nobility of war. Long before
+Nietzsche wrote and Treitschke taught war as a part of the
+Prussian creed the teachings of these mad philosophers expressed
+an indigenous feeling in Germany. It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> not some abstract
+belief to be studied. It is a vital, burning, ever-present
+question which affects deeply, intimately, every man in this
+world. For until the Prussians are made weary of this belief and
+converted to a milder life, there is no woman in any corner of
+the earth, however remote, who may not have to see her son or
+husband go out to die in the fight against Prussian aggression,
+who may not, if this fight fails, be dragged away with her
+daughters to become slaves or endure that which is far worse than
+slavery.</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="zeppelin" id="zeppelin"></a><a href="images/illo353a.jpg"><img src="images/illo353a_th.jpg"
+alt="Zeppelin postcard" title="REPRODUCTION OF A POST CARD CELEBRATING THE
+PROWESS OF THE ZEPPELIN, SOLD IN GERMANY" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">REPRODUCTION OF A POST CARD CELEBRATING THE
+PROWESS OF THE ZEPPELIN, SOLD IN GERMANY</p>
+
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a name="postcard" id="postcard"></a><a href="images/illo353b.jpg"><img src="images/illo353b_th.jpg"
+alt="Zeppelin postcard" title="ZEPPELIN POST CARD OF PATRIOTIC SENTIMENT SOLD IN
+GERMANY POPULARIZING THE AIR RAID ON DEFENSELESS CITIES" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">ZEPPELIN POST CARD OF PATRIOTIC SENTIMENT SOLD IN
+GERMANY POPULARIZING THE AIR RAID ON DEFENSELESS CITIES</p>
+
+
+<p>If the Prussian people themselves cling to their Gods of War, if
+Kaiser and Crown Prince fulfil their ideals, if the Prussian
+leave the reins in the hands of these warlike task masters and
+refuse to join the other peoples in stamping out the devil of
+war, then the conflict must go on, go on until the Germans get
+their stomachs full of war, until they forget their easy
+victories of the last century, until their leaders learn that war
+as a national industry does not pay, until their wealth and their
+trade has disappeared, until their sons are maimed and killed and
+their land laid waste, until the blinders fall from their eyes
+and they sicken of Emperor and Crown Prince, of the almost
+countless Kings and Grand Dukes and Princes, Generals and
+Admirals, Court Marshals and Chamberlains and Majors and
+Adjutants, Captains and Lieutenants, who now, like fat, green,
+distended flies, feed on the blood of Germany. What is there in
+war for any one but those men of froth at the top? It is this
+infernal king business that is responsible; so much of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> the king
+tradition is bound up with war that a king with power feels that
+he is untrue to the traditions of his ancestors if he fails at
+some period of his career to give the court painters and the
+court poets and the court historians a chance to portray him as a
+successful warrior.</p>
+
+<p>The British air minister recently announced that reprisal raids
+were to be made on German towns. Who is not sorry for the poor
+people who may suffer, but the war must be brought home to them.
+They have made no protest while Zeppelins killed babies and women
+and children in the "fortress" of London. The "fortress" of
+London, indeed! First the Germans attack an open town, contrary
+to every rule, and then, when guns are mounted to ward off future
+attacks, the Germans christen the town a "fortress" and claim the
+right to continue this slaughter of non-combatants.</p>
+
+<p>Postcards were sold and eagerly bought all over Germany showing
+the Zeppelins bombing towns. When some German father sits by the
+hospital bed of his dying daughter, who sobs out her life torn
+with a fatal wound, let him tack one of these postcards over the
+bed and in looking on it remember that "he who lives by the sword
+shall perish by the sword," that it was at the command of the
+Kaiser and the Crown Prince when they thought only the German
+Zeppelins could make a successful air raid that these massacres
+were ordered and that the German people at the time yelled their
+approval of deliberate dastardly murder.</p>
+
+<p>"Te Deum" has been always the favourite psalm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span> sung in cathedrals
+for all Christian conquerors, but neither psalms nor the paid
+pastor's praises of the Emperor will satisfy the German people,
+who have made awful sacrifices for intangible victories.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE ERRORS OF EFFICIENT GERMANY</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">T</span>he</span> Yankee finding himself, like Mark Twain's hero, suddenly
+transported back to King Arthur's Court is landed in a surprising
+and unknown world. But one of King Arthur's knights brought to
+life at the court of the present German Emperor aside from steam,
+electricity, gun powder, telegraph and telephones would find the
+system as despotic as in the days when the enchanter, Merlin,
+wove his spells and the sword Excalibur appeared from the depths
+of the magic lake. But while the system is as royal and as
+despotic as in King Arthur's day, while the king and his military
+nobles look down on the merchants and the toilers and the plain
+people, no knights ride forth intent upon good deeds, to protect
+the poor or avenge the wrongs of the innocent.</p>
+
+<p>It was the cold realists of the General Staff who battered down
+the defences of Belgium and the forts of France, destroyed the
+monuments of art and levied a tax of sixty million francs a month
+upon a little country deprived of its means to produce wealth,
+took the food from the inhabitants, shipped the machinery and raw
+material into Germany, deported the men and insulted the women
+and drove<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span> whole populations from their homes to work as slaves
+for the conquerors.</p>
+
+<p>But while they can plan military successes in the first rush of
+assault on the chessboard of Europe they have failed to
+understand other nations&mdash;failed even to learn the lessons of
+history. They did not know that in every land, in every walk of
+life, there are men who will "reject a bribe and who will die for
+an idea."</p>
+
+<p>Imagine a German Staff officer reporting in Berlin that over a
+hundred thousand Alsatians were armed and organised and that they
+threatened, unless certain proposed legislation uniting them, for
+example, with Baden, was withdrawn, to resist forcibly any
+attempt to incorporate them in that Grand Duchy. Would not this
+look to a German officer like real revolution and nothing else?
+And when, in addition, there came news of the landing of arms for
+the Nationalists in Ireland and of the organisation of the
+Nationalist army, the Germans, without knowledge of the
+psychology of other peoples, believed that Great Britain had her
+hands full and that the moment had come when they could go to war
+and leave Great Britain out of all calculations. So studying only
+the German mind, believing that all peoples in national character
+are like the Germans, the Great General Staff, the greatest
+military aggregation the world has ever seen, failed lamentably,
+whenever the human element became the factor in the situation.
+Its military successes have been marvellous; its judgments<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span> of
+mankind ridiculous. Its errors of judgment may be arranged as
+follows:</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number One.</i></p>
+
+<p>Italy was in alliance with Germany and Austria, although there
+was no greater hate before the war than that between Italians and
+Austrians; and the Great General Staff believed that Italy would
+remain in this unnatural alliance, would fight in order to give
+the Germans and the German-Austrians the domination of Europe.
+The victory of the Central Empires would have placed Italy under
+that Austrian influence from which in her struggle for freedom
+under the leadership of Cavour, Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel she
+had liberated herself.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Buelow, who early in his career romantically married a
+charming Italian of good family, was sent to Rome to keep Italy
+neutral. But he failed.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Two.</i></p>
+
+<p>Germany's belief that because of the Carson movement Great
+Britain was immobilised and could take no part in the war.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Three.</i></p>
+
+<p>The theory cherished especially in military circles that because
+the Japanese army had been trained by Prussians Japan would join
+Germany. Indeed, at the moment when the Japanese were packing
+their trunks and preparing to leave their Embassy, a German crowd
+with flags and torches was assembled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> in front cheering Japan,
+the latest ally of the Entente.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Four.</i></p>
+
+<p>The belief by the General Staff that the British Colonies would
+render no assistance to the mother country.</p>
+
+<p>In the first days after England entered the war many German
+statesmen said to me, "Of course, now Canada will be incorporated
+in the United States." The Germans believed that the practical
+thing, for the moment, for the Canadians was to avoid war, to
+disavow all their obligations and ties of blood and permit
+Britain to be destroyed. The General Staff thought that because
+the world did not have actual proof of the German designs of
+world conquest, because that design had not been publicly
+proclaimed, that no people or nation would either know or
+understand the vast enterprise of conquest on which Prussian
+autocracy had embarked.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Five.</i></p>
+
+<p>The unexpected resistance of the Belgians.</p>
+
+<p>The German armies were held only a few days, yet the delay of
+those few days changed the fortunes of the world.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Six.</i></p>
+
+<p>The splendid stand of France which was a complete surprise to the
+Great General Staff. They believed that France was degenerate,
+torn by scandals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> and that a sudden assault would land the
+German army in Paris. In this connection it was another great
+error for the Germans to have sought Paris, important from a
+sentimental but not a military point of view. They might better
+have occupied first the north coast of France, and from there
+could have conducted the German submarine campaign with deadly
+effect.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Seven.</i></p>
+
+<p>We have seen what a shell the Russian Empire was, but in July,
+1914, the Great General Staff believed that Russia was on the
+edge of a revolution. Barricades had been erected in the streets
+of Petrograd and the Staff believed that the revolution, which
+has since divided Russia, was in the making. Instead of this the
+Russian Empire lasted for nearly three years and the Russian
+troops and generals inflicted many a hard blow not only on the
+Austrians but on the German forces.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Eight.</i></p>
+
+<p>Germany was confident that the United States had been so
+propagandised, so covered by bribes, by paid newspapers, that the
+export of supplies to the Allies could be prevented. Another
+error was the barbarity shown in the sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>
+by which it was sought to terrorise Americans into withholding
+from England and France the privileges of international law, and
+of the definite treaty of The Hague in 1907, in which Germany had
+joined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> and which gave to private individuals the right to supply
+munitions of war to any belligerent.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Nine.</i></p>
+
+<p>Thinking that the Emperor, by posing as a Mohammedan in the East,
+could with the aid of the Turks stir all Mohammedans to a Holy
+War.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans laboured with the Mohammedan soldiers captured by
+them. I saw many fine looking old Sheiks from the desert entering
+the Foreign Office in Berlin. The Eastern world was filled with
+German spies. But the Holy War was a failure, and the hope that
+the races of Asia and Africa would rise in favour of Germany was
+not borne out by events. The men of the East are wise, the rulers
+of India are enlightened and were not silly enough to place
+themselves voluntarily under the harsh rule of Prussia.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection"><i>Error Number Ten.</i></p>
+
+<p>The belief that President Wilson had been elected with an
+absolute mandate to keep the peace at all costs, the Germans
+declared for unrestricted submarine warfare, expecting a craven
+neutrality from the United States.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>PRESIDENT WILSON AND PEACE</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">O</span>nce</span> the Kaiser said to me, "I wish I had as much power as your
+President. He has far more power than I have."</p>
+
+<p>What would the Kaiser say of the power and prestige now enjoyed
+by the President of the United States?</p>
+
+<p>At first blush it seems almost ridiculous for us to rush to war
+shouting against autocracy while the man with the greatest power
+the world has ever seen announces to the world that we fight "to
+make the world safe for Democracy."</p>
+
+<p>Charles I must turn enviously in his grave when his spirit sees
+the obedient Parliament of Washington; and a line of fallen
+Kings, from Charles to Nicky Romanoff, must wish that they had
+had the opportunity to attend lectures at Princeton University
+where our President, Woodrow Wilson, once held forth on the
+science of government.</p>
+
+<p>But it is characteristic of the high intelligence of our people
+that we have recognised that war to be waged effectively must be
+directed by one head. We know that after the war we shall be able
+to recover all the powers delegated to the President. We have
+gained by our temporary surrender<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> all the efficiency of
+autocracy and risked none of its dangers, and have simply
+followed the custom of the free German tribes which elected a
+leader for war and gave him a power never given the chiefs in
+time of peace.</p>
+
+<p>How much more enduring is our Government! Since the war the
+government cabinets of England have twice changed radically, that
+of France five times, and Italy very frequently indeed. Few
+realise that our Constitution is the oldest in the world to-day.
+Since its adoption the government of every land in some material
+particular has changed many times, France, for instance, from
+King and Republic, then to citizen kingship, then to Republic,
+then to Empire, and finally to Republic. In England the form has
+remained the same, but the power passed, in 1830, with the
+passage of the Reform Bill, from nobles to commoners, as great a
+revolution as any in France.</p>
+
+<p>And I admire the very inaccessibility of President Wilson. He
+does not waste time on non-essentials, on useless polite
+conversation or pointless discussion. This may add to his enemies
+but makes for efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>When I saw the President on one occasion about German affairs we
+talked for four and a quarter hours without intermission. In that
+period he extracted from me all the information he required at
+the time. He is a wonderful man to have at the head of our nation
+in war or peace.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the splendid peace message of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span> President (Jan. 8,
+1918) will sink into the consciousness of the German people.</p>
+
+<p>There are liberal and reasonable men among them striving for
+peace and for disarmament.</p>
+
+<p>In January of 1917, just at the moment when the military
+autocracy brought on war with America by their sudden
+announcement of ruthless submarine warfare, the liberals of
+Germany were preparing to co-operate with our President in the
+efforts that he was then making for peace.</p>
+
+<p>A Socialist member of the Reichstag, a man whose name is known
+throughout the world, wrote at that time two articles to be used
+in the effort for peace, and I print them in order that those
+outside of Germany may obtain a glimpse of the mind of one of the
+leading Socialists of that country. These articles have never
+before been published.</p>
+
+<p>I feel that now when we are at war with Germany perhaps it would
+cause embarrassment to this man should I publish his name. In a
+country where a man may be sent to jail for speaking without
+respect of some act of the Kaiser's ancestors, committed more
+than four hundred years ago, it is dangerous for any German to
+put his name to utterances which might not march with the wishes
+of despotic Germany.</p>
+
+<p>It has always been the desire of the Kaiser's government to draw
+the Allies into a peace conference with the hope of detaching
+some of the Allies from their combination. Perhaps these
+articles, although written by a Socialist, were part of a clever
+governmental peace propaganda to which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span> the majority Socialists
+so readily lent themselves during the year 1917. But on the other
+hand I think these articles represent the sincere real expression
+of the writer who is still a member of the Minority or Haase
+faction of the German Socialist Party. Though written a year ago
+they discuss points still unsolved and which must come before the
+peace conference that settles the war:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center">HOW AMERICA CAN HELP EUROPE.</p>
+
+<p class="center">BY &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG</p>
+
+<p>The immediate reply of the Central Powers to
+President Wilson's note (Dec., 1916) has been a
+polite refusal to indicate, beyond some
+generalities open to the blame of ambiguity, in a
+clear way what their demands of peace would be. It
+has been followed by their note to the neutrals of
+the 11th of January, which also avoids giving a
+distinct delineation of their demands. The Central
+Powers maintain that only a peace conference of
+the belligerents themselves would be the proper
+place to bring forth the respective peace
+conditions, and they state they would produce
+theirs when once the conference has met. Putting
+aside every insinuation of motives one cannot help
+being reminded by this of the attitude of the
+Central Powers during the fateful twelve days of
+July-August, 1914, when they refused any outside
+mediation and insisted on direct conversations
+between Russia and Austria, whilst the punitive
+military expedition of the latter against Servia
+had to take its course. In so far their suggestion
+would not augur well for the execution.</p>
+
+<p>The Entente Allies, on their side, have been
+somewhat more explicit. Their answer to President
+Wilson includes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span> the delineation of demands that
+certainly are open to criticism, but just for this
+call for a reply or even compel it. At the time
+these lines are written only newspaper comments
+have so far come forward, and it is not necessary
+to dwell upon these. Nor does it seem appropriate
+to anticipate the reply of the Chancellor, which
+in some form or other will surely be given in the
+course of the next weeks. What matters is that
+there is a programme given for discussion and we
+are able to scrutinise its nature and bearing.</p>
+
+<p>The demands explicitly or implicitly contained in
+the note of the Allies can be summarised under
+five heads, viz.:</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>1. Restitution of occupied territory to its former
+political community,</li>
+
+<li>2. Reparation for inflicted material and moral
+wrongs,</li>
+
+<li>3. Territorial changes motivated by alleged
+
+<ul>
+<li>a. rights of nationality,</li>
+
+<li>b. need for freeing suppressed or protecting
+consistently maltreated nationalities,</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>4. Reform of International Law,</li>
+
+<li>5. National and international treaties for the
+protection of inland and maritime boundaries.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<p>Of these the demands under 1 and 2 are certainly
+in their principle quite reasonable, and if it
+comes to actual and exact formulation are apt to
+lead to a fair agreement.</p>
+
+<p>The demands under 3 are partly on principle also
+unobjectionable, whilst some, as e.g., the cession
+of the Polish provinces of Prussia to a Polish
+state under Russian tutelage or the cession of the
+European vilayets of Turkey to Russia or some
+newly created community under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span> Russian tutelage,
+can hardly be supported by reasonable argument in
+the face of the fact that they could only be
+carried out by dictation after a complete and
+crushing victory of the Allies over the Central
+Powers. That is to say, after a prolonged war more
+murderous and more embittered than that behind us.
+It is to be expected that public discussion will
+in regard to demands of this nature create an
+opinion resulting in their reduction if not
+disappearance. What is reasonable in them falls
+either under number 3, letter "a," or under
+numbers 4 and 5.</p>
+
+<p>Now as regards the demands under 4 and 5, the
+settlement of most of them belongs rightly to an
+International Conference of all the nations. In
+their good and efficient regulation all are
+interested. They are also of the greatest concern
+to the future of mankind as a whole. The demands
+or questions can as regards their general
+character also be divided under three other heads,
+viz.:</p>
+
+<p>Firstly, questions of justice to nations or
+nationalities as political or sociological
+entities,</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, questions of the most expedient
+settlement of disputes between individual Powers
+or groups of such where no fundamental principles
+of nationality or similar rights are concerned,
+and</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, questions which concern all the nations
+through their common interest in general security
+and protection against the disturbance of
+international peace and traffic.</p>
+
+<p>Both the Allies and the Central Powers agree to
+the idea of settling these latter questions in a
+better way than before; i.e., by an International
+League of the Nations to enforce peace. But both
+want the creation of this League to be settled
+after the war. It can, however, with good reason
+be upheld that there is in this a fault against
+logic which would have to be paid dearly by them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>
+as well as by the neutral world. Both base a
+number of their demands on the necessity of
+protecting themselves against renewed onslaughts
+by their opponents. Now such protection might be a
+necessary thing under the present state of an
+International Law which has been outraged and
+partly been made inane by themselves and has
+partly turned out not to meet the conditions of
+modern warfare as they result from the modern
+weapons of destruction. But it would be made
+unnecessary or its requirements be greatly reduced
+if the League of the Nations, such as is in
+principle accepted by them, did already exist or
+had its rules and regulations already laid down in
+detail. Is it reasonable to allow this
+contradiction to cause now innumerable deaths and
+mutilations of human beings and unbounded
+destruction of material wealth instead of seeking
+means to dissolve it as early as possible? Ought
+not all our wits be exerted to find this earlier
+solution?</p>
+
+<p>There are within the means of the neutrals, if
+acting together, two ways to bring the war to an
+earlier end than that to be expected from the free
+decision of the belligerents. The one is to drop
+all considerations of neutrality such as at
+present regarded and, without directly supporting
+the one section to the detriment of the other,
+withdraw from both of them all supplies in food,
+raw material, half and wholly manufactured goods,
+not minding which section would by this be more
+damaged than its opponents. In fact, it would most
+likely be a decidedly unneutral measure against
+the one section which now benefits more than the
+other by these supplies, and because of this and
+from other reasons there is little probability
+that it would find general acceptance. The other
+way is to reduce the justification of the
+continuation of the war by minimising the objects
+for which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> it is led in the belief of the great
+masses of the people engaged as much as in the
+eyes of the outside world.</p>
+
+<p>Both belligerents, to say it again, put in the
+first line of their requirements security against
+renewed attacks, protection against the
+continuation of the insecurity of peace. Both
+admit that the proposed League of the Nations has
+become a necessity; both admit that it might
+indeed protect mankind against new wars and a
+state of incessantly endangered peace. Why then
+wait and let the disaster go on instead of
+proceeding at once to lay the foundation of this
+League?</p>
+
+<p>The step is not so impossible as it might appear.
+Supposing one neutral state took the matter in
+hand and, after having ascertained the consent of
+the other neutrals or at least a majority of
+them&mdash;which it is almost sure to obtain&mdash;would
+invite all the nations, the belligerents included,
+to a conference or a congress at a neutral place
+for the discussion and the arrangement of the
+principles and rules of the proposed League of the
+Nations. Would the belligerent nations refuse to
+send their delegates to such a conference? Could
+they do it without damaging their case before the
+world of the neutrals and the masses of their own
+people? It is most improbable that they would do
+such a thing. And even if they did they would not
+by this put the conference to naught. It would be
+there and would give palpable substance to an idea
+which until now lived, in spite of great and most
+ingenuous work spent on it, politically only in
+the sphere of lofty speculation or projects.</p>
+
+<p>And the conference could do more. Starting from
+the maxim which finds such impressive accentuation
+in President Wilson's note that war in general
+must not, and the present war in particular can
+not, be regarded as the private affair of the
+individual states that engage in it, the
+conference could also take into consideration some
+questions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> of consequence connected with the
+present war. It could, e.g., whilst laying the
+foundations for the security of countries against
+wilful attacks lay down opinions about the just
+settlement of disputed questions of nationality
+and the liberation of nations or part of such from
+allegiance to a state or empire of different or
+mixed nationalities. It seems to become a
+necessity to make clear whether a Power or
+coalition of such can be justified to put in the
+list of their war aims the liberation of
+nationalities without sufficient proof that the
+latter all want to sever their connection with the
+state or empire to which they just belong.</p>
+
+<p>The Tcheques in Austria and the Finns in Russia
+strive for their full autonomy within these
+empires, but they have very little shown of a
+desire to become a separate state. An opinion that
+wars for abstruse benefits never asked for can
+under no circumstances be regarded as liberation
+wars would wrong nobody because it would apply to
+all, but it may contribute much to have designs
+given up which otherwise would uselessly cause
+bloodshed and prolonged enmities.</p>
+
+<p>The conference would also be justified in taking
+measures to procure an impartial expert opinion on
+the origin and the legal conduct of the war and
+the general principles of national and
+international right involved.</p>
+
+<p>If the conference would invite neutral experts in
+international law of general renown to investigate
+the questions indicated above and draw up reports
+it would not by this offend in the smallest degree
+against the requirements of impartiality. But the
+reports could, if based on careful examination and
+considerately worded, contribute very much to
+soften the excited minds in the countries engaged
+and facilitate the preliminaries of a genuine
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>There are, no doubt, all sorts of objections that
+could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span> be raised against this suggestion. But they
+can be met satisfactorily if the matter is taken
+up in earnest and with practical mind. The
+principal difficulty to overcome is <i>time</i>; no
+time must be wasted by research in far-fetched
+details. It is a comparatively short list of
+pertinent questions which would have to be
+answered, and the materials of their examination
+are already at hand in the declarations and
+documentary publications of the different
+governments themselves which want to be verified
+by juxtaposition with the corresponding
+publications of the other side and to be
+scrutinised upon their intrinsic significance.
+Works of conscientious legists and historians that
+could serve as specimens are not missing. But they
+are occasioned by private enterprise and express
+opinions not always in the measured language that
+would alone fit the purpose here in view.</p>
+
+<p>This purpose is to direct the minds of the
+greatest possible number of people in the affected
+countries to such way of regarding the questions
+of the war and to such comprehension of the
+feeling of the other side as are the necessary
+conditions of a sane and sober appreciation of the
+nature and the possibilities of a reasonable
+peace. The present feeling in these sections of
+the public which form public opinion in this
+country as in England and in France, is as full of
+bitterness as can be. A cure is badly wanted, but
+it does not proceed automatically. Weariness of
+the war is there, but it is counteracted partly by
+the manifold incidents of the war itself, by the
+appetites it has awakened, by the mutual distrust
+it has created.</p>
+
+<p>It might be objected that one can hardly expect a
+number of even neutral experts to come to a
+concerted opinion on these points. But it would be
+of little consequence if the experts, instead of
+agreeing on a common report, would publish
+majority and minority reports.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span> What matters is
+that opinions of qualified experts are at all
+drawn up and published, so that discussion is as
+much as possible free from the effects of the
+biased speeches of interested statesmen and other
+politicians and their press. The report or reports
+would also be of use when an armistice at least
+had been agreed upon and a conference for the
+conclusion of a peace is sitting. And even if the
+work of the invited experts should take more time
+than the conclusion of the peace itself, the
+reports might still be of considerable value. For
+what matters is not only that a peace is come to
+but also that the nations should afterward possess
+authoritative impartial opinions on the main
+questions of consequence connected with the origin
+and the conduct of the war. For such opinions
+would educate the poisoned minds to an objective
+and argumentative discussion of the means to
+prevent a repetition of the present disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Only those who live in the affected countries can
+be aware how great the need is for providing the
+general public with unbiased authoritative
+expositions of these questions.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the conference could and should also
+discuss in a pertinent way the question of
+<i>disarmament</i>. This question has to-day reached a
+stage much beyond that of mere desirability. It is
+now a question of commanding necessity, one can
+justly say of life and death of the reached stage
+of civilisation. Not pious wishes or theoretical
+expositions will in regard to it now suffice. We
+must have practical proposals, proposals of a
+scheme to put disarmament into practice and
+proposals of the means to induce the different
+states to accept the scheme and to carry it out.</p>
+
+<p>It is a big and pretentious programme here
+suggested, the first to be decided by breaks with
+the old principle of non-interference in state
+affairs. But the times are so exceptional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span> that
+extraordinary measures cannot be shunned. If one
+sees two lads fight each other with their fists or
+even sticks one may well say, "Let them first
+fight it out and then we shall see to bring them
+to reason." But if they stand on board a ship and,
+mad with rage, and, without interruption and
+unremittingly, throw incendiary matter at each
+other you would rather stop them before the ship
+is in flames. Under other conditions it might be
+the right thing to convoke a conference to be held
+after the war is over. As it is now, reason would
+demand not to adjourn the term to that juncture.
+This is not the place to adjudicate
+responsibilities. Suffice it to say that the
+present aspect of the conflict is the worst since
+its beginnings and threatens aggravations of its
+horrors.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the neutrals none is more predestined to
+take the initiative in this grave matter than the
+United States of America, by their great power, by
+their geographical position, by the ethnological
+composition of their citizens and last, but not
+least, by their historical traditions they before
+all are called to act. The small European nations
+are already, as it were, too much under the fire
+around them to be so free in their action as is
+the government of the giant republic on the
+western hemisphere. But that they would with the
+greatest readiness join in the convocation of a
+conference for the settlement of at least the two
+first of the described subjects is sure beyond any
+doubt.</p>
+
+<p>The leader in the arrangement of this conference
+is, in my opinion, the least objectionable, and at
+the same time it is the most promising help that
+in the present appallingly entangled situation
+America can give Europe. The Old World is
+poisoned. The virus of the most irrational hatred
+of its component sections against each other,
+inoculated into them by all sorts of false
+leaders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> of opinion, eats deeper and deeper and
+threatens to mortify all the roots of a wholesome
+life. May the United States of America help a
+disunited Europe to find the way out of the deadly
+miasmatic jungle into which it has lost itself.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em">THE HELPLESSNESS OF EUROPE</p>
+
+<p class="center">BY &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG</p>
+
+<p>Europe is in the position of a wanderer who has
+gone astray into a swamp. In vain he labours to
+regain firm ground. The more frantically he
+struggles the surer he is to become submerged.
+Like an infant child he is unable to help himself.
+Help must come from people outside the swamp.</p>
+
+<p>We are now in the third year of the biggest, the
+most fratricidal and the most hopeless war the
+world has ever seen. It is hopeless in so far as
+on the one side none of the two coalitions is
+likely to be in a visible time as much the victor
+over the other that it can dictate it its own
+terms, and as on the other side there is no common
+basis to be seen for a sensible compromise. It is
+not the extravagance of demands that forms an
+insuperable barrier for peace. Extravagant terms
+of peace have indeed been formulated by
+unauthorised persons or groups but they have
+nowhere received the sanctioning stamp of the
+responsible governments. The latter prefer rather
+to shine by the moderation of their demands, at
+least as far as territory is concerned. But it is
+just this apparent moderation that makes peace
+such an almost insoluble problem.</p>
+
+<p>Far behind this moderation in regard to
+territorial demands looms the desire to destroy
+the opponents' chances of political predominance.
+The war is, for the present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span> at least, in the
+first instance a struggle about the supremacy in
+Europe. And this perhaps more in a negative sense
+than otherwise. Jingoes are, of course, everywhere
+in high and low quarters, but it is very doubtful
+whether one of the responsible heads of the
+belligerent nations pursues for himself or his
+nation seriously and consistently what might be
+called the mastery of Europe. All are, however,
+dead against the idea that this mastery might pass
+into the other camp. Comparatively easy as it is
+to settle a dispute on questions of territory by
+arbitration or to work out schemes for compromise
+in regard to such, so difficult or almost
+impossible it would be to arbitrate on a question
+of actual supremacy or to settle it by compromise.</p>
+
+<p>Particularly in the camp of the Allies is the
+possibility lest Germany might emerge out of the
+war the actual arbiter of Europe conceived as an
+unbearable thought. None of the allied Powers,
+neither England nor France and not even Russia,
+Italy being in this respect quite out of question,
+has during the last decades shown a disposition or
+a pretence to play up to such a part.</p>
+
+<p>But Germany is suspected of nourishing ideas of
+this kind, and utterances of some of their
+prominent men, <i>occasional sayings of the Kaiser
+included</i>, tend to give substance to this
+suspicion. In vain Germans object that their
+country has all the 44 years since 1870 kept the
+peace in Europe. We have done the same, would the
+others reply, and we have not, as Germany has
+done, again and again threatened war when things
+did not run according to her wishes or humours.
+<i>Germany has in fact abstained from actual peace
+breaking. But she was regarded and has not a
+little done to acquire the fame, as the latent or
+virtual disturbing element in European politics.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This view in regard to political Germany has
+greatly been enhanced through many of her actions
+during the present war. It is natural enough,
+though not particularly edifying, that in a war
+each party ascribes all the guilt thereof to the
+opponents and poses as the innocent who
+maliciously was surprised when not dreaming of any
+harm. But the cantankerous way in which almost the
+whole political and intellectual Germany has
+handled this question and has treated it as a
+crime not to take in every respect the German view
+of the case and of all the details of warfare has
+strengthened the feeling that this nation has come
+to regard itself as a sort of high judge of
+Europe. People were reminded of that
+ill-considered harangue to German soldiers at the
+time of the China expedition when they were
+entreated to act towards the Chinese like the Huns
+under Attila. <i>This and the eagerness to crush by
+overwhelming power every small nation that
+ventures to take sides with the Allies as well as
+the proclaiming of rights for submarines and
+Zeppelins upon her own authority&mdash;these and
+similar measures have only been too suited to
+nourish the conception that Germany places herself
+in the r&ocirc;le of the scourge of God.</i></p>
+
+<p>How this feeling reacts upon political thought is
+illustrated by a conversation a German socialist
+has had in the summer of 1915 on neutral ground
+with a French socialist politician of no jingoish
+leanings at all on the possibilities of peace.
+Even if Germany declared herself ready to
+relinquish Belgium and to return to France every
+inch of ground occupied, his countrymen would not
+accept peace from her, explained the Frenchman.
+And on the question, "Why not?" he replied
+passionately: "Because it would be the German
+peace; because it would yet leave Germany the all
+powerful of Europe; because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span> it would make us
+depend upon the whims and tempers of that
+conceited military nation."</p>
+
+<p>"But are you going to bleed yourself to death?"
+was the next question, and the reply, uttered in a
+voice where sadness mingled with determination,
+was:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, rather be ruined!"</p>
+
+<p>This is a specimen of the feeling created by the
+present war, and I am afraid the sentiment has not
+abated a whit yet. Germans have done a good deal
+in attempts to detach the French from the English.
+They have told them that they are only the poor
+seduced tools of the base and egotistic
+Britishers, that Germans did not bear them any
+malice, that they rather pitied them and would
+fain be ready to come to terms with them. But
+declarations of this sort proved only how little
+the French mentality was understood this side of
+the Vosges. The French nation is too much
+impressed by the memory of her great past and the
+part played by her in European politics to stand
+being pitied and patted like children of tender
+age. It will be respected as an equal who acts
+with the full knowledge of the state of things and
+is too much given to political reflection to
+accept willingly any view of the war that visibly
+is coloured by the interest of Germany in the
+dissension between the two great Powers of Western
+Europe. The anti-German feeling runs still very
+high in France; her leading papers excel without
+any exception in extremely harsh language against
+everything German, and the great mass of those who
+in former years had propagated the idea of a
+Franco-German understanding are now dead against
+it.</p>
+
+<p>A similar feeling has step by step got hold of the
+British nation. From not being very popular at its
+beginning in England, the war has come to be
+regarded as a greater national concern than any of
+its predecessors. The frantic if not hysterical
+outbursts of hatred against England<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span> in Germany
+when the former decided to stand by France in the
+war were at first not taken too seriously. But by
+and by the unceasing utterances of spite have,
+together with the known acts of German aerial and
+submarine warfare, deeply reacted on the British
+mind. The feeling is now general that England has
+never before had an enemy so full of hatred
+against her, so ardently desirous of causing her
+irreparable harm as she now has in present day
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Even such socialist papers as the <i>New Statesman</i>,
+which before the war had no anti-German bias at
+all, have arrived at the same conclusion
+concerning what may be called a German peace as
+the French socialist politician whose opinions
+were given above characterised it. In an article
+called "The Case for the Allies," and especially
+addressed to Americans, the <i>New Statesman</i>
+explains in its number of December 30th that peace
+with an unbeaten Germany would mean "Mittel Europa
+from the Baltic to the Black Sea," that nothing
+would prevent its expansion through the Balkans to
+El Arish and Bagdad, that throughout this vast
+area the authority, if not the suzerainty, of
+Berlin would be acknowledged and that the small
+European States north and northwest of Germany
+would without any resistance&mdash;by the mere force of
+things&mdash;come to be subjected to the dictate of
+Germany. In the words of the <i>New Statesman</i>, as
+the result of an inconclusive peace, "militarism
+would be more firmly established than ever by the
+record of its marvellous success and by the
+manifest need for a military organisation
+proportionate to so vast an expansion."</p>
+
+<p>Is this feeling justified? Does it appreciate
+facts at their exact value? <i>There is undoubtedly
+an influential section in Germany which entertains
+feelings of this kind.</i> It has its adherents
+particularly in naval circles and amongst the
+intellectuals of the nation and in a considerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span>
+degree also in the financial world. These sections
+hate in England partly the happy possessor of what
+in their opinion ought by right to belong to the
+German race and partly the power without which
+German expansion would meet with no resistance
+worth speaking of by European nations. <i>This
+section of anti-English on principle or by deeply
+rooted hatred, influential as it is, is, however,
+not the whole nation.</i> It has only now the hold of
+her mind because it has succeeded in instilling
+into her the belief that England is the secret
+manufacturer of the present war, that she is the
+selfish fermenter of hatred in Europe, the
+scheming brewer of strife on the Continent.
+England has become to the average German mind a
+real nightmare, a sort of a Frankenstein or any
+such spookish monster, and as she now, by the
+vicissitudes of the war, has indeed become the
+most dangerous of Germany's opponents it is not
+possible to educate people from the inside to a
+more rational view of her part in this war and in
+European politics altogether.</p>
+
+<p>There you have the greatest hindrances to peace in
+Europe. I did not mention Russia. But the war
+between Germany, inclusive of Austria-Hungary, and
+Russia is of quite a different nature. It is more
+of a war of the older order. It has, of course,
+also evoked a good deal of hatred. But on the
+whole it is as wars go, more of an objective
+nature. There are material differences on which it
+would not be impossible to compromise. But there
+is no such deeply-seated irrational opposition,
+which now sets Germans and English and French and
+Germans against each other. The war between the
+Central Powers and Russia is, comparatively
+speaking, an accident in the political history of
+Europe. <i>The war between England, France and
+Germany is a catastrophe in European civilisation.
+As a war it is most irrational, and just because
+of its absurdity it is so utterly difficult to
+find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span> a solution for it, and there is little hope
+that unless some outside force intervenes, it may
+end otherwise than by absolute general
+exhaustion.</i></p>
+
+<p>Things would be otherwise if there were reasonable
+hopes of a concerted action on the part of the
+international union of the socialist parties. But
+such hopes, if they ever could be entertained,
+have by now become a thing of the past. In the
+three countries named the majority of the leaders
+of organised labour have taken sides in the war
+alongside of their governments and have by this
+more or less given up independency and lost the
+confidence of their former comrades in the
+opposite camp. Distrust, which in general has so
+much contributed to bring about this war, prevails
+also in the ranks of the socialists in regard to
+the leaders of the movement on the other side of
+the frontier. Minorities everywhere work for a
+greater independency as a step to a better
+international understanding. But they have as yet
+nowhere succeeded in winning the majority of the
+movement over to their views and policy, and even
+if they did, all sorts of hindrances would by the
+governments be put in the way of these Socialists
+to assemble internationally in sufficient number
+for work of this nature.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it to be expected that revolts of the
+discontented masses will be vast enough to force
+the governments into peace negotiations against
+their will. The possibilities of centralised
+governments against revolutionary upheavals as
+long as these remain locally isolated, which in
+the face of the enormous extent of the section of
+the globe directly drawn into the war is most
+probable, are too great to let these movements
+have a great chance of changing the policy of the
+rulers. This would only happen when at least some
+of these classes or parties which at present
+support the war come round to their opinion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> of
+which very few signs are at present to be seen.
+The work of small minorities everywhere, the war
+has got hold of the minds of the millions in all
+countries and has filled nations against nations
+with such distrust and spite as in the history of
+civilised mankind never before have been
+witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>How little we are justified to expect peace from
+the action of these socialists who stand by
+governments in the war is, as far as my own
+country is concerned, shown by the fact that the
+big meetings now (and, I am willing to admit, it
+is the intention of the initiators to hold them in
+favour of peace) led by the leaders of the
+majority of the social-democratic party, such as
+Messrs. Scheidemann, David, Ebert and others, turn
+out in practice as meetings in support of the
+policy of the government in regard to the question
+of war and peace. In order to defend their own
+political attitude the speakers are compelled to
+shift the responsibility for the war and its
+continuation wholly on the shoulders of the
+governments of the opposite countries and their
+supporters, and by this they increase in the mind
+of their hearers the conviction that nothing short
+of a defeat of these countries will bring the war
+to a desirable end. In England the majority of the
+Labour Party and a considerable number of the best
+known socialist leaders and in France the most
+influential leaders of socialist party support
+also the war policy of their respective
+governments in all principal issues. The well
+meant and praiseworthy attempts to convene a full
+International Socialist Congress for the purpose
+of settling these differences by finding a common
+line of action are, I am sorry to say, under the
+circumstances most likely to prove abortive. <i>They
+will founder on the self-contradiction that the
+Socialists of the Entente countries argue that
+their governments hate the idea of German
+militarism coming out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span> unbeaten and unreduced out
+of this war which in their opinion was provoked by
+it, whilst the leaders of the German Socialists in
+power would rather see this same militarism which
+they in former years have so violently attacked
+and denounced, come out victorious than have it
+interfered with by outside influence.</i></p>
+
+<p>In short, sections of the socialist movement will
+assist other forces in the action for peace, but
+the movement as a whole is incapable to act in the
+matter as a force of compelling strength.</p>
+
+<p>Help must in the main come from outside.
+Consequently President Wilson's action in his note
+to the belligerents of December 20th would have
+been the right thing, even if it had offended in
+some way against the rules of diplomatic
+procedure. Under so exceptional circumstances as
+these occasioned by the present war extraordinary
+steps are certainly justified and breaches of
+etiquette of little significance. But the note was
+faultless in this respect, and it can moreover be
+said that in no way did it endanger legitimate
+interests of the one or the other section of the
+belligerents. It offends only in spirit against
+Cain's word, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and in
+distinct words against the conception that war is
+a private affair of states may it ever so much
+interfere with the material and moral welfare of
+other nations.</p>
+
+<p>The step has not at once succeeded. But it has
+opened the way; nay, it has forced the door open
+for discussion in a fashion that nobody will be
+strong enough to shut it again. True, the Central
+Powers have by their offer of peace negotiations
+forestalled the note by a week. But this offer
+would have come to naught without Mr. Wilson's
+action. Harsh as the reply of the Allies is to the
+offer, it would most likely have been put in much
+more negating terms had not the American note
+caused<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> the Entente Allies to avoid a blunt "No"
+and content themselves with raising objections and
+interjecting accusations. By this they have
+willy-nilly provoked a debate and instead of
+shutting the door kept it well open.</p>
+
+<p>People may call this a small success. In fact it
+is a beginning, and for the first as such
+sufficient. The question is now what shall the
+next step be and how can the debate be directed to
+positive proposals?</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">Of course, as these articles were given by this Socialist-Author
+for publication any one is at liberty to reproduce them.</p>
+
+<p>In conducting the peace negotiations, President Wilson will have
+the benefit of the services of Colonel House, the one man who, I
+believe, is best fitted to protect the interests of America and
+of humanity at such a conference. I, of course, saw Colonel House
+during the war in Berlin and in America and I consider that no
+man alive is his superior in either knowledge of the whole
+situation or in ability to cope with the trained diplomats of
+Europe. Human nature is much the same and the gentle mannered
+Texan who has been so successful in American politics will not
+fail when representing us at the table of Peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>AFTER THE WAR, WHAT?</h4>
+
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">N</span>o</span> one but a fortune teller or professional seer dares to predict
+the condition of the world after this war. Only mere suggestions
+can be thrown out, shadows of prophecy as to what may come.</p>
+
+<p>Will the tide of emigration turn from Europe and the United
+States to other countries or will people of German birth and
+descent leave America to return to the Fatherland after the war?</p>
+
+<p>I made it my business after I had learned German to talk to many
+of the plain people in Berlin and elsewhere, to get their views.
+I found that the common soldiers, especially those representing
+the class of skilled workingmen in the industrial centres were
+almost unanimous in saying that after the war and at the first
+opportunity they intended to leave Germany, to turn from a
+country capable of perpetrating this calamity on the world, a
+country where they have been subject not alone to military
+service but to a cruel and oppressive caste system of discipline.
+I believe that Germany will enact laws against emigration and
+that there will be zones of espionage on all German frontiers
+designed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span> to watch and keep back such Germans as may seek to
+escape to other countries.</p>
+
+<p>In Austria even more stringent laws will be necessary to keep the
+unmarried males from leaving.</p>
+
+<p>I know that experts of the United States Government believe at
+least three millions of Slovaks, Greeks, etc., will leave America
+after the war, taking with them the money they have earned, for
+investment in new opportunities in the Old Country.</p>
+
+<p>With this view I cannot agree. The soil of the European continent
+is too poor, wages too small, hours too long, and distaste for
+the military and caste systems too great, to tempt those who have
+tasted the equality and the freedom of America. Why to-day an
+ordinary coal miner in Pennsylvania can earn $5,000 a year&mdash;a sum
+greater than the pay of a Prussian or Austrian general! Why
+should this miner go back to insult and slavery?</p>
+
+<p>The greatest problem of Germany comes after the war&mdash;when these
+millions of men, trained for four years or more to murder, shall
+return. It will be hard for them to settle down to regular work,
+impossible for them to submit again to the iron discipline of
+German civil life. Will they not, as Bloch predicts, possibly,
+re-enact the horrors of the French Commune, or even those of the
+French Revolution?</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to understand why Prussian autocracy does not freely
+offer what it will be compelled to give after the war&mdash;equal
+suffrage in Prussia, fair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span> representation in the Reichstag&mdash;a
+government responsible to the Reichstag. Is it not better for the
+Emperor to offer this&mdash;following Bismarck's saying that "in
+Prussia the revolutions are made by the rulers."</p>
+
+<p>And who of all rulers in history seemed to sit more securely on
+his throne than Nicholas who is now learning from his keepers
+what a Czar really is?</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor said to me once, "Is it not wonderful how the German
+people bear their sufferings in this war?" I said I thought it
+was wonderful. It is that and more,&mdash;it is almost a miracle&mdash;that
+a whole nation can so nearly approach this delirium.</p>
+
+<p>The autocratic idea survives in Germany&mdash;on November 22, 1917,
+the Conservative Union of the Province of Brandenburg unanimously
+adopted the following resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"The Prussian State, fundamentally a people of its Princes, is
+the foundation on which the German Empire rests.</p>
+
+<p>"Not sovereignty of the people but Kingship by Divine Right is
+its corner stone.</p>
+
+<p>"We implore our deputies to do their best to prevent the Kingship
+being debased into a sham Kingship and being replaced by that
+sovereignty of the people by means of the alteration of the
+Prussian franchise."</p>
+
+<p>After reading this can any one wonder that the Kaiser believes he
+is called by God to rule the Germans?</p>
+
+<p>"Kingship by Divine Right"&mdash;is quite a development<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span> of a Kingship
+that originated in foreclosure proceedings, when Prussia was
+taken for a debt by the crafty, rich Hohenzollern Burgraf of
+Nuremberg.</p>
+
+<p>Is it any wonder that the Kaiser once said to me during the war,
+"Everything seems to be going my way&mdash;don't you think God is
+helping me?"</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The efforts of those in charge of the German propaganda to sow
+dissensions among the Allies are more than awkward.</p>
+
+<p>For some time after the landing in force of the British troops in
+France, the newspapers of Germany were filled with cartoons
+representing the British refusing to leave Calais; and now that
+America has entered the war even so intelligent a philosopher as
+Chancellor Hertling speaks as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"If those who hold power in France forcibly
+repress every suggestion of peace, and try to
+rouse fresh will for war by a show of assurance of
+victory, in spite of the frightful sacrifices the
+war has cost the country, and must cost still
+further, it is because they are sustained by the
+hope of help from America. In this hope they
+patiently tolerate the Americans also making
+themselves at home in France, turning Bordeaux
+into a great American harbour with immense loading
+and unloading wharves, and cutting down the
+forests of the Gironde in order to build a camp in
+the neighbourhood of Bordeaux for the expected
+army. French workmen tolerate in their factories
+the competition of American workmen, with whom
+they are not in sympathy, and the owners allow
+them to look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span> into the secrets of their business,
+all so that the new Ally may help to take the
+revenge on the hated Germans."</p></div>
+
+<p class="newsection">Misguided old Philosopher!</p>
+
+<p>The most stupid peasant of the Bordeaux country does not believe
+that the Americans have come to France in order to occupy
+permanently a section of that sandy, barren scrub pine desert
+which stretches to the south of Bordeaux.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">And President Wilson and his cabinet, Lloyd George and the
+statesmen of France and Italy, Portugal and Russia must be on
+their guard&mdash;Wolff's agency is at work, spreading poisonous
+propaganda. Here is an excerpt that speaks for itself:</p>
+
+<p>"The Imperial and Royal Propaganda Department, Section of Foreign
+Affairs, calls the editor's attention to the practice of the
+enemy press in caricaturing the Kaiser, the Crown Prince,
+Hindenburg and alleged German militarism, with the evident
+intention of an odius anti-German propaganda. It would,
+therefore, be important from the patriotic point of view for the
+daily newspapers also to occupy themselves by means of
+caricatures with the principal events of the day.</p>
+
+<p>"The idea of such propaganda has been conceived by the supreme
+military command. And it is therefore desirable that all should
+conform to it. The official cinema has been ordered by the
+supreme command to enter into direct communication with the daily
+press, and many leading newspapers have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span> hastened to express
+their readiness to insert these patriotic caricatures, for the
+drawing of which the service of the best artists in Munich and
+Berlin have been secured. These caricatures will regard chiefly
+the heads of state of the Entente powers, their political leaders
+and those who make no mystery of their hatred for Germany. The
+blocks will be supplied free of expense."</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">German employers will never be able to grind down their workmen
+as before the war. The men who have fought in the trenches will
+return with a new feeling of independence, a new spirit of revolt
+against the caste prejudices, a disinclination to do the same
+work in the same hours and for the same wages.</p>
+
+<p>My tailor in Berlin told me that several of his men who had
+returned after being discharged from the army because of some
+physical disability or wounds took an entirely different attitude
+and that one of them, for example, had said to him: "Do not think
+that I have come back to work as before. I have the Iron Cross, I
+have helped to save Germany. I am a hero and I do not propose
+again to be your industrial slave."</p>
+
+<p>That is the new spirit which after the war will animate the
+deceived, hitherto down-trodden lower classes of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>In our own country, the balance of political power may be held by
+the soldiers who are enlisted in the war and who, like the G.&nbsp;A.
+R.'s after our Civil War, may doubtless organise not only for
+protection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span> but for political purposes. And this great restless
+body of returned troops, veterans of wars beyond the seas, may
+change our whole foreign policy in ways of which we do not dream.
+We shall be a more warlike nation, less patient to bear insult,
+more ready for war, unless this war ends all wars.</p>
+
+
+<p class="newsection">The war after the war, in trade and commerce, may be long and
+bitter. The rivers of Germany are lined with ships of seven or
+eight thousand tons, many of them built or completed since the
+war, and Germany designs as her first play in this commercial war
+to seize the carrying trade of the world. The German exporter has
+lost his trade for years. Alliances have already been made in
+great industries, such as the dyestuff industry, in preparation
+for a sudden and sustained attack upon that new industry in
+America. Prices will be cut to far below the cost of production
+in order that the new industry of America fighting single handed
+against the single head German trust may be driven from the
+field. The German Government will take a practical hand in this
+contest and only the combination of American manufacturers and
+the erection of a tariff wall of defence can prevent the
+Americans, if each fights single handed and for his own end, from
+falling before the united, efficient and bitter assault of German
+trade rivals.</p>
+
+<p>The war has brought new power and new responsibility to women.
+Armed with the franchise they will demand not only equal rights
+but equal pay. In Great Britain alone, before the war, there
+were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span> less than five hundred thousand women workers where now
+over five million carry the burden even of the war industries of
+the country.</p>
+
+<p>Unless the war ends with a victory so decisive for the Allies
+that an era of universal peace shall dawn for the world, each
+nation will constitute itself an armed camp fearing always that
+the German, with his lust for war and conquest, will again
+terrorise the world by a sudden assault.</p>
+
+<p>And a necessary sequence of this preparation for war will be the
+desire of each nation to be self-sufficient&mdash;to produce within
+itself those materials indispensable for the waging of war.
+Capital will be wasted because each nation will store up
+quantities of these materials necessary to war which it is
+compelled to import from other countries.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, Germany will always carry great stocks of grain and
+of fats, of copper and cotton and wool, all of the materials for
+the lack of which she suffered during the present war.</p>
+
+<p>In my first book, I touched on the change in the industrial
+system that will be brought about by the socialised buying and
+selling introduced first by Germany and which must be copied by
+the other nations if they desire to compete on equal terms with
+that country. In Germany for several years after the war at
+least, and perhaps as a permanent regulation, the purchase of all
+luxuries outside of Germany will be forbidden because of the
+desire to keep German gold and credits at home.</p>
+
+<p>Germans have even stated to me that they do not fear in a trade
+way any prejudice created<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> against them in other countries by
+their actions during this war. They say that a man always will
+buy where he can buy the cheapest, and that however much a
+merchant may hate the Germans after the war, if he can buy the
+goods he wants for his use from Germany at a cheaper rate than
+anywhere else, he will forget his prejudices in the interest of
+his pocketbook.</p>
+
+<p>This is a question which each reader will have to solve for
+himself. Personally, I believe that in England, in France, and in
+America, too, if the war should last a long time, the prejudice
+against German trickery and brutality in war will become so great
+that many a merchant will prefer to lose a little money than deal
+with German sellers. However, the appeal of the pocketbook is
+always so earnest and so insistent that the Germans may be right
+in the view that financial considerations will weigh down the
+balance as against the prejudice engendered in this struggle. And
+if there comes a change of government in Germany, if the
+Hohenzollerns no longer control, or if in a liberalised Germany
+the ministers are responsible to a popular parliament, while
+kings sink to the political position of the kings of Great
+Britain or of Spain, then the commercial prejudice certainly will
+not last long. The boycott of Germany for fifty years suggested
+by the American Chamber of Commerce is a most powerful weapon.</p>
+
+<p>And why, if wars are to continue after this one, should we
+contribute to German trade profits and consequently to German
+preparations for another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span> war? The nations of the Allies must
+reckon, too, with the bitter, bitter hate felt for them by the
+whole German people&mdash;and only one who has been in Germany since
+the war can realise its intensity.</p>
+
+<p>One great factor in forcing a change of government will be the
+desire of the individual German after the war to say that the
+government of his country existing then is not the government
+that ordered the shooting of Edith Cavell, the enslavement of the
+women and girls of northern France, the deportation of the
+Belgian workingmen, the horrors of the prison camps, the burning
+of Louvain and all the other countless barbarities and cruelties
+ordered by the German military commanders.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine after this war in some distant island, perhaps, a
+Frenchman, an Englishman, an American, a Portuguese, an Italian
+all seated at the dining table of a little hotel. A German comes
+in and seeks to join them. Will he be treated on an equality?
+Will he be taken into their society? Or will he be treated as a
+leper and a pariah?</p>
+
+<p>The Germans will wish to be in a position to say: "Why,
+gentlemen, I was against all these cruelties. I was against the
+sinking of the <i>Lusitania</i>, and the murder of its women and
+children. I was against the starving of Poland and the slaughter
+of the Armenians and the crucifixion of prisoners, and we Germans
+have thrown out the government that was responsible for these
+horrors."</p>
+
+<p>Stronger than any other consideration will be the desire of the
+German to repudiate these acts which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span> have made the Germany of
+to-day a Cain among the nations,&mdash;an outcast branded with the
+mark of shame.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian author Bloch whom I have quoted, says, referring to
+the future war:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Behind all conflicts of interest between nations
+statesmen must balance the chances of success of
+their nation, promised by the recourse to arms,
+against the terrible miseries of the victims
+caused by war as well as the social peril which
+can be the consequence of war.</p>
+
+<p>"They who ask themselves when it will be possible
+to propose to the people of any nation after the
+war a compensation for its enormous sacrifices,
+forget that the conquered will be so exhausted
+that there will be no question of being able to
+draw from a conquered nation the least pecuniary
+indemnity. All that can be imposed on the
+conquered will be the abandonment of some rags of
+frontier territory.</p>
+
+<p>"In these conditions, up to what point can calm be
+counted on to reign among the millions of men
+called to the colours, when in their ranks there
+is not more than a handful of old officers and
+when the command will be in the hands of those
+newly promoted from among the non-commissioned
+officers? That is to say, men belonging to the
+working classes. Will these workingmen surrender
+their arms in the states of Central Europe where
+the propaganda has spread already among the
+masses?</p>
+
+<p>"Will they allow themselves to be disarmed after
+the war and could there not come events more
+horrible than those which signalised the rapid
+triumph of the Commune of Paris?"</p></div>
+
+<p>Just as to-day it is not isolated armies but whole peoples in
+arms that are opposed, so in the war of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span> commerce after the war
+not single producers and exporters, corporations or individuals,
+but whole nations will meet in the markets of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Germany has favoured trusts&mdash;controlling prices and unfair
+competition&mdash;and we shall encounter in buying and in selling the
+whole German nation ranked behind their Central Buying Company in
+buying and their Kartels in selling.</p>
+
+<p>Isolated firms and individuals cannot on our side cope with such
+an offensive&mdash;but we are hampered in effectiveness by the
+so-called Sherman law&mdash;a law from which England is free.</p>
+
+<p>The war will produce great and sudden alterations and President
+Wilson in meeting new problems has pursued a progressive course;
+witness his support of the Webb law, which enables our
+manufacturers to combine in export trade.</p>
+
+<p>Every sign points to a new era in business&mdash;an era in which the
+Government will permit&mdash;even encourage&mdash;enlightened business
+combinations.</p>
+
+<p>The railroads of the country in the efficient hands of McAdoo
+have already bettered service, and the rights of the Savings
+Banks and of other holders of the securities of each road have
+been secured.</p>
+
+<p>We must, on the one hand, permit the abolition of ruinous
+competition and on the other safeguard the public from high
+prices, and the smaller firms and corporations from the unfair
+competition of a powerful rival.</p>
+
+<p>Great changes are coming in the social structure of the world. We
+are on the threshold of a great readjustment. Whatever else our
+entrance into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span> war may accomplish, let us hope that it will
+have made of us a nation with the throb of a single patriotism
+and the steady pulse of an energetic efficiency that shall not
+merely seek in honest rivalry to compete with other nations but
+in an enlightened and helpful way shall strive truly to heal a
+wounded civilisation in the God-given days of peace.</p>
+
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a href="images/illo398.jpg"><img src="images/illo398_th.jpg"
+alt="Die Zukunft" title="EXACT SIZE REPRODUCTION OF A PAGE OF THE FAMOUS
+&quot;DIE ZUKUNFT&quot;" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">EXACT SIZE REPRODUCTION OF A PAGE OF THE FAMOUS
+&quot;DIE ZUKUNFT&quot; PUBLISHED BY MAXIMILIAN HARDEN, THE ONE UNCENSORED
+EDITOR OF GERMANY</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="padding-top: 2em"><a href="images/illo399.jpg"><img src="images/illo399_th.jpg"
+alt="Program of service" title="COVER OF PROGRAM OF SERVICE IN PROTESTANT
+CATHEDRAL, BERLIN" /></a></p>
+<p class="caption" style="padding-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%">COVER OF PROGRAM OF SERVICE IN PROTESTANT
+CATHEDRAL, BERLIN, IN CELEBRATION OF THE FIVE-HUNDREDTH
+ANNIVERSARY OF THE LORDSHIP OF HOHENZOLLERNS IN
+BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM***</p>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11775 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Face to Face with Kaiserism, by James W.
+Gerard
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Face to Face with Kaiserism
+
+
+Author: James W. Gerard
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 3, 2007  [eBook #21991]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Irma Spehar, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 21991-h.htm or 21991-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/9/1/21991/21991-h/21991-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/9/1/21991/21991-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM
+
+by
+
+JAMES W. GERARD
+
+Late Ambassador to the German Imperial Court,
+Author of "My Four Years in Germany"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+New York
+George H. Doran Company
+Copyright, 1918,
+by George H. Doran Company
+Copyright, 1918, by The Public Ledger Company
+Copyright, Canada, 1918, by The Public Ledger Company
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+COLONEL EDWARD M. HOUSE
+
+STATESMAN AND FRIEND
+
+THE AUTHOR
+
+DEDICATES THIS BOOK
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: PAPER MONEY USED IN PRISON CAMPS]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A PRISON CAMP MONEY CERTIFICATE
+ISSUED AT THE PRISON CAMP OF NEUHAMMER]
+
+[Illustration: PAPER MONEY ISSUED AGAINST PROPERTY IN GERMANY.
+REALLY A "GREENBACK" OR ALMOST FIAT MONEY]
+
+[Illustration: POSTAGE STAMPS ISSUED AT RUHLEBEN PRISON CAMP.
+USED BY PRISONERS WRITING TO EACH OTHER IN THE CAMP.]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION OF THE KAISER'S VISITING
+CARD]
+
+[Illustration: THE VISITING CARD OF THE CROWN PRINCE, REPRODUCED
+IN FACSIMILE]
+
+[Illustration: THE KAISER AND VON TREUTLER TAKEN IN THE NORWEGIAN
+TOWN OF ODDE IN 1910]
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+
+
+In some measure this book is a continuation of MY FOUR YEARS IN
+GERMANY, the narrative here being carried up to the time of my
+return home, with some observations on the situation I have found
+in the United States.
+
+What I want especially to impress upon the people of the United
+States is that we are at war because Germany invaded the United
+States--an invasion insidiously conceived and vigorously
+prosecuted for years before hostilities began;--that this war is
+our war;--that the sanctity of American freedom and of the
+American home depend upon what we do _NOW_.
+
+JAMES W. GERARD.
+
+NEW YORK,
+APRIL FIRST, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                             PAGE
+
+I     PERSONALITY OF THE KAISER AND SOMETHING OF THE KING BUSINESS   13
+
+II    WHO DOES THE KAISER'S THINKING AND WHO DECIDED ON THE BREAK
+      WITH AMERICA?                                                  32
+
+III   WHO SANK THE "LUSITANIA"?                                      42
+
+IV    THE KAISER AND "LESE-MAJESTE"                                  49
+
+V     WHEN THE KAISER THOUGHT WE WERE BLUFFING                       55
+
+VI    THE INSIDE OF GERMAN DIPLOMACY                                 73
+
+VII   GERMANY'S PLAN TO ATTACK AMERICA                               84
+
+VIII  GERMANY'S EARLY PLOTS IN MEXICO                               111
+
+IX    THE KULTUR OF KAISERDOM--THE GERMAN SOUL                      129
+
+X     THE LITTLE KAISERS                                            143
+
+XI    ROYALTY'S RECREATION                                          148
+
+XII   THE ETERNAL FEMININE                                          157
+
+XIII  HOME LIFE AND "BRUTALITY" OF THE PEOPLE                       166
+
+XIV   AIMS OF THE AUTOCRACY                                         174
+
+XV    AUSTRIA-HUNGARY--THE KAISER'S VASSAL STATE                    196
+
+XVI   GERMAN INFLUENCE ON THE NORTHERN NEUTRALS                     217
+
+XVII  SWITZERLAND--ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL                          230
+
+XVIII A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE                                           237
+
+XIX   MY INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF SPAIN                           251
+
+XX    GERMAN SPIES AND THEIR METHODS                                263
+
+XXI   EN ROUTE HOME--KAISERISM IN AMERICA                           273
+
+XXII  THAT INTERVIEW WITH THE KAISER                                300
+
+XXIII THE FUTURE KAISER--THE CROWN PRINCE AND HIS BROTHERS          312
+
+XXIV  WHEN GERMANY WILL BREAK DOWN                                  323
+
+XXV   THE ERRORS OF EFFICIENT GERMANY                               340
+
+XXVI  PRESIDENT WILSON AND PEACE                                    346
+
+XXVII AFTER THE WAR, WHAT?                                          368
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+THE KAISER AND VON TREUTLER                               _Frontispiece_
+
+THE IRON CROSS                                                       36
+
+THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY STAFF, BERLIN                              50
+
+FACSIMILE OF AN ORDER ISSUED BY COMMANDER OF GERMAN PRISON CAMP
+OF DOEBERITZ                                                         78
+
+COVER OF PAMPHLET BY JOHN L. STODDARD                               104
+
+PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN COURTYARD OF EMBASSY, AUGUST, 1916              126
+
+EXAMPLE OF A COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OFFERED FOR SALE                   152
+
+VIEWS OF A TYPICAL HOLSTEIN COUNTRY HOME                            188
+
+MAIN STAIRWAY IN THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BERLIN                       210
+
+AMBASSADORS SHARP AND GERARD, PARIS, FEBRUARY, 1917                 240
+
+THE "INFANTA ISABELLA"                                              274
+
+PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AFTER BANQUET GIVEN AMBASSADOR GERARD ON JANUARY
+6TH, 1917                                                           304
+
+THE CROWN PRINCE AND CROWN PRINCESS                                 316
+
+REPRODUCTION OF ZEPPELIN POST CARD OF PATRIOTIC SENTIMENT           336
+
+ZEPPELIN POST CARD SOLD IN GERMANY                                  336
+
+
+
+
+FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PERSONALITY OF THE KAISER AND SOMETHING OF THE KING BUSINESS
+
+
+To the American mind the Kaiser is the personification of
+Germany. He is the arch enemy upon whom the world places the
+responsibility for this most terrible of all wars. I have sat
+face to face with him in the palace at Berlin where, as the
+personal representative and envoy of the President of the United
+States, I had the honor of expressing the viewpoint of a great
+nation. I have seen him in the field as the commanding general of
+mighty forces, but I also have seen him in the neutral countries
+through which I passed on my return home and in my own beloved
+land--in the evidence of intrigue and plotting which this
+militaristic monarch has begotten and which is to-day "the
+Thing," as President Wilson calls it, which has brought the
+American people face to face with kaiserism in the greatest
+conflict of all history.
+
+What manner of man is he? What is his character? How much was he
+responsible for what has happened--how much his General Staff?
+What of the Crown Prince and what of the neutral peoples and
+their rulers whom Germany has intimidated and would fain
+subjugate if it suited her purpose? These are the questions I
+shall attempt to answer out of my experiences in Germany and my
+contacts with the rulers of other countries in my journeys to and
+from Berlin and Washington.
+
+To illustrate the craft of the Kaiser, I believe I can perform no
+better service to Americans than to reveal an incident which has
+not hitherto been published. It occurred at the New Year's
+reception of 1914 when the Ambassadors of all the foreign
+countries represented at the German court, were ranged in a large
+room at the Palace. They stood about six feet apart in the order
+of their residence in Berlin. The Kaiser and his aides entered
+the room, and the Emperor spoke a few minutes to each envoy. He
+tarried longest with the Turkish Ambassador and myself, thereby
+arousing the curiosity of the other diplomats who suspected that
+the Kaiser did more than merely exchange the greetings of the
+season. He did.
+
+What the German Emperor said to me interests every American
+because it shows his subtlety of purpose. _The Kaiser talked at
+length to me about what he called Japan's designs on the United
+States. He warned me that Mexico was full of Japanese spies and
+an army of Japanese colonels._ He also spoke about France, saying
+that he had made every effort to make up with France, that he had
+extended his hand to that country but that the French had
+refused to meet his overtures, that he was through and would not
+try again to heal the breach between France and Germany!
+
+All this was in 1914, six months before the outbreak of the
+European War. Little did I know then what the purpose was back of
+that conversation, but it is clear now that the Emperor wished to
+have the government of the United States persuaded through me
+that he was really trying to keep Europe at peace and that the
+responsibility for what was going to happen would be on France.
+The German is so skilful at intrigue that he seeks even in
+advance of an expected offensive to lay the foundation for
+self-justification.
+
+But the reference to Japan and alleged hostility against us on
+the part of fanciful hordes of Japanese in Mexico made me wonder
+at the time. There were many evidences subsequent to that New
+Year's Day reception of an attempt to alienate us from Japan. As
+a climax to it all, as a clarification of what the Emperor had in
+mind, came the famous Zimmermann note, the instructions to the
+German Minister in Mexico to align both Japan and Mexico against
+us when we entered the war against Germany!
+
+Plotting and intriguing for power and mastery! Such is the
+business of absolute rulers.
+
+I believe that had the old Austrian Kaiser lived a little while
+longer, the prolongation of his life would have been most
+disastrous both for Austria and Hungary. I believe after the
+death of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo and after a year of war the
+German Emperor and autocracy were brooding over a plan according
+to which, on the death of Francis Joseph, the successor should be
+allowed to rule only as King or Grand-Duke of Austria, the title
+of Emperor of Austria to disappear and German Princes to be
+placed upon the thrones of Hungary and of a new kingdom of
+Bohemia. These and the king or grand-duke of Austria were to be
+subject-monarchs under the German Kaiser, who was thus to revive
+an empire, if not greater, at least more powerful, than the
+empires of Charlemagne and of Charles the Fifth. Many public
+utterances of the German Kaiser show that trend of mind.
+
+Emperor William deliberately wrote and published, for instance,
+such a statement as this: "From childhood I have been influenced
+by five men, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Theodoric II,
+Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a
+dream of world empire. They failed. I have dreamed a dream of
+German world empire and my mailed fist shall succeed."
+
+Could any declaration of a life's ambition be more explicit? It
+seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man
+loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged
+animal or ambition drives him always on--he is never content with
+any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million,
+when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and
+desire, presses on insatiably with the first million in his
+pocket, more restless, more dissatisfied, than the hungry
+farmer's boy who first carries his ambitions to the great city.
+
+When these zealous, scheming men gain the power of kingship, they
+usually bring disaster to their country. Their subjects find no
+compensation in the personal ambitions which hurry a nation into
+the miseries of war. Better Charles II, dallying with his
+ringletted mistresses, than an Alexander the Great; better Henry
+the Fourth of France, the "ever-green gallant," than Frederick
+the Great, bathing his people in blood. "Happy nations have no
+history."
+
+William the Second, the present German Emperor, might well be
+called the Restless Emperor. He is never satisfied to remain more
+than a few days in any place or in any occupation. He commands
+his armies in person. He has won distinction as a writer and a
+public speaker. He is an excellent shot. He has composed music,
+written verses, superintended the production of a ballet, painted
+a picture; the beautiful Byzantine chapel in the Castle of Posen
+shows his genius for architecture; and, clothed in a clergyman's
+surplice, he has preached a sermon in Jerusalem. What ruler in
+all history has exhibited such extraordinary versatility?
+
+In my conversations with the Emperor I have been struck by his
+knowledge of other countries, lands which he had never visited.
+He was familiar not only with their manners, customs, industries
+and public men, but with their commercial problems. Through his
+conversation one can see the keen eye of the Hanseatic trader
+looking with eager envy on the trade of a rival merchant. The
+Emperor, incidentally, while instinctively commercial, has an
+inborn contempt, if not for the law, at least for lawyers. In
+October, 1915, for instance, he remarked to me, "This is a
+lawyers' war, Asquith and Lloyd George in England, Poincare and
+Briand in France."
+
+In appearance and conversation Emperor William is very manly. His
+voice is strong, with a ring in it. He is a good rider. Following
+the German custom, he puts on his nightshirt every afternoon
+after lunch and sleeps for two hours--for the German is more
+devoted to the siesta than the Spaniard or Mexican. The hours of
+the Berlin Foreign Office, for example, were from eleven to one
+and from four to eight. After a heavy lunch at one o'clock all
+the officials took a nap for an hour or two. Also, the hours of
+the bank where I did business were from ten to one and from four
+till six. This meant that after six o'clock the clerks had to sit
+until perhaps eight making up the books for the day.
+
+In 1916, the Olympic games were to have taken place at Berlin,
+and in September, 1913, before sailing for Germany, I attended a
+luncheon at the New York Athletic Club, given by President Page,
+with the members of the German Commission who had come to America
+to study athletics and to see what could be done in Germany so
+that the Germans could make a good showing at the games in their
+own city.
+
+After my arrival in Germany one of the members of this commission
+told me that it was impossible, he believed, to organise the
+Germans as athletes until German meal and business hours had been
+changed. He said that with us in America young men leaving
+business at four-thirty, five or five-thirty, had time in which
+to exercise before their evening meal, but that in Germany the
+young men ate so much at the midday meal that they required their
+siesta after it, and that they did not leave their offices until
+so late in the evening that exercise and practice were impossible.
+
+On the Emperor's table his wine glasses or rather cups are of
+silver. Possibly this is because he has been forbidden by his
+physician to drink wine. The Germans maintain the old-fashioned
+custom of drinking healths at meals. Some one far down the table
+will lift his glass, look at you and smile. You are then expected
+to lift your glass and drink with him and then both bow and smile
+over the glasses. As the Emperor must reciprocate with every one
+present, his champagne and wine are put in silver cups in order
+that those drinking wine with him do not see that he consumes no
+appreciable quantity of alcoholic liquor on the occasion of each
+health drinking. Some people in America may have often wished for
+a similar device.
+
+The Emperor is out of uniform only on rare occasions.
+Occasionally, when in a foreign country, he has appeared in
+civilian dress, as shown in the accompanying photograph, taken in
+1910 at the small town of Odde in Norway, where he had landed
+from his yacht. He appears to much better advantage in uniform
+than in civilian attire. Although uniformed while at sea as an
+Admiral, his favourite uniform is really that of the Hussars. In
+this picture he is accompanied by Baron von Treutler, Prussian
+Minister to Bavaria and Foreign Office representative with the
+Kaiser. Von Treutler is a German of the world. I met him at the
+Great General Headquarters, at the end of April, 1916, when the
+submarine question was being discussed. He came to dinner several
+times at the Chancellor's house, undoubtedly reporting back what
+was said to the Emperor, and I believe that his voice was against
+the resumption of ruthless submarine warfare and in favour of
+peace with America. Shortly after this period he fell into
+disfavour and went back to occupy his post of Minister in Munich.
+
+In conversation, the Emperor reminds one very much of Roosevelt,
+talking with the same energy, the same violence of gesture and of
+voice so characteristic of our great ex-President. When the
+Emperor talks all his attention is given to you and all his
+mental energy is concentrated on the conversation. In this
+violence of manner and voice he seems not at all German. The
+average German is neither exuberant nor soft-spoken.
+
+His favourite among his ancestors is William of Orange. Once he
+attended a fancy-dress ball in costume and make-up copied from
+the well-known picture of that Prince. The Emperor is strongly
+built and is about five feet nine inches tall. He sits well on
+his horse and walks, too, with head erect and shoulders thrown
+back--a picture of military precision.
+
+A friend of mine who was present at Kiel with his yacht, in 1910,
+tells me that when all the yachts and warships had been assembled
+along the long narrow waterway which constitutes that harbour,
+with the crews lined up on deck or manning the yards, with bands
+crashing and banners floating, the _Hohenzollern_ slowly steamed
+into the harbour and passed lazily and majestically through the
+waiting ships. Alone on the upper bridge stood the Monarch,
+attired in full military uniform, with white coat and tight
+breeches, high top boots, shining silver breastplate and silver
+helmet, surmounted by an eagle, the dress of the Prussian Guard
+Regiment so dear to those who portray romantic and kingly roles
+upon the stage, a figure on whom all eyes were fixed, as splendid
+as that of Lohengrin, drawn by his fairy swan, coming to rescue
+the unjustly accused Princess. And, alas, the Germans like all
+this pomp and splendour. It appeals to something in the German
+heart and seems to create a feeling of affection and humility in
+the German breast.
+
+When I talked at length one day with President Wilson on my visit
+to America in October, 1916, he remarked, half to himself, in
+surprise at my tale of war, "Why does all this horror come on the
+world? What causes it?" "Mr. President," I answered, "it is the
+king business."
+
+I did not mean nominal kings as harmless as those of Spain and
+England. I was thinking of the powerful monarchs. A German
+republic would never have embarked on this war; a German Congress
+would have thought twice before sending their own sons to death
+in a deliberate effort to enslave other peoples. In a free
+Germany teachers, ministers and professors would not have taught
+the necessity of war. What German merchant in a free Germany
+would have thought that all the trade of the East, all the riches
+of Bagdad and Cairo and Mosul could compensate him for the death
+of his first-born or restore the blind eyes to the youngest son
+who now crouches, cowering, over the fire, awaiting death? For
+there was no trade necessity for this war. I know of no place in
+the world where German merchants were not free to trade. The
+disclosures of war have shown how German commerce had penetrated
+every land, to an extent unknown to the best informed. If the
+German merchants wanted this war in order to gain a German
+monopoly of the world's trade, then they are rightly suffering
+from the results of overweening covetousness.
+
+Experts in insanity say that the Roman Emperors as soon as they
+attained the rule of the world were made mad by the possession of
+that stupendous power. The sceptre of Emperor William is mighty.
+No more autocratic influence proceeds from any other monarch or
+ruler. But you will say how about our President in time of war?
+Great power can safely be given to a president. Our presidents
+have all risen from the ranks. Usually they have gone through the
+school of hard knocks. And there are ways of keeping them abreast
+of the people.
+
+It is told that hidden from public view, crouched down in the
+chariot in which the successful Roman pro-consul or general drove
+triumphantly through the crowded streets of Rome, was a slave
+celebrated for his impertinence, whose duty it was to make the
+one honoured feel that, after all, he was nothing more than an
+ordinary mortal blessed with a certain amount of good luck.
+Probably as the chariot passed by the forum the slave would say,
+after a thunderous burst of applause from the populace: "Do not
+take that applause too seriously. That is the T. Quintus Cassius
+Association whose chief received a hundred sesterces from your
+brother-in-law yesterday, on account, with a promise of a hundred
+more in case the Association's cheers seemed loud and sincere."
+
+So in America the press, serious and comic, takes the place of
+the humble slave and throws enough cold water on the head of any
+temporarily successful American to reduce it to normal proportions.
+Besides, the President knows that some day he must return to the
+ranks, live again with his neighbours, seek out the threads of a
+lost law practice or eke out a livelihood on the Chautauqua
+circuit in the discomfort of tiny hotels, travelling in upper
+berths instead of private cars and eating on lunch stools in small
+stations instead of in the sumptuous surroundings of presidential
+luxury. These are sobering prospects.
+
+Kings, on the other hand, come to look on their subjects as toys.
+A post-card popular in Austria and Germany showed the old
+Emperor, Francis Joseph, seated at a table with a little
+great-grand-nephew on his knee, teaching the child to move toy
+soldiers about on the boards; and it is unfortunately true that
+the same youngster--should the system of the Central Empires be
+perpetuated--will be able to move his subjects across the map of
+Europe just as he did the toy soldiers on his great-grand-uncle's
+table. He will be able to tear men from their work and their
+homes, to seize great scientists, great chemists, great
+inventors--men who may be on the eve of discoveries or remedies
+destined to rid the human race of the scourge of cancer or the
+white plague--and send them to death in the marshes of Macedonia
+or the fastnesses of the Carpathians because some fellow-king or
+emperor has deceived or outwitted him.
+
+In a monarchy all subjects seem the personal property of the
+monarch and all expressions of power become personal. This
+extends throughout all countries ruled by royalty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, for example, a member of the royal family dies, even in
+another country, it must be lamented by the court circle of other
+lands. Here is the official notice sent to all diplomats and
+members of the Imperial German Court on the occasion of the death
+of the Queen of Sweden.
+
+     "The Court goes into mourning to-day for Her
+     Majesty the Queen-Mother of Sweden for three weeks
+     up to and including the 19th of January, 1914.
+
+     "Ladies wear black silk dresses, for the first
+     fourteen days, including January 12th, with black
+     hair ornaments, black gloves, black fans and
+     black jewelry; the last eight days with white hair
+     ornaments, grey gloves, white fans and pearls.
+
+     "Gentlemen wear the whole time a black band on the
+     left sleeve. Civilians wear with the embroidered
+     coat, during the first fourteen days, including
+     January 12th, on occasions of Grand Gala, black
+     buckles and swords with black sheathes. During the
+     last eight days bright buckles; on occasions of
+     'Half Gala' gold or silver embroidered trousers of
+     the color of the uniform and in the one as in the
+     other case gold or silver embroidered hat with
+     white plume; with the 'small' uniform, however,
+     black trousers (or knee-breeches, black silk
+     stockings, shoes with black bows and the
+     'three-cornered' hat with black plume). During the
+     first fourteen days gentlemen wear black woolen
+     vests and black gloves, in the last eight days
+     black silk vests and grey gloves.
+
+"Berlin, December 30, 1913.
+
+"The Ober-Ceremonienmeister.
+"GRAF A. EULENBURG.
+
+     "By command of His Majesty the Emperor, mourning
+     will be suspended for New Year's Day and the 17th
+     and 18th of January."
+
+So, it is apparent what a close corporation all the royal
+families make and the peoples are simply viewed as the personal
+property of the ruling princes. In his telegram which the German
+Kaiser wrote to President Wilson on August tenth, observe that
+all is personal. The Kaiser says, "I telegraphed to His Majesty
+the King, _personally_, but that if, etc., I would employ _my_
+troops elsewhere.... His Majesty answered that he thought _my_
+offer...." He speaks of the King of the Belgians "having refused
+_my_ petition for a free passage." He refers to "_my_ Ambassador
+in London."
+
+This telegram shows, on the other hand, another thing,--the great
+ability of the Kaiser. Undoubtedly he knew why I was coming to
+see him--to present the offer of mediation of President
+Wilson--but from our conversation I do not think that he had even
+in his mind prepared the answer, which sets forth his position in
+entering the war.
+
+He said, "Wait a moment, I shall write something for the
+President." Then taking the telegraph blanks lying on the table,
+he wrote rapidly and fluently. It was a message in a foreign
+language, and, whatever we may think of its content, at any rate
+it is clear, concise, consecutive and forceful.
+
+The personal touch runs through that extraordinary series of
+telegrams in the famous "Willy-Nicky" correspondence between
+Kaiser Wilhelm and the last of the Romanoffs, discovered in
+Petrograd by Herman Bernstein. These reveal, moreover, the
+surpassing craft of the German Kaiser. He was the master schemer.
+Touting for German trade, always for his advantage, he twists the
+poor half-wit of the Winter Palace like a piece of straw.
+
+Emperor William was not satisfied with a quiet life as patron of
+trade. As he studied the portraits of his ancestors, he felt that
+they gazed at him with reproachful eyes, demanded that he add, as
+did they, to the domains of the Hohenzollerns, that he return
+from war in triumph at the head of a victorious army with the
+keys of fallen cities borne before him in conquering march.
+
+One-tenth of Frederick the Great's people fell, but to the
+poverty-stricken peasant woman of Prussia, lamenting her husband
+and dead sons, did it matter that the rich province of Silesia
+had been added to the Prussian Crown? What was it to that broken
+mother whether the Silesian peasants acknowledged the Prussian
+King or the Austrian Empress? Despots both. And what countless
+serfs fell in the wars between the King and the Empress! I once
+asked von Jagow when this war would end. He answered, "An old
+history of the Seven Years' War concludes, 'The King and the
+Empress were tired of war, so they made peace.' That is how this
+war will end." Will it? Will it end in a draw, to be resumed when
+some king feels the war fever on him? No, this war must end
+despots, and with them all wars!
+
+It is all such a matter of personal whim. For instance before
+Bulgaria entered the war on the side of Germany, even the best
+informed Germans predicted that King Ferdinand would never join
+Germany because of an incident which occurred in the Royal Palace
+of Berlin. This is how it happened:
+
+It is the custom for one monarch to make his pals in the King
+business officers of his army or navy. Thus the German Emperor
+was General Field Marshal and Proprietor of the 34th "William the
+first, German Emperor and King of Prussia" Infantry, and of the
+7th "William the Second, German Emperor and King of Prussia"
+Hussars, in the Austro-Hungarian Army; Chief of the "King
+Frederick William III St. Petersburg Life Guards," the 85th
+"Viburg" Infantry and the 13th "Narva" Hussars, and the "Grodno"
+Hussars of the Guard, in the Russian Army; Field Marshal in British Army;
+Hon. Admiral of the British Fleet and Colonel-in-Chief 1st Dragoons;
+General in the Swedish Army and Flag Admiral of the Fleet; Hon.
+Admiral of the Norwegian and Danish Fleets; Admiral of the
+Russian Fleet; Hon. Captain-General in the Spanish Army and Hon.
+Colonel of the 11th "Naumancia" Spanish Dragoons; and Hon.
+Admiral of the Greek Fleet.
+
+The King of Bulgaria was Chief of the 4th Thuringia Infantry
+Regiment No. 72, in the Prussian Army. As per custom, on a visit
+to Berlin he donned his uniform of the Thuringian Infantry. He
+had put on a little weight, and military unmentionables, be it
+known, are notoriously tight. So as he leaned far out of the
+Palace window to admire the passing troops, he presented a mark
+so tempting that the Emperor, in jovial mood, was impelled to
+administer a resounding spank on the sacred seat of the Czar of
+all the Balkans. Instead of taking the slap in the same jovial
+spirit in which it was given the Czar Ferdinand, a little jealous
+of the self-assumed title of Czar, became furiously angry--so
+angry that even the old diplomats of the Metternich school
+believed for a time that he never would forgive the whack and
+even might refuse to join Germany. But Czar Ferdinand, believing
+in the military power of Germany, cast his already war-worn
+people in the war against the Allies, much to the regret of many
+Bulgarian statesmen who, having been educated at Robert College,
+near Constantinople, a college founded and maintained by
+Americans, and having imbibed somewhat of the American spirit
+there, were not over-pleased to think of themselves arrayed
+against the United States of America.
+
+But there is no monarch in all Europe who is more wily than Czar
+Ferdinand. At a great feast in Bulgaria at which Emperor William
+was present, Czar Ferdinand toasted the Emperor in Latin and
+alluded to him as "_Miles Gloriosus_"--which all present took to
+mean "glorious soldier"; but the exact Latin meaning of
+"gloriosus" is "glorious" in its first meaning and "boastful" in
+its second, a meaning well known in Berlin where, at the "Little
+Theatre," in a series of plays of all ages, the "_Miles
+Gloriosus_" of Plautus had just been presented--a boastful,
+conceited soldier, the "_Miles Gloriosus_," the chief character
+of the comedy.
+
+Nothing illustrates more vividly the belief of the royal families
+of the Central Empires in their God-given right to rule the plain
+people than those few words of Maximilian written before his
+ill-fated expedition to Mexico. Speaking of the Palace at
+Caserta, near Naples, he wrote, "The monumental stairway is
+worthy of Majesty. What can be finer than to imagine the
+sovereign placed at its head, resplendent in the midst of these
+marble pillars,--to fancy this monarch, like a God, graciously
+permitting the approach of human beings. The crowd surges upward.
+The King vouchsafes a gracious glance, but from a very lofty
+elevation. All powerful, imperial, he makes one step towards them
+with a smile of infinite condescension. Could Charles V, could
+Maria Theresa appear thus at the head of this ascending stair,
+who would not bow their heads before that majestic, God-given
+power?"
+
+What was the condition of the people under Maria Theresa, whom
+Maximilian spoke of as possessing a power that, according to him,
+was so God-given no one could fail to bow the head before her
+majestic presence? The peasants, under her rule, were practically
+slaves, as they could not leave the lord's lands nor even marry
+without his permission, nor could they bring their children up to
+any profession other than that of labourer. In other words, the
+children of the slave must remain slaves.
+
+Poor Maximilian! He was a brother of the late Emperor Francis
+Joseph and a member of that Kaiserbund and royal system which,
+while America was busy with domestic difficulties between the
+North and South, sought to wrest from Mexico her liberty. I
+wonder if the Mexicans have forgotten the incident and its
+implications.
+
+But one-man power always fails in the end. No man, king or
+president, whatever he may himself think, has a brain all
+powerful and all knowing. There is wisdom in counsel. Too much of
+some favourite dish may lead to indigestion and that to bad
+judgment at a critical time and disaster. Napoleon III, just
+before 1870, was suffering from a wasting disease and so allowed
+himself to be ruled by the beautiful, narrow, fascinating,
+foolish Spanish Empress whom he gave to the French in a moment of
+passion because, as she said to him, "The way to her room lay
+through the church door." Colonel Stoffel, the French Military
+Attache to the Berlin Embassy, wrote confidentially report after
+report to the Emperor telling him of the immense military
+strength of Prussia and of her readiness for immediate war. But
+most of these reports were afterwards found unopened in the desk
+of the doting, sick and fallen Emperor.
+
+For, after all, however divine the King, Emperor or Kaiser may
+consider himself, he is but a vulnerable human being--and no
+accident of birth should give even a small number of people on
+this earth into the hands of a single mortal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHO DOES THE KAISER'S THINKING AND WHO DECIDED ON THE BREAK WITH
+AMERICA?
+
+
+Because the German Emperor possesses talents of no mean order,
+because of his fiery energy, because of the charm of his
+conversation and personality, his ambitions for world conquest
+are most dangerous to the peace of the world.
+
+Certainly of all the ruling houses of the world, the
+Hohenzollerns have shown themselves the most able, and of the six
+sons of the Kaiser there is not one who is unable or unworthy
+from the autocratic standpoint to carry on the traditions of the
+house. They are all young men who in any field of human endeavour
+are more than a match for men of their age, and by reason of
+these qualities, so rare in kings and princes, it has been easy
+to arouse a great feeling of devotion for the royal house of
+Prussia among all classes in Germany, with the possible exception
+of the Social Democrats. The other kings and princes of Germany
+have been overshadowed, mere puppets in the king business, by the
+surpassing talents of the Hohenzollerns, and so the task of those
+who, in Germany and out, hope for that evolution towards
+liberalism or even democracy which alone can make the nations of
+the world feel safe in making peace with Germany, is beset with
+numerous difficulties.
+
+Before the war the Emperor turned much of his enterprising talent
+into peaceful channels, into the development of commercial and
+industrial Germany. No one has a greater respect for wealth and
+commercial success than the Emperor. He would have made a
+wonderful success as a man of business. He ought to be the
+richest person in the Empire, but the militaristic system which
+he fostered gave that distinction to another. For the richest
+person in Germany before the war was Frau Krupp-Bohlen, daughter
+of the late manufacturer of cannon. She inherited control of the
+factories and the greater part of the fortune of her father and
+was rated at about $75,000,000. It was a contest between Prince
+Henckel-Donnersmarck and the Emperor for second place, each being
+reputed to possess about sixty to sixty-five million dollars.
+Most of the Emperor's wealth is in landed estates, and of these
+he has, I believe, about sixty scattered through the Empire. The
+Emperor is credited with being a large stockholder in both the
+Krupp works and the Hamburg-American Line. What a sensation it
+would make in this country were the President to become a large
+stockholder in Bethlehem Steel or the Winchester Arms Company!
+
+The earnings of the Krupp's factory since the War have been
+immense and doubtless the fortune of the Krupp heiress since then
+has more than doubled. The subscriptions to war loans and war
+charities, thrown by Frau Krupp-Bohlen and the Krupp directors
+as sops to public opinion, are mere nothings to the fat earnings
+made by that renowned factory in this war.
+
+And what a sensation, too, would be caused in America if the
+Bethlehem Steel Company or the United States Steel Corporation
+were to purchase newspapers or take over The Associated Press in
+order to control public opinion! Yet the German nation stands by,
+apathetic, propagandised to a standstill, stuffed and fed by news
+handed them by the Krupps and the alliance of six great
+industrial iron and steel companies of western Germany.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A question which interests every inhabitant of the world to-day
+is, where does the ultimate power reside in Germany?
+
+Where is the force which controls the country? The Reichstag, of
+course, has no real power; the twenty-five ruling princes of
+Germany, voting in the Bundesrat through their representatives,
+control the Reichstag, and the Chancellor is not responsible to
+either but only to the Emperor.
+
+Consider, for a moment, the personality of von Bethmann-Hollweg,
+Chancellor of the Empire for eight or nine years. He lacked both
+determination and decision. Lovable, good, kind, respected, the
+Chancellor, to a surprising degree, was minus that quality which
+we call "punch." He never led, but followed. He sought always to
+find out first which side of the question seemed likely to
+win,--where the majority would stand. Usually he poised himself
+on middle ground. He could not have been the ultimate power in
+the State.
+
+I have a feeling that the Kaiser himself always felt in some
+vague way that his luck lay with America, and I imagine that he
+himself was against anything that might lead to a break with this
+country. What, then, was the mysterious power which changed, for
+instance, the policy of the German Empire towards America and
+ordered unrestricted submarine war at the risk of bringing
+against the Empire a rich and powerful nation of over a hundred
+million population?
+
+The Foreign Office did not have this decision. Its members, made
+up of men who had travelled in other countries, who knew the
+latent power of America, did not advise this step--with the
+exception, however, of Zimmermann, who, carried away by his
+sudden elevation, and by the glamour of personal contact with the
+Emperor, the Princes and the military chiefs, yielded to the
+arguments of military expediency.
+
+The one force in Germany which ultimately decides every great
+question, except the fate of its own head, is the Great General
+Staff.
+
+On one side of the Koenigs-Platz, in Berlin, stands the great
+building of the Reichstag, floridly decorated, glittering with
+gold, surrounded by statues and filled, during the sessions of
+the Reichstag, with a crowd of representatives who do not
+represent and who, like monkeys in a cage, jibber and debate
+questions which they have no power to decide. Across the square
+and covering the entire block in a building that resembles in
+external appearance a jail, built of dark red brick without
+ornament or display, is the home of the Great General Staff. This
+institution has its own spies, its own secret service, its own
+newspaper censors. Here the picked officers of the German army,
+the inheritors of the power of von Moltke, work industriously.
+Apart from the people of Germany, they wield the supreme power of
+the State and when the Staff decides a matter of foreign policy
+or even an internal measure, that decision is final.
+
+The peculiar relations of the Emperor to the Great General Staff
+make it possible for him to dismiss in disgrace a head of the
+Staff who has failed. But at all times the Kaiser is more or less
+controlled in his action by the Staff as a whole and at a time
+when the chief of the Great General Staff is successful, the
+latter, even on questions of foreign policy, claims the right
+then to make a decision which the Emperor may find it difficult
+to disregard. This is because in an autocratic government, as in
+any other, personality counts for much. Von Tirpitz controlled
+all departments of the navy, although only at the head of one.
+The Ludendorff-Hindenburg combination, especially if backed by
+Mackensen, can bend the will of the Emperor.
+
+[Illustration: THE IRON CROSS. IN THE EXPECTATION OF A SHORT WAR
+THOUSANDS OF THESE CROSSES WERE DISTRIBUTED IN THE FIRST MONTHS
+OF THE WAR AND THE PRECEDENT THUS ESTABLISHED HAS LED TO THE
+GIVING OF PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THESE DECORATIONS]
+
+Yet while the head of the Great General Staff may fall, the
+system always remains. An unknown, mysterious power it is,
+unchanging, and relentless, a power that watches over the German
+army with unseen eyes. It seeks always additions to its own ranks
+from those young officers who have distinguished themselves by
+their talents in the profession of arms. What does it mean to
+them?
+
+It is January twenty-seventh, the birthday of the Kaiser in a
+German garrison town. The officers of the regiment are assembled
+in the mess-hall, the regimental band plays the national air of
+Prussia, "Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz" (Hail, thou, in the
+conqueror's wreath). (The music is familiar to us because we sing
+it to the words of "America." The British sing the air to the
+words of "God Save the King." This music was originally written
+for Louis XIV.) The health of the Emperor is proposed and drunk
+with "Hurrahs" and again "Hurrahs," and then comes a telegram
+from Berlin announcing the promotions and decorations granted to
+some of the officers of the regiment: the most envied of all is
+that younger officer, perhaps the student among them, who
+receives the laconic despatch telling him that he is detailed to
+the Great General Staff!
+
+Then commences for the young officer a life of almost monastic
+devotion. No amusements, no social obligations or entertainments
+must interfere in the slightest with his earnest work in that
+plain building of mystery which so calmly, and with such mock
+modesty, faces the garish home of the Reichstag on the Koenigs-Platz,
+in Berlin.
+
+Who decided on the break with America? It was not the Chancellor,
+notoriously opposed; it was not the Foreign Office, nor the
+Reichstag, nor the Princes of Germany who decided to brave the
+consequences of a rupture with the United States on the submarine
+question. It was not the Emperor; but a personality of great
+power of persuasion. It was Ludendorff, Quartermaster General,
+chief aid and brains to Hindenburg, Chief of the Great General
+Staff, who decided upon this step.
+
+Unquestionably a party in the navy, undoubtedly von Tirpitz
+himself, backed by the navy and by many naval officers and the
+Naval League, advocated the policy and promised all Germany peace
+within three months after it was adopted; unquestionably public
+opinion made by the Krupps and the League of Six (the great iron
+and steel companies), desiring annexation of the coal and iron
+lands of France, demanded this as a quick road to peace. But it
+was the deciding vote of the Great General Staff that finally
+embarked the German nation on this dangerous course.
+
+I do not think the Emperor himself, unless backed by the whole
+public opinion of Germany, would dare to withstand the Great
+General Staff which he himself creates. They are so much his
+devotees that they would overrule him in what they consider his
+interest.
+
+Whatever thinking the Emperor does nowadays is more or less on
+his own account. There is to-day no shining favourite who has his
+ear to the exclusion of others. The last known favourite was
+Prince Max Egon von Fuerstenberg, a man now about fifty-four years
+old, tall, handsome, possessed at one time of great wealth and a
+commanding position in Austria as well as Germany, with the
+privilege of citizenship in both countries. The Prince in his
+capacity as Grand Marshal accompanied the Emperor, walking in
+his train as the latter entered the White Hall at a great ball
+early in the winter of 1914. The Emperor was stopping at the
+Prince's palace in southern Germany at Donnaueschingen when the
+affair at Zabern and the cutting down of the lame shoemaker there
+shook the political and military foundations of the German
+Empire. Prince Max together with Prince Hohenlohe, Duke of Ugest,
+embarked, however, on a career of vast speculation in an
+association known as the Princes' Trust. They built, for
+instance, the great Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, and a hotel of the
+same name in Hamburg, and an enormous combined beer restaurant,
+theatre and moving picture hall on the Nollendorff Platz in
+Berlin. They organised banks, and the name of the princely house
+of Fuerstenberg appeared as an advertisement for light beer. They
+even, through their interest in a department store on the east
+end of the Leipziger Strasse, sold pins and stockings and ribbons
+to the working classes of Berlin. As this top-heavy structure of
+foolish business enterprise tumbled, the favour of Prince Max at
+the Imperial Court fell with it. For the Emperor never brooks
+failure.
+
+During the present war Von Gontard, related by marriage, I
+believe, to brewer Busch in St. Louis; von Treutler, who
+represented the Foreign Office; von Falkenhayn, for a while head
+of the Great General Staff and Minister of War, and the Prince of
+Pless, and von Plessen with several minor adjutants, have
+constituted the principal figures in the surroundings of the
+Emperor. Falkenhayn fell because of his failure in the attack of
+Verdun, ordered by him or for which he was the responsible
+commander. Von Treutler probably told the truth; he was against
+the breaking of the submarine pledges to America; and Prince
+Pless, who remains still in favour, never took a decided stand on
+any of these questions. Prince Pless, as Prince Max was, is rich.
+His fortune before the war, represented mostly by great landed
+estates in Silesia, mines, etc., amounted approximately to thirty
+million dollars. His wife is an Englishwoman, once celebrated as
+one of the great beauties of London, daughter of Colonel and Mrs.
+Cornwallis-West, and sister of the Duchess of Westminster and
+Cornwallis-West, formerly married to Lady Randolph Churchill, and
+now the husband of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the well-known actress.
+And therefore the position of Princess Pless has not been
+enviable during this war.
+
+Emperor William does not, like many kings and dictators, confine
+himself in his search for general information regarding men and
+conditions to the reports of a few persons. He always has been
+accessible, seeking even to meet strangers, not merely his own
+people but foreigners, thus escaping the penalty of those rulers
+who shut themselves up and who have all their information and
+thoughts coloured for them by the preferences and desires of
+prejudiced counsellors.
+
+The chiefs of the army are always in close touch with the Kaiser,
+but he is consulted on army commands and promotions much less
+than on civil and even naval promotions.
+
+Always with him is the head of the Civil Cabinet, who advises
+with the Emperor on all appointments and promotions on the civil
+side of the Government, helping even to make and unmake
+Ambassadors and Chancellors. Admiral von Mueller, head of the
+Marine Cabinet, is constantly in the Emperor's company. He is a
+shrewd, capable, reasonable man; for a long time Admiral von
+Mueller was against taking the chance of war with America and
+perhaps, even to the end, persisted in this course. After the
+fall of von Tirpitz, von Mueller acquired more real power. But in
+a sense it is incorrect to speak of the forced retirement of von
+Tirpitz as a "fall," because from his retirement he was able to
+carry on such a campaign in favour of "ruthless" submarine war
+that the mass of the people, Reichstag deputies, the General Staff,
+and all came over to his point of view and von Bethmann-Hollweg,
+who had brought about his dismissal, was forced officially to adopt
+the policy first sponsored by this skilful old sea-dog and politician.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHO SANK THE "LUSITANIA"?
+
+
+Who is responsible for the sinking of the _Lusitania_, for the
+deliberate murder which has always remained deep in the
+consciousness of every American, and which at the outset turned
+this great nation against Germany?
+
+In the first place there was no mistake--no question of orders
+exceeded or disobeyed. Count von Bernstorff frankly, boldly,
+defiantly, and impudently advertised to the world, with the
+authority of the German Government, that the attempt to sink the
+_Lusitania_ would be made. The Foreign Office, no doubt,
+acquainted him with the new policy. Von Tirpitz, then actual head
+of the Navy Department and virtual head of the whole navy, openly
+showed his approval of the act, and threw all his influence in
+favor of a continuation of ruthless tactics. But a question which
+involved a breach of international law, a possible break with a
+friendly power, could not be decided by even the Foreign Office
+and Navy together.
+
+The Great General Staff claims a hand in the decision of all
+questions of foreign policy which even remotely affect the
+conduct of the war. Similarly it was the duty of the Foreign
+Office to point out the possible consequences under the rules of
+international law; but when the question of submarine warfare was
+to be determined, the consultation was usually at the Great
+General Headquarters. At these meetings von Tirpitz or the navy
+presented their views and the Great General Staff sat with the
+Emperor in council, although it was reported in Charleville at
+the time of the settlement of May, 1916, that Falkenhayn,
+speaking in favour of submarine war, had been rebuked by the
+Emperor, and told to stick to military affairs.
+
+All the evidence points to the Emperor himself as the responsible
+head who at this time ordered or permitted this form of murder.
+The orders were given at a time when the Emperor dominated the
+General Staff, not in one of those periods, as outlined in a
+previous chapter when the General Staff, as at present, dominated
+the Emperor. When I saw the Kaiser in October, 1915, he said that
+he would not have sunk the _Lusitania_, that no gentleman would
+have killed so many women and children. Yet he never disapproved
+the order. Other boats were sunk thereafter in the same manner
+and only by chance was the loss of life smaller when the _Arabic_
+was torpedoed. It is argued that, had the Emperor considered
+beforehand how many non-combatants would be killed, he would not
+have given the order to sink that particular boat. But what a
+lame excuse! A man is responsible for the natural and logical
+results of his own acts. It may be too that Charles IX, when he
+ordered, perhaps reluctantly, the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
+did not know that so many would be killed, but there can be no
+Pilate-washing-of-the-hands,--Emperor William was responsible. He
+must bear the blame before the world.
+
+Blood-shed in honorable war is soon forgotten; but the cowardly
+stroke by which the Kaiser sought to terrorise America, by which
+he sent to a struggling death of agony in the sea, the peaceful
+men and women and children passengers of the _Lusitania_, may
+ever remain a cold boundary line between Germany and America
+unless the German people utter a condemnation of the tragedy that
+rings true and repentant.
+
+We want to live at peace with the world when this war is over, to
+be able to grasp once more the hands of those now our enemies,
+but how can any American clasp in friendship the hand of Germans
+who approve this and the many other outrages that have turned the
+conscience of the world against Germany?
+
+To Americans in Berlin, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ came like
+a lightning stroke. No Bernstorff warnings had prepared us. I
+believed I would be recalled immediately. In making preparations
+to leave, I sent a secretary to see the head of one of the
+largest banks in Germany, a personal friend, to ask him, in case
+we should leave, to take for safe-keeping into his bank our
+silver, pictures, etc. He said to my secretary, "Tell Judge
+Gerard that I will take care of his valuables for him, but tell
+him also, that if the _Mauretania_ comes out to-morrow we shall
+sink her, too."
+
+That was the attitude of a majority of the business men of
+Germany. German casualties at that time had been great so that
+the mere loss of human life did not appal as would have been the
+case in a country unused to the daily posting of long lists of
+dead and wounded. Consequently the one feeling of Germany was of
+rejoicing, believing indeed that victory was near, that the
+"damned Yankees" would be so scared that they would not dare
+travel on British ships, that the submarine war would be a great
+success, that France and England deprived of food, steel and
+supplies from America soon would be compelled to sue for peace,
+especially since the strategically clever, if unlawful, invasion
+of France by way of Belgium had driven the French from the best
+coal and iron districts of their country.
+
+I do recall that one Imperial Minister, a reasonable individual
+whose name I think it best not to mention, expressed in private
+his sorrow, not only for the deed itself, but for the mistaken
+policy which he saw, even then, would completely turn in the end
+the sympathies of America to the Entente Allies. And there were
+others,--among the intellectuals, and, especially, among the
+merchants of Hamburg and Frankfort who had travelled in the outer
+world both on pleasure and business, who realised what a profound
+effect the drowning of innocent men, women and children would
+have on our peace-loving people.
+
+Many of these men said to me, "The sinking of the _Lusitania_ is
+the greatest German defeat of all the war. Its consequences will
+be far-reaching; its impression, deep and lasting."
+
+The Teutonic Knights, from whom the ruling class of Prussia is
+descended, kept the Slavic population in subjection by a reign of
+physical terror. This class believes that to rule one must
+terrorise. The Kaiser himself referring to the widespread
+indignation caused by German outrages of the present war, has
+said: "The German sword will command respect."
+
+Terrorism--"Schrecklichkeit"--has always formed a part, not only
+of German military inclination, but of German military policy. I
+often said to Germans of the Government, "Are you yourselves
+subject to being terrorised? If another nation murdered or
+outraged your women, your children, would it cause you to cringe
+in submission or would you fight to the last? If you would fight
+yourselves, what is there in the history of America which makes
+you think that Americans will submit to mere frightfulness; in
+what particular do you think Americans are so different from
+Germans?" But they shrugged their shoulders.
+
+I have heard that in parts of Germany school children were given
+a holiday to celebrate the sinking of the _Lusitania_. I was busy
+with preparations, too anxious about the future to devote much
+time to the study of the psychology of the Germans in other parts
+of Germany at this moment, but with the exception of the one
+Cabinet Minister aforementioned, and expressions of regret from
+certain merchants and intellectuals, it cannot be denied that a
+great wave of exultation swept over Germany. It was felt that
+this was a master stroke, that victory was appreciably nearer and
+that no power on earth could withstand the brute force of the
+Empire.
+
+Mingled with this was a deep hate of all things American
+inculcated by the Berlin Government. And we must understand,
+therefore, that no trick and no evasion, no brutality will be
+untried by Germany in this war. It was against the rules of war
+to use poison gas, but first the newspapers of Germany were
+carefully filled with official statements saying the British and
+French had used this unfair means. Coincidentally with these
+reports the German army was trying by this dastardly innovation
+to break the British lines. It was not a new procedure. Months
+before the _Lusitania_ crime, the newspapers and people had been
+poisoned with official statements inflaming the people against
+America, particularly for our commerce with the Entente in war
+supplies.
+
+It was the right, guaranteed by a treaty to which Germany was a
+signatory, of our private individuals to sell munitions and
+supplies, but as Prince von Buelow once remarked on December
+13th, 1900, in the Reichstag, "I feel no embarrassment in saying
+here, publicly, that for Germany, right can never be a determining
+consideration."
+
+Indeed the tame professors were let loose and many of them rushed
+into government-paid print to prove that, according to law, the
+murders of the _Lusitania_ were justified. A German chemist
+friend of mine told me that the chemists of Germany were called
+on, after poison gas had been met by British and French, to
+devise some new and deadly chemical. Flame throwers soon appeared
+together with more insidious gases. And it is only because of the
+vigilance of other nations that German spies have not succeeded
+in sowing the microbes of pestilence in countries arrayed against
+lawless Germany.
+
+Remember there is nothing that Kaiserism is not capable of trying
+in the hope of victory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE KAISER AND "LESE-MAJESTE"
+
+
+The talents and ability and agreeable personality of the German
+Emperor must not blind us to the fact that he is the centre of
+the system which has brought the world to a despair and misery
+such as it never has known since the dawn of history. We must
+remember that all his utterances disclose the soul of the
+conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a
+conspicuous place in the gallery of human events; envious, too,
+of the great names of the past, his ears so tuned for admiration
+and applause that they fail to hear the great, long drawn wail of
+agony that echoes around the world. His eyes are so blinded with
+the sheen of his own glory that they do not see the mutilated
+corpses, the crime, the pestilence, the hunger, the incalculable
+sorrow that sweeps the earth from the jungles of Africa to the
+frozen plains of the North, from Siberia to Saskatchewan, from
+Texas to Trieste, from Alaska to Afghanistan--everywhere he has
+brought the dark angel of mourning to millions upon millions of
+desolate homes.
+
+Do you remember that picture of the Conquerors, Caesar and
+Alexander, Attila and Napoleon, Charlemagne and Cambyses, astride
+their horses or in chariots in the centre of the picture, dark,
+gloomy, menacing? On each side of them, lining a vast plain that
+fades in the distance, lie the dead--stiff, cold, grey,
+reproachful;--yet all the victims of those conquerors, as well as
+all their battalions do not equal the countless number that have
+already drenched a forgiving earth with their dying blood in this
+war:--victims all of the vain-glorious ambition of a single
+mortal--the German Kaiser.
+
+But the despot who sends his subjects to die, as Frederick the
+Great said, "in order to be talked about" is not indigenous to
+any one particular country. Like conditions produce like results.
+The career of Louis XIV, the "Sun King," for instance, whose wars
+and extravagances sowed the seeds of the French Revolution, is
+epitomised in two phrases uttered by him: "I am the State" and "I
+almost had to wait."
+
+After the French Revolution, another despot, the first Napoleon,
+not only sought the conquest of the world, but made his ex-waiter
+and ex-groom marshals and his washerwomen duchesses ape the
+manners and customs of the old regime. Despotism has been
+characteristic of many generations but the world had thought
+itself rid of the worst offenders.
+
+Royalty still lives to torture and retard civilisation. Its
+methods of perpetuation are unchanged from the middle ages. What
+is lese-majeste but a survival of feudalism, a kind of slavery to
+inviolable tradition--the immunity of the monarch and his family
+from that criticism and freedom of discussion which is the
+essence of democracy?
+
+[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY STAFF, BERLIN: MR.
+GERARD IN THE CENTER]
+
+To commit lese-majeste, to speak slightingly of royalty in
+Germany, is a very serious offence.
+
+I have taken the following examples of decisions in lese-majeste
+cases not from the records of the lower courts, the decisions of
+which may be reversed, but from the records of the Imperial
+Supreme Court at Leipzig, the highest court in the land.
+
+For instance: The defendant, a speaker at a meeting consisting
+chiefly of sympathisers with the socialist cause, made the
+following statement in reference to a speech of the Kaiser:
+
+"Under the protection of the highest power of the State the
+gauntlet has been flung before the (socialist) Party, the
+gauntlet which means a combat for life and death. Well, then, so
+far as the insult concerns our Party, we are so far above it,
+that the mudslinging--no matter from what direction it may
+come--cannot touch us."
+
+The defence pointed out that the defendant "had considered each
+word carefully before he had made the speech, and that in doing
+so, wanted to avoid any possibility of lese-majeste."
+
+The Supreme Court held that although the defendant carefully
+selected his words and tried to evade prosecution, he must be
+adjudged guilty, because his audience could not have misunderstood
+the insinuation. The sentence was affirmed.
+
+Dangerous as it is to say anything that can be construed as
+derogatory of the authority, of the Kaiser it is equally
+dangerous to attack the dead members of the Royal House.
+
+The editor of the _Volkswacht_ had published in his paper an
+article entitled "The German Characteristics of the Hohenzollerns"
+which the Lower Court interpreted to be a reply to a statement of
+the Kaiser, which had referred to a group of people considered
+unworthy by him to be called "Germans." Without doubt the editor
+was alluding to the Kaiser's speech, made at Koenigsberg to the
+newly enlisted army recruits, in which he called the socialists
+"vaterlandslose Gesellen," i.e., scoundrels without any country.
+The writer, however, discussed "the conduct of the Elector
+Joachim of Brandenburg and of his brother Albrecht, Elector of
+Mainz, before and during the election of Emperor Charles V."
+
+The defence claimed that the defendant could not be held guilty
+of lese-majeste against the Kaiser since the defendant "criticised
+the Kaiser's ancestors and not the Kaiser himself." But the Court
+held that it was the intent of the defendant to discredit the
+"House of the Hohenzollerns, and that the Kaiser by implication,
+being the living head of the Hohenzollern family, was thereby
+insulted." The Court further states that the defendant's article
+could not be regarded as a scientific or historical contribution
+since the _Volkswacht's_ subscribers, consisting chiefly of
+workingmen, had neither any understanding of nor interest in
+dynastic intrigues of the sixteenth century.
+
+Even those Americans who have expressed themselves freely about
+the Kaiser will, after the war is over, be compelled to take
+their "cures" in some country other than Germany, for in one
+case it was held that an American citizen was rightfully
+convicted in Baden of lese-majeste because of statements made by
+him in Switzerland.
+
+The Court held that the judgment of the Lower Court must be
+sustained, since the German Imperial Laws have precedence over
+any treaties engaged in by the Grand Duchy of Baden and the
+United States and "that the fact that the defendant had become a
+citizen of the United States does not exempt him from prosecution
+in the German Imperial Courts."
+
+In another case a newspaper editor criticised a speech delivered
+by the Kaiser before the Reichstag on December 6th, 1898. The
+defendant did not refer to the person of the emperor himself, but
+simply attacked and ridiculed the propositions and proposals made
+by His Imperial Majesty. The defence pointed out that the
+Kaiser's speech was not an act of the Kaiser's own personal will,
+but only an act of government for which the Imperial Chancellor
+should be responsible, and that the defendant was not conscious
+of the fact that the criticism contained in his article could be
+an insult to the person of the Kaiser.
+
+It was held, however, by the Court that a criticism of the
+Kaiser's speech at the opening of the Reichstag is _always_ to be
+regarded as a criticism of the Kaiser's person, and that the plea
+that the Imperial Chancellor should be responsible for acts of
+government of this sort is not sustained.
+
+In other words it is, in Germany, a crime to criticise or
+ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred lips of the
+Kaiser.
+
+If the Kaiser announces that two and two make five, jail awaits
+the subject who dares to ridicule that novel arithmetical
+proposition.
+
+It is because of these convictions for lese-majeste that the
+Berliners, when discussing the Emperor at their favourite table
+or "Stammtisch" in the beer halls and cafes, always refer to him
+as "Lehmann."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WHEN THE KAISER THOUGHT WE WERE BLUFFING
+
+
+_An Unpublished Diary_
+
+Kaiserdom is an institution with which the American people are
+really unacquainted--a complex institution the parallel of which
+does not exist elsewhere. How it sought to play double with the
+United States is in a general way familiar to Americans, but I
+think the record of what happened in the eighteen months
+preceding our break with Germany will illustrate exactly the
+currents and cross-currents of official opinion which led the
+United States to be scrupulously cautious in its course before
+entering the war. As I talked with the Emperor or the Chancellor
+or the Foreign Minister, I jotted down from time to time notes of
+their conversation as well as brief summaries of the information
+available to me from other sources. Naturally I cabled to the
+Department of State the most significant news, but much of this
+was not published because our Government was proceeding
+cautiously and did not wish to be embarrassed by publicity of its
+negotiations. There is every reason now, however, why the facts
+should be known. I am reproducing here the diary I kept from
+June, 1915, to the end of January, 1917, when unrestricted
+submarine warfare was resumed and our break with Germany came. I
+did not have the idea then of ever publishing my memoranda, so my
+comments were written without restraint. They show, I am sure,
+what the general trend of sentiment was in Germany for and
+against submarine warfare and disclose, too, that while the
+Emperor was often in the background and seemingly not the most
+powerful factor in the situation, it was his system that
+dominated Germany, his spirit that bred the lust for military
+gain at whatever cost--even the respect of the whole civilised
+world. Here are the notes as I penned them at the time:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_June, 1915._ Lincoln never passed through a crisis greater than
+that with which the President is contending. He is fighting,
+first, for humanity and some decency in war, and, second,
+determining whether a European Emperor shall or shall not dictate
+the political attitude of certain of our citizens.
+
+It is regrettable to be compelled to think that the German nation
+knows no treaty or law except the limit of its own desires.
+
+We are still awaiting the second _Lusitania_ note and I fear that
+Germany will never consent to abandon its present hideous method
+of submarine war. It is extraordinary to hear Germans of all
+classes extoll mere brute force as the only rule of international
+life. It is a warning to us to create and increase our fleet and
+coast defences.
+
+The Germans not only do not fear war with us, but state frankly
+they do not believe we dare to declare it, call us cowardly
+bluffers and say our notes are worse than waste paper. Breaking
+diplomatic relations means nothing.
+
+Von Wiegand, the newspaper correspondent, is just back from
+Przemysl and says the Russians were defeated by woful lack of
+artillery and ammunition. Their power for offence is broken for
+many months. From the West I hear the French are rather
+discouraged.
+
+Germany has ample food and gets all copper, etc., necessary for
+war purposes through Sweden in exchange for potash and other
+commodities.
+
+An officer of the war ministry, who comes to see me about
+prisoners, etc., told me last night that because the French have
+kept several hundred Germans as prisoners in Dahomey and other
+places in Africa, fifteen thousand French prisoners will be sent
+to work in the unhealthy swamps of Holstein. I have cabled the
+State Department often about this Dahomey business, transmitting
+the request of Germany that these prisoners be sent to Europe.
+Germans cannot be beaten on reprisals.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two or three German-Americans have attacked the President,
+Secretary Bryan and our Government, some publicly. I have ordered
+their passports taken away and hope to be sustained. To permit
+them to continue poisoning the atmosphere would be taken as a
+sign of weakness here. No one who abuses his own country, its
+government or its Chief is entitled to protection from that
+country.
+
+We have the visiting of British prisoners in good shape now, that
+prohibition put on our visiting and inspecting the camps was
+abolished in March by the "treaty" I arranged between England and
+Germany. It was not until March twenty-ninth that we finally got
+passes to visit camps under the "treaty." The prisoners say they
+are badly treated when they are first captured, but we know only
+of their treatment in the camps.
+
+I do not believe all the atrocity stories; but one of our
+servants in this house came back from the East front recently and
+said the orders were to kill all Cossacks. Our washerwoman
+reports that her son was ordered to shoot a woman in Belgium and
+I myself have heard an officer calmly describe the shooting of a
+seven-year-old Belgian girl child, the excuse being that she had
+tried to fire at an officer.
+
+If the _Lusitania_ business settles down, I hope the suggestion
+made to me by the authorities here and cabled to the State
+Department, will be carried into effect. This was that each
+American and Spanish Ambassador, having charge of prisoners in
+belligerent countries, should meet in Switzerland and discuss the
+whole prison situation. Each Ambassador would be accompanied by
+representatives of whatever authorities deal with prisoners (here
+the War Ministry) in the country to which he is accredited. To
+prevent unseemly discussions the actual talking would be done by
+the Ambassadors (coached by those representatives). In addition
+to doing away with many misunderstandings and helping the
+prisoners, there are great possibilities in such a meeting. We
+could all give each other useful "tips" on the caring for
+prisoners, inspections, camps, package delivery, mail, etc.
+
+There is plenty of food in Germany now and enough raw materials
+to carry on the war. Raw materials for peaceful industries are
+needed.
+
+A suggestion--why not start a great government chemical school or
+give protection for a certain number of years to dyestuffs,
+medicine, chemical, and cyanide material? All these industries
+are run here by the trustiest trusts that ever trusted, and by
+their methods keep American manufacturers from starting the
+business. A Congressman represents one of the best firms, hence
+his statements that it is impossible to start such manufactures
+in America. Our annual tribute to these trusts is enormous. One
+dyestuff company here employs over five hundred chemists. Only
+big or protected business can compete. This war has shown that we
+should not be dependent on other countries for so many manufactures.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gifts from America within the last week have been refused in
+Saxony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I fear that Germany will not give up its present method of
+submarine war. Each month new and more powerful submarines are
+added.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps it is worth a war to have it decided that the United
+States of America is not to be run from Berlin.
+
+Germans in authority feel that our "New Freedom" is against their
+ideas and ideals. They hate President Wilson because he embodies
+peace and learning rather than war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In regard to prisoners, Mr. Harte reports prisoners in Russia and
+Siberia better treated than was reported.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I hear for the first time of growing dissatisfaction among the
+plain people, especially at the great rise in food prices.
+Germany is getting everything she wants, however, through Sweden,
+including copper, lard, etc. Von Tirpitz and his Press Bureau
+were too much for the Chancellor; the latter is not a good
+fighter. Zimmermann, if left to himself, would, of course, have
+stopped this submarine murder.
+
+I hope the President never gives in on the embargo on arms; if he
+ever gives in on that, we might as well hoist the German Eagle on
+the Capitol.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_July, 1915._ I think that the firm tone of the President's note
+(of June 9, 1915) will make the Germans climb down. There seems a
+general disposition to be pleased with the note and an expectation
+that matters can be arranged. The great danger is that the
+Germans may again get the idea that we do not dare to declare
+war. In such case they will again become difficult to handle.
+
+Zimmermann and von Jagow are both quite pleased with the tone of
+the note.
+
+They both talk now of keeping Belgium, the excuse being that the
+Belgians hate the Germans so that if Belgium again became
+independent it would be only an English outpost. Meyer Gerhard,
+Bernstorff's special envoy, has arrived and has broken into print
+over the sentiment in America. I am afraid he makes it too
+peaceful, and, therefore, the Germans will be encouraged to
+despise America.
+
+While the authorities here think the idea of freedom of the seas
+good, they think the idea of freedom of land too vague. They want
+to know exactly what it means and say the seas should be free
+because they belong to no one, but that land is the private
+property of various nations. They compare the situation to a city
+street, where every one is interested in keeping the streets free
+but would resent a proposal that private houses also should be
+made common meeting ground if not common property. Unfortunately
+for Germany and the world, the German armies are winning and this
+will be considered a complete vindication of the military and
+caste system and everything which now exists. As Cleveland said,
+we are confronted by a condition, not a theory. _Germany, unless
+beaten, will never directly or indirectly agree to any freedom of
+land or disarmament proposal._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor probably will see me soon. He has been rabid on the
+export of arms from the United States to the Allies, but like all
+Germans, when they see we cannot be scared into a change of
+policy, he is making a nice recovery.
+
+Was told by a friend at the Foreign Office that the German note
+would contain a proposition that regular passenger ships should
+not be torpedoed without notice, but must carry no cargo other
+than passengers' baggage. Have heard Marine Department rather
+opposes this, but may favor proposition as to ships inspected and
+certified to carry no arms or ammunition. No note until after
+July fourth, they say at Foreign Office, on tip from Washington.
+(Note--German note was delivered to me July 8, 1915.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Chancellor and von Jagow have been in Vienna, probably over
+Balkan question. The situation there hinges on Bulgaria. Germany
+wants a direct strip of territory for itself or Austria to
+Constantinople. Thirteen million pounds in gold sent recently by
+Germany to Turkey to keep the boys in line. Principal Socialist
+paper, the _Vorwaerts_, has been suppressed because it spoke of
+peace; reason given is that this kind of talk would encourage
+enemies of Germany.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans are becoming more strict, even women now entering
+Germany must strip to the skin and take down their back hair. The
+wife of Hearst's correspondent here had to submit to this the
+other day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At first, newspaper correspondents had to promise they would not
+go to enemy territory, next that they would not go to neutral
+territory (after one correspondent went to Denmark and sent out
+dispatches about the movement against annexing Belgium). Now the
+correspondents must promise not to go home. This is to keep
+secret the internal conditions. The women stormed a butter shop
+here the other day and our Consul reports, in Chemnitz, quite a
+serious food riot. The military were called out and the fire
+department turned hose on the crowd.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Austria, I hear men up to fifty-five are being called to the
+colours and even the infirm taken for the army. There are said to
+be seven German and five Austrian army corps invading Servia. The
+losses of the invaders are reported to be heavy. To date, the
+German dead in this war number about seven hundred thousand.
+People who offered private hospitals at the beginning of the war
+and who were told these were not needed, have been requested to
+open them. I was told the remaining civil population of Vouziers,
+France (in German hands), had been removed to make room for
+German wounded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The note of July 21, 1915, in which the President said he would
+regard the sinking of ships without warning as "deliberately
+unfriendly," is received with hostility by press and Government.
+Of course, the party of frightfulness has conquered those of
+milder views, owing largely to the aggressive newspaper campaign
+conducted by von Tirpitz, Reventlow and Company. The Germans
+generally are, at present, in rather a waiting attitude, perhaps
+anxious to see what our attitude toward England will be--but this
+will not affect their submarine policy. The Foreign Office now
+claims, I hear, that I am hostile to Germany, but that claim was
+to be expected. Of course, I had no more to do with the American
+note than they did, but it is impossible to convince them of
+that, so I shall not try.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Germany has the Balkan situation well in hand. Roumania can do
+nothing in the face of recent Russian defeats and has just
+consented to allow grain to be exported to Austria and Germany,
+but has, I think, not yet consented to allow the passage of
+ammunition to Turkey. The pressure, however, is great. If not
+successful, perhaps German troops will invade Servia so as to get
+a passage through to Turkey.
+
+A minister from one of the Balkan States told me the situation of
+Roumania, Greece and Bulgaria was about the same, each state can
+last in war only about three months, so all are trying to gauge
+three months before the end and then come in on the winning side.
+
+The Bulgarian Minister of the Public Debt got in here by mistake
+the other day, insisting he had an appointment; he _had_ an
+appointment with the Treasurer, Helfferich, whose office is
+nearby. This shows, perhaps, that Bulgaria is getting money here.
+
+Also the Germans are sending back to Russia, Russians of
+revolutionary tendencies, who were prisoners here, with money
+and passports in order that they may stir up trouble at home.
+
+The Germans are making a great effort to take Warsaw, even old
+Landsturm men are in the fighting line; I think they will get it,
+and then they hope to turn two million men and strike a great
+blow in France--thus they expect to end the war by October.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I notice now a slight reaction from annexation toward giving up
+all or part of Belgium; but I must say I hear very little of
+popular dissatisfaction with the war. Everything seems to be
+going smoothly; but they are scraping the bottom of the box on
+getting men for the army.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not pleasant to be hated by so many millions. The Germans
+naturally make me the object of their concentrated hate. I
+received an anonymous letter in which the kindly writer rejoices
+that so many Americans were drowned in the Chicago disaster. This
+shows the state of mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor is at the front, "Somewhere in Galicia." They keep
+him very much in the background, I think, with the idea of
+disabusing the popular mind of the idea that this is "his war."
+After all, accidents may happen, and even after a victorious war
+there may be a day of reckoning. The Chancellor went to the front
+yesterday, probably to see the Emperor about the American
+question.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_August, 1915._ I had a conversation last week of one hour and a
+half with the Chancellor. He sent for me because I had written
+him to take no more trouble about my seeing the Emperor. He
+explained, of course, first that he did not know I wanted to see
+the Emperor, and second that it was impossible to see the
+Emperor. They keep the Emperor well surrounded. _Now_ I do not
+want to see him. He is hot against Americans and the matters I
+wanted to talk of are all settled--one way. I cabled an
+interesting report on the Emperor's conversation re America.
+
+The Chancellor is still wrong in his head; says it was necessary
+to invade Belgium, break all international laws, etc. I think,
+however, that he was personally against the fierce Dernburg
+propaganda in America. I judge that von Tirpitz, through his
+press bureau, has egged on the people so that this submarine war
+will continue. _An official confessed to me that they had tried
+to get England to interfere, together with them, in Mexico, and
+Germans "Gott strafe" the Monroe Doctrine in their daily prayers
+of hate._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Warsaw, as I predicted officially, long ago, will soon fall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No great news--we are simply waiting for the inevitable submarine
+"accident."
+
+Unless there is a change of sentiment in the Government I think
+the submarine commanders will be careful.
+
+The Chancellor talked rather freely but again said it was
+impossible to leave Belgium to become an outpost of the English,
+but possibly with Germans in possession of the forts, the
+railways and with commercial rights in Antwerp it might be
+arranged.
+
+There is a faction here led by deputy Bassermann, Stresemann,
+Fahrmann, etc., who are attacking the Chancellor. They represent
+great industrials who want to annex Belgium, Northern France,
+Poland and anything else that can be had, for their own ultimate
+advantage. A man named Hirsch is hired by the Krupp firm to
+"accelerate" this work. Krupps also pay the expenses of the
+"Oversea Service" which is feeding news to America.
+
+A paper against annexation of Belgium has been signed, I am told,
+by Dernburg, Prince Hatzfeld and others, and will be presented to
+the Chancellor to-day. I believe many are to sign it; but of
+those who have signed are Hatzfeld, who is one of the three big
+Dukes of Prussia; Prince Henckel-Donnersmarck, who is the second
+richest subject in Germany--(85 years old, he was in 1870 first
+Governor of Lorraine)--von Harrach, who is a man of great
+ability, highly respected, as is also Professor Delbrueck.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Reichstag meets in a few days. The Socialists are holding
+daily caucuses, but have not yet decided on any party action.
+Undoubtedly they will vote for the new ten milliard loan, with
+Liebknecht and a few others dissenting. Probably a split will
+also develop in the National Liberal Party; Bassermann and others
+have been attacking the Chancellor, but I think other members
+will dissent. It is quite probable that there will be a
+discussion about the _object_ of the war, and permission will be
+asked for public discussion, the Socialists perhaps claiming that
+they have consented to a defensive war only, and that now that
+the war is on enemy territory peace should be at least discussed.
+There may also be talk about the annexation of Belgium and food
+prices. The Socialists are greatly incensed at those who are
+holding food for high prices.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Personally, I think that Germany now wants peace but does not
+want to say so openly.
+
+A relative of a Field Marshal told me to-day that Germany's
+killed to date were 600,000 and 200,000 crippled for life.
+
+I must say that the plain people still seem perfectly tame and
+ready to continue the war. However, there may also be a protest
+in the Reichstag about the treatment by non-commissioned officers
+of Landsturm men who have never served but who now, in the
+process of scraping the box, are called to the colors.
+
+The Germans hope by a great movement to capture a great part of
+the Russian army; probably they will fail. They also entertain
+hopes that in such case Sweden will enter Finland and two Balkan
+States declare for them. Balkan Ministers here tell me the defeat
+of Russia makes it impossible for Roumania to enter, but they
+fear an invasion by the Germans. All diplomatic work is now
+centred in the Balkans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Successes in Russia have made the people here very cocky. Hence,
+probably, the torpedoing of the _Arabic_. Also great hope of
+Bulgaria coming in with Germany; there is no more dissatisfaction
+heard over the war. I have as yet received nothing from
+Washington regarding the _Arabic_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have just spent four half days at Ruhleben, where civilian
+Britishers are interned, so as to give every prisoner a chance to
+speak to me personally.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is much talk of creating an independent Poland. The
+Reichstag session has developed no opposition.
+
+A fac-simile of that infernal advertisement[A] of the Cleveland
+Automatic Tool Company in the _American Machinist_ was laid on
+the desk of every member of the Reichstag; and the papers are
+full of accounts of great deliveries of war munitions by America,
+possibly preparing people for a break. If Bulgaria comes in,
+Germany will undoubtedly take a strip in Servia and keep a road
+to Constantinople and the East. The new Turkish Ambassador has
+just arrived. The old one was not friendly to Enver Bey and so
+was bounced; he remains here, however, as he fears if he went to
+Turkey he would get some "special" coffee. The hate for Americans
+grows daily.
+
+[Footnote A: This was an advertisement in an American newspaper
+about machines for the manufacture of particularly deadly shells
+and was much used in Germany to show how America was helping the
+Entente.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All rumours are that in the recent council at Posen the
+Chancellor, advocating concessions in submarine war, won out over
+von Tirpitz. But von Tirpitz will die hard, and there will be
+trouble yet, as the Navy will be very angry if the present
+methods are abandoned. Members of the Reichstag have telegraphed
+backing up the Chancellor; but it is hard for any civilian idea
+to prevail against Army or Navy.
+
+Probably the Admiralty will say that the submarine which
+torpedoed the _Arabic_ was lost, in order to avoid disgracing an
+officer.
+
+If the _Arabic_ question is not complicated with the _Lusitania_
+a solution will be easier. The common people have been aroused by
+von Tirpitz's press bureau and it will be simpler for the
+Chancellor to "back track," taking as an example a case like the
+_Arabic_ when the ship was going West and carried no ammunition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The defeat of the Russians is undoubtedly crushing. Is England
+waking up too late? There will be a big offensive soon against
+the West lines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have heard nothing up to to-day from the State Department re
+the _Arabic_, except one cable asking me to request a report.
+
+A correspondent has just been in and says that the General Staff
+people threaten to expel him because he went to Copenhagen and
+sent out news about the petition to the Chancellor not to annex
+Belgium. The Foreign Office had no objection; this shows how the
+line is forming between the Chancellor and the Military. All
+correspondents to-day say the Germans are trying to dragoon them
+into sending only news which the General Staff wants sent, and
+the Military have added their censorship to that of the Foreign
+Office.
+
+An official told me that Bernstorff, while not exactly exceeding
+his instructions in his "_Arabic_ Note" (of Sept. 1, 1915), had
+put the matter in a manner they did not approve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Orders have now, apparently, been given to all German officials
+to say that the war will last a long time--at least a year and a
+half.
+
+It is expected that Persia will come in under German leadership
+and attack India.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our Military Attache, Colonel Kuhn, was finally presented to the
+Kaiser and had a pleasant chat with him. Colonel Kuhn says all
+fighting on the West is with artillery and hand grenades. Rifles
+are thrown aside.
+
+Germans have spies "piking off" our Embassies in Paris, London
+and Petrograd.
+
+Great airship attacks on London may be expected. In one of the
+recent attacks nine thousand eight hundred bombs (fire and
+explosive) were dropped. I get this from good authority.
+
+Foreign Office quite elated over their Balkan triumph.
+Personally, I think it was one of the most effective bits of
+German "diplomacy" in the history of the Empire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE INSIDE OF GERMAN DIPLOMACY
+
+
+_The Diary Continued_
+
+_October, 1915._ There is a tendency here to say Bernstorff went
+too far. But this is all for the public, von Jagow told a
+correspondent so to-day; but, of course, he did not know about
+the note of Austria to Servia either! The Marine people are
+positively raging. The paper which Reventlow writes for, the
+_Tages Zeitung_, was suppressed yesterday; I hear on account of
+an article on this _Arabic_ settlement, but I am not yet sure.
+
+There is talk now of marching to Egypt.
+
+More and more men are being called to colours. But Germany seems
+to be able to take care of all fronts. The Emperor is now in the
+West. The Foreign Office leads the rejoicing over the Entente's
+invasion of Greece and the violation of its neutrality and says
+that talk about Belgium is now shown to be _cant_.
+
+Weather is rotten and we shall have a melancholy winter. Feel the
+war more--deaths and prices. Six hundred and eighty thousand
+killed to October first, and many crippled. Food way up, but they
+cannot starve Germany out.
+
+Suppression of the _Tages Zeitung_ means that the Chancellor has
+at last exhibited some backbone and will fight von Tirpitz. The
+answer of Germany depends on the outcome of this fight. It is
+possible that von Falkenhayn and the army party may sustain the
+Chancellor as against von Tirpitz. It is quite likely that a sort
+of safe conduct will be offered in the note for ships especially
+engaged in passenger trade. Much stress will be laid on English
+orders to merchant ships to ram submarines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Kaiser is at Pless, a castle of Prince of Pless, in Silesia,
+near Breslau, where he moved after the attempt of French fliers
+to bombard him at Charleville on the West Front. The Germans
+probably will have Lemberg in a few days. This may prevent
+Roumania coming in. There is talk here of an attempted revolution
+in Moscow. There is said to be jealousy of Hindenburg and on
+account of this, Mackensen was put forward to be the hero of the
+Galician Campaign. Captain Enochs, one of our observers in
+Austria, was forced out of Austria because of German pressure and
+our other military observers will follow soon.
+
+Many commercial magnates have arrived in town to argue with the
+government against war with America; but some are in favor of the
+continuance of bitter submarine war, notably one who sees his
+Bagdad railway menaced by possible English success in the
+Dardanelles.
+
+
+_November, 1915._ A man who saw Tisza tells me the Serbs inquired
+if they could get peace and retain their territories. They were
+answered, "No."
+
+It is said that Italy has also felt out for peace, but was
+answered that she must deal with Austria alone--and Austria says
+that she will not include Italy in any general peace but will
+wallop her alone after general peace is made.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am working hard to get British prisoners properly clothed.
+Winter is already here. Efforts to starve Germany will not
+succeed. We shall be on meat and butter cards, but that is only a
+precaution. The people still are well in hand. Constant rumours
+of peace keep them hopeful. Men over forty-five not yet called.
+They seem to have plenty of troops. The military are careless of
+the public opinion of neutrals; they say they are winning and do
+not need good opinion. I am really afraid of war against us after
+this war--if Germany wins. We had snow, ice, and cold weather at
+the end of October.
+
+There have been uneasy movements among the people in Leipzig, a
+great industrial centre, and the _Volkzeitung_, a Socialist paper
+there, has been put under permanent preventive censorship.
+
+All these movements start with the question of the price of food.
+
+The Prussian Junkers, however, are really benefited by the war.
+They get, even with a high "stop price," three times as much as
+formerly for their agricultural products and pay only a small
+sum, sixty pfennig daily, for the prisoners of war who now work
+their fields. They may, in addition, have to pay the keep of the
+prisoners, but that is very small. Camp commanders are allowed
+sixty-six pfennig per head per diem.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is much talk of peace. The shares of the Hamburg-American
+Line and the shares of the Hamburg-South American Line have risen
+enormously in price from fifty-six to one hundred and forty in
+one case. This may be caused by an advantageous sale of some
+shares of the Holland-American Line or by promise of a subsidy,
+or by hopes of peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no question but that every man under forty-five that can
+drag a rifle has been drafted for the army, with the possible
+exception of men working in railways, munitions, etc.
+
+Yesterday I noticed many women working on the roadbed of the
+railway.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The new Peruvian Minister is named von der Heyde; his father was
+a German.
+
+The Greek Minister still thinks Greece will stay out of the war.
+His father is one of the cabinet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans are very glad to get rid of Brand Whitlock. For some
+time they have been looking for an excuse to expel him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dyestuff and other chemical manufacturers are getting quite
+scared about possible American competition. I hope the Democrats
+will give protection to these new industries and will also enact
+some "anti-dumping" legislation.
+
+The German cities are adding to the general weight of debt by
+incurring large debts for war purposes, such as relief of
+soldiers' families, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The former Turkish Ambassador, who is against the Young Turks, is
+living here. He is afraid to go back and also the Germans are
+keeping him in stock in case the Young Turks go out of power, and
+possibly to stir up trouble in Egypt, as his wife is a daughter
+of one of the Khedives.
+
+There are lots of suspicious looking Spaniards about, possibly
+cooking up an attack on Gibraltar.
+
+Any German peace talk includes payment of a large subsidy by
+England, Russia, and France; Italy to be left to Austria to
+finish.
+
+The export of gold has now been formally forbidden.
+
+There is no doubt whatever that the population in the conquered
+portion of Poland has been for a long time in need of food.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our Military Attache, Colonel Kuhn, just back from Servia, says
+the Germans have, literally, stacks of ammunition and had begun
+preparing last spring for the present attack, even little
+mountain wagons and new harness being all ready. Only about six
+German corps are there.
+
+The hate against Americans here is deep-seated and bitter. Hans
+Winterfeldt, a prominent German banker, with American citizenship,
+just came in to tell me that at the annual meeting to-day of the
+great Allegemeine Electricitaets Gesellschaft a fight was started
+against him because of his American citizenship, and he was not,
+therefore, re-elected a director. He thinks of resigning from all
+banks, etc., and returning to America.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_December, 1915._ Red Cross Doctor Schmidt just in from Servia
+says Belgrade was completely plundered.
+
+Having lots of difficulty getting the Germans to give the English
+prisoners clothes.
+
+Hate of Americans worse than ever.
+
+Germans are not resentful when I fight to get things for English
+prisoners; they only say they hope our Ambassadors are doing the
+same for Germans.
+
+Much disappointment at Dr. Snoddy's mission not yet being
+permitted to work in Russia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Last Tuesday night I ran into quite a peace demonstration, called
+by placards the night of the Peace Interpretation in the
+Reichstag. Soon disbanded by the police with many arrests. One
+man told me that they were tired of a silly war and days without
+meat. There has been nothing in the papers about these demonstrations;
+of course, each arrest makes an anarchist for life.
+
+It is hard to get butter. The women storm the butter shops and
+market.
+
+In a new building (where the Consulate is) they are taking off
+the _copper_ roof.
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF AN ORDER ISSUED BY COMMANDER OF
+GERMAN PRISON CAMP OF DOEBERITZ. MANY CAMP COMMANDERS, WITHOUT
+AUTHORITY, UNDERTOOK TO MAKE PRISONERS SUFFER FOR ALLEGED AND
+UNPROVED MISDEEDS OF THE BRITISH. I HAD GREAT TROUBLE IN WATCHING
+FOR ORDERS OF THIS CHARACTER AND SECURING THEIR ANNULMENT:
+
+     ORDER.
+
+     The unheard-of and rough treatment, which,
+     according to reliable information, has been
+     accorded to civilian prisoners, and particularly
+     German women and children who remain in England,
+     has caused the withdrawal of all privileges
+     formerly granted to English Prisoners of War. On
+     this account, permission for all kinds of
+     amusements and games has been cancelled.
+
+     The time for bathing has been limited to 10
+     minutes.
+
+     The English Prisoners of War, Mc Lachlan, was shot
+     dead early on the 7th. August, whilst attempting
+     to escape.
+
+     The English Prisoner of War, Orton, has been
+     summoned to a Military Trial owing to resistance
+     agairest to Authority.
+
+Alberti
+
+Oberst und Kommandant
+des Gefangenenlagers Doeberitz.]
+
+Of a sudden--peace talk. The Chancellor is waiting to address the
+Reichstag, waiting to get the sentiment of the members who are
+all in Berlin, and then swim with it. Many members, who are not
+Socialists, favour peace, and the Chancellor will be forced to
+make some sort of a declaration on why they are fighting and for
+what.
+
+A Reichstag member told me the Reichstag will say and do things
+it did not dream of doing six months ago. There are many quiet
+meetings of members going on.
+
+Hindenburg is out with an interview saying it is not yet time for
+peace. This is a Government measure to stamp out peace talk among
+the Reichstag members.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Am having a hard fight to get the British prisoners properly
+clothed for the winter. Of course, the Germans have rather a
+difficult time with so many prisoners, but that is no excuse if
+men die of cold. The weather is and has been bitterly cold.
+
+Saw von Jagow lately, but only on business and commercial
+questions. Zimmermann lunched here to-day. Roeder, of the
+_World_, is here making a study of German industrial conditions.
+I introduced him to Gutmann, of the Dresdner Bank; Rathenau, head
+of the Allegemeine Electricitaets Gesellschaft; Dr. Solf, Colonial
+Minister, and others. I think his report will be very sound and
+worth reading.
+
+There is no question but that there is a deep-seated hatred of
+America here, _which must be reckoned with sooner or later_.
+
+I don't expect things to be easy, but I wish to goodness all
+Americans would stay at home.
+
+Greek Minister still thinks Greece will remain neutral.
+
+Probably greatest need of Germany is lubricating oil for
+machines, etc. Germans claim to have a copper mine in Servia. I
+never heard of one there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Ohnesorg, U. S. N., and Osborne back from inspecting camps.
+They report bad conditions; they were not allowed (contrary to
+our "treaty") to talk out of hearing of camp officers to the
+prisoners in Lemburg Camp. These prisoners are 2,000 Irish, and
+the reason, of course, for the refusal of the usual permission is
+that the Germans, through the notorious Sir Roger Casement, have
+been trying to seduce the Irish, and do not want the soldier
+prisoners to tell us about it. I have learned, through other
+sources, that the Germans seduced about 30 Irish. I told von
+Jagow what I had learned and asked what the Germans had done with
+these victims--whether they were in the German army or not. He
+said, "No, most of them had been sent to Ireland to raise hell
+there." I suppose they were landed from submarines.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think the German press has received orders to step softly on
+the von Papen-Boy-ed recall. The greatest danger now lies in
+Austria, and over the _Ancona_ note. There is a large body of
+manufacturers, ship-owners, etc., here who at the last moment
+declare themselves against war with the U. S. A. and use their
+influence to that end, but in Austria no such interests exist to
+help toward peace. However, pressure from Germany may be brought
+to bear.
+
+I think Germany will not send successors to von Papen and Boy-ed
+even with safe conduct; whether they will ask the recall of our
+attaches is another question not yet decided.
+
+An official tells me confidentially that Rintelen was sent to
+America to buy up the product of the Dupont Powder Company, and
+that if he did anything else he exceeded his instructions.
+
+Shop people in Berlin with whom I have talked are getting sick of
+the war.
+
+I hear rumours that Germany is trying, through its Minister in
+China, to come to an understanding with Japan and Russia.
+
+The banks are sending circulars to all safe-deposit box holders,
+trying to get them to give up their gold.
+
+An American clergyman has just told me the German church body has
+refused to receive an American Church deputation and has written
+a very bitter letter.
+
+An official has told me that no new Military Attache will be sent
+to America. The naval people have not yet decided.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am very glad to hear Colonel House is coming over. There are
+many things I want to tell the President but which I do not dare
+to commit to paper.
+
+A newspaperman supposed to be of the _New York_ ---- had an
+interview with Zimmermann the other day, and Zimmermann sent some
+messages by him to the President. I do not know what the
+messages are. We all suffer much from amateur diplomats.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Anthony Czarnecki, a very intelligent Chicagoan, an American of
+Polish descent, is here representing Victor Lawson and the
+_Chicago Daily News_. He informs me that the Spy Nest is
+contemplating an attack on the Administration because of the
+taking away of Archibald's and others' passports.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My impression is that the Austrians, owing to pressure from here,
+will eventually give in on the _Ancona_ business. I think the
+present a good time to force the settlement of the _Lusitania_
+question.
+
+     NOTE. I do not suppose that any Ambassador ever
+     suffered as much from amateur "super Ambassadors"
+     as I did.
+
+     The German Foreign Office, trying to be modern and
+     up-to-date at times, paid more attention to the
+     tales of pro-German American correspondents than
+     they did to the utterances of President Wilson.
+
+     Of course, the Germans succeeded in taking many of
+     those correspondents in their camp. In the Hotel
+     ---- in Berlin an agent of the German Government
+     who possessed American citizenship was always
+     ready to arrange trips to the front or to make an
+     advance of money to an American correspondent who
+     would promise to be "good."
+
+     Some received cash, some were paid in interviews
+     with prominent officials, some received both,
+     before all was continually dangled the blue
+     ribbon--the hope of an interview with the
+     Kaiser--and some, thank God, were real Americans
+     and refused all the offered temptations--news or
+     money.
+
+     An American gentleman who lived for a time at this
+     hotel has given me a written statement which
+     throws a light on the activities of certain of
+     these gentry and which I may some day use. In this
+     he states how one of these gentlemen claimed that
+     the Imperial Chancellor always sent for him to
+     consult him on his attitude towards America and
+     that he had advised him to make a bold front and
+     bluff. Hence, perhaps the note of January
+     thirty-first which suddenly announced the ruthless
+     submarine war.
+
+     I have proof that one of this traitorous gang went
+     about Berlin personating me. What scheme he was
+     cooking up I do not know.
+
+     Zimmermann was particularly weak in being advised
+     by one of these shady individuals.
+
+I think the German Government will allow Ford or any of his
+angels to come here, but the Peace Ark seems pretty well wrecked.
+
+Provincial and small newspapers are much more bitter against
+America than the larger ones.
+
+Von Jagow told me the other day that he thought the feeling here
+against America was so bitter that, eventually, war would be
+inevitable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Received following anonymous letter:
+
+     "I am enabled to-day to give your Excellency news
+     of the utmost importance, Germany is at the end of
+     its forces and the Imperial Government is inclined
+     to make peace cost what may! One of the most
+     prominent and influential members of the Reichstag
+     has assured me, that the general conviction of the
+     parliament is dominated by the absolute necessity,
+     to pull back and to strive for peace as soon as
+     possible. The financial aspect given by Dr.
+     Helfferich is disastrous, the military situation,
+     taken in the whole, unsatisfactory and the
+     confidential information, given by Herr von Jagow
+     in the committee with regard to the Egyptian
+     expedition, discouraging if not hopeless. The
+     Government and particularly Herr von Bethmann wish
+     for peace, but believe themselves restrained by
+     public opinion and by the fear of the
+     Pan-Germanists. It's now the psychological moment
+     for intervention by the United States and there
+     can be no doubt, that it should and will be
+     exercised in favour of humanity, culture and
+     freedom, in favour of the prevalence of the
+     Anglo-Saxon race and the future development of the
+     new world against Prussian barbarity, Imperial
+     despotism and Teutonic slavery!
+
+22. XII. 1915.
+OLD GENTLEMAN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+GERMANY'S PLAN TO ATTACK AMERICA
+
+
+_The Diary Continued_
+
+_January, 1916._ Many of the intelligent rich are expressing the
+fear that after this war the Socialist high price system,
+governmental seizure of food, control of raw materials, etc.,
+will be continued and also that the owners of large landed
+estates will be compelled to subdivide them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are getting vague and conflicting reports in the newspapers
+here about the sinking of the _Persia_. There seems to be no end
+to this business. Perhaps it is best to have the inevitable _come
+now_. The hate of America has grown to such an extent under
+careful Government stimulus that I am quite sure we will be the
+first attacked after the war. Therefore, if it is to come, it had
+better come now when we would start with a certain fleet in
+command of the seas, making it impossible for agitators,
+dynamiters, and spies to be sent to Mexico and South America and
+into the U. S. A. through Canada and Mexico. From the highest to
+the lowest I get intimations that at the first chance America
+will be attacked.
+
+There is still a spirit of confidence in ultimate success, amply
+justified, it would seem, by the military situation.
+
+A lot of dyestuffs mysteriously left Germany recently in spite of
+the embargo, and got to Holland, billed to America, where it
+remains, awaiting a permit from the British. Perhaps the Germans
+are getting worried about the possible building-up of the
+industry at home. The profits of the German dyestuff "trust" are
+certainly great enough to tempt the trust to do anything to keep
+the monopoly. Hardly a company pays less than 24 per cent.
+dividends.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Kaiser is still laid up with a boil on his neck.
+
+I am waiting the arrival of Colonel House, who, I suppose, will
+be here in ten days or so.
+
+S. S. McClure of the good ship _Nutty_ (Proprietor Ford), Herman
+Bernstein and Inez Milholland Boissevain, likewise of the crew,
+have been here. Their stories are most amusing. Apparently, now,
+the nuttiest have voted to remain a permanent committee at The
+Hague; salary (five thousand suggested) to each to be paid by
+Ford--with washing and expenses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Reichstag, sitting in "Budget Commission," is getting quite
+worked up over the censorship and the Socialists are demanding
+the freedom of the press.
+
+Yesterday one member said he thought it would do the U. S. A.
+good if they knew what the Germans really thought of Americans.
+
+The spy system here is very complete and even the President and
+Cabinet at home in America are surrounded. Heydebrand, leader of
+the Conservative Party, called the uncrowned King of Prussia,
+said yesterday in the Prussian Chamber that "America was among
+the worst enemies of Germany." I am convinced that Germany, as
+now advised, either will attack America or land in South America,
+if successful in this war. Falkenhayn, Chief of the General
+Staff, said, referring to America, "It is hard to stop a
+victorious army."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have just returned from three days in Munich. I visited two
+prison camps and the American Red Cross Hospital in Munich and
+conferred with Archdeacon Nies (of the American Episcopal
+Church), who is permitted to visit Bavarian prison camps, talk to
+prisoners, and hold services in English. These Bavarian camps are
+under Bavarian, not Prussian, rule.
+
+Munich seems lively and contented. I saw great quantities of
+soldiers there and at Ingolstadt.
+
+I expect Colonel House about the 26th, and shall be very glad to
+see him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Morgenthau was here for a day. I took him to see von Jagow, where
+we talked for an hour. Later, through some Germans, he met
+Zimmermann, who asked him if he did not think the German-Americans
+in America would rise in rebellion if trouble came between
+Germany and America.
+
+Von Jagow was very explicit in saying that Germany had made no
+agreement with us about submarine commanders. He said distinctly
+that Germany reserved the right to change these orders at any
+time. On the general question, he again said that the submarine
+was a new weapon and that the rules of international law must be
+changed, apparently claiming the right for Germany to change
+these rules at will and without the consent of any other power
+involved.
+
+Morgenthau sailed Sunday, the sixth, from Copenhagen. The
+newspapers to-day and last night print articles to the effect
+that the negotiations are taking a more favourable course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_February, 1916._ I dined last night at von Jagow's. He said I
+would get a note to-day which would accept all Bernstorff's
+propositions except, as he put it, one word, viz.: Germany will
+acknowledge liability for the loss of American lives by the
+sinking of the _Lusitania_, but will not acknowledge that the act
+of sinking was illegal. He said that international law had to be
+changed, that the submarine was a new weapon, and that, anyway,
+if a break came with America, that they had a lot of new
+submarines here and would make an effective submarine blockade of
+England. To-day a cipher from the German Foreign Office came in
+to be forwarded to the State Department for Bernstorff, so I
+suppose this is what he referred to. Probably the Germans are in
+earnest on this proposition. It is now squarely up to the
+American people to decide.
+
+Of course, I am very much disturbed at the turn of affairs, but I
+am doing nothing except repeating to Lansing what is said to me,
+and trying to convince the Germans that we are in earnest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was very glad to see Colonel House in Berlin, for many reasons,
+and, especially, that the President may get his view of the
+situation here. He had long talks with the Chancellor, von Jagow,
+and Zimmermann, and also met Dr. Solf, the Colonial Minister; von
+Gwinner, head of the Deutsche Bank; Gutmann, of the Dresdner
+Bank; and Dr. Rathenau, head of the Allegemeine Electricitaets
+Gesellschaft and many corporations, who is now engaged with the
+General Staff in providing raw materials for Germany.
+
+I think the Germans are getting short of copper and nickel,
+especially the latter. Copper lightning rods of churches have
+been taken and an effort was made to take the brass reading desk
+in the American Church and the fittings in the Japanese Embassy.
+
+I think from underground rumours that the Germans and the
+propagandists will endeavour to embroil us with Japan.
+
+Baroness von Schroeder, a von Tirpitz spy, stated the other day
+that Japan would send a note to the United States of America
+making demands on the U. S. in regard to the Japanese immigration
+question.
+
+There was a well-defined report that Germany would issue a
+manifesto stating that enemy merchant ships would be fired on
+without notice and this because of orders alleged to have been
+found on British ships ordering merchant ships to fire on
+submarines at sight.
+
+The Chancellor told me he was ready for peace but that all his
+emissaries had met with a cold reception in the Allied countries
+of France, England and Russia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fight against the Chancellor has been started in the home of
+the Junkers--the Prussian Chamber. The powerful liberal papers
+are jumping hard on the disturbers and the Chancellor hit back
+quite hard. These Junkers are demanding unlimited submarine war
+and are stirred up by von Tirpitz. It is one of their last kicks
+as soon a real suffrage will have to be introduced in Prussia.
+The Chancellor foreshadowed this in opening this Prussian
+Chamber; hence the tears!
+
+The visit of Colonel House here was undoubtedly, from this end, a
+success; and I am glad that he can give the President a fresh and
+impartial view.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+March first we go on a milk and butter card regime. I have put
+the Polish question (food) up to Zimmermann, and asked informally
+whether proper guarantees against the direct or indirect taking
+of food and money from Poland will be stopped, if relief is sent;
+no answer yet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In spite of what I was told by certain exalted personages last
+autumn, I think that if the war continues much longer the
+President will be welcomed as a mediator. In fact, there are a
+number of cartoons and articles appearing in the newspapers
+which, in tone, are against the President because he does not
+insist on peace.
+
+I think that we may soon look for a very strong German attack on
+the West Front, an endeavour to break through before the time
+when the French and English are contemplating their offensive,
+which is probably some time in March.
+
+At or about the same time there will probably be great Zeppelin
+attacks on London and on other English centres. It is reported
+that in their next offensive the Germans will use a more deadly
+form of poison gas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had the grippe, went to Partenkirchen for a few days, but the
+first night in country air since July, 1914, was too much for me
+and filled me with such energy that I tried skiing, fell down and
+broke my collar-bone, came to Berlin and can sit at my desk, but
+am very uncomfortable.
+
+I think Germany was about to offer to sink no merchant ships
+without notice and putting crews, etc., in safety, if England
+would disarm merchant ships, but now, since the President's
+letter to Stone, both the Chancellor and von Jagow say they are
+convinced that America has a secret understanding with England
+and that nothing can be arranged.
+
+Captain Persius points out in to-day's _Tageblatt_ that it is not
+submarines alone that are now, without notice, going to sink
+armed merchant ships, but cruisers, etc., will take a hand.
+
+It is reported that the Kaiser went to Wilhelmshafen to warn
+submarine commanders to be careful and that submarines will hunt
+in pairs, one standing ready to torpedo while the other warns.
+The German losses at Verdun are small as artillery fire
+annihilated enemy first. I think an attack will be made now in
+another part of the front.
+
+Germany has forbidden the _import_ of many articles of luxury;
+this is to keep exchange more normal and keep gold in the
+country. This probably will continue after the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some newspaper men just in from Verdun report the Germans saving
+men--losses small--going at it with artillery, probably over
+1,000 guns, and making a slow and almost irresistible push. Some
+military attaches think there may be a strong attack somewhere
+else on the front.
+
+This Verdun attack was undoubtedly made to keep Roumania out.
+
+I think the food question here is getting very serious, but
+before they are starved out they will starve six million
+Belgians, eleven million Russians and Poles and two million
+prisoners; so that, after all, this starvation business is not
+practical.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a Grand Council of War last week at Charleville to
+determine whether von Tirpitz's proposition, to start an
+unlimited submarine blockade of England, should be started or
+not--i.e., sink all ships, enemy and neutral, at sight.
+Falkenhayn was for this, the Chancellor against, and von Tirpitz
+lost. The decision, of course, was made by the Emperor.
+
+Great advertising efforts are being made on the question of the
+Fourth War Loan. It will, of course, be announced as successful.
+
+There are undoubtedly two submarine parties in Germany and there
+may be an unlimited blockade of England.
+
+I think Germany, as at present advised, is willing, if merchant
+ships are disarmed, to agree to sink no boats whatever without
+warning and without putting passengers and crew in safety. The
+Admiralty approves of this.
+
+One of the American correspondents publishes an article in the
+_Lokal Anzeiger_ on America, in which he makes some statements no
+loyal American should make just now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "illness" of von Tirpitz is announced. I think it means his
+resignation, and have just cabled, although it is possible that
+his resignation may never be publicly announced. For one thing,
+the Kaiser and army people began to think it was a bad innovation
+to have any officer or official appealing to cheap newspapers and
+the "man in the street" in a conflict with superior authority.
+
+I heard that at Charleville conference both the Chancellor and
+von Jagow said they would resign if von Tirpitz's policy of
+unlimited submarine war on England was adopted.
+
+The food question is becoming really acute--the village people
+are about starving in some sections and are not as well off as
+the people in the big towns; it is the policy to keep the people
+in the cities as content as possible in order to prevent riots,
+demonstrations, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some Germans have asked me if the sending of a German "Colonel
+House" to America would be agreeable to the President. Probably
+the Envoy would be Solf, and he could talk informally to the
+President and prominent people. If sent he would require a safe
+conduct from England and France.
+
+I hear the submarines now are mostly engaged in mine laying, at
+the mouth of the Thames.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Events are beginning to march. At first von Tirpitz's "illness"
+was announced, then came his resignation. Yesterday was his
+birthday and a demonstration was expected; there were many police
+out, but I could see no demonstrators. The row may come in the
+Reichstag.
+
+There are two sources of danger; first, a failure at Verdun and
+the new food regulations may make people ready to accept
+Tirpitz's guarantee that if he is allowed his way the war can be
+won and ended. He has a large following already who favour this
+plan; second, there are some Reichstag members and others who
+think the Tirpitz people can never be reconciled unless there is
+a new Chancellor.
+
+The Chancellor sent for me Friday. I think the Chancellor wants
+to keep peace with America and also wishes to make a general
+peace. He talked, or rather I talked, a little about terms. He
+still wants to hang on to Belgium, but I think will give most of
+it up; but is fixed for an indemnity from France. The loss of
+life here is affecting every one, the Chancellor is a very good
+man, and I think honestly desires an honourable peace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Potatoes are restricted from to-day, 10 pounds per head in 12
+days, not much, bacon and lard practically not to be had, butter
+only in small quantities and meat out of reach of the poor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I told the Chancellor I thought a great source of danger to the
+good relations of Germany and U. S. A. was in Mexico, that if we
+had trouble there, had to raise a large army and rouse the
+military spirit at home, the President might find it hard to hold
+the people. This struck him as a new view, as most Germans think
+that Mexican troubles are to their advantage, and I am sure
+Villa's attacks are "made in Germany."
+
+I shall not come home; both the Chancellor and von Jagow have
+begged me not to go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I sent a cable about the possible stirring up of our coloured
+people by propagandists. I notice that there are great fires in
+many cities of the South.
+
+It is reported that Prussian State Railways were given the banks
+as additional security for the last loan, but I do not see how
+this could be, as the railways are Prussian and the Loan
+Imperial.
+
+Several South American diplomats here think that in case of war
+between U. S. and Germany public opinion in their countries will
+demand the seizure of the German ships and possible war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_April, 1916._ I am just off to the Reichstag where the
+Chancellor is to speak. I have no news here and none from
+America, but it seems to me five boats sunk almost at once will
+rather strain things at home. Here they do not want war with
+America. Perhaps von Tirpitz before leaving gave these submarine
+commanders these orders to sink at sight.
+
+I think the Germans will eventually encircle and take Verdun,
+mostly now for moral effect.
+
+Von Jagow will shortly give Conger (_Associated Press_) an
+interview disclaiming any intention on Germany's part of
+attacking America after the war. "A guilty conscience, etc.," and
+"Qui s'excuse, s'accuse."
+
+Every night fifty million Germans cry themselves to sleep because
+all Mexico has not risen against us.
+
+Part of Germany goes soon on meat ration. The food question is
+becoming acute, but they will last through here.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think that the Germans would now, in spite of previous
+statements by a high authority, welcome the intervention of the
+President looking toward peace. Colonel House is so relied on
+here that he would be doubly welcome as the bird with the olive
+branch.
+
+It looks more and more as if the issue of the campaign would be
+peace or war! On this issue the Germans at the last moment will
+have to side with the President.
+
+The recent sessions of the Reichstag have been lively. Liebknecht
+caused a row on several occasions. Once by interrupting the
+Chancellor to imply that the Germans were not free, next to deny
+that the Germans had _not_ wished the war, and another time by
+calling attention to the attempts of the Germans to induce
+Mohammedan and Irish prisoners of war to desert to the German
+arms, the Irish being attacked through Sir Roger Casement.
+Liebknecht finally enraged the Government by calling out that the
+loan subscription was a swindle.
+
+The German-American spies and traitors are hard at work at 48
+Potsdammer Strasse and also at the Oversea News Service, a
+concern paid for by Krupps. Mr. ----, in addition, gains money by
+getting permits for goods to go out of Germany, capitalising his
+"pull" as it were. Some of the money for their dirty work is
+given them by Roselius of Bremen, proprietor of the "Caffee Hag."
+----, a traitor, who also writes against the President, also
+works with the gang.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This cry in America that German babies have not sufficient milk
+is all rot. One of our doctors has reported on the subject. The
+cry is only raised to get a hole in the British blockade.
+
+The Germans are going at Verdun carefully, and an imitation of
+each French position or trench they wish to take--planned from
+airmen's and spies' reports--is constructed behind the German
+lines and the German soldiers practise taking it until they are
+judged letter perfect and are put to work to capture the
+original.
+
+It is said the Germans have developed a submarine periscope so
+small as to be almost invisible, which works up and down so that
+only at intervals, for a second or so, does it appear above the
+water. Also, it is said the wireless vibrations by means of
+copper plates at each end are transmitted through the boat, and
+every member of the crew learns the wireless code, and no matter
+where working can catch the vibrations.
+
+Note about the _Sussex_ and other four ships just in. I think
+Germany is now determined to keep peace with America as the plain
+people are convinced that otherwise the war will be lengthened--a
+contingency abhorrent to all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_May, 1916._ I delivered the last American note to von Jagow
+to-day. He said they probably would not answer, and then engaged
+me in gossipy conversation.
+
+These people want peace and will gladly accept the President as
+mediator.
+
+The Pope, they think, will want brokerage--a "Makler Lohn"--as
+they call it--concessions for the church, such as the return of
+the Jesuits, etc.
+
+If they get good and sick of war here, perhaps they may not feel
+like revenge after all--but there is an ever-present danger we
+must prepare for.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fact that I was given detailed instructions as to leaving,
+etc.--which they undoubtedly learned, with their wonderful spy
+system--helped the _Sussex_ settlement.
+
+The Chancellor and I became great friends as a result of my stay
+at the Hauptquartier. The League of Truth gang attacked me
+lately. The Government published a certificate in the _Official
+Gazette_ to the effect that I was their fair-haired boy,
+etc.--very nice of them. I really think they recognise that the
+propaganda was an awful failure and want to inaugurate the era of
+good feeling.
+
+I did not go to the front at the Hauptquartier as reported. I had
+enough to do in Charleville, but did witness the splendid relief
+work being done by the Americans who are feeding 2,200,000 of the
+population of Northern France. Twenty thousand of the inhabitants
+of Lille, Roubaix-Tourcoing, are being sent under circumstances
+of great barbarity to work in the fields in small villages. I
+spoke to the Chancellor and he promised to remedy this.
+
+Germans say they will take Verdun. A military treaty with Sweden
+is reported; a large Swedish Military Commission is now here,
+receiving much attention.
+
+While at Charleville, in connection with American work, I asked,
+at one village, to see the German Army stores so as to convince
+myself that the German Army was not using the stores from
+America. I saw that one-half the stores came from _Holland_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think the psychological moment is approaching when Colonel
+House should appear as the President's White Emissary of Peace.
+
+While the food question here is pressing, the harvest will be
+good, if present indications continue. Rye is the principal crop
+and this is harvested about July 12th. I think, however, Germany
+can last, and in very desperation may try a great offensive which
+may break the French lines and change the whole position. The
+people here, although tired of war, are well disciplined and will
+see this thing through without revolution.
+
+We are rather in calm after the last crisis. The Chancellor sent
+for me and said he hoped we would do something to England or
+propose a general peace, otherwise his position here will become,
+he thinks, rather hard. Delbrueck, vice-chancellor, very hostile
+to America, is out--failure as Minister of Interior to organise
+food supply is the real reason.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yesterday I had a talk with the Chancellor. The occasion was the
+Polish Relief question which I shall now take up direct with
+Helfferich, who, as I predicted, is the new Minister of the
+Interior and Vice-Chancellor. He is a very business-like man and
+did much for the favourable settlement of our last crisis.
+
+The Chancellor seemed rather downcast yesterday, without apparent
+cause. He says that Germany from now on will have two months of
+hardship on the food question, but that after that things will
+be all right. The crops, as I have seen on my shooting place, are
+magnificent and the rye harvest will probably begin even before
+July 15th.
+
+Mrs. Gerard has just returned from a week in Budapest with her
+sister. The Hungarians are once more gay and confident. The
+Italians, their hereditary foes, are being driven back, and on
+the Russian front there seems to be a sort of tacit truce--no
+fighting and visiting in trenches, etc.--terms of great
+friendliness.
+
+(This was the beginning of the fraternisation which led, a year
+later, to the collapse of Russia.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the races here last Sunday there was an absolutely record
+crowd and more money bet than on any previous day in German
+racing history. The cheaper field and stands were so full of
+soldiers that the crowd seemed grey, which goes to show that the
+last man is not at the front.
+
+State Socialism makes advances over here. A proposition is now
+discussed to compel the young men who are earning large wages to
+save a part thereof.
+
+On the _Sussex_ question, I got a colleague to ask about the
+punishment of the Commander and to say at the Foreign Office,
+after he had once been refused any information, that I had heard
+that the people at large in America believed the Commander has
+received "Pour le Merite." Von Jagow said that he was sure that
+this was not so, but that he did not know the name of the
+Commander, and that it was not "usual" to tell what punishment
+had been given. So that I suppose the matter will rest, unless I
+get orders to ask formally about the punishment.
+
+The German military people and ruling Junker class are furious at
+the settlement with America, and abuse America, the President and
+me indiscriminately.
+
+Anything the President says about peace is prominently placed in
+the newspapers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yesterday in a debate in the Reichstag over the censorship,
+member Stresemann, National Liberal (the party which now holds
+the balance of power), violently abused President Wilson and said
+he was not wanted as a peace-maker. All applauded except the
+Socialists--so I think the President had better say nothing more
+about peace for the present. What he has said has done much good
+and has pleased the Government here, if not the Reichstag.
+Although von Jagow is a Junker of Junkers, the Junkers are
+against him and claim he is too weak. He may be bounced.
+
+The crops are very fine.
+
+Undoubtedly we shall have another crisis when the extremists here
+demand a "reckless" U-boat war because we are doing nothing to
+England.
+
+Germany will last through on the food question.
+
+I have heard reports that the Turks are tired of German rule and
+almost ready to flop.
+
+I am to meet Prince Buelow, ex-Chancellor, to-morrow and may fish
+up something interesting.
+
+The Kaiser has gone to the front, probably Russian. Next war loan
+will be 12 milliards.
+
+Helfferich lunched here last Sunday. He speaks English fairly
+well. Zimmermann is laid up with the gout.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Reichstag debate yesterday, Stresemann, applauded by all
+except Socialists, said that Germany threw away Wilson as a
+peace-maker. However, the Government is pleased with President's
+peace talk, as it keeps the people from thinking of food and
+U-boat crises.
+
+U-boat question will come up again, when Pan-Germanists and
+Conservatives demand a reckless U-boat war because we have done
+nothing against England.
+
+Harden's paper has been confiscated again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_June, 1916._ I am sorry to lose Ruddock, who is sent to Belgium,
+but it is a good appointment, as his knowledge of German and
+relations here will help matters.
+
+The debates in the Reichstag have been quite interesting
+yesterday and the day before. The Chancellor, irritated by the
+anonymous attacks on him in pamphlets, etc., made a fine defence.
+In the course of the debate allusions were made to President
+Wilson and the U-boat question. The U-boat question may break
+loose again any day.
+
+I do not think that either Austria or Germany wishes President
+Wilson to lay down any peace conditions. There may possibly be a
+Congress after the Peace Congress, but meanwhile all parties
+here feel that America has nothing to do with peace conditions.
+America can bring the parties together, but that is all. The
+speech about the rights of small peoples has, I hear, made the
+Austrians furious, as Austria is made up of many nationalities
+and the Germans say that if the rights of small peoples and
+peoples choosing their own sovereignty is to be discussed, the
+Irish question, the Indian question and the Boer question, the
+Egyptian question and many others involving the Entente Allies
+must be discussed. I think that generally there is a big change
+in public opinion and the Germans are beginning to realise that
+the President is for peace with Germany.
+
+The Germans expect that by September preparations will be
+finished and that the Suez Canal will be cannonaded, bombed and
+mined so that it will dry up, and then the Indian-Afghan troubles
+will begin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_June, 1916._ The President's peace talks carried over the
+dangerous moment after the submarine submission. Von Jagow told
+me that because of debates in Reichstag the President must not
+think he is not welcome as mediator.
+
+Crops look well.
+
+The break on Austro-Russian front is reported to have been caused
+by wholesale desertions of Ruthenian troops to Russians.
+
+The editor of the _National Zeitung_, responsible for the fake
+interview with me, has been "fired" from that paper which has
+published a notice to that effect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grand Admiral von Koester made a speech implying that reckless
+submarine war should be taken up and England thus defeated. He is
+retired, but is head of the Navy League, a concern backed by the
+Government, possessing a million members and much political
+influence.
+
+Apropos of hyphenated Americans, a friend tells me that when he
+was secretary here some years ago, a certain Congressman tried
+for six years to get presented at Court, insisting that he be
+presented as a "German-American." The Kaiser turned him down,
+saying he knew no such thing as a "German-American," and the
+Congressman finally consented to be presented as an American.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The U-boat question will come up again, say in three months,
+unless we get in serious trouble in Mexico, when it will come up
+sooner.
+
+Edwin Emerson has been sent out of the country, I think to serve
+in the Turkish Army in some capacity, perhaps paymaster or some
+such job.
+
+The Foreign Office continues to protect these American
+mud-slingers--such as the "League of Truth" which is run by a
+German named Marten, posing as an American and a dentist
+(American citizen) named Mueller--these circulate a pamphlet
+entitled, "What Shall We Do With Wilson," etc., and are the gang
+who insulted the American flag by putting it wrapped in mourning
+on a wreath on the statue of Frederick the Great with a
+placard, "Wilson and his Press do not represent America."
+
+[Illustration: COVER OF THE PAMPHLET FEROCIOUSLY ABUSIVE OF
+PRESIDENT WILSON. ISSUED BY THE EX-TRAVEL LECTURER, JOHN L.
+STODDARD]
+
+What shall we do
+with Wilson?
+
+by
+
+John L. Stoddard.
+
+Meran. Tyrol 1916
+
+Printing-office F. Pleticha, Meran, Tyrol.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Letters, codes, etc., for Bernstorff and individuals are sent to
+America as follows: the letters are photographed on a reduced
+scale so that a letter a foot square appears as an inch and a
+half square. These little prints are put in the layers of a shoe
+heel of a travelling American or elsewhere, book cover, hat band,
+etc., and then rephotographed and enlarged in America. Also
+messengers travel steerage and put things in the mattress of a
+fellow passenger and go back to the ship after landing in New
+York and collect the stuff.
+
+A German friend, just returned from Austria, says the feeling
+there against America is very strong on account of the Dumba
+incident.
+
+Yesterday I was told by a German that the German army had
+aeroplanes which develop 300 H. P., and would soon have some of
+1000 H. P.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_July, 1916._ Every one in this Embassy is getting to the
+breaking point. Nerves do not last forever, and the strain of
+living in a hostile country is great. The Germans, too, are on
+edge. They are going to take away our privilege of speaking to
+prisoners alone; this because they think I learned of the
+shooting of the second Irishman at Limburg from prisoners. As a
+matter of fact I did not, but cannot, of course, say how I did
+learn.
+
+The Russian prisoners are being slowly starved, the French and
+English get packages from home.
+
+There are rumors that a Bavarian regiment which was ordered a
+second time to take a position, which the Prussians lost at
+Verdun, refused and was ordered to be decimated, and that then
+the Crown Prince of Bavaria threatened to march all the Bavarian
+troops home unless the order to decimate was rescinded. I do not
+believe the rumour, but its circulation and other events such as
+the refusal of the Bavarians lately to adopt a common postage
+stamp, shows there is a little irritation growing between Prussia
+and Bavaria. For years before the war the Bavarian Comic papers
+cartooned the Prussians, common and royal, but like every other
+movement nothing will result.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is much underground work for the resumption of reckless
+submarine war going on, all part of a campaign to upset the
+Chancellor. Von Buelow, Ex-Chancellor, is working hard. He,
+however, since his row with the Emperor over the "Telegraph"
+interview, which he passed as correct, will never be accepted by
+His Majesty. Nevertheless, he is becoming a focal point for
+opposition.
+
+The Chancellor and his party are very timid about attacks. For
+instance, they will do nothing against Emerson, Mueller and that
+crew, which insults indiscriminately our flag, our President, the
+Chancellor, Zimmermann and me, because, as Zimmermann frankly
+told me, they are afraid of attacks. Mueller on the 4th of July
+hung out the American flag in mourning and circulated copies of
+the Declaration of Independence charged with a bloody hand and a
+black cross. I have filed in vain affidavits with the Foreign
+Office, by people who say he has threatened to shoot me at sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans seem to fear the Russian attacks more than the
+English and French. They claim to have the measure of the
+English, and not to fear their offensive.
+
+Dr. John R. Mott has been here. He made a great impression. I had
+him at lunch with the Chancellor, Zimmermann, and officials of
+the prisoner department and War Ministry.
+
+Mass feeding of the people has begun. They pay a few pfennigs per
+meal.
+
+I have heard rumours lately of actual dissatisfaction among
+soldiers at front and of many being transferred, but this unrest
+also will have no definite result.
+
+Constant rain lately will damage the harvest and rot the potatoes
+to some extent. Nevertheless, as I have often said, the Germans
+will last. Holland has allowed more food in lately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The long confinement will make many prisoners insane. Many old
+men at Ruhleben, living six in a horse's stall or in dim hay
+lofts, simply turn their faces to the wall and refuse even to
+complain.
+
+The statement in the American papers that our National Guard
+could not mobilise for Mexico because of lack of sleeping cars
+caused much ridicule here, where they go to the front in cattle
+cars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_July, 1916._ A committee called the National Committee for an
+Honourable Peace has been formed. Prince Wedel is at the head.
+Most of the people are friends of the Chancellor. One is an
+editor of the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ which is the Chancellor's
+organ. On August 1st, fifty speakers, of this Committee will
+begin to speak, probably the opposition will come into their
+meetings and try to speak or break up the meetings.
+
+The _Lokal Anzeiger_, also a government organ, prints an
+editorial to the effect that Germany may take up ruthless
+submarine war again. Great numbers of U-boats are being built and
+in September operations will be on a big scale, though the
+Chancellor will try to keep them to cruiser warfare.
+
+The prisoner question on all sides is growing acute. The Germans
+sent me a note to-day threatening stern reprisals if the alleged
+bad treatment of their prisoners in Russia does not stop.
+
+We can no longer talk to prisoners alone. Von Jagow told me that
+after the visit of Madam Sasenoff, or Samsenoff, to a Russian
+prisoners' camp, there was a riot, but the real reason is that
+the Germans have much to conceal. The prison food now is a
+starvation ration.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Alliance of the Six, really an organization fostered by big
+iron business in Westphalia, is very active for annexation. This
+wants to get the French iron mines and coal, and so control the
+iron business of the Continent and perhaps Europe.
+
+A man from Syria passed through here recently and gave me most
+interesting accounts of the state of affairs there. The Turks are
+oppressing the Arabians and the revolt of the Grand Sheriff of
+Mecca may have great effects in this war. This man says that the
+English are building two railroads from Suez into the desert and
+the Germo-Turks are building toward the canal from the North. For
+the Canal attack there are, at present, principally Austrian
+troops assembled. The Turks are beginning to take Greeks from the
+Coast cities into the interior of Asia Minor and are oppressing
+the Syrian Arabian cities, such as Beirut, where thousands are
+dying of starvation. At the Islahje-Aleppo R. R., 30 Turkish
+soldiers a day die from cholera. The Germans, by their precautions,
+escape. He passed 147 German auto trucks in the Cilician
+mountains bound for Bagdad. Also saw the British prisoners from
+Kut el Amara, who are dying of dysentery, being compelled to walk
+in the hot sun from Kut. He thinks the English and the Grand
+Sheriff will transfer the title of head of the religion from the
+Sultan at Constantinople to either the Sultan of Egypt or some
+new Sultan to be established as an Arabian Sultan, perhaps at
+Bagdad if the Russians and English take it, or at Mecca, and he
+considers this movement of Arabians against Turks may assume
+great proportions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is still talk here of a resumption of reckless submarine
+war which question is complicated and involved in the eternal
+efforts of the Conservatives to get the Chancellor out.
+
+The recognition of the "merchant submarine" has made a very good
+impression here.
+
+The plain people are eager for peace but those interested in
+carrying on the war have the upper hand.
+
+The harvest is good, and is now being gathered.
+
+A number of navy and (which is significant) army officers visited
+von Tirpitz, lately in his Black Forest Retreat and gave him a
+testimonial.
+
+There is prospect that what is called here a "Burg Frieden"
+(Peace of the City) will be declared between the Chancellor and
+the principal Conservative newspapers.
+
+One of the American correspondents back from Verdun says that a
+corps commander said his corps took no prisoners.
+
+I think many of the Hungarians are for peace. I get this from
+Andrassy's son-in-law who is also a member of the lower house.
+Tisza, however, is still in full control.
+
+Prince Leopold's (he is a brother-in-law of the Kaiser) stags
+have destroyed vegetables of the plain people (as in the days of
+William Rufus) and people dare write letters, and Liberal papers
+dare publish them complaining of these depredations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+GERMANY'S EARLY PLOTS IN MEXICO
+
+
+_The Diary Concluded_
+
+_August, 1916._ Count Andrassy, leader of the opposition to Tisza
+in Hungary, has been here for some time. He lunched with us one
+day and I had a talk with him in German. Andrassy is rather old
+and tired. Andrassy's father, the Prime Minister, was originally
+a great friend of Germany.
+
+It is possible that Andrassy through German influence may be made
+Minister of Foreign Affairs instead of Burian. This is to be the
+first step in a German coup d'etat to take place on the death of
+Francis Joseph--the throne successor to be given Austria alone,
+and Prince Eitel Fritz, the Kaiser's favourite son, to be King of
+Hungary with possibly a Czech kingdom in Bohemia.
+
+Andrassy had an audience with the Kaiser here. Andrassy is
+apparently friendly with America and is also for peace.
+
+_Von Tirpitz is out with a statement practically demanding war
+with America._ I am surprised that the newspapers are allowed to
+publish it. Very likely it will not be permitted to go out but it
+ought to be known in America.
+
+Germany probably will come out with a strong note about Poland,
+refusing help and saying harvest is sufficient. This is not true
+as to food for babies who cannot live on rye and wheat, but need
+condensed milk.
+
+The treatment of prisoners is going from bad to worse. The
+Chancellor and Foreign Office can do nothing against the military
+party.
+
+Hoover, Professor Kellog, and I are all very much discouraged
+about Polish and other relief questions. The Germans are getting
+more and more disagreeable about these matters, even though they
+are for the benefit of Germany. Warwick Greene, of the Rockefeller
+Foundation, being a new arrival is more hopeful, but that will
+soon wear off.
+
+The Germans are getting a blacklist of their own. One Barthmann,
+an American, who sells American shoes in Germany, wanted to get
+his pass stamped to go to America, and permission to come back,
+and was told that would only be done if the Chamber of Commerce
+(Handels-Kammer) consents; you see the connection--no American
+goods for Germany.
+
+The Jews here are almost on the edge of being "pogrommed." There
+is a great prejudice against them, especially in naval and
+military circles, because they have been industrious and have
+made money. Officers openly talk of repudiating the War Loan
+which they say would only mean a loss for the Jews.
+
+The Germans say they have new and horrible inventions which will
+end the war soon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I supposed that because I had some acquaintance with German
+watering places and German-Americans I knew a little about
+Germany. I was wrong. No casual traveller ever gets to know the
+military caste nor do the members of that caste travel except on
+"business."
+
+The members of the military caste live like Spartans and are
+consoled by the fact that they rule the country and look down on
+the merchant class. They feel that they have created modern
+industrial Germany. The military caste (of which the naval and
+all government bureaus are branches) has organised the nation for
+war with the efficiency of the managers of a great American
+corporation. The government is an absolutism. No Jew can become
+an officer. Officers of crack regiments do not go to the homes of
+persons in any kind of business. A business man is called a
+"Kaufmann," as we speak of a house painter. Some tame professors
+are paid by the State to give an impression of "Kultur."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This war is now a war for conquest or money. All people tell me
+that we must have "pay for so much blood." "If we don't keep
+Belgium there will be a revolution. Who is to pay for the War?" A
+Socialist who referred yesterday in the Reichstag to the Kaiser's
+speech of the beginning of the war which stated this was not a
+war to get territory, was well sat upon. Even the Socialists are
+all for war against Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+None of the German colonies is fit for Europeans. _Germany last
+year proposed joint intervention in Mexico to England._ If
+successful Germany will try to get a foothold in the Western
+Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is like a red rag to a bull to
+every German.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Relations with members of the Government here are quite agreeable
+but there is not an effective government at present. The
+Chancellor will take no decisive action and leaves matters to
+department heads who fight with other department heads. The
+Emperor saw fit to follow the traditions of 1870 and go to the
+field taking the Chancellor and heads of many departments with
+him, hence great governmental confusion, but this does not affect
+military organisation. He is bored by the Chancellor, a good man,
+but of no action or decision. Von Falkenhayn is the Emperor's
+favourite. He is the chief of the General Staff. Von Tirpitz and
+von Mueller (also naval) have great weight. The Kaiser is thus
+surrounded by military influences.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Saw summaries of the news published by the General Staff and
+given to the Emperor to read. He gets only German-American news
+from America and no bad news from anywhere. On the _Lusitania_
+case there is a disposition to think, because we were not warlike
+over Mexico, we will stand anything. _The Kaiser will not see me
+because of the delivery of arms by Americans to the Allies and
+has so stated._
+
+There is no shortage of food supply. I was told yesterday they
+did not need our Polish Relief Committee for German Poland as
+Germany can take care of this alone. The hate of Americans is
+intense. But this hate can be turned off and on by the Government.
+The people believe everything they see in the papers. The
+monetary situation is not bad. All the money for war supplies has
+been spent in Germany, except perhaps for a few horses, etc.,
+from Scandinavia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Chancellor and von Jagow have been in Vienna. Von Jagow told
+me only on current business, but this was a diplomatic statement.
+I believe they went to settle the fate of Poland. I hear Prussia
+wants an independent Poland and Austria wants to make it part of
+the Austrian Empire. In any event I think Prussia will secure the
+organising of the army which will soon be raised. A prominent
+Pole told me two days ago that the peasants were coddled by
+Russia, whose motto in Poland was "divide et impera," and that
+they will violently resent being drafted into the Prussian army.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bitter attacks on the Chancellor continue. At a recent
+meeting in Bavaria resolutions were passed that the first
+objective of the war was to get rid of the Chancellor and the
+second to "clean out the Anglophile Foreign Office," which
+prevented Germany from resorting to "reckless" methods for the
+swift winning of the war.
+
+As a son-in-law of a high official told me to-day, the break
+between the military and navy on one side and the Civil
+Government on the other has widened almost into civil war. The
+same man told me that the Kaiser has lately become quite
+apathetic and lets events take their course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of my attaches has broken down completely, cries when spoken
+to; living in a fiercely hostile atmosphere is not agreeable and
+I wonder how long the rest of us can hold out.
+
+The harvest is very good, but does not provide fat, and as yet,
+meat. But the starving out business I have always said was an
+"iridescent" dream.
+
+New men, 80,000 in this vicinity alone, are being called to the
+colours.
+
+Every one here is getting more on razor edge, prisoners are
+treated more roughly and get worse food. Bavaria is getting
+restless and dissatisfied, this will not amount to anything
+definite but is a sign of the times.
+
+I went to Herringsdorff for a few days of swimming. At a concert
+in the evening a man recited a poem he said he had written about
+"having bled enough." He was vehemently applauded. Quite a
+contrast to the days when the best actors in Germany were not
+ashamed to spout the "HYMN OF HATE"!
+
+The military people use the censorship even against papers
+friendly to the Chancellor and Germans certainly can hate each
+other as thoroughly and scientifically as they do most other
+nations. Dr. Alonzo Taylor thinks that in peace times some one
+fed this nation too much meat.
+
+The newspapers are preparing the people for the entry of
+Roumania.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Professor ----, a school friend of Tisza's and Burian's who was
+recently in Austria, saw Burian and says Burian is ready and even
+anxious to make an arbitration treaty with America and also send
+an Ambassador in Dumba's place to Washington. This is out of my
+jurisdiction. He says that to-morrow or next day there will be an
+interpellation in the Hungarian Chamber about sending an
+Ambassador to America.
+
+The National Liberals probably will unite with the Conservatives
+and demand a strong hold on Belgium, if not actual possession of
+that country, as one of the objects of the war.
+
+This Union of National Liberals and Conservatives is dangerous
+and may mean a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The entry of Roumania took every one by surprise. Beldiman, the
+Roumanian Minister here, was visiting the reigning Prince of
+Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, brother of the Roumanian King, and
+apparently knew nothing of the danger of a break.
+
+To-day Hindenburg is named Chief of the General Staff, and his
+Chief of Staff, Ludendorff, is made Quartermaster General,
+Falkenhayn, former Chief of Staff is bounced without even the
+excuse of a diplomatic illness. This is all a great concession to
+popular opinion. I do not know where Hindenburg stands with
+reference to America, but have heard that he is a reasonable man.
+Of course, here the Army has as much to say in foreign affairs as
+the Foreign Office, if not more. When I was at the Great General
+Headquarters, Falkenhayn, although I knew him, did not call on
+me, and dodged me. He did not even appear at the Kaiser's table
+when I lunched there. From all this I judge he was against
+America on the submarine question. I also have heard that when
+Helfferich was talking before the Kaiser, in favour of peace with
+America, Falkenhayn interrupted him, but was told by the Kaiser
+to "stick to his last" or words to that effect.
+
+These people here are now nervous and unstrung and actually
+believe that America will now enter the war against them. It is
+impossible to conceive of the general breakdown of nerves among
+this people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_I have heard lately of men as old as 47 being taken for the
+Army._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Zimmermann has now gone on a vacation, his place being
+temporarily filled by von Treutler, Prussian Minister to Bavaria,
+who since the commencement of the war has been with the Kaiser. I
+judge this means the Kaiser is looking personally into matters
+at the Foreign Office. Von Treutler is, I think, against the
+resumption of reckless submarine war. He is lunching with me
+to-day. He is rather the type of intelligent-man-of-the-world and
+sportsman, and has little of the Prussian desire to "imponieren"
+by putting his voice two octaves lower and glaring at one like an
+enraged bullfrog.
+
+Dr. William Bayard Hale, of Mexican fame, who is in Berlin
+representing the Hearst papers, has become very thick with
+officials here. Von Jagow and Zimmermann are much impressed by
+him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans may hate the President, but there are in America
+hundreds of thousands of Czechs from Bohemia, Poles from Poland,
+Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croatians and Slavs from Hungary, Roumanians,
+Italians, Greeks, Russians, Scotch, Belgians, and French who HATE
+the Germans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I believe the Germans want an excuse to resume reckless submarine
+war and an American correspondent has taken the job of making bad
+feeling to justify such a course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_September, 1916._ As these people get desperate the submarine
+question gets deeper and deeper under their skin. I really think
+that it is only a question of time.
+
+Of course, from what I learn here Greece is sure to come in and
+this is expected here.
+
+As the Consul General at Hamburg has reported, serious riots
+have occurred there, two by the poor classes, mostly women, and
+one by students. The crowd shouted "Down with the Kaiser," called
+for an end of the war, calling for unlimited submarine war
+against England.
+
+The hate of Americans grows daily, if indeed it is possible to be
+greater.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ira Nelson Morris, American Minister to Sweden, was here. He and
+his wife are charming people. He is very popular in Sweden. Elkus
+is also here on his way to Constantinople. If any one can "get
+away" with that difficult post he can. I took Elkus to see von
+Jagow and had him at lunch with von Treutler, the man in
+Zimmermann's place. I talked with Elkus to von Jagow about Syrian
+Relief. A Syrian, whose name I cannot give away, says the Turkish
+Government reported to our Embassy in Turkey that the harvest in
+Syria was the best in years, whereas, in truth this year's
+harvest, on account of drought and last year's on account of
+locusts, are the worst in 35 years. Missionaries have told me
+that Syrians are starving.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fact for the Russian born--Germany does not recognise the
+American citizenship or naturalisation of a person born in
+Russia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yesterday there was a conference of all party leaders at the
+Chancellor's. I understand nothing was said about America or
+submarine question. I doubt this. The Press here and certain
+other agencies are trying to convince America that all is
+peaceful, but Baron Mumm two days ago told Elkus, in this house,
+that the ruthless submarine war undoubtedly would be resumed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In general conversation with von Jagow, recently, he said that
+the offensive on the Somme could not continue without the great
+supply of shells from America. He also said that recently a
+German submarine submerged in the Channel had to allow 41 ships
+to pass, and that he was sure that each ship was full of
+ammunition and soldiers but probably had some protecting American
+angels on board, and, therefore, the submarine did not torpedo
+without warning. He seemed quite bitter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wife of an American newspaper correspondent was recently
+attacked in the street. Of course, the husband will not cable
+this to America. Two stenographers from this Embassy were
+recently slapped on coming out of a theatre because they were
+speaking English.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Reventlow's paper was recently suppressed and Reventlow forbidden
+to write without special permission. This is a good sign from the
+Chancellor.
+
+Dr. Hale was recently given a special trip to the West front, and
+allowed to talk to the Crown Prince, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_December, 1916._ The Germans are simply delighted with the
+President's peace note. Only a few cranks or conservative papers
+are against it.
+
+I saw Zimmermann the day after my arrival. He was most friendly
+and said he hoped he and I would be able, as usual, to settle
+everything in a friendly manner.
+
+Yesterday he lunched here and gave me the German reply after
+lunch. He told me at the first talk that he, the Chancellor,
+Hindenburg and Ludendorff were all working together. Most people
+here say that Hindenburg and Ludendorff are at present the real
+rulers of Germany. Zimmermann remarked that there was no danger
+from "reckless" submarine war.
+
+Zimmermann said he regretted the sending of the Belgians to
+Germany but it was hard now to go back on what they had done. I
+have some hope that a retreat may be arranged--possibly by
+sending the Belgians back gradually and saying nothing about it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The American Chamber of Commerce are to give a big dinner January
+sixth to welcome me back. Zimmermann and von Gwinner, head of
+Deutsche Bank, have agreed to speak and many prominent Germans
+have accepted.
+
+The Press department of the Foreign Office has been reorganised
+by Zimmermann, and Hammann, the former head, fired. The new head
+is Major Deutelmoser, formerly of the General Staff, a personal
+friend of mine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Emperor is at Potsdam and consulted with Zimmermann, General
+von Kessel, etc., as to the reply to the President's peace note.
+
+Berlin is much more melancholy than when I left. General von
+Kessel came to our American Colony Christmas tree for poor Berlin
+children. It was very pathetic. One little kid got up and prayed
+for peace and every one wept. I hope to get to see Ludendorff and
+Hindenburg soon and see how they feel toward America.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I went to Ruhleben, the British civilian camp, yesterday to tell
+the prisoners that all over 45 go home. It was quite a Christmas
+gift as 700 there are over that age. (Note: don't think this
+agreement of Germany and England ever went into effect!)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_January, 1917._ Germany wants a peace conference in order to
+make a separate peace on good terms to them with France and
+Russia, then hopes to finish England by submarines, then later
+take the scalp of Japan, Russia and France separately. The Allies
+ought to remember what Ben Franklin said about hanging together
+or separately. I get the above scheme from very good authority.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weather is most depressing; dark, and rain every day. All
+hands seem cross. Zimmermann, I think, finds it much more
+difficult to be the responsible first than the criticising
+second. It is not as easy as it looked to him.
+
+The Kaiser stated the other day that he did not expect peace now,
+that the English would try a great offensive in the spring and
+would fail.
+
+_Herbert Hoover writes me that the Germans are violating all
+their pledges in Belgium._ He expects a year of great difficulties.
+I hear this confirmed on best authority and that even the German
+official who is supposed to see that food is not sent from
+Belgium to Germany in violation of Germany's pledges sends out
+butter to his family; that there is an absolute reign of terror
+in Belgium, sudden and arbitrary arrests, etc. I think the
+Germans want to see all foreign diplomats out of Bucharest and
+Brussels and the charges against Voypicka should be considered in
+that light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The greatest danger from submarine war is that unthinking persons
+in the U. S. may start a crusade against the President's policy,
+encourage the Germans in the belief that we are divided and lead
+them to resume reckless acts in that belief. The continuance of a
+strong front is the very best way to keep the peace.
+
+Both Zimmermann and the Chancellor asked me about Bernstorff, and
+returning good for evil, I said that he was O. K., on very good
+terms with the Government, well liked (_sic_) and that no one
+could do better!
+
+A friend just returned from a week's visit in Hungary reports a
+great desire for peace. Persons who, a year ago, said that the
+President could have nothing to do with peace or negotiations,
+now say he is the only possible mediator. This comes from high
+government circles there.
+
+The historic crown of St. Stephen was much too large for the
+King, but the little crown prince made a great hit with the
+populace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An Armenian woman came through here the other day. Her husband
+had been captured or killed and her tale of the treatment of the
+Armenians by the Turks was heartrending.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everything points to a coming crisis in the matter of food, how
+serious it will be even the officials themselves do not know, as
+there is much concealed food and much smuggling over the various
+frontiers.
+
+In some parts of Germany, the country police or gendarmes are
+searching the farm houses thrice weekly.
+
+I have secured permission to visit and inspect the enslaved
+Belgians, have named as inspectors all members of our staff
+speaking French, but as yet have not received passes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here is a copy of a letter I have just received from a German:
+
+     "The hypocrisy of the German Government is really
+     disgusting! It is a well-known matter of fact,
+     that by hints and approbation, nay even by express
+     orders of the German military authorities the
+     troops in France and Belgium have been stimulated
+     to give no quarter at all in the case of British
+     adversaries, and that in Russia even whole
+     regiments and brigades have been annihilated by
+     grapeshot, although the poor wretches delivered
+     themselves on mercy and raised their hands, to
+     prove their submission. Both the Prussian and the
+     Bavarian crown-prince have expressly ordered to
+     make no prisoners, to spare ammunition and to
+     despatch the surviving by steel and bayonet. Has
+     the order been forgotten, issued by the Kaiser in
+     the beginning of the German China-Expedition, to
+     deal with the Chinese like the Huns, to destroy
+     and annihilate every human creature both men and
+     women and even innocent children!
+
+Quis Aulerit Gracchos de seditione quaerentes?
+                            Unus pro multis.
+
+     P. S.
+
+     The war would be decided and peace restored as
+     soon as the U. S. A. Government would intervene in
+     favour of humanity, liberty and civilisation. Down
+     with the Prussian Tyranny!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Germans will do nothing about Belgium. The deportations were
+a military measure, demanded by Ludendorff, who constantly fears
+a British landing on the Belgian coast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A man who called on von Tirpitz recently was told by von Tirpitz
+that he, von Tirpitz, was watched like a spy and all his letters
+opened. Von Tirpitz said that Hindenburg was the real ruler of
+Germany, that anything Bethmann said was censored by Hindenburg
+and that Hindenburg was now against reckless submarine war but
+that any substantial defeats in the field would make him change
+his mind. Von Tirpitz said that the Kaiser was losing his mind
+and spent all his time praying, and learning Hebrew.
+
+[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN COURTYARD OF EMBASSY, AUGUST,
+1916
+
+_Left to right_--Lanier Winslow; Albert B. Ruddock; Percival
+Dodge; Grafton Minot; von Gwinner, head of the great Deutsche
+Bank; Surgeon Ohnesorg, U. S. N.; Ernest Bicknell of Red Cross;
+Ambassador Gerard; Mr. Wilmeth of Treas. Dept.; Assistant
+Secretary of War Breckenridge; Roland Harvey; Charles Russell;
+Hugo Ballin, head of Hamburg-American Line; Major Ryan and First
+Secretary Grew.]
+
+The food situation grows worse. Potato cards must now be
+presented in restaurants and hotels. I doubt if potatoes can last
+beyond April. There is food in Roumania but much will go to the
+troops; Austrians and Turks: the railways are so used by troops,
+etc., that it is doubtful if any food from there can reach
+Germany for months.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All apartment houses in Berlin are closed at nine, and lights in
+halls extinguished. Theatres close at ten and movies also. There
+is want of coal due to lack of transportation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The President's address to the Senate yesterday (Jan. 22, 1917)
+is splendid. I don't know yet how it will be taken here. If it is
+published it will give the German people something to consider.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Postcards showing Zeppelins in the act of murdering the sleeping
+babies of an enemy city are distributed here with pride.
+
+All Germans of my acquaintance have impressed on me lately the
+renewed danger of submarine warfare. The American correspondents
+are not allowed to send out the hate of America speeches and
+articles. Cyril Brown of the _World_ says that last week fifty
+per cent of the matter he sent was cut out by censor here.
+
+The new U-boat campaign will go along the armed merchantman lines
+and an endeavour will be made to force or get us in some way to
+recognise that an armed merchantman is the same as a warship
+and, therefore, may be fired on without notice. It is the old
+story, but more subtly presented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Food situation more and more serious, riots lately in two markets
+in Berlin.
+
+Have not yet received passes to see the Belgians.
+
+Undoubtedly Ludendorff is the real dictator of Germany to-day.
+What he thinks about America may be judged from the circumstances
+before Colonel Kuhn's recall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nearer I get to the situation the more I consider the
+President's peace note an exceedingly wise move. It has made it
+very difficult for the terrorists here to start anything which
+will bring Germany into conflict with the U. S.
+
+_The Chancellor, Zimmermann, Stumm, have all ridiculed the idea
+that Germany will go back on her "Sussex" pledges; but if she
+does, then the peace note makes it easier for America to enter
+the war on the Allies' side with a clear conscience and the
+knowledge on the part of the people at home that the President
+did everything possible to keep us out of the mess._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE KULTUR OF KAISERDOM--THE GERMAN SOUL
+
+
+The older I grow the more it seems to me that all men are alike
+and that they have been alike at all periods of history, capable
+of the same development and differing only because of environment.
+
+I do not believe, for example, that any mystery is concealed
+behind the faces of the peoples of the East. Once I asked
+Soughimoura, my colleague in Berlin, Ambassador of Japan, whether
+the Japanese were as much subject to nerves as western peoples.
+He answered in the affirmative but said they were taught from
+infancy to control their nerves. I asked him how, and he said the
+principle of the system was deep abdominal breathing with a slow
+release of the breath as soon as nervousness came on. Japanese
+wrestlers practised this, he added, and when a man took deep
+breaths it was almost impossible to throw him.
+
+Of course, social life and customs change with climate. But
+education is the most powerful factor of all. The Aztecs of
+Mexico offered human sacrifices, but the letter of the Aztec
+mother to her daughter, giving advice and counsel, mentioned by
+Prescott in his history, might have been written by a New
+England mother to-day. Somewhere in the world is a savage eating
+human flesh, persuaded that in so doing he is acting in
+accordance with the tenets of his religion.
+
+These are the extremes.
+
+But the German or rather the Prussian, has been moulded into the
+extraordinary person that he is to-day by a slow process of
+education extending through several generations. At Marienburg,
+on the Baltic shore of Germany, stands the ancient castle of the
+Teutonic Knights recently restored by the German Kaiser. The
+Knights at one time conquered and occupied much of the territory
+that is now modern Prussia. A military religious order, they
+attracted adventurers from all lands and their descendants
+constitute many of the noble families of Prussia. It is this
+tradition of conquest for gain that still animates the ruling
+class of Prussia and therefore all Germany.
+
+Later through the middle ages and as the central power of the
+Emperor grew weaker and weaker, what is to-day Germany became a
+nest of dukedoms and principalities. Before the French Revolution
+these numbered hundreds. After the Thirty Years' War which
+ravaged Germany from 1615 to 1645 extreme poverty was often
+conspicuous at these petty courts. War was an industry and the
+poor German peasants were frequently bartered as slaves to the
+war-god, as the Hessians were sold by their ruler to the British
+in our War of the Revolution. The Germans were then the
+mercenaries of Europe, savages skilled in war, without mercy
+towards the towns unfortunate enough to be given to their
+pillage. There is no more horrible event in all history than that
+of the sack of Rome by the German mercenaries in the year 1527.
+Under General George von Frundsberg, who joined forces with the
+recreant constable Bourbon of France and the Spaniards, these
+lawless Germans invaded the fertile plains of Italy and took Rome
+by assault.
+
+The most awful outrages were perpetrated. Prelates were tortured
+after being paraded through the streets of the Eternal City,
+dressed in their sacred pontificals and mounted on donkeys.
+Altars were defiled, sacred images broken, vestments and services
+and works of art taken from the plundered churches and sacred
+relics insulted, broken and scattered. For nine months the orgy
+continued, the inhabitants being tortured by these German
+soldiers in their effort to find hidden treasure. In fact
+conditions in Belgium to-day had their counterpart centuries ago
+in the treatment of Roman Catholic Priests and the people of
+Rome.
+
+The great change in the feeling of the country towards Prussia
+since the latter's conquest of the rest of Germany in 1866, is
+still exemplified by one quotation from Goethe. He said, "The
+Prussian was born a brute and civilisation will make him
+ferocious." We all have seen how prophetic was this sentence.
+Skilled in chemistry, in science, well educated, made rich by
+manufacturing and foreign commerce, the Prussians of to-day have
+shown themselves far more bloody, far more cruel than the German
+lansquenet of the middle ages who sold himself, his two handed
+sword, his military experience and his long lance to the highest
+bidder.
+
+Tacitus tells of how the ancient Germans when drawn up in battle
+array used to sing a sort of war song to terrify their enemies.
+
+It was Goethe incidentally who remarked "Amerika, du hast es
+besser." (America, you are better off.) The poet who died in 1832
+foresaw, indeed, the coming power of the free democracy across
+the seas.
+
+It was interesting to note the psychological development of the
+Germans during the war. For the very short time while war hung in
+the balance there was a period almost of rejoicing, among the
+singing crowds in the streets--a universal release of tension
+after forty years' preparation for war.
+
+Next came the busy period of mobilisation and then, as the German
+armies swept through Belgium and France, stronghold and fortress
+falling before them, there came a period of intense exaltation, a
+period when the most reasonable Germans, the light of success and
+conquest in their eyes, declared German Kultur would now be
+imposed on the whole world.
+
+The battle of the Marne ended this period of rejoicing and,
+through the winter of 1914-1915, when it became apparent that
+Germany would not win by a sudden assault, the temper of the
+people began to change to an attitude of depression.
+
+It has been at all times the policy of the German autocracy to
+keep the people of Germany from amusing themselves. I know of no
+class in Germany which really enjoys life. The Counts and Junkers
+have their country estates. Life on these estates, which are
+administered solely for profit, is not like country life in
+England or America. The houses are plain and, for the most part,
+without the conveniences of bath rooms and heating to which we
+are accustomed in America. Very few automobiles are owned in
+Germany. There are practically no small country houses or
+bungalows, although at a few of the sea places rich Jews have
+villas.
+
+The wealthy merchant takes his vacation in summer at Carlsbad or
+Kissingen or in some other resort where his physical constitution,
+disorganised by over-eating and over-drinking, can be regulated
+somewhat. Many Germans take their families to Switzerland where
+the German of all ages with knapsack and Alpine stick is a
+familiar sight.
+
+Earnestness is the watchword. For should the people once get a
+taste of pleasure they might decide that the earth offered fairer
+possibilities than life in the barracks or the admiring
+contemplation of fat and complacent grand dukes and princes.
+
+Much of this sycophancy is due to the poverty of the educated
+classes. Salaries paid to officials are ridiculously small. The
+German workingmen both in wages and living are on a lower scale
+than those of other western nations with the possible exception
+of Russia, Italy and the Balkan States. The professional and
+business classes earn very little. The reason for the superiority
+of the German in the chemical industry is because a chemist, a
+graduate of the university, can be hired for less than the salary
+of an American chauffeur.
+
+And this earnestness of life was insisted upon even to a greater
+degree by the autocracy with the opening of war. The playing of
+dance music brought a visit from the police. The theatres at
+first were closed but later opened. Only plays of a serious or
+patriotic nature were originally permitted. Dancing was tabooed,
+but in the winter of 1915-16 Reinhardt was allowed to produce a
+ballet of a severely classical nature and at the opera performances
+the ponderous ballet girls were permitted to cavort as usual.
+
+I saw no signs of any great religious revival, no greater
+attendance at the churches. Perhaps this was because I was in the
+Protestant part of Germany where the church is under the direct
+control of the government and where the people feel that in
+attending church they are only attending an extra drill, a drill
+where they will be told of the glories of the autocracy and the
+necessity of obedience. In fact, religion may be said to have
+failed in Germany and many state-paid preachers launched sermons
+of hate from their state-owned pulpits.
+
+Always fond of the drama and opera I was a constant attendant at
+theatres in Berlin. The best known manager in Berlin is
+Reinhardt, who has under his control the Deutsches Theatre with
+its annex, the Kammerspiel and also the People's Theatre on the
+Buelow Platz. I made the acquaintance of Mr. Reinhardt and his
+charming wife who takes part in many of his productions. I dined
+with them in their picturesque house on the Kupfer Graben. In the
+Deutsches Theatre the great revolving stage makes change of scene
+easy so that Reinhardt is enabled to present Shakespeare, a great
+favourite in Germany, in a most picturesque manner. He manages to
+lend even to the most solemn tragedy little touches that add
+greatly to the interest and keep the attention fixed.
+
+For instance in his production of "Macbeth," when Lady Macbeth
+comes in, in the sleep-walking scene, rubbing her hands and
+saying, "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" the actress
+taking this part in Berlin gave a very distinct and loud snore
+between every three or four words: thus most effectively
+reminding the audience that she was asleep.
+
+As the war continued the taste of the Germans turned to sombre,
+tragical and almost sinister plays. Only a death on the stage
+seemed to bring a ray of animation to the stolid bovine faces of
+the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season
+was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, whose "Spring's Awakening,"
+given in New York in the spring of 1917, horrified and disgusted
+the most hardened Broadway theatregoers. The principal female
+role was played by a Servian actress, Maria Orska--very much on
+the type of Nazimova. In this play, presented to crowded
+audiences, only one of the four acts was without a death.
+
+Another favourite during war-time, played at Reinhardt's
+theatre, was "Maria Magdalena." The characters were the father,
+mother, son and daughter of a German family in a small town and
+two young men in love with the daughter. In the first act the
+police arrest the son for theft, giving the mother such a shock
+that she dies of apoplexy on the stage. In the second act, the
+two lovers have a duel and one is killed. In the third act, the
+surviving lover commits suicide, and, in the fourth act, the
+daughter jumps down the well. The curtain descends leaving only
+the old man and the cat alive and the impression is given that if
+the curtain were ten seconds later either the cat would get the
+old man or the old man would get the cat!
+
+The mysterious play of Peer Gynt was given in two theatres during
+each winter of the war. All of Ibsen's dramas played to crowded
+houses. Reinhardt, during the last winter I was in Berlin,
+produced Strindberg's "Ghost Sonata," in quite a wonderful way.
+The play was horrible and grewsome enough, but as produced by
+him, it gave a strong man nightmare for days afterwards.
+
+The German soul, indeed, seems to turn not towards light and gay
+and graceful things, but towards bloodshed and grewsomeness,
+ghosts and mystery--effect doubtless of the long, dark, bitter
+nights and gray days that overshadow these northern lands.
+
+I think the only time I lost my temper in Germany was when a
+seemingly reasonable and polite gentleman from the Foreign Office
+sitting by my desk one day, in 1916, remarked how splendid it
+was that Germany had nearly two million prisoners of war and that
+these would go back to their homes imbued with an intense
+admiration of German Kultur.
+
+I said that I believed that the two million prisoners of war who
+had been insulted and underfed and beaten and forced to work as
+slaves in factories and mines and on farms would go back to their
+homes with such a hatred of all things German that it would not
+be safe for Germans to travel in countries from which these
+prisoners came, that other nations had their own Kultur with
+which they were perfectly satisfied and which they did not wish
+to change for any made-in-Germany brand!
+
+Certain Germans have prated much of German "Kultur," have boasted
+of imposing this "Kultur" on the world by force of arms. What is
+this German "Kultur"? A certain efficiency of government obtained
+by keeping the majority of the people out of all voice in
+governmental affairs, a certain low cost of manufactured products
+or of carrying charges in the shipping trades made possible by
+enslaving the workmen who toil long hours for small wages--a
+certain superiority in chemical production because trained
+chemists, willing to work at one semi-mechanical task, can be
+hired for less than a Fifth Avenue butler is paid in America, and
+a certain pre-eminence in military affairs reached by subjecting
+the mass of the people to the brutal, boorish, non-commissioned
+officers and the galling yoke of a militaristic system.
+
+Subtract the German Jews and in the lines of real culture there
+would be little of the real thing left in Germany. Gutmann,
+Bleichroeder, von Swabach, Friedlander-Fuld, Rathenau, Simon,
+Warburg in finance; Borchardt and others in surgery, and almost
+the whole medical profession; the Meyers, the Ehrlichs,
+Bamberger, Hugo Schiff, Newburger, Bertheim, Paul Jacobson, in
+chemistry and research; Mendelssohn, and others, in music;
+Harden, Theodor Wolf, Georg Bernhard and Professor Stein in
+journalism.
+
+But why continue--about the only men not Jews prominent in the
+intellectual, artistic, financial, or commercial life of Germany
+are the pastors of the Lutheran Churches. And the Jews have won
+their way to the front in almost a generation. Still refused
+commissions in the standing army (except for about 114 since the
+war), still compelled to renounce their religion before being
+eligible for nobility or a court function, still practically
+excluded from university professorships, considered socially
+inferior, the Jews of Germany until a few years ago lived under
+disabilities that had survived from the Middle Ages. They were
+not allowed to bear Christian names. The marriages of Jews and
+Christians were forbidden. Jews could not own houses and lands.
+They were not permitted to engage in agriculture and could not
+become members of the guilds or unions of handicraftsmen. When a
+Jew travelled he was compelled to pay a tax in each province
+through which he passed. Jews attending the fair at Frankfort on
+the Oder were compelled to pay a head tax, and were admitted to
+Leipzig and Dresden on condition that they might be expelled at
+any time. Berlin Jews were compelled to buy annually a certain
+quantity of porcelain, derisively called "Jew's porcelain" from
+the Royal manufactory and to sell it abroad. When a Jew married
+he had to get permission and an annual impost was paid on each
+member of the family, while only one son could remain at home,
+and the others were forced to seek their fortune abroad. The Jews
+could worship in their own way, in some states, provided they
+used only two small rooms and made no noise.
+
+The reproach that the Jew is not a producer, but is a mere
+middleman, taking a profit as goods pass from hand to hand, is
+handed down from the time when Jews were forbidden by law to
+become producers and, therefore, were compelled to become traders
+and middlemen, barred from the guilds and from engaging in the
+cultivation of the soil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The German newspaper in size is much smaller than ours. If you
+take an ordinary American newspaper and fold it in half, the fold
+appearing horizontally across the middle of the page and then
+turn it so that the longer sides are upright, you get an idea of
+the size. There are no editorials in German newspapers, but
+articles, usually only one a day, on some political or scientific
+subject, one contributed by a professor or some one else
+supposedly not connected with the newspaper.
+
+The editor of the German newspaper in his desire to poison and
+colour the news to suit his own views does not rely upon an
+editorial, but inserts little paragraphs and sentences in the
+news columns. For instance, a note of President Wilson's might be
+printed and after a paragraph of that, a statement something like
+this will be inserted in parentheses. "This statement comes well
+from the old hyprocrite whose country has been supplying arms and
+ammunition to the enemies of Germany. The Editor." A few sentences
+more or a paragraph of the note and another interlineation of this
+kind. Small newspapers have a news service furnished free by the
+government, thus enabling the latter to colour the news to suit
+itself. It is characteristic of Germany and shows how void of
+amusement the life of an average citizen is and how the country
+is divided into castes, that there is no so-called society or
+personal news in the columns of the daily newspaper.
+
+You never see in a German newspaper accounts common even to our
+small town newspapers, of how Mrs. Snooks gave a tea or how Mrs.
+Jones, of Toledo, is visiting Mrs. Judge Bascom for Thanksgiving.
+If a prince or duke comes to a German town a simple statement is
+printed that he is staying at such and such a hotel.
+
+German newspapers, as a rule, are very pronounced in their views,
+either distinctly Conservative or Liberal or Socialist or Roman
+Catholic. The _Berliner Tageblatt_ is nearest our idea of a great
+independent, metropolitan, daily newspaper. Other newspapers
+represent a class and many of them are owned by particular
+interests such as the Krupps and other manufacturers or munition
+makers.
+
+There is little that is sensational in the German newspaper. I
+remember on one occasion that two women murderers were beheaded
+in accordance with German law. Imagine how such an occurrence
+would have been "played up" in the American newspapers, with
+pictures, perhaps, of the executioner and his sword, with
+articles from poets and women's organisations, with appeals for
+pardon and talk of brainstorms and the other hysterical
+concomitants of murder trials in the United States. But in the
+German newspapers a little paragraph, not exceeding ten lines,
+simply related the fact that these two women, condemned for
+murdering such and such a person, had been executed in the
+strangely medieval manner--their heads cut off on the scaffold by
+a public executioner.
+
+The German newspapers in reporting police court and other
+judicial proceedings often omit names and it is possible in
+Berlin for a man to prosecute a blackmailer without having his
+own name in print.
+
+When a German victory was announced flags were displayed, but as
+the war progressed so many victories announced turned out to be
+nothing wonderful or decisive that little attention was paid to
+the vain-glorious flaunting of German triumphs. Following an old
+custom ten or fifteen trumpeters climbed the tower of Rathhaus or
+City Hall and there quite characteristically blew to the four
+quarters of Heaven; but again as these official and brazen
+blowings were not always followed by the confirmation in fact,
+trumpetings were gradually discontinued.
+
+The Germans cleverly kept back the announcement of certain
+successes in order to offset reverses. For instance, on a day
+when it was necessary to tell the people of a German retreat the
+newspapers would have great headlines across the front of the
+first page announcing the sinking of a British cruiser (sunk,
+perhaps, a month before) and then hidden in a corner would be a
+minimised announcement of a German defeat.
+
+To us in Germany there was at the time no battle of the Marne. So
+gradually was the news of the retreat of the German forces broken
+to the people that to-day the masses do not realise that the fate
+of the world was settled at the Marne!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE LITTLE KAISERS
+
+
+As the king idea seems inseparably connected with war there is no
+country in the world where kings and princes have been held in
+such great account as in the Central Empires.
+
+I believe there are only two Christian kings in the world--the
+kings of Italy and of Montenegro--who are not by blood related to
+some German or Austrian royalty.
+
+For remember that while we think of Germany as ruled by the
+Kaiser and while it is his will that is certainly imposed upon
+the whole of that territory which does not exist politically or
+even geographically but which we call Germany, there are houses
+of royalty in it almost as numerous as our big corporations.
+There are the three kings of Bavaria, Wuertemburg and Saxony,
+grand dukes and dukes, and princes, all of them taking themselves
+very seriously and all of them residing in their own domains;
+jealously keeping away from the Emperor's court and jealously
+guarding every remnant of rule which the constitution of the
+German Empire has bequeathed to them.
+
+Once I asked one of these princelings what his older brother, the
+reigning prince, did with his time in the small provincial town
+which is the capital of the principality. The brother looked at
+me with real surprise in his eyes and answered, "Why he reigns!"
+
+Before the constitution of the German Empire, many of these
+poverty-stricken little courts were centres of kindly amusement,
+even of intellectual life.
+
+The court of the Grand Duke Charles-Augustus, of
+Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach at Weimar where Goethe resided and where he
+was entrusted with responsible state duties, was renowned in
+Europe as a literary centre.
+
+Many of these princelings, however ridiculous their courts may
+have seemed, exercised despotic power. To-day the inhabitants of
+the two Mecklenburg duchies are protected by neither constitution
+nor bill of rights. The grand duke's power is absolute and he can
+behead at will any one of his subjects in the market-place or
+torture him to death in the dungeons of the castle and is
+responsible to God alone.
+
+Here is an example from history. George Louis, Duke of
+Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle, married his mistress, a Huguenot girl
+called Eleanore d'Olbreuze. They had one daughter, Sophia
+Dorothea, who married the Elector of Hanover, who was also George
+I of England. Sophia Dorothea was supposed to have been involved
+in a love affair with a Swedish Count, Philip Konigsmarck.
+Konigsmarck was murdered by order of George I, and Sophia
+Dorothea incarcerated in Ahlden where she died in 1726.
+Konigsmarck's sister went to Saxony to beg the aid of the Saxon
+King, Augustus the Strong. She failed to get news of her brother,
+but became one of the mistresses of Augustus the Strong and the
+mother of the celebrated Marshal Saxe. I say one of the
+"mistresses" of Augustus the Strong because he boasted that he
+was the father of 365 illegitimate children!
+
+The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was the mother of Frederick the
+Great and his brothers, and therefore, an ancestor of the present
+German Kaiser. Any one writing about her in a disparaging manner
+is subject to be imprisoned, under the decisions of the Imperial
+Supreme Court, for "lese-majeste" or injuring the person of the
+present monarch in daring to slander his ancestors. And, I
+suppose, any one referring to Augustus the Strong may be shut up
+in Dresden for insulting a predecessor of the present King.
+
+Every year the nobles of the Central Empires hold a convention at
+Frankfort, where the means are discussed by which their
+privileges may be preserved. No newspaper prints an account of
+this Convention of the highest Caste.
+
+The German peasants, as far as I have seen, are not so much under
+the dominion of feudal tradition as are the peasants in Austria
+and Hungary.
+
+I was shooting once with a Hungarian Count who stationed me in
+one corner of a field to await the partridges, which driven by
+the beaters were expected to fly over my head and as I stood
+waiting for the beaters to take up their positions two peasant
+girls walked past me. One of them, to my surprise, caught hold of
+my hand, which she kissed with true feudal devotion. As a guest
+of the Count I was presumably of the noble class and therefore
+entitled by custom and right to this mark of subjugation. And it
+became quite a task in walking through the halls of the castle to
+dodge the servants, all of whom seemed anxious to imprint on me
+the kiss of homage.
+
+Thackeray in the "Fitzboodle Confessions" gives a most amusing
+account of life in one of these small, sleepy, German courts and
+relates how he left Pumpernickel hurriedly, by night, after the
+court ball where he had discovered not only that his German
+fiancee had eaten too much, but that she had a taste for bad
+oysters.
+
+All of these small kings and princes are jealous of the King of
+Prussia and of his position of German Emperor and show their
+jealousy by avoiding Berlin.
+
+In October, 1913, when in London on my way to Germany, I met the
+young Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz in the Ritz Hotel where
+he was dining with an English earl and his beautiful wife. As I
+happened to have a box for the Gaiety Theatre, we all went there
+together and paid a visit to George Grossmith behind the scenes
+and talked with Emmy Wehlen, the Austrian actress, who was
+appearing in the comic opera then running. But in all the time
+that I was in Germany I never once saw or heard of the young
+Grand Duke who rules the subjects of his duchy with autocratic
+rule without even the semblance of a constitution.
+
+Formerly our minister used to be accredited to some of these
+courts and, on inquiring informally through a friend, I learned
+that the American Minister is still accredited to Bavaria on the
+records of the Bavarian Foreign Office, no letters of recall ever
+having been presented. The fact that the American Ambassador is
+accredited to none of these courts is a distinct disadvantage
+because without letters of credence he does not come into contact
+with any of the twenty-four rulers of Germany who control the
+Bundesrat in which their representatives sit, voting as they are
+told by the kings, grand dukes and princes. A number of these
+kings and princelings, combining in the Bundesrat, can outvote
+the powerful king of Prussia. But they don't dare!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ROYALTY'S RECREATION
+
+
+I had a shooting estate about twenty miles from Berlin, one that
+I could reach by automobile in forty-five minutes from the door
+of the Embassy. Because of the strict German game laws I had
+better shooting there than within two hundred miles of large
+cities in America.
+
+There seemed to be something to shoot there almost every day of
+the year. On the sixteenth of May the season opened for male
+roe--a very small deer. About the first of August the ducks,
+which breed in northern Germany, can be shot. These were mallards
+and there were about two thousand or more on a lake on my
+preserve. We usually shot them by digging blinds in the oat
+fields, shooting them after sunset as they flew from the lake to
+feed in the newly harvested grain. The season for Hungarian
+partridge opened on August 20th. These were shot over dogs in the
+stubble and in the potato fields. After a few weeks partridges
+became very wild and we then shot them with a kite. When we had
+put up a covey out of range and marked where they went down in a
+potato patch or field, perhaps of lucern or clover, a small boy
+would fly a kite made in the form of a hawk over the field. This
+kept the partridges from flying and they would lie while the dogs
+pointed until we put them up.
+
+By October 1st pheasants could be shot; English pheasants become
+wild. These roosted in the trees at night and so escaped the
+plentiful foxes. Later on came shooting at long ranges, after
+they had collected in bands, of the female roedeer and also the
+hare shooting. Rabbits were shot at all times, and in November
+and December and January on foggy days it was not difficult to
+get a wild goose.
+
+The hares were shot in cold weather, after the snow was on the
+ground, by walking in line of ten or fifteen beaters with two or
+three guns at intervals along the line and later, when the hares
+were very wild and the weather very cold, by what is called by
+the Germans "kessel-jagd" or kettle-hunt. For this hunt the head
+keeper would collect a number of beaters, as many as a hundred,
+from the neighboring towns and villages, mostly small boys and
+old men. On the great, flat plain the keeper would send out his
+beaters to the right and the left, walking in a straight line at
+about twenty-yard intervals. After each side had gone perhaps
+half a mile they would then turn at right angles, walk a mile,
+and then turn at right angles until the two lines met, so that
+perhaps a square mile of territory would be enclosed by the
+beaters with the ten to fifteen men with guns at intervals in the
+line. When the square had been formed the head keeper blew a
+blast on his bugle and all turned and walked slowly towards the
+centre and the hares were shot as they attempted to break through
+the line.
+
+On one day just before I left Germany, I and members of the
+Embassy shot more than two hundred hares on one of these hunts.
+The German hare is an enormous animal with dark meat, almost
+impossible to distinguish from venison.
+
+After these hare drives, besides, of course, paying the beaters
+their regular wages, I used to hold a lottery, giving a number of
+these hares as prizes or distributing hares to the magnates of
+the village, such as the pastor, the school teacher, the
+policeman and the postmaster.
+
+When we were shooting in the summer and autumn the peasants were
+working in the fields and one had to be very careful in shooting
+roebuck with a high-powered rifle. It is customary to hunt
+roebuck on these flat plains from a carriage. In this way a
+bullet, travelling at a downward angle, if the buck is missed,
+strikes the ground within a short distance. If one were to shoot
+lying down, kneeling or standing, the danger to peasants in the
+fields would be very great. The pheasants were sometimes shot
+over dogs, but usually as the beaters drove small woods. A
+pheasant driven and flying high makes a difficult mark. One
+getting up before the dogs is almost too easy a shot.
+
+We shot the rabbits by using ferrets, little animals like weasels
+wearing little muzzles and bells upon their necks. In the woods
+where the rabbits had their holes four or five ferrets would be
+put in the rabbits' holes and it was quite difficult to shoot
+rabbits as they came out like lightning, dodging among the trees.
+In the early spring the "birkhahns" were shot, a variety of black
+and white grouse. There were some blinds or little huts of twigs
+erected near places where the ground was beaten hard and on these
+open, beaten spots early in the morning the "birkhahns" waltz,
+doing a peculiar backward and forward dance in some way connected
+with their marriage ceremonies. There were also on this estate
+numbers, at times, of a curious bird found only in Spain,
+Roumania, Asia Minor, and these plains of the Mark of Brandenburg,
+a large bustard called by the Germans "trappe." These birds were
+very shy and hard to approach. Although I had several shots at
+them with a rifle at four or five hundred yards I did not succeed
+in getting one.
+
+In talking with the Chancellor he almost always opened the
+conversation by asking if I had yet killed a "trappe." As a rule
+the German uses for shooting deer and roebuck a German Mauser
+military rifle, but with the barrel cut down and a sporting stock
+with pistol grip added. On this there is a powerful telescope.
+Many Germans carry a "ziel-stock," a long walking stick from the
+bottom of which a tripod can be protruded and near the top a sort
+of handle piece of metal about as big as a little finger. When
+the German sportsman has sighted a roebuck he plants his aiming
+stick in the ground, rests the rifle on the side projection,
+carefully adjusts his telescope, sets the hair trigger on his
+rifle and finally touches the trigger.
+
+At the commencement of the war the Duke of Ratibor collected all
+these sporting rifles with telescopes and sent them to the front.
+These were of the same calibre as the military rifles and took
+the military cartridge, so they proved enormously useful for
+sniping purposes.
+
+Going one day to a proof establishment to try a gun I opened by
+mistake a door which led to a great room where thousands of
+German military rifles were being fitted with telescopes. These
+telescopes have crossed wires, like those in a surveyor's
+instrument, and it is only necessary in aiming to fix the centre
+of the crossed wires on the game and pull the trigger. A clever
+arrangement enables the wires to be elevated for distant
+shooting.
+
+So great is the discipline of the German people that game on
+these estates is seldom, if ever, touched by the peasants. There
+is no free shooting in Germany. The shooting rights of every inch
+of land are in possession of some one and the tens of thousands
+of game keepers constantly killing the crows, hawks, foxes and
+other birds and animals that destroy eggs and game make the game
+plentiful. The keeper has the right by law to shoot any stray dog
+or cat found a hundred yards from a village. I paid the head
+keeper a certain sum per month and in addition he received a
+premium called "shot money" for each bird or roebuck shot. He
+also received a premium for each fox or crow or hawk he
+destroyed, bringing, on the first of the month, the beaks and
+claws of the hawks, etc., to prove his claim. Foxes are very
+plentiful in Germany and in one winter on this estate, only
+twenty miles from Berlin, the keeper trapped or killed twelve
+foxes.
+
+[Illustration: EXAMPLE OF THE COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OFFERED FOR
+SALE. ON THE OBVERSE IS THE PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE. ON THE
+REVERSE IS "YOUNG SIEGFRIED" ATTACKING A CHIMERA-LIKE MONSTER
+WITH FOUR HEADS: A BEAR FOR RUSSIA, A UNICORN FOR ENGLAND, A LION
+FOR BELGIUM, AND A COCK FOR FRANCE]
+
+The Emperor is very fond of fox shooting. Foxes are driven out of
+the forest past his shooting stand by beaters and one of the
+reasons why Prince Fuerstenberg was such a favourite of the
+Emperor was that he provided him with splendid fox shooting,
+although it is whispered that he bought foxes in boxes in all
+parts of Germany and had them turned loose for the Emperor's
+benefit.
+
+In the more thickly forested portions of Germany deer as well as
+roedeer are shot and in many districts wild boar. In Poland and
+in a few estates in Germany on the eastern border, moose, called
+elk (elch in German), are to be had. These, however, have very
+poor horns.
+
+Talking to the keepers and beaters on this shooting estate gave
+me a very good idea of the hardships suffered in rural Germany,
+of the way in which the people in the farming districts are kept
+down by the lords of the manor and by the government, and it was
+from this village and the neighbouring town that I got some idea
+of the number of men called to arms in Germany.
+
+By a custom dating from the devastating wars of the Middle Ages
+there are practically no farms in Germany, but inhabitants of the
+agricultural districts are collected in villages and the few
+farms have, characteristically, a military name. They are called
+"vorwerk" or outposts. In the village on my estate there are
+almost exactly six hundred inhabitants, men, women and children,
+and of these at the time I left Germany one hundred and ten had
+been called to the Colours. In the neighbouring town of
+Mittenwalde, of almost three thousand inhabitants, over five
+hundred had joined the army. At the commencement of the war the
+population of the German Empire was about 72,000,000, or
+something over, and applying these same proportions it will be
+seen what a vast army was created.
+
+In the industrial districts where men are required for munition
+work perhaps not as great a proportion has been called. The name
+of the village on my estate was Gross Machnow, the road from
+Berlin to Dresden ran through it and only a few miles east was
+the shooting place of Wusterhausen where the favourite shooting
+box of the father of Frederick the Great was and where he was
+accustomed to hold his so-called tobacco parliament, when, with
+his cronies, over beer and long pipes, the affairs of the nation
+were discussed with great freedom.
+
+The horse races in Germany are excellent. There are several
+tracks about Berlin. The Hoppegarten, devoted almost exclusively
+to flat racing; the Grunewald, the large popular track nearest to
+Berlin where both steeplechases and other races are held; and
+Karlshorst, devoted exclusively to steeplechasing and hurdle
+racing.
+
+The jockey club of Berlin is the Union Club, which owns the
+Hoppegarten track. Its officers are men of the highest honour and
+in no country in the world are the races run more honestly, more
+"on the level," than in Germany.
+
+Nothing makes for mutual international understanding more than
+sport. Even during the most bitter crises between Germany and
+America I felt that I could go absolutely alone to the crowded
+race tracks and, while I know the Germans differed emphatically
+with the American views of the war, the gentlemen in charge of
+the races and the members of the Union Club treated me with the
+kindest consideration and the most graceful courtesy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am sorry that I never attended any of the Court hunts which
+took place in the vicinity of Potsdam. A pack of hounds is kept
+there and boars hunted. The etiquette is very strict and no one,
+not presented at court, can appear at these hunts. As I did not
+have an opportunity to present my letters of credence until a
+month or more after my arrival in Berlin in the autumn of 1913,
+the winter rains had set in before I was eligible for the hunts
+and in addition I had not taken the precaution to order the
+necessary costumes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first time that a man appears at one of these hunts he must
+wear a tall silk hat, a double-breasted red coat, with tails like
+a dress coat, white breeches and top boots. After he has once
+made his appearance in this costume he may, thereafter,
+substitute for it a red frock hunting coat, white breeches and
+top boots and a velvet hunting cap, the same shape as the caps
+worn by the jockies. There are no jumps on these hunts. When the
+boar has been brought to bay by the dogs, the right to despatch
+him with a long hunting knife is reserved for the most distinguished
+man present. If a royalty is present at one of these hunts he
+distributes small sprigs of oak leaves to every one at the hunt,
+cherished ever after as valued souvenirs.
+
+When I first arrived at Berlin, having brought horses with me
+from America, I used to ride every morning in the Tiergarten.
+Because so many Germans are in the army, riding is a very
+favourite sport and in peace times the Tiergarten is crowded with
+Berliners. Most of the riding was done between seven and ten in
+the morning. The early rising is compensated for, however, by the
+siesta after lunch, a universal custom.
+
+Shooting is almost more of a ceremony than a sport. The letters
+exchanged between Emperor William and Czar Nicholas, lately
+discovered in the Winter Palace, show what a large part shooting
+played in their correspondence. One or the other is continually
+wishing the other "Weidmanns-Heil," which is the German
+expression for "good luck" as applied to shooting. All royalties
+must ride and keep in practice, especially because of military
+service. Indeed, all the sports of the Kaiser and his people
+converge toward a common object--military efficiency and war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE ETERNAL FEMININE
+
+
+Even the women, many of whom are honorary colonels to regiments,
+must keep in trim for the great parade days of autumn and spring.
+Many of these female colonels appear in uniform, riding at the
+head of their regiments. They sit on side saddles, however, and
+wear skirts corresponding somewhat in colour with the uniform
+coat and helmet of the regiment of which they are the honorary
+proprietors.
+
+German female royalties are rather inclined to set an example of
+quietness in dress. They seldom wear the latest fashion and never
+follow the exaggerated modes of Paris. Even their figures are of
+the old-fashioned variety--pinched at the waist. While in the
+Tiergarten in the morning I saw many good horses, but only one
+fashionably cut riding habit. Many of the others must have been
+at least twenty years old, as the sleeves were of the Leg of
+Mutton style, fashionable, I believe, about that number of years
+ago.
+
+Many German noblewomen shoot and are quite as good shots as their
+husbands. I was quite surprised once on a shooting party to meet
+an elderly princess whose grey hair was in short curls and who
+wore a coat and waistcoat like a man's. She shot with great skill
+and smoked long Havana cigars!
+
+When German women get out of the country they very quickly
+imitate foreign fashions and extravagances of dress. The Czarina
+of Russia, for example, a German Princess, is very fond of
+fashions, and a friend of mine who had three audiences with her
+during the war tells me that on the occasion of his first
+audience she was dressed in black and received him in a room
+where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was
+in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her
+dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white.
+
+There is one good thing about the king and aristocratic system.
+The position of women in the social scale is fixed by the
+husband's rank. There is, therefore, none of that striving, that
+vying with each other, which so often exhausts the nerves of the
+American woman and the purse of the husband. The German women
+give their time and attention to the "Four K's" that, in a
+German's eyes, should bound a woman's world, "Kaiser, Kinder,
+Kirche, Kuche" (Emperor, children, church and kitchen).
+
+The successful business man of New York or Chicago or San
+Francisco is surprised to find how docile and domestic the German
+woman is--no foolish extravagance, but a real devotion to husband
+and home, a real mother to her many children. She matches that
+short epitaph of the Roman matron--"She spun wool; she kept the
+house."
+
+When I came to Germany I found, on studying the language, that
+there was no word in German corresponding to "efficient." I soon
+learned that this is because everything done in Germany is done
+efficiently, and there is no need to differentiate one act from
+another in terms of efficiency. But the German man could not be
+as efficient as he undoubtedly is, without the whole-hearted
+devotion of the German woman.
+
+German girls are given a good, strong, sound education. They
+learn languages, not smatterings of them. They are accomplished
+musicians. Domestic science they learn from their mothers. They
+are splendid swimmers, hockey players, riders and skaters.
+
+During our first winter in Berlin we spent many afternoons at the
+Ice Palace in the Lutherstrasse, an indoor ice rink much larger
+than the one in the Freidrichstrasse, the Admirals Palast, where
+the ice ballets are given and the graceful Charlotte used to
+appear. The skating club of the Lutherstrasse was under the
+patronage of the Crown Prince and was one of the very few meeting
+places of Berlin society. The women were taught to waltz by male
+instructors and the men by several young women--blonde skaters
+from East Prussia. I tried to improve my skating and spent many
+hours making painful "Bogens" or circles under the efficient eyes
+of a little East Prussia instructress. Afternoon tea was served
+during the interval of skating and one afternoon a week was
+specially reserved for the Club members.
+
+One of my young secretaries used to go occasionally to Wannsee,
+near Berlin, to play hockey with a German friend; as the young
+men were nearly all in the war, girls made up the majority of
+each team. My secretary reported that those German girls were as
+strong, as enduring and as skilful as the average young man.
+
+Girls of the working classes, instead of flirting or turkey
+trotting at night, make a practice of going to the Turnvereins,
+to exercise in the gymnasiums there. If the members of the German
+lower classes only had the opportunity to rise in life what would
+they not accomplish! So many of them are very ambitious,
+persistent, earnest and thrifty.
+
+Of course, female suffrage in Germany or anything approaching it
+is very distant. First of all, the men must win a real ballot for
+themselves in Prussia, a real representation in the Reichstag. In
+the Germany of to-day, a woman with feminist aspirations is
+looked on as the men of the official class look on a Social
+Democrat, something hardly to be endured. And this is in spite of
+the fact that the nations to the North, in Scandinavia, freed
+women even before America did.
+
+The most beautiful woman in Berlin society is Countess
+Oppersdorff--the mother of thirteen children. She is not German,
+but was born a Polish Princess Radziwill.
+
+The chief lady of the Imperial Court is Countess Brockdorff. She
+is rather stern in appearance and manner, and rumour has it that
+she was appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress
+to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the
+Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away
+from the traditional rigidity of the Prussian royal house.
+
+Countess Brockdorff is a most able woman. I grew to have not only
+a great respect, but almost an affection for her. At court
+functions she usually wears a mantilla as a distinguished mark
+and several orders and decorations. We had three women friends
+from America with us in Berlin whom we presented at Court. All
+were married, but only the husband of one of them could leave his
+work and visit Germany. The two other husbands, in accordance
+with the good American custom, were at work in America. Countess
+Brockdorff spoke to the lady whose husband was with her, saying
+to her, "I am glad to see that your husband is with you," an
+implied rebuke to the other ladies and an exhibition of that
+failure to understand other nations so characteristic of highly
+placed Germans. With us, of course, a good-natured American
+husband, wedded as much to his business as to his wife, permits
+his wife to travel abroad without him and neither he nor she is
+reproved in America because of this.
+
+Among the other ladies attendant on the Empress are Fraeulein von
+Gersdorff, whose cousin is a lawyer practising in New York, and
+Countess Keller. There are other ladies and a number of maids of
+honour and all of them are overworked, acting as secretaries,
+answering letters and attending various charitable and other
+functions, either with the Empress or representing her. One of
+the charming maids of honour, Countess Bassewitz, was married
+during the war to Prince Oscar, the Kaiser's fifth son. This
+marriage was morganatic, that is, the lady does not take the
+name, rank and title of her husband. In this case another title
+was given her, that of Countess Ruppin, and her sons will be
+known as Counts Ruppin, but will not be Princes of Prussia.
+
+There is much misunderstanding in America as to these morganatic
+marriages. By the rules of many royal and princely houses, a
+member of the house cannot marry a woman not of equal rank and
+give her his name, titles and rank. But the marriage is in all
+other respects perfectly legal. The ceremony is performed in
+accordance with Prussian law, before a civil magistrate and also
+in a church, and should the husband attempt to marry again he
+would be guilty of bigamy.
+
+I gave away the bride at one of these morganatic marriages, when
+Prince Christian of Hesse married Miss Elizabeth Reid-Rogers, a
+daughter of Richard Reid Rogers, a lawyer of New York. Prince
+Christian has an extremely remote chance of ever coming to the
+throne of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, but nevertheless and because
+of the rules of the House of Hesse-Barchfeld, he cannot give his
+rank and title to a wife, not of equal birth. The head of the
+House, therefore, the Grand Duke of Hesse, conferred the title of
+Baroness Barchfeld in her own right on the bride, and her
+children will be known as Barons and Baronesses Barchfeld.
+
+When Prince Christian and his wife go out to dinner in Berlin, he
+is given his rank at the table as a member of a royal house, but
+his wife is treated on a parity with the wives of all officers
+holding commissions of equal grade with her husband in the army.
+As her husband is a Lieutenant, she ranks merely as a Lieutenant's
+wife. On the same day that Miss Rogers and Prince Christian were
+wedded, Miss Cecilia May of Baltimore married Lieutenant Vom
+Rath. I acted as one of Miss May's witnesses at the Standesamt,
+where the civil marriage was performed, while the religious
+marriage took place in our Embassy. Lieutenant Vom Rath is the
+son of one of the proprietors of the great dye works manufactories
+known as Lucius-Meister-Farbewerke at Hoehst, near Frankfurt a. M.,
+where salvarsan and many other medicines used in America are
+manufactured, as well as dyestuffs and chemicals.
+
+In my earlier book I described presentations at the Royal
+Prussian Court in Berlin, especially the great court called the
+"Schleppencour," because of the long trains or Schleppe worn by
+the women. All the little kingdoms and principalities of the
+German Empire have somewhat the same ceremonies. In Dresden, the
+capital of Saxony, a peculiar custom is followed. The King and
+Queen sit at a table at one end of the room playing cards and the
+members of the court and distinguished strangers file into the
+room, pass by the card table in single file and drop deep
+courtesies and make bows to the seated royalties, who, as a
+rule, do not even take the trouble to glance at those engaged in
+this servile tribute to small royalty. I suppose that the excuse
+for this is that it is an old custom. But so is serfdom!
+
+There are in Germany many so-called mediatised families,
+so-called because at one time they possessed royal rank and
+rights over small bits of territory before Napoleon changed the
+map of Europe and wiped out so many small principalities.
+
+At the Congress of Vienna these families who lost their right of
+rule, in part compensation, were given the right to marry either
+royalties or commoners; so that the marriage of a Prince of
+Prussia with a daughter of one of these mediatised houses would
+not be morganatic. The girl would take the full rank of her
+husband and the children would inherit any rights, including the
+rights to the throne possessed by him.
+
+Thus the beautiful young Countess Platen, shortly before we left
+Berlin, was married to von Stumm, the very able Under Secretary
+of State for Foreign Affairs. While she became on her marriage
+Baroness von Stumm, nevertheless, if she had married the son of
+the Kaiser, she would have taken his rank and her children would
+have inherited all rights and titles possessed by their father.
+This is because the Platens, although bearing only the title of
+Counts, are a mediatised family.
+
+It is noteworthy that in Berlin women of that blonde type with
+regular features, which we believe is the German type, are very
+rare. This type is to be found perfected in Scandinavia,
+although a few specimens exist in Germany. Looking over a Berlin
+theatre I have often noticed the predominance of brown and black
+hair.
+
+There is always some one higher up to whom German women must
+curtsy. All women, whatever their husband's rank, must curtsy to
+a Royal Prince. Unmarried girls curtsy to married women and kiss
+their hands. Men, on meeting women, always kiss their hands.
+
+Berlin is certainly the gossip headquarters of the world. Some
+years ago the whole town was invaded by a mania for anonymous
+letter writing, and when the smoke had cleared away few were left
+with unriddled reputations.
+
+It is the fashion of the present court, however, to be very
+puritanical. No such little affairs are going on publicly, as
+have occurred in the annals of the Hohenzollern family. For even
+the old Emperor William, grandfather of the present Kaiser, had
+numerous love affairs. The tree is still pointed out near the
+Tiergarten where he met Princess Radziwill every day.
+
+And the Chancellor's palace was once the home of another royal
+"friend."
+
+The Foreign Office was at one time the home of the Italian
+dancer, La Barberini, the only woman who ever for a time enslaved
+Frederick the Great. I discussed affairs of state with von Jagow
+and Zimmermann in the very room where she gave her supper
+parties.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HOME LIFE AND "BRUTALITY" OF THE PEOPLE
+
+
+The apartments of Berlin are designed for outward show for which
+the Berliners have a weakness. They have great reception and
+dining-rooms called "representation rooms," but very little
+comfort or space in the sleeping quarters.
+
+It is impossible to think of dropping in suddenly on a Berliner
+for a meal. The dinners are always for as many people as the
+rooms will hold and are served by a caterer.
+
+Only two very distinguished guests may be invited. The host and
+hostess sit opposite each other at the sides of the table, with
+the guests tapering off in rank to right and left of them, the
+ends of the tables being filled up with aides and secretaries.
+When a great man is invited his aide or secretary must be asked
+also. These come usually without their wives.
+
+After dinner men and women leave the table together and smoke in
+the other rooms of the house, going from group to group. And,
+although perhaps ten kinds of wine are served during dinner, as
+soon as the guests leave the dining-room, servants make their
+appearance with trays of glasses of light and dark beer and
+continue to offer beer during the remainder of the evening.
+
+The Germans talk much of food and spend a greater part of their
+income on food than any other nation. They take much interest in
+table furnishings, china, etc., and invariably turn over the
+plates to see the marks on the under side.
+
+Whipped cream is an essential to many German dishes, and in the
+season a Berliner will commit any crime to obtain some plover's
+eggs.
+
+The weiss bier of Berlin, served in wide goblets, is rather going
+out of fashion. It often is drunk mixed with raspberry juice.
+
+The restaurants of Berlin are not gay, like those of Paris. There
+is, however, a rather rough night life created for foreign
+consumption. I did not take in any of these night restaurants and
+dancing cabarets, warned by the case of an Ambassador from ----
+who was reproved by von Jagow for visiting the "Palais de Danse."
+
+In peace time few automobiles are to be seen on the Berlin
+streets. There are many millionaires in the city, but the old
+habits of German thrift persist.
+
+The modern architecture of Germany is repulsive. The man who
+builds a new house seems to want to get something resembling as
+nearly as possible a family vault. Ihne, court architect and
+Imperial favourite, has produced, however, some beautiful
+buildings, notably the new library in Berlin.
+
+Munich pretends to be more of a centre of art and music than
+Berlin. Artists have their headquarters there, but the disciples
+of the awful "art nouveau" and kindred "arts" have produced many
+horrors in striving for new effects.
+
+The opera in Munich is better than in Berlin. One of the Bavarian
+Princes plays a fiddle in the orchestra in the Royal Opera House.
+
+The Berlin hospitals are better than ours, except for the caste
+system which prevails even there, and there are first, second and
+third class wards.
+
+The underground road is built at about the same depth as the New
+York subway. There are two classes, second and third; there are
+no guards on the trains, only the motorman in the first car. The
+passengers open the side doors themselves and these are shut
+either by passengers or station guards. Accidents are rare, all
+showing the innate discipline of the people. The charge is by
+distance. You buy a ticket for five or eight stations and give up
+the ticket as you go out of the station. If you have travelled
+farther than the distance called for by your ticket you must make
+the additional payment. This requires that each ticket be
+inspected separately when taken up.
+
+The tramways have different routes. These routes are shown by
+signs and by numbers displayed on the car. Women motormen in the
+war period caused many accidents.
+
+For those Germans who cannot afford to ride or shoot, walking is
+the principal recreation. There are a few golf courses in the
+German Empire, mostly patronised by foreigners and American
+dentists.
+
+Military training is always in view and the use of the knapsack
+on walking tours is universal, even school children carry their
+books to school in knapsacks and so become accustomed, at an
+early age, to carry this part of the soldier's burden.
+
+Occasionally, in summer, bands of girls or boys are to be seen on
+walking tours. In addition to the usual knapsack, they carry
+guitars or mandolins. These young people are known as "Wander
+vogel" (wandering birds), and sing as they walk. But they don't
+sing very loud. They might break some regulation.
+
+Outside of the large cities and even in the cities vacant lots
+are occupied by "arbour colonies" (lauben colonie)--tiny little
+houses of wood erected by city workingmen and surrounded by
+little gardens of vegetables and flowers. Here the city workman
+spends Sunday and often the twilight hours and the night in
+summer time. Of course, these are possible only in a country
+where the workingman is in a distinct social class and where he
+is compelled to be content with the amusements and occupations of
+that class alone.
+
+There is no baseball or substitute for it--the clerks get their
+diversion in a country excursion or at the free bath on the Wann
+or Muggel Lake.
+
+These "free baths," so-called, are stretches of sandy lake shore
+where the populace resort in hot weather, undressing with the
+indifference of animals on the beach, men and women all mixed
+together, the men wearing only little bathing trunks and the
+women scanty one-piece bathing suits. There is a bathing tent
+where two cents is charged for the privilege of undressing, but
+most prefer the open beach. Few swim or go in the water, but the
+majority lie about the beach, often sleeping in affectionate
+embrace, all without exciting any comment or ridicule.
+
+The boy scout movement was taken up enthusiastically in Germany
+with the cheerful support of the military caste, who look on the
+activity as a welcome adjunct to military training. The boys
+certainly are given a dose of real drill. On one occasion I saw a
+boy company at drill march straight into the Havel river, no
+command to halt having been given at the river bank!
+
+The workingmen of Germany are more brutal than those of England,
+France and America, but this is because of the low wages they
+receive, and because they feel the weight of the caste system.
+
+In a speech in December, 1917, I said that a revolution in
+Germany would come after the war and that a fellow Ambassador in
+Berlin had said to me that because of the great brutality of the
+workingmen in Germany this uprising would make the French
+Revolution look like a Methodist Sunday School picnic. A
+newspaper reported me as saying this on my own authority and
+added that I had said the Germans were the most "bestial" people
+on earth.
+
+I only want to be responsible for what I actually say. I did not
+call the Germans "bestial," although unfortunately it is a fact
+that many officers of the army and others have been guilty of a
+brutality which has helped turn the face of the world from the
+whole German people.
+
+Not all the Germans are brutal. I received many letters revealing
+evidence to the contrary.
+
+Here is the protest of a German soldier, an eye-witness of the
+slaughter of Russian soldiers in the Masurian lakes and swamps:
+
+     "It was frightful, heart-rending, as these masses
+     of human beings were driven to destruction. Above
+     the terrible thunder of the cannon could be heard
+     the heart-rending cries of the Russians: 'Oh,
+     Prussians! Oh, Prussians!' But there was no mercy.
+     Our Captain had ordered: 'The whole lot must die;
+     so rapid fire.'
+
+     "As I have heard, five men and one officer on our
+     side went mad from those heart-rending cries. But
+     most of my comrades and the officers joked as the
+     unarmed and helpless Russians shrieked for mercy
+     when they were being suffocated in the swamps and
+     shot down. The order was: 'Close up and at it
+     harder!'
+
+     "For days afterward those heart-rending yells
+     followed me, and I dare not think of them or I
+     shall go mad. There is no God, there is no
+     morality and no ethics any more. There are no
+     human beings any more, but only beasts. Down with
+     militarism!"
+
+This was the experience of a Prussian soldier. At present
+wounded; Berlin, October 22, 1914.
+
+     "If you are a truth-loving man, please receive
+     these lines, from a common Prussian soldier."
+
+Here is the testimony of another German soldier on the East
+front:
+
+     "Russian Poland, Dec. 18, 1914.
+
+     "In the name of Christianity I send you these
+     words. My conscience forces me as a Christian
+     German soldier to inform you of these lines.
+
+     "Wounded Russians are killed with the bayonet
+     according to orders, and Russians who have
+     surrendered are often shot down in masses
+     according to orders in spite of their
+     heart-rending prayers.
+
+     "In the hope that you, as the representative of a
+     Christian State, will protest against this, I sign
+     myself, '_A German Soldier and Christian._'
+
+     "I would give my name and regiment, but these
+     words could get me court-martialed for divulging
+     military secrets."
+
+The following letter is from a soldier on the Western Front:
+
+     "To the American Government, Washington, U. S. A.:
+
+     "Englishmen who have surrendered are shot down in
+     small groups. With the French one is more
+     considerate. I ask whether men let themselves be
+     taken prisoner in order to be disarmed and shot
+     down afterward? Is that chivalry in battle?
+
+     "It is no longer a secret among the people; one
+     hears everywhere that few prisoners are taken;
+     they are shot down in small groups. They say
+     naively, 'We don't want any unnecessary mouths to
+     feed. Where there is no one to enter complaint,
+     there is no judge.' Is there, then, no power in
+     the world which can put an end to these murders
+     and rescue the victims? Where is Christianity?
+     Where is right? Might is right.
+
+_"A Soldier and Man Who Is No Barbarian."_
+
+The first two letters refer to the battle of the Masurian Lakes,
+when the troops of Hindenburg, in checking the invading
+Russians, indulged in a needless slaughter of prisoners.
+
+I heard in Berlin of many cases of insanity of both German
+officers and men who were driven insane by the scenes of
+slaughter at this battle and especially by the great cry of
+horror and despair uttered by the poor Russians as they were shot
+down in cold blood or driven to a living death in the lakes and
+marshes.
+
+An American newspaper said this could not be true, asking why did
+I not publish the letters in my first book. But my first book did
+not contain all I have to relate, and the letters in question
+were sent by me to the State Department early in the war, and
+were not at hand on the publication of my other series.
+
+But speaking of anonymous letters, shortly before I left Germany
+I received a package containing a necklace of diamonds and pearls
+with a letter, which, translated, reads as follows:
+
+     "The enclosed jewelry was found in the fully
+     destroyed house of Monsieur Guesnet of 36 Rue de
+     Bassano, Paris. It is requested that this jewelry,
+     which is his property, be returned to him."
+
+The package was addressed to the Embassy of the United States. I
+took it with me on leaving Germany and restored it to the family
+of the owner in Paris. The Guesnet country house lay within the
+German lines and the sending of the jewelry to me shows
+conscience somewhere in the German army.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+AIMS OF THE AUTOCRACY
+
+
+I have shown how the Kaiser is imbued with a desire of conquest,
+how, as he himself states, he dreamed a dream of world empire in
+which his mailed fist should be imposed upon all the countries of
+the earth.
+
+But the Kaiser alone could not have driven Germany into war. His
+system could.
+
+The head of one of the great banks of Germany told me in the
+first few weeks of the war that the Kaiser, when called upon at
+the last moment to sign the order for mobilisation by the General
+Staff, hesitated and did so only after the officers of the
+General Staff had threatened to break their swords over their
+knees.
+
+If this story is true, what a pity that the Kaiser did not allow
+the officers to break their swords! What would have happened?
+Would the military have seized the power and deposed the Kaiser,
+putting the Crown Prince in his place? I believe it might have
+happened had he refused to sign the order. The Kaiser, after
+leaving Kiel, attended a council at Potsdam where war was decided
+upon, and I really doubt whether at the last moment he did not
+shrink before the awful responsibility or hesitate to sign the
+mobilisation order.
+
+The immediate cause of Germany's going to war was the feeling on
+the part of the autocracy that the people would not much longer
+bear the yoke of militarism. That this fear had justification was
+shown by the enormous vote of lack of confidence in the Reichstag
+after the Zabern affair. At all costs the autocracy must be
+preserved, and if in addition the world could be conquered, so
+much the better.
+
+With modern improvements on the outside the heart of the
+government of Germany is that of the Middle Ages. The nobles as a
+rule are poor, the returns from their landed estates small, and,
+in peace times, the army general, the Prussian noble, and the
+Prussian official is overshadowed in display and expenditure by
+the rich merchant.
+
+Army officers, nobles and governing class felt this and believed
+that war would restore what they regarded as the natural
+equilibrium of the country, the officers, the officials and the
+nobles at the top and the merchant class back in its place below.
+
+With war, retired generals living on small pensions in dingy
+towns once more became personages, rushing about the country in
+automobiles attended by brilliant staffs and holding almost the
+power of life and death. His lands worked by prisoners at six
+cents a day, and their products sold at five times the original
+price with no new taxes on either land or incomes, the Prussian
+Junker is enjoying the war.
+
+And this autocracy can make no peace which is not a "German
+peace," which does not mean that the Emperor and the generals can
+ride through the Brandenburger Thor to celebrate the conclusion
+of what may be thought a victorious war.
+
+For the plain people of Germany, while they can make no
+revolution now, on returning to their homes maimed and broken
+after four years in the trenches, will revolt at last, if a peace
+has been concluded which does not spell success for Germany. They
+will say to their government,--to the autocracy,--"We had no
+political power. We left everything in your hands. We had nothing
+to say either about the declaration of this war or its conduct.
+In return for our submission you promised efficiency and you
+promised us more, the conquest of the world. You have failed and
+we are going to overthrow you."
+
+It is the knowledge of this that makes the Emperor and the
+autocracy ready to take any chance, anxious to continue the war
+in the hope that some lucky stroke, either of arms or of
+propaganda, will turn the scale in their favour, because they
+know that any peace that is not a German peace will mean the end
+of autocracy and probably of the Hohenzollerns.
+
+And all the while the people are told that the war is a defensive
+war, although the German armies fight far in enemy territory in
+France, in Russia, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Roumania. They
+always are told, too, that it is Germany who is desirous of
+making peace and that the Allies refuse.
+
+Last summer (1917) when an interview I had with the Chancellor in
+which he named the peace terms of the autocracy was published,
+the interview was repudiated by the Chancellor, who stated that
+these terms were not his. I am sure that they are not his and
+were not his, but I am equally sure that they are the terms and
+were the terms of the autocracy of Prussia as stated by him.
+Shortly after this the newspapers confirmed part of these terms,
+telling of the talk in Germany of the guarantees to be exacted in
+case Belgium was surrendered by the Germans, which guarantees
+amounted to the absolute control of that unfortunate country and
+"rectification of the frontiers" demanded by Germany on the
+Eastern Front.
+
+Outside of Germany the propagandist and the pacifist and other
+agents of the Central Empires have proclaimed that this war is
+not a war of conquest or aggression.
+
+But the evidence is to the contrary.
+
+Kaiser and pastors, Reichstag members and generals, orators and
+journalists, have all at different times during the war declared
+themselves in favour of conquest.
+
+And it is extraordinary as showing the masterful manner in which
+the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making
+these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to
+cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented
+from making peace only by the wicked Allies.
+
+The King of Bavaria, speaking early in 1915 at a banquet, said,
+"I rejoice because we can at last have a reckoning with our
+enemies and because at last we can obtain a direct outlet from
+the Rhine to the sea. Ten months have gone by. Much blood has
+been poured out. But it shall not be poured in vain, for the
+fruit of the war shall be a strengthening of the German Empire
+and _the extension of its boundaries_, so far as this is
+necessary in order that we may be assured against future
+attacks."
+
+Duke John Albert of Mecklenburg, who is the gentleman who slapped
+his chest and cried out to me on one occasion that Germany would
+never forget the export of arms and ammunition to her enemies by
+America and that some day Germany would have her revenge,
+declared also in 1915 that the war would give Germany not only a
+mighty African Colonial Empire but a sufficiency of strongholds
+on earth for their navy, commerce, coaling and wireless stations.
+
+The Kaiser, himself, speaking in July, 1915, in his call to the
+German people issued from the Great General Headquarters, said
+"that Germany would fight until peace came, a peace which offered
+the necessary military, political and commercial guarantees for
+the future."
+
+Vice-President Paasche of the Reichstag, in April at Kreuznach,
+said, "We are not allowed to speak about conditions of peace. But
+the wish must be given expression that lives in the heart of
+every German that we will not give up enemy land conquered with
+so much German blood."
+
+A sentiment also expressed in April, 1915, by the National
+Liberal Reichstag member, Wachhorst de Wente, was to this effect:
+"Our fatherland must be larger. We must not allow it to be taken
+from us. Otherwise we will have obtained nothing except victory.
+We desire also to have the reward of victory. We will not give
+back all."
+
+Von Heydebrand, the Conservative Leader, the uncrowned King of
+Prussia, as he is called, demanded as a condition of peace "a
+stronger and larger Germany."
+
+Naturally, the Conservative leaders are for conquest and
+annexation. Numerous articles in the Centrist Cologne _Volkzeitung_
+were published protesting against giving Belgium her independence
+again. In April, 1916, this newspaper approved the statement of
+Leader Spahn of the Centrum party that the war must not end
+without "tangible results," and also the statement of Stresemann,
+another member of the Reichstag: "We demand and expect a larger
+Germany." In February, 1916, _Germania_, the Berlin organ of the
+Catholic party, demanded also a tangible prize of war as one of
+the conditions of peace.
+
+Countless examples can be given from speeches in the Reichstag
+and from leaders and newspapers of virtually all parties in
+Germany, showing this desire for conquest, showing that Germany
+will not be content to go back to the situation before the war.
+Even Maximilian Harden, who is respected all over the world
+because of his fearlessness and reason, has written since the war
+in favour of a greater Germany, thus:
+
+     "We wage the war from the rock of conviction that
+     Germany after its deeds has a right to demand
+     broader room on the earth and greater
+     possibilities of action and these things we must
+     attain."
+
+Dr. Spahn, to-day the leader of the Centrum party, answering in
+December, 1915, Scheidemann, who had argued against annexation,
+and speaking in the name of 254 members of the Reichstag
+representing the citizens' parties said:
+
+     "We wait in complete union, with calm
+     determination, and let me add, with trust in God,
+     the hour which makes possible peace negotiations,
+     in which forever the military, commercial,
+     financial and political interests of Germany must,
+     in all circumstances and by all means, be
+     protected, including the widening of territories
+     necessary to this end."
+
+Ludendorff is now perhaps the man of most weight and influence,
+barring no one, in all Germany. When only Chief of Staff of the
+East Army he wrote: "The Power of Middle Europe will be
+strengthened, that of the Great Russians pushed back towards the
+East, from whence it came, at a time not very distant."
+
+These quotations simply show that the great majority of
+Germans--those outside the social democratic party--of the
+Germans, indeed, who rule the country, conduct its commerce, and
+officer its army and navy--all have been infected with a
+dangerous microbe of Pan-Germanism and of world-conquest.
+
+Every one who professes a knowledge of German life and character,
+every one who writes of the origin of the war, talks of
+Treitschke, Nietzsche and Bernhardi.
+
+Nothing made the Germans angrier than to find in foreign
+newspapers that on this triumvirate was placed the burden of the
+responsibility for the war. And I agree with the complaining
+Germans. Bernhardi, who, during the war, was given a command
+behind the fighting front at Posen, was not considered a skilful
+general by the military or a great or even popular writer by the
+people.
+
+How many people in our country or in France or in England are
+influenced by the lectures or writings of one college professor?
+And yet, according to many out of Germany, Treitschke, the deaf
+professor of Heidelberg, is the one man who transmuted the soul
+of Germany and incited the Empire to a cruel war.
+
+In America you can find any brand of professor, from a professor
+in a Virginia College who recently boasted that he would not
+subscribe to American Liberty war bonds, but would send the money
+to the Socialist, pacifist candidate for Mayor of New York, to
+the Professor in the University of Chicago who based his claim to
+fame on the fact that he had never been kissed. What professor of
+history has had any great political influence beyond his own
+college?
+
+And it is equally absurd to think of a Prussian Junker, sitting
+by the fire in the evening, deeply absorbed in the philosophy of
+Nietzsche. All Germans, as a matter of fact, through pride of
+conquest in 1864, 1866 and 1870 and great industrial success,
+had come to believe themselves to be supermen delegated by Heaven
+to win the world. Treitschke and Nietzsche were simply affected
+in their writings by this universal poison of overweening vanity.
+They but reflected the fashion of the day in thinking; they did
+not lead the nation's thought. Nietzsche himself wrote in one of
+his letters shortly before his death which occurred in 1900,
+"Although I am in my forty-fifth year and have written fifteen
+books, I am alone in Germany. There has not been a single
+moderately respectful review of one of my books."
+
+I never found a German of the ruling class who had read anything
+written by Treitschke, Nietzsche or Bernhardi.
+
+Tannenberg had more readers and a greater following, although he,
+of course, expresses only the aspirations of the Pan-Germans. But
+he presents concrete positions which any one can understand.
+
+For instance, the German merchant looking at Tannenberg's book
+and seeing the map of South America coloured with almost
+universal German domination, smiles and approves, for he thinks
+German trade will swallow that rich continent and clever laws and
+regulations will exclude the imports of all other nations.
+
+In some aspects Tannenberg foresaw what is happening to-day when
+he says, "The Finns have been waiting a long time to detach
+themselves from the Great Russians, their hereditary enemies."
+
+But in the main, in his sketch of the war to which he looked
+forward, he failed to predict accurately the attitude of the
+world. His predictions represent many of the dead hopes of the
+Pan-Germans, those Germans who believe it is the right and duty
+of Germany to conquer all.
+
+Prophesying war between Germany on one side and France and Russia
+on the other, Tannenberg believed that more confusion and
+resistance to war than actually occurred would come in Bohemia
+and Poland following the order for mobilisation in the Slav parts
+of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He mistakenly wrote also that
+Japan would declare war on Russia, a belief shared by the
+torchlight paraders of Berlin in August, 1914.
+
+Tannenberg thought Italy would declare war on France. He was
+wrong in his confidence that France was decadent, wrong in
+believing that England and the United States would only talk but
+would not fight, yet right in his belief that revolution would
+break out in Russia. In fact, I think that for years after the
+Franco-Russian Alliance, Germany was preparing a Russian
+revolution to break out on whatever day the Russian troops were
+ordered to their colours. He says that France will be so
+thoroughly defeated that the "war ought not to leave her more
+than eyes to cry with."
+
+I am afraid that while many eyes will cry in France, through the
+breadth of Germany there will be but few homes where eyes will
+not weep over the casualties of war, for which cruel, crazy
+dreamers of world empire, like Tannenberg, are largely responsible.
+
+For Tannenberg's dream, the dream of the autocracy and of the
+Pan-Germanists, is to give to Germany most of South America, a
+great part of Africa, of Asia, the great islands north of
+Australia, including those of the Dutch; with Holland and Belgium
+part of the German Empire as well as the Baltic provinces, and a
+share of the French colonies to be divided with England.
+
+The share of the United States for standing by and agreeing to
+the robbery was to be, according to Tannenberg, a protectorate
+over Mexico and Central America.
+
+Mexicans who were offered Texas and New Mexico by Zimmermann
+should read this Pan-Germanistic book in which all of Mexico is
+generously bestowed on us.
+
+And I wish that Tannenberg's book could be read by every public
+man in South America--that South America in which the Argentine,
+Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, the southern parts of Brazil and
+Bolivia are, according to Tannenberg, to come under the
+protectorate of Germany. Latin-American publicists should inquire
+from the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina how long it is
+before a "protectorate" is transmuted into a conquered country.
+Tannenberg does speak for a great party in Germany. The
+children's school books show German "colonies" in Southern
+Brazil.
+
+As Sainte Beuve said, there is a fashion in intellect. The German
+to-day is essentially practical, cold, cynical, and calculating.
+The poetry and the Christmas trees, the sentiment and sentimentality,
+remain like the architectural monuments of a vanished race, mere
+reminders of the kindlier Germany that once was, the Germany of
+our first impressions, the Germany that many once loved. But that
+Germany has long since disappeared, buried beneath the spiked
+helmets of Prussianism, and another intellect is in vogue.
+
+That older, kindlier Germany was the nation tempered and softened
+by the suffering of the Napoleonic wars. After the battle of
+Jena, where Napoleon rubbed the face of Prussia in the mud of
+defeat, there came on Germany that period of privation which left
+its impress so deeply on the German as to make thrift his first
+characteristic. A spirit of lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism
+imbued the whole people. Young girls cut off their long golden
+hair to be sold for the Fatherland. Jewels were given by all who
+possessed them. "Gold gab ich fuer Eisen" (I gave gold for iron)
+became a saying based on the readiness with which the rich made
+sacrifices to the cause of country. And with this patriotism, and
+with this penury, came into every home a more intimate family
+life, a greater earnestness, a deeper religious sentiment, a
+turning towards the idealistic side of life; but all was changed
+by the successful wars of Prussia that gave Prussia the
+leadership, the right to rule Germany. Then, with the end of the
+Franco-Prussian war, came a period of material prosperity, the
+rush of the population to the cities, and the building of great
+manufactories, of enormous shipping interests, of powerful
+banking institutions, of trusts and combinations which marked the
+Germany of 1914.
+
+The fashion in intellect had changed, and the grasping,
+successful Prussian of 1914 was far removed from the ruined,
+chastened Prussian of 1810.
+
+Nations, like individuals, change in character with the stress of
+life. From 1810, the period of a sorrowing Germany, to 1914 is
+one hundred and four years. The same number of years subtracted
+from the year 1796, when our new Republic was firmly established,
+and when George Washington made his noble farewell address,
+brings us to 1692, when nineteen persons were legally hanged,
+charged with witchcraft in Massachusetts, and when in that State
+Giles Cory perished under the awful torture, judicially applied,
+known as the "peine forte et dure."
+
+It is quite true that weak voices against annexations have been
+heard.
+
+Dernburg and Professor Hans Delbrueck (the latter not to be
+confused with the disgraced, pig-slaughtering, ex-Vice-Chancellor),
+in their petition against the annexation of Belgium, showed a
+most reasonable spirit, and signing this petition with them were
+many of the great men and great minds of Germany. But their
+movement was a failure in Germany itself. Their campaign of
+reason could make no headway against the "League of Six"--the six
+great iron and steel companies of the West, who, with their paid
+lansquenets of the press and hired accelerators of public
+opinion, clamour for annexation so that they may rivet the chains
+of their industrial monopoly on the whole continent of Europe.
+
+The Conservatives and Junkers, on the other hand, favour
+annexations to the East; especially do they eye greedily the
+Baltic provinces where great estates are in the hands of
+landowners of German blood. What a reinforcement to the
+conservative cause would these Junkers of the Baltic be and, in
+the Conservative view, if there are to be annexations in the West
+which would increase the number of industrial subjects and,
+undoubtedly social democrats, there must be a balancing accession
+of agricultural interest on the Eastern frontier.
+
+The only cloud in the serene blue sky of Junker hopes is the fact
+that annexations in Poland would add to the number of Roman
+Catholics and, therefore, to the power of the Centrum or Roman
+Catholic party. Hence the desire to make of Poland an independent
+kingdom, but one controlled by the Central Empires.
+
+The Poles are more at ease, having been given more liberty, under
+Austrian than under Prussian rule, and hence the tendency is to
+put Poland under Austrian rule. The Prussians do not object to
+this because it does not matter whether Prussia controls Poland
+directly or through Prussia's control of Austria, now, alas, only
+too apparent.
+
+But the principal aim of the nobles and the landed aristocracy of
+Germany, followed by their host of office-holders and dependents,
+is to keep the "graft," to hold the offices, civil and military,
+filled so long by these old Prussian families.
+
+The von Lachnows, to imagine a typical Junker family, hold one
+thousand acres of land in Brandenburg. The head of the house,
+Baron von Lachnow, was Minister to Sweden. After having held as a
+young man a position of Secretary of Legation, he left the
+diplomatic service to fight with his old regiment, the Gleiwitz
+Hussars, through the Franco-Prussian War. He then returned to the
+diplomatic service in which he finally attained the rank of
+Minister to Sweden. He now lives on his estate of Lachnow, with a
+pension as ex-minister. On great occasions he appears at the
+Royal Palace, resplendent in uniform, wearing the Orders of the
+Red Eagle and Prussian Crown with the Cross of the Johannis
+Order. His total income from pensions and estate is about ten
+thousand dollars a year. The oldest son, Baron Karl Friederich,
+after serving in his father's regiment, resigned and entered the
+diplomatic service and is now second secretary of the legation in
+Buenos Aires. He married there the daughter of a rich cattle
+owner. The second son, Baron Johann, is now Police President of
+the city of Schelsau, after having been district attorney in an
+industrial district where he distinguishes himself by his
+prosecution of the social democrats. He married the daughter of
+the rich manufacturing proprietor Schulz, who sells, wholesale,
+little statuettes on the Ritterstrasse in Berlin. Baron August is
+in the army, detailed to the General Staff and with a great
+future before him. Baron Max is now out of a job. While on his
+vacation the colony, in which he was secretary to the Governor,
+was captured by the British, and so at the outbreak of the war he
+assumed his old uniform of First Lieutenant in the Gleiwitz
+Hussars and was given command of the prison camp at Schluttenberg,
+where he has won distinction for his severity with British
+prisoners. Baron Ernst is in the navy. This is considered rather
+a come-down by the family, as the navy, unlike the army, is not
+aristocratic. He has great hopes of marrying the only daughter of
+Von Blitz, who owns a splendid estate in Silesia. One of the
+daughters, Hilda, is married to Count Wenharp, owner of a
+beautiful estate in Pomerania, and the other to Hochlst, who is
+judge of the law court in Holstein and who owns the Rittergut (or
+manor) of Klein Spassberg, near Kiel.
+
+[Illustration: VIEWS OF A TYPICAL HOLSTEIN COUNTRY HOME OWNED BY
+A JUNKER COUNTRY NOBLEMAN]
+
+The estate of Lachnow is perfectly flat ground. The road to
+Brandenburg runs through the estate and village, the houses of
+which front directly on the road. This road in the village is
+paved with rough cobblestones. The house of the von Lachnows
+almost touches the road, from which it is separated by an old
+stone wall. One side is on a square, cobblestoned courtyard,
+formed by the great barns, stables and sheds which surround the
+other three sides of the square. The house and all the barns are
+built of rough stone. The house is built on the plan of a piece
+of Castile soap, walls and roof and nothing more. Inside there
+are a dining-room, two parlours and an office-den for the master,
+upstairs bedrooms, opening on a long hall; no bathrooms, no
+conveniences, even the water is brought in by the maids from the
+well in the centre of the court. The furniture is old and plain.
+The family does not keep an automobile, but two horses draw a
+dog cart to the station and take the family on visits to the
+neighbouring aristocracy. The driver is the sexton of the village
+church on these occasions. On the two sides of the house away
+from the main road and the square of barns there is a park of
+about ten acres. Here are a few evergreens and gravel paths and a
+pond where some enormous carp excite the wonder of the village
+children.
+
+Baroness Lachnow is renowned for her devotion to the four K's. No
+one has a better stock of household linen, all made by her, her
+daughters and her maids, in the whole Mark. She superintends
+every household detail and holds the keys to closets and wine
+cellar.
+
+Of course, the family does not associate with the schoolmaster
+and the Lutheran minister of the village, but they speak very
+kindly to them and the Baron once interested himself in obtaining
+a long service decoration for the schoolmaster.
+
+The von Lachnows live on their estate the year round, except for
+two weeks in February when they go to Berlin to a cheap hotel and
+attend one of the court balls. The Baroness never spends more
+than three hundred and fifty dollars a year on her clothes,
+although when in Sweden, as a Minister's wife she spent more. The
+Baron and Baroness sometimes condescend to dine with the
+father-in-law of their son, a manufactory proprietor, at his
+handsome apartment on the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, but Schultz,
+in spite of his four million marks and growing business, is made
+to feel the wide gulf that separates him from the nobility.
+
+Baron Lachnow farms his own estate. His farm superintendent is
+von Treslow, once an officer in the Gleiwitz Hussars, who was
+compelled to resign because of a crippled arm, badly broken in a
+steeplechase. This taciturn, soured individual, on the outbreak
+of war, was given a place as commander of a village way station
+near the West Front, where his cruelties to the French inhabitants
+will long be remembered.
+
+Food is very simple. The family drink beer except on great
+occasions, but the Baron drinks Moselle at the midday meal and a
+red wine in the evening. The recreation is shooting and visits to
+the neighbours.
+
+Such a visit is a great event, arranged by letter beforehand. The
+von Lachnows drive to visit the von Seltows eighteen miles away.
+They arrive in time for lunch, when much wine is drunk. After
+this the women gossip over their fancy work and the men visit the
+stable, discuss crop prices and inspect the host's collection of
+horse flesh. The family photographs are inspected and Count
+Reventlow's latest article abusing the Americans is discussed and
+the belief suggested that a democratic people without King or
+Kaiser or nobility cannot be organised for war. The Social
+Democrats are condemned and the story gleefully told of how the
+son of von Seltow cut down a Social Democrat who was slow in
+getting out of his way.
+
+I can understand the feelings of the von Lachnows, the imaginary,
+typical Prussian family of the ruling class which I have
+pictured for you. If Germany should be democratised, what place
+would be left for them? The offices of the government thrown open
+to all classes in fair elections, places in the army and navy and
+diplomacy open to competition in great academies like West Point
+and Annapolis. Deprived of the aroma of power given now by
+diplomatic or military place and noble birth in the caste system,
+the sons and daughters could no longer make rich marriages with
+the sons and daughters of the rich business men and manufacturers.
+No more would the civil offices of Prussia be open only to
+appointments among the noble or Junker class.
+
+I do not blame the von Lachnows because they fight tooth and nail
+for the retention of their old privileges--because they endeavour
+to hold the common people in a serfdom almost as complete as that
+of the Dark Ages. The dawn of constitutional government will be
+their twilight, the twilight of the Gods of militarism, of
+privilege, and of caste. Prussian autocracy made the war in a
+last desperate endeavour to bribe the people into continued
+submission.
+
+The only excuse for the existence of the Prussian ruling class
+to-day, as much out of place as chain armour or robber barons, is
+its supposed honesty and efficiency; but no class which has
+brought this war on the German people can be described as
+competent; no sane governing class would have plunged into
+disastrous war a country that by peaceful penetration, by thrift
+and manufacture, and financial and commercial ability was in
+process of acquiring much of the wealth of the world.
+
+The _first_ aim of German autocracy is to keep its own political
+position at home.
+
+_Second_--To obtain as much of the territory of other nations, as
+great an influence in unconquered lands, as possible.
+
+_Third_--To make peace now, but only if that peace is a German
+peace, a peace which can be called and advertised and proclaimed
+as a German victory.
+
+More particularly, Germany now looks to the East. In the
+so-called Baltic provinces of Russia the lands to a great extent
+are owned by Russian subjects of German blood. The peasants are
+poor, servile, without education or property, an ideal field for
+the advance of autocracy. It is hoped to either annex these
+provinces boldly or to establish protectorates, which, sooner or
+later, at an opportune moment, will fall into German hands--just
+as Austria gained the consent of Europe to a protectorate over
+Bosnia and Herzegovina and then suddenly added them to the
+domains of the Hapsburgs.
+
+The German propagandists have long been working on the people of
+that part of Russia known as the Ukraine. If the Ukraine can be
+made a separate protectorate or a semi-independent state, some
+day it will be easily absorbed. The autocracy has the same hope
+about Lithuania, at one time semi-independent. There, too, the
+propagandists have worked on Lithuania--all these provinces, of
+course, differing slightly from the races surrounding and all
+with a semi-independent history, as, for instance, Courland.
+
+But all these races should think twice before they accept a
+momentary independence, if that autonomy is to lead them under
+the Prussian yoke. Whether that yoke is easy to bear or not is
+best answered by the Danes, Alsatians, Poles and Lorrainers who
+have been forcibly incorporated in the Kingdom of Prussia.
+
+But greatest prize of all is the commercial control of Russia
+which the autocracy hopes to win for its merchant class. Time and
+again I was told in Germany that a separate peace with Russia was
+near and that the exploitation of Russia by the enterprising
+German merchants, in a short time, would repay Germany for all
+the losses of the war.
+
+Would it not seem extraordinary if the language of business and
+commerce of the United States were French? But to-day in Russia
+and for years back the language of commercial business intercourse
+has been German. A great beginning, a great foundation it is for
+the eventual control, not only of the business, but the political
+structure of Russia. If the Germans at war with Russia have been
+able to split, revolutionise and divide it and put their
+representatives in control, what will they not be able to
+accomplish when peace shall bring them full liberty to circulate
+freely in that rich but ignorant country.
+
+In the end, all classes in Russia will demand a strong
+government, and if no military dictator, no Russian Napoleon has
+taken in his hands the reins of government, then the German
+Kaiser will stand by ready to whisper to the torn people of
+Russia, as Napoleon III did to the French, "My Empire is Peace!"
+
+But even if Germany evacuates France and restores the complete
+independence of Belgium, even if no territories are gained to the
+East, or protectorates or independent states carved from the body
+of Russia to be a later prey of Germany, Germany will have
+won--if from Bremen to Bagdad German influence or actual German
+rule is predominant in Middle Europe, the Great Central State,
+where the cotton of Mesopotamia, and the coal and iron of
+Westphalia, the copper of Servia, the oil and grain of Roumania
+all will contribute to the manufacturer of Germany, who, in turn,
+will sell his goods in that vast territory. And best of all in
+autocratic view, the man power of the Central Empires will be so
+increased that at a propitious moment, in a characteristic sudden
+assault, the armies of the Central Empires will invade and
+conquer Palestine, Egypt and India, and take what they will in
+Africa and Asia, while British, Japanese, and American and French
+navies impotently rage in useless control of the high seas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AUSTRIA-HUNGARY--THE KAISER'S VASSAL STATE
+
+
+Few people in America perhaps realise how completely
+Austria-Hungary is under the domination of Germany and Kaiserism.
+There are those who think that the hand of the Vienna Government
+was forced by Berlin when the ultimatum to Serbia was answered so
+reasonably by the little country to the south, but there can be
+no doubt that Austria has been ever since under the yoke of the
+German General Staff.
+
+And because the first break, the first glimpse of reasonable
+peace will in turn be forced on Germany by sorely tried
+Austria-Hungary, bent by war and bowed by debt, it is well to
+study a little the races and assess the influences of that
+unfortunate land.
+
+My wife's sister married a Hungarian Count, a member of the
+Hungarian House of Lords, and I have met many of the political
+leaders and magnates of that country on my trips there.
+
+The Germans of Austria are handsomer, more attractive but far
+less efficient than their bloody brethren from the cold,
+wind-swept plains of Prussia. They have acquired a slight touch
+of the Oriental and something of the manana (to-morrow) of the
+Spaniards, a heritage, perhaps, of the days when Spain and
+Austria were so closely connected by Hapsburg rule.
+
+In the presence of an Austrian one feels his charm instead of the
+aggressive personality which is Prussian. Undoubtedly the
+Prussians counted on the good nature of the southern Germans,
+Hungarians, Poles and Slavs in their insidious campaign to make
+these peoples, practically, if not in name, subject and tributary
+to Prussian rule. The Prussian propagandist has brought them face
+to face with a new Kaiserism.
+
+Shortly after the war a great number of Austrian professors of
+German blood issued a manifesto demanding closer union with
+Germany--a prelude to the plots being hatched in Berlin against
+Hapsburg rule.
+
+The Court of Austria is quite different from that of Berlin; no
+modern ideas during the reign of Francis Joseph disturbed his
+medieval outlook.
+
+The beautiful Empress of Austria, who was assassinated by an
+anarchist in Switzerland, was probably insane. At any rate, for
+many years she lived apart from the Emperor, devoted to hunting
+and horses, going often as far as Ireland for her favourite sport
+and seldom appearing in Vienna. Francis Joseph, however, was
+consoled by an ex-actress, Frau Kathie Schratt, whom he visited
+daily and who occupied a position in Vienna almost as powerful as
+that of the mistresses of Louis XIV. Even in this very war when
+Frau Schratt established a hospital, she was photographed in the
+centre of a group of women all occupied at this hospital and all
+holding the highest rank at the Austrian Court. The instant the
+old Emperor died, however, her power, influence and prestige
+disappeared and I imagine that her titled and high born helpers
+were not long in deserting the hospital wards over which she had
+presided.
+
+That extraordinary Empire known as the Austrian Hungarian Dual
+Monarchy is less an Empire or a Kingdom or a State than the
+personal property of the Hapsburgs, whose hereditary talent for
+the acquisition of land is recorded on the map of Europe to-day.
+
+For centuries this royal family by treaty, by intrigue, by war,
+purchase and marriage has been adding to its dominions, bringing
+under its personal rule races who do not understand each other's
+language and who differ widely in customs, intellectual
+attainments and religion.
+
+The last acquisition of territory by the house of Hapsburg was in
+the year 1908, when the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office boldly
+declared that Bosnia and Herzegovina, placed under the protectorate
+of Austria-Hungary by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, had been
+annexed to the Empire. The German Kaiser, standing by like a
+watching accomplice while the burglary was in progress,
+threatened a general European war if any nations protested.
+
+At a time when Prussia was a struggling state, Austria was the
+dominant power in Central Europe, but the one battle of Sadowa in
+1866 settled for ever the question of supremacy and the German
+States like Bavaria, Saxony, Wuertemburg, etc., which stood with
+Austria in that war, after receiving a sound beating, ranged
+themselves on the side of the victor and, in 1870, joined in
+acclaiming the King of Prussia as the First German Emperor.
+
+That event settled the question of leadership in Central Europe
+and the dream of the Emperor Frederick who died about the time of
+the discovery of America. It was he who wrote the famous anagram
+on the vowels A, E, I, O, U.
+
+ ustria  st       mperare  rbi         niverso
+A       E        I        O           U
+ lles    rdreich  st       esterreich  nterthan
+
+"It is the fate of Austria to rule the world."
+
+In upper and lower Austria, so-called, there are about twelve
+million German Austrians. This territory is comparatively small
+and in it lies the city of Vienna. To the north and northeast lie
+Bohemia and Moravia, the country of the Tchechs or Szechs of
+Slavic blood. These people together number about six million.
+Prague is the capital of Bohemia, while in Moravia there is no
+great city. For centuries these peoples have been oppressed by
+the Austrians and in the Hussite rebellion the lands of Bohemia
+and Moravia were parcelled out to the Austrian nobles as well as
+to the warlike adventurers who had joined the Austrian armies.
+
+With extraordinary obstinacy and patriotism these peoples cling
+to their old language and customs. They have suffered much
+during this war and many tales are told of the shooting of all of
+the officers of Tchech regiments and the execution of every tenth
+man among the privates.
+
+It is a bit of poetic justice that the town of Bethlehem in
+Pennsylvania, where my friend Schwab is making so much war
+material to be used against the Central Powers, was founded by
+fugitives, who, rebelling against oppression, left Moravia in
+search of liberty.
+
+North of the Carpathians lies Galicia, a Polish country, with
+Lemberg and Krakow as its capitals, and in the eastern part the
+Ruthenians, a race identical with the Russians. These Ruthenians
+number upwards of four million.
+
+It is a peculiar fact that in the curious Dual Monarchy each race
+oppresses some other. The Ruthenians complain that they are
+oppressed by the Poles. The kingdom of Hungary lies to the east
+of Austria containing in its twenty million inhabitants about ten
+million Magyars, who are the dominant race and who in turn rule
+over a population of one and one-half million Ruthenians, two and
+one-half million Slovacks or Tchecks, three million Roumanians in
+the southeastern portion and about three million of the race now
+known as Jugo-Slavs. Of these Jugo-Slavs about two million are in
+that part of the Dual Monarchy under Austrian rule. These are the
+principal divisions of peoples. A Slavish race differing somewhat
+from the others is in the mountains to the east of Hungary where
+much fighting has taken place in the last war known as Boukovina.
+In the southeastern part of Hungary there is a German speaking
+country, known as Siebenburgen, where live the descendants of a
+German colony planted about two centuries ago.
+
+In Styria, in the mountainous districts of Austria to the west of
+Hungary, lives a race differing again from all the others, a
+mountain race supposed to be eaters of arsenic, a drug which they
+believe gives them a good complexion and stamina for mountain
+climbing. It is said that the bodies of these arsenic eaters
+remain undecomposed for a long time. And from this part of the
+world comes the curious superstition of the existence of human
+vampires.
+
+Slovenes, and Jews, Carinthians and inhabitants of Carniola, Serbs
+living like Moslems in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italians in Trieste
+and the Trient--all make up the strange Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
+
+The union between Austria and Hungary is a personal union. The
+Emperor of Austria is King of Hungary. Only in four particulars
+are the Empire and the Kingdom united, namely, a joint administration
+of the army and navy, of diplomatic affairs and of such finances
+as are connected with joint expenditures for these purposes.
+
+In 1848 Hungary sought to break away from Austria. Kossuth
+heroically led the Hungarians against their Austrian masters,
+only to be beaten in the end because of the advent of the
+Russians, because one autocrat came to the aid of another.
+
+Since then, by superior political talents and taste for intrigue,
+the Magyars have not only held the Slovaks, Roumanians, etc., of
+their own country in political subjection, but have held much of
+the power in the Dual Monarchy. Their danger lies, however, in
+the predominance of German influence; and some day the gay,
+easy-going, pleasant Hungarians may awake to find the Prussian
+Eitel Fritz seated on their throne and to learn what Prussian
+efficiency means when applied to those whom Germans consider an
+inferior people.
+
+The twelve million Austrian Germans differ much in character from
+the Prussians. They are far more polite, far more agreeable, far
+more fond of amusement of all kinds. Indeed it is because of
+their pleasant personal characteristics that so many other
+nations have been content to remain under their rule. In no city
+of the world is the mass of the population as fond of pleasure as
+in Vienna. The best light operas come from that city. Vienna is
+the original home of the waltz. The "Blue Danube" was composed on
+the shores of the river which flows through the Austrian capital.
+
+The dominant religion of the German Empire is Protestant, but in
+the Dual Monarchy it is Roman Catholic among the ruling Germans
+in Austria and Magyars in Hungary.
+
+In Austria and in Hungary most of the land is held in great
+estates. The peasants, as in Germany, sometimes own a few strips
+of land near their miserable villages. Possession of land is
+necessary to the standing of any noble. In Hungary, for example,
+no noble sits in the house of Magnates or House of Lords unless
+he is the owner of a certain amount of land.
+
+Once across the Hungarian border, one sees the people taking a
+certain delight in refusing to understand German. The names of
+the railway stations are in Hungarian, and the uniforms of
+station officials, conductors, etc., differ from those in
+Austria. Every effort is made by the population to emphasise the
+fact that Hungary is an independent kingdom, joined to Austria by
+personal rule alone.
+
+There is no melting pot in this part of the world. In the Lower
+House of the Hungarian parliament sit forty-three Croatian
+delegates, Croatia being that part of southwestern Hungary near
+the Adriatic where the inhabitants are of Slav blood. By the
+Hungarian constitution those delegates have the right to speak in
+the Hungarian parliament in their own language and so from time
+to time a Croatian delegate arises in his place and delivers an
+ambitious harangue in Croatian, understood by no one except his
+fellow delegates who already know what he intends to talk about.
+This is only one example of how these peoples cling tenaciously
+to their language and national rights.
+
+It is possible to find in Hungary an Hungarian village, a German
+village, a Slav village and a Roumanian village, all within a
+short distance of each other. Men from each of these villages
+after one month in the United States throw aside their national
+costume and buy their clothes in the same Bowery shop, eat the
+same food and send their children to the same public school not
+only without protest, but with eagerness, whereas, in Hungary,
+not one of the inhabitants of these different villages would
+think of abandoning his national traits to learn the language of
+his German neighbours.
+
+Because commands are given in German in the armies of the Dual
+Monarchy all the male population, at least during the term of
+their military service, have been compelled to learn some German.
+But this they forget as soon as possible when they return from
+their period of military service.
+
+Many members of these races go to America and after working there
+a short time amass enough money to return to Austria-Hungary and
+purchase a small piece of land,--the ambition of every one born
+of the soil.
+
+One of the sons of Prince Lichtenstein told me that a friend who
+was running for the Hungarian Lower House in a district of
+Hungary largely inhabited by Slavs, spoke in Hungarian and,
+finding that his audience did not understand him, tried German.
+Finally, when matters had come to a standstill, some one in the
+back of the room called out to him, asking if he spoke English.
+The candidate answered that he did. Whereupon the crowd told him
+to speak English which nearly all understood, and so the
+Hungarian, a candidate for parliament in Hungary, was forced, in
+order to be understood, to address his Hungarian electors in the
+language which they had learned in America.
+
+Franz Ferdinand, whose murder at Sarajevo was used by the Central
+Powers as a pretext for a war determined on long before that
+time, was the heir to the throne of the late Francis Joseph. He
+was a romantic character. He visited frequently at the house of
+Archduchess Isabella, where Countess Chotek, of a Bohemian noble
+family, was a lady in waiting. Franz Ferdinand fell violently in
+love with the fair Bohemian, and in his desire to marry, enlisted
+the aid of Koloman Szell, Premier of Hungary. Szell told friends
+how Franz Ferdinand loved mystery and how, when he wanted to talk
+to him about marriage plans, instead of meeting somewhere openly
+in Vienna, would arrange that Szell's train should stop in the
+open fields. Szell, on alighting and following directions, would
+find Franz Ferdinand hiding behind a designated haystack.
+
+In a country where one royal family not only rules but owns the
+land, this attempt of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then heir to the
+throne, and mad with love, to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, lady
+in waiting to Archduchess Isabella, caused a palace revolution.
+By the aid of Szell he at last succeeded in carrying out the
+marriage. But this was only after he and his wife had been
+required to submit to the most humiliating conditions and
+subscribe to a marriage contract or promise which was not only
+enacted thereafter as a statute in Hungary, but was formally put
+on record by the Austrian parliament.
+
+In this declaration, Franz Ferdinand declared it to be "his firm
+and resolute resolve to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, that he had
+sought, in accordance with the laws of the house, to obtain
+consent of the Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, the Emperor
+and King, Francis Joseph I, gloriously reigning, that the most
+serene, supreme head of the Arch house had deigned graciously to
+grant this permission and that Franz Ferdinand, however
+(describing himself as 'We'), recognise the house laws and
+declare them binding on Us particularly with regard to this
+marriage declaration, that our Marriage with Countess Chotek is
+not a marriage of equal birth, but a morganatic one and is to be
+considered as such for all time, and that in consequence neither
+our wife nor our issue or descendants is entitled to possess or
+claim those rights, titles, armorial bearings and privileges that
+belong to wives of equal birth and to children of archdukes or
+marriages of equal birth." Franz Ferdinand, further, recognised
+that his children from this marriage would have no right to
+succeed to the throne in the kingdoms and lands of Austria nor,
+consequently, to the lands of the Hungarian Crown and that they
+were excluded from the order of succession.
+
+He further agreed and promised not only for himself but for his
+wife and children, that none of them would ever attempt to revoke
+this declaration.
+
+The old Emperor gave the wife of Franz Ferdinand the title of
+Princess Hohenberg and later raised her to the rank of duchess
+which, in the Central Empires, is a higher rank than that of
+princess. She was also created a Serene Highness after the birth
+of her third child, Prince Ernest, in 1904. The first child,
+Princess Sophie, was born in 1901, and the second, Prince
+Maximilian Charles, in 1902.
+
+In spite of the rank thus granted to her, the Duchess of
+Hohenberg was frequently slighted by Archdukes and Archduchesses
+of the House of Hapsburg, and when the present Emperor, the
+Archduke Charles Francis Joseph, married Princess Zita of
+Bourbon-Parma, in 1911, and this marriage was followed by the
+birth of a son, on November 20, 1912, it was plain to Franz
+Ferdinand and his wife that the hostility of the old Emperor and
+the other members of the House of Hapsburg, aided by events, had
+succeeded in definitely excluding his children by Countess Sophie
+from the throne.
+
+These slights to his wife, so marked as to cause the publication
+of articles inspired by himself in a newspaper devoted to his
+interests, and the birth of the heir to Carl, must have had a
+profound influence on melancholy Franz Ferdinand.
+
+In all Europe there was one monarch clever enough to take
+advantage of the situation, to win Franz Ferdinand to him by the
+honours he paid to the Duchess of Hohenberg,--the German Emperor.
+Kaiser Wilhelm invited the pair to Potsdam and there both were
+made to feel that in one court, at least, the honours due to a
+wife of equal birth were paid to the ex-Countess Sophie. This
+Potsdam visit was in 1909, and I believe that, thereafter, the
+German Emperor and Franz Ferdinand met on other occasions.
+
+In the chapter on Emperor Wilhelm, I have stated the belief
+prevalent, even in Germany, that he intended as his first step
+towards his openly expressed ambition for world dominion, to make
+himself, on the death of Francis Joseph, Emperor of a Great
+Continental Empire in which the German Princes, his sons, should
+occupy the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia, the heir of the House
+of Austria to rule as king or grand duke of Austria with possibly
+another German ruled kingdom touching the sea on the south.
+
+There are some who believe that when the Kaiser, accompanied by
+von Tirpitz, visited Franz Ferdinand at Konopisht in June, 1914,
+before the Kiel week, that a great conspiracy was entered into,
+in which it was arranged that a great Central Empire should be
+created with one of the sons of the Duchess of Hohenberg on the
+throne of Bohemia and the other provided for by some newly carved
+out kingdom made from Bosnia, or a portion of Serbia. And it may
+have been part of this plot that Eitel Fritz and other sons of
+the Kaiser should be provided with thrones derived from Balkan
+territory.
+
+It will be remembered that as Franz Ferdinand and his wife fell
+under the assassin's bullet at Sarajevo he called out: "Sophie,
+live for our children!" His devotion to his wife and to their
+children was extraordinary. He was continually sparing from his
+income so that on his death his sons would have a large sum of
+money, saved from the income of estates which they could not
+inherit.
+
+It is hard to believe that such a crime against the House of
+Hapsburg and against his own country was contemplated from the
+inside of royalty. But one event seems a confirmation of this
+theory. The dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were buried with
+such lack of honour, almost with such contempt, as to lead to the
+belief that the head of the House of Hapsburg, Emperor Francis
+Joseph himself, without whose directions the Chamberlain, Count
+Montenuovo, would not have dared to act, discovered his heir in
+some act against the laws or fortunes of the Imperial House.
+
+For the funeral arrangements were such, that the Austrian and
+Hungarian aristocracy were moved to protest and as a result a
+belated order was issued directing that the troops of the Vienna
+Garrison should take part in the funeral ceremonies. About one
+hundred and fifty members of the leading families of Hungary and
+Austria, without invitation, entered the funeral procession and
+followed the bodies to the railway station. The _London Times_
+correspondent called attention to this in cables to his newspaper
+at the time.
+
+Personally, I do not incline to this view, but I do believe that
+at Konopisht the war of 1914 was finally agreed on. Too many bits
+of evidence point to this and from something said to me at Kiel
+by a very high personage, before the assassinations at Sarajevo,
+I would have guessed that war was coming, had it not been
+impossible for me to believe that the world was to be plunged
+into war simply because the German people were restless under the
+rule of the autocracy.
+
+When the murders occurred at Sarajevo, all plans had been laid
+for war and the death of Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of
+Hohenberg merely gave another excuse to begin hostilities, after
+Austria, in the Council of Potsdam, had ratified all the
+arrangements made by the Emperor Wilhelm and Franz Ferdinand for
+the European war. Undoubtedly the German Emperor used his
+influence with Franz Ferdinand and his wife in order to secure
+the former's aid in dragging Austria into the war,--a war begun
+to win the dominion of the world.
+
+How many in America have heard the name of Sophie Chotek? Yet the
+ambitions of this woman have done much to send to war the
+splendid youths who from all the ends of the earth gather in
+France to fight the fight of freedom.
+
+The clever German Emperor, playing upon her ambitions, induced
+the gloomy, hated Franz Ferdinand to consent to the world war,
+and matters had gone so far that even the death of the Archduke
+Franz Ferdinand could not change the situation nor turn the war
+party of Hungary and Austria from their programme of blood.
+Eighty-four years of age, the old Francis Joseph could only offer
+a weak defence to the martial insistence of Tisza, Premier of
+Hungary, and his able understrapper, Forgotsch, who represented
+him in the Foreign Office at Vienna and who undoubtedly is the
+man who drafted the forty-eight hour ultimatum to Servia.
+
+[Illustration: MAIN STAIRWAY IN THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BERLIN]
+
+Berliners say that although the German Emperor gave the Duchess
+of Hohenberg all the honours due to the wife of an Austrian
+Archduke, heir to the throne of the Austrian Empire, he was
+careful not to bring her claims in direct conflict with any
+Prussian female Royalty and that on the first visit of Franz
+Ferdinand and his wife to Potsdam, when the doors of the banquet
+room were thrown open, it was seen that the Kaiser had skilfully
+placed all the guests at small tables, sitting at one with the
+Empress and his two guests. In this way he prevented a conflict
+of precedence and a possible scene with some Prussian royal
+princess.
+
+After one of these Potsdam visits, the Austrian government
+appropriated three hundred millions for new Skoda cannon and a
+great and unexpected increase of the navy was voted. In Austria
+itself it was seen that the German influence was dragging
+Austria-Hungary nearer and nearer to war.
+
+Ferdinand disliked the Hungarians and in turn was hated by them.
+If he had attained the throne of the Empire, as his children
+could not inherit, he would have endeavoured first to remove that
+obstacle, but if he had not succeeded he intended, as I have
+said, either to restore the kingdom of Bohemia and place his son,
+child of a Bohemian mother, on the newly created throne, or
+create, possibly from conquered lands, another kingdom over which
+his heir could reign.
+
+The Magyars, the real Hungarian ruling race, are most skilful
+politicians. Their elections often are corrupt and all the tricks
+of the politician are in use in Hungary.
+
+In many families political talent seems hereditary. Tisza, the
+Premier of Hungary for the period for some time before the war,
+was the son of Tisza, who was Premier of Hungary about the year
+1875. Kossuth, son of the great Kossuth, has been active in
+politics. The father of Count Julius Andrassy was Premier about
+1866 and favoured Germany, a policy which has been inherited by
+his son. One of the sons-in-law of Count Andrassy's wife, Marquis
+Pallavicini, came to America to act as best man when my wife's
+sister married Count Sigray.
+
+Andrassy came to Berlin during the war where I had several long
+talks with him. The one desire of Hungarians and Austrians alike
+is for peace, but surrounded by the armies of their German
+masters, they have lost their independence of action, a bitter
+blow to the Magyars, who are not fond of the Germans.
+
+Count Stephen Tisza is an obstinate and able man, so many sided
+that it is related of him that he fought a duel, rode a
+steeplechase and made a great speech in Parliament, all in one
+day.
+
+Duelling is still a custom in Hungary, Austria and Germany. Once
+when I was in Hungary I took supper with a Count who had been
+second in a duel that day. One young Magnate was at a restaurant
+with an actress who wore a wide brimmed hat. Another young
+Magnate of his acquaintance looked under the hat brim to see who
+the girl was. Result: a duel with sabres in a riding school. On
+this occasion, as the insult was not deadly, the use of sharp
+points was forbidden. The duel was stopped after one young
+Magnate received a cut on the forehead.
+
+Stephen Tisza, on first taking office, was permitted by the old
+Emperor to obtain some apparent concessions for Hungary in order
+to make his premiership popular. It was arranged that Hungarian
+flags should be carried by Hungarian regiments, and that the
+officers of those regiments all should be Hungarians, but German
+was to be used as the military language and language of command
+even in the Hungarian regiments.
+
+As soon as Tisza became premier for the first time, Count Apponyi
+left the Liberal party and lately Count Julius Andrassy and his
+wife's sons-in-law, Count Karoli and Marquis Pallavicini, have
+been in violent opposition to Tisza, Pallavicini even fighting a
+duel with the Prime Minister.
+
+In a country where the majority of the inhabitants are Roman
+Catholics it is rather strange that Tisza and his father, both
+strong Protestants, should have attained the Premiership. The
+father of Count Stephen Tisza was even more obstinate than his
+son and greatly oppressed the Slovaks and Roumanians within the
+borders of Hungary.
+
+A great responsibility lies at the door of Stephen Tisza. He
+allowed the Germans to use him in bringing on the world war.
+Doubtless he believed that Russia and the Powers would not move,
+that Austria-Hungary could seize or invade Serbia, while Germany
+terrorised the world as in 1908 when Bosnia and Herzegovina were
+added to the Imperial dominions. But his failure to read the
+intentions of Russia and the other Powers is no excuse for the
+calamity he brought on Hungary and the world, no excuse for the
+fact that his country is now overwhelmed by Kaiserism, its armies
+surrounded by the armies of Germany and its very independence
+threatened by the subtle influence and intrigues of the master
+intriguer of the world,--the German Kaiser.
+
+The franchise in Austria and in Hungary is like that given
+grudgingly to the Prussian, a mere ghost of suffrage. Autocracy
+rules. In Hungary, particularly the Magyars, seeking to keep the
+political power in their hands, oppose a broadening of the
+franchise. Tisza has always been against any letting down of the
+bars, but when the young and brilliant Count Esterhazy was made
+Premier, many looked for a change--a change which has, however,
+not yet come.
+
+The new Emperor Carl at first seemed to exhibit Liberal
+tendencies, but only for a moment.
+
+The events in Russia will have a grave effect in Austria-Hungary.
+More than a million Russians are prisoners in the Dual Monarchy,
+nearly a million of whose subjects are in Russia--and of these at
+least fifty thousand Czechs are fighting the Austrians and
+Germans in the ranks of the Roumanian army. Many more will refuse
+to leave Russia, but the coming back of one-half, after having
+witnessed the winning of liberty by the Russians, will influence
+their countrymen in no small degree. Just as the French soldiers
+under Lafayette and Rochambeau, after helping us gain our
+independence, returned from the free fields of America to a
+France where the burdens of the plain people were almost
+unendurable and brought on the great French Revolution, the
+soldiers and prisoners who return to Prussia and to Austria-Hungary
+from the strange scenes of the Russian Revolution may, perhaps,
+leaven the inert slave masses of the Central Empires with a
+spirit of revolt for liberty.
+
+We should institute a great propaganda from the Italian front.
+For instance, I have been told by a man who has been on that
+front, a man who should know, that if a few American troops were
+sent there and signs erected stating "Come over and surrender to
+the Americans, you will be taken to America well fed and paid a
+dollar per day when you volunteer to work," there would be a
+great rush of Austro-Hungarian troops eager to be taken prisoner.
+
+The losses of Austria and Hungary have been enormous--men up to
+fifty-five have been drafted for the army, and the troops have
+often suffered defeat and the horrors of retreat at the hands of
+Russians, Serbians, and Italians.
+
+And all the time the iron hand of the German Kaiser grasps more
+and more of the power. Cheerless prospect it is for the once gay
+Hungarians, the once happy Austrians, if to financial ruin and
+the killing of the flower of their youth is to be added the iron
+horror of Prussian domination.
+
+Our citizens of Austrian and especially of Hungarian descent have
+been loyal to their new flag. And our great President with
+enlightened wisdom has eased the enemy alien regulations so as to
+favour those born in the Dual Monarchy. America will never
+forget the loyalty, ungrudgingly given by those of her people
+born under the double eagle of the Hapsburgs.
+
+In my many visits to Hungary I grew to like and admire the
+Hungarians. Natural in manners, hospitable, polite, there is
+something in them that wins Americans. How different the open
+hospitality and friendliness in Budapest from the stern, cold
+formality of the Prussian capital!
+
+And with all friends of Hungary I hope that that country will
+soon throw off the trance of Prussianism, which has led the Dual
+Monarchy into a Dance of Death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+GERMAN INFLUENCE ON THE NORTHERN NEUTRALS
+
+
+Just as I had the opportunity to study conditions in Austria, so
+also I came in contact with the politics and diplomacy of the
+nations contiguous to Germany on the north.
+
+My grandfather, Benjamin F. Angel, was American Minister to
+Sweden and Norway and on leaving received from the King the Order
+of St. Olaf. I have always taken a deep interest in Scandinavian
+affairs and it behooves the American people to regard closely
+what is happening nowadays in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
+
+The outbreak of the European War in 1914 served to bring the
+three northern nations close together. Their Kings met in
+conference and a peace monument was erected on the boundary of
+Norway and Sweden as if to proclaim to the world that in spite of
+their recent separation, Norway and Sweden were sister countries.
+
+The people of these three countries are of the same blood and
+their languages are somewhat similar. Norwegian and Danish
+written are practically the same. But there is quite a difference
+in pronunciation. Swedish is more like German and the pronunciation
+is not as difficult to learn as that of Norwegian and Danish. In
+Norway, there are older dialects, differing from Danish, and
+there has lately been a great movement in favour of a more national
+language. Many Norwegians regard the official Danish-Norwegian as a
+reminder of old subjection to Denmark and not at all fitted for
+the new independent Norwegian kingdom. The new national language
+is called "Landsmaal."
+
+Sweden and Norway were both under one king from 1814 to 1905. In
+that year after a peaceful secession, Prince Charles of Denmark,
+the son of the King of Denmark, was made the King of Norway, with
+the title of Haakon VII. Although both have kings, Denmark and
+Norway may be termed democratic countries.
+
+Copenhagen is lively since the war. The population of Denmark is
+only 2,500,000 and the whole country is only 14,829 square miles,
+which means an area about the size of Maryland. The country was
+once larger but in 1864 Prussia went to war with Denmark and,
+finally, after the war with Austria in 1866, added to the Crown
+of Prussia the two Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As
+the city and port of Kiel were included in this territory
+annexed, it is easy to see why the Germans engaged in this
+enterprise against Denmark.
+
+Denmark possesses the Faro Islands which lie far to north of
+Scotland, the great island of Iceland and Greenland, relics of
+the times when the Viking ships brought such terror to the other
+countries of Europe, that the Litany used to read: "From plague,
+pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, from sudden death
+and from the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us."
+
+In Christiania we saw on our trip out two graceful Viking ships
+dug out of the clay shores of the coast in a state of fair
+preservation--one of them a Princess's ship on which it was easy
+to imagine some blonde princess of the North, her long braids of
+golden hair flying in the wind, urging on her Scandinavian
+oarsmen.
+
+The Danes are a sturdy race, the women more independent than
+those of other countries. On the _Frederick VIII_, when we sailed
+from Denmark, September 28, 1916, for the United States, were two
+handsome girls, nineteen and twenty-one years of age, the
+daughters of the proprietor of the largest department store in
+Copenhagen. They were going to America to find employment in
+department stores in the different cities of the country,
+travelling entirely alone, and expected to return to Denmark
+after a year's experience in America with many new ideas of
+management and advertising for their father in Copenhagen. These
+girls were wonderfully educated, speaking in addition to Danish,
+French, German and English with hardly a trace of accent. They
+lived a short distance out of Copenhagen and told me that every
+morning of the year they jumped into the sea at six-thirty in the
+morning, something that I should not care to do even in August in
+that cold northern land.
+
+Danish farmers learned early that in order to be prosperous they
+must practise intensive farming. I believe that Denmark, which
+even before the war enjoyed a high degree of prosperity, is the
+only country in the world where there are pig sties steam-heated
+and electric lighted while the farmer himself does not have these
+luxuries.
+
+Our farmers have much to learn from the farmers of Denmark both
+in agricultural methods and in co-operation for the marketing of
+products. The reclamation of the Danish moors in Jutland has made
+surprising progress: it is in Jutland that a park has been
+preserved in its primeval state--the Danish-American Park, bought
+with money subscribed by Danish emigrants to America who
+prospered in their adopted land.
+
+Ever since the conquest of Denmark by Germany, there has been a
+deep hatred of all things German in Denmark on account of the
+treatment of those Danes, numbering between one hundred and two
+hundred thousand, who were living in Schleswig and Holstein and
+were unfortunate enough to be turned over as property to the King
+of Prussia.
+
+I found the Danes agreeable people. Of the same race as the
+Germans, living like them in the dark North, this difference in
+behaviour is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the Danes are
+free, while the Germans are oppressed by the weight of an ever
+present autocracy.
+
+While the Danish people hate the Germans, officially Denmark is
+careful to conceal this hate and even, apparently, to lean
+towards the German side, through fear of the German troops, which
+could easily overrun Denmark in thirty hours.
+
+Denmark, during the war, received oil cake from America, which
+was fed to cattle later sold to Germany. A great tonnage of fish
+has also been sent from Denmark to Germany while salt and potash
+have been imported. There is no question but that supplies of all
+kinds and in great quantities have found their way across the
+Danish border.
+
+And the Danes have prospered enormously since the war. Many
+people have become millionaires through the sale of food and
+other supplies to the Germans. A great deal of this food supply
+was sent in the form of canned meat, popularly known as goulash,
+and so to-day whenever an automobile passes on a Danish road, the
+small boys call out "goulash Baron," in the belief that the
+occupant is a new-made millionaire, enriched by trade with
+Germany.
+
+It is hard for us to realise how far north the Scandinavian
+countries lie. Christiania, the capital of Norway and in its
+southern part, is in the same latitude as the south point of
+Greenland; and is it not difficult to imagine a modern city
+situated in Greenland?
+
+In Christiania it is not fairly daylight in December until ten in
+the morning and dark early in the afternoon. The ample water
+power of Norway and Sweden furnishes electric light, a godsend in
+the short dreary winter days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Norway, in many respects, is one of the most advanced countries
+in the world. Having been ruled by Denmark for four hundred
+years, it was united to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, in 1814,
+with the approval of all the Powers, but against the inclinations
+of the Norwegians, who knew that they were given to Sweden to
+compensate that country for the loss of Finland, annexed to Russia.
+
+The ambitious Bernadotte arranged to govern Norway as king of
+that country, which was theoretically to retain its independence
+and be united to Sweden only through the personal rule of the one
+monarch.
+
+At this time, the Norwegian Constitution provided that no more
+personal privileges should be granted and since then the progress
+of Norway towards a real democracy has been rapid. It was the
+conflict over the right demanded by the Norwegians to establish a
+separate consular service that led to the dissolution of the
+union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, Norway voting for
+separation 368,211 to 184.
+
+There are now no nobles in Norway. Shortly after the union it was
+decided that those who had titles of nobility could hold them for
+life, but that their descendants could not inherit.
+
+Legislation for the protection of child workers, women, for
+insurance, etc., is of an advanced character. For instance, no
+child under fourteen is permitted to work and no woman for six
+weeks after her confinement--women receiving full sick benefit
+pay during this period. Many of the railways are state owned.
+
+Norway is a land of little farms, the shipping and fishing
+industries occupy many men, but with the exception of the water
+power driven nitrate plants, on the coast, and the wood-pulp
+factories, there is little manufacturing.
+
+The mass of the people are with the Allies. Last winter, when it
+was proposed that a German concert troupe should play and sing in
+Christiania, the people threatened to burn the theatre if the
+performance was permitted.
+
+But, as in Sweden, the German propagandists are at work in
+Norway. Here again, unless we present our case, the people may be
+turned from the Allies.
+
+King Gustavus V, who occupies to-day the throne of Sweden, has a
+German wife. All the sympathies of the court, which copies the
+little courts of Germany, of the aristocracy and of the army are
+strongly with Germany.
+
+In Sweden, although the king has not much more power than the
+kings of Denmark and Norway, there is an aristocracy which
+inclines to imitate the manners of the German aristocracy and to
+seize, if possible, the privileges enjoyed by that body. The
+officers in the army in Sweden are devoted to German ideals and,
+since the war, great bodies of them have been invited to Germany,
+where there has been much ado over them.
+
+The people, however, do not sympathise with Germany, knowing what
+the triumph of Germany means for them and how the court and the
+army and the aristocracy would be thereby encouraged to put the
+Swedish people in what the Germans would call "their place."
+
+The Swedes fear the domination of Germany and the domination of
+an aristocracy and army imbued with German ideas. They know that
+if Germany wins, the king business will take on a new lease of
+life. The ground was ripe for the Allies but the German
+propaganda, cleverly managed, spending money without stint, is
+gradually bringing the people to a point where, if the blockade
+is tightened, they may consent to Sweden's entering the war as an
+ally of the Central empires.
+
+In spite of the dislike of the people for the German cause, I
+think that the aristocracy and the court and the army would have
+forced Sweden into the war but for one thing. After some months
+of war, an arrangement was made whereby the so-called "heavily
+wounded" were exchanged with prisoners between Russia and
+Germany. The German who was a prisoner of the Russians and had
+lost an arm or a leg, was sent home. These wounded prisoners on
+their way to their home countries, were compelled to travel the
+whole length of Sweden and it was the sight of these poor stumps
+of humanity, as the trains stopped at the various stations in
+Sweden, that kept the Swedish people out of war. Many pictures of
+them printed in the Swedish papers caused profound dismay in
+Sweden and developed an inexpressible abhorrence of war.
+
+Since hostilities commenced, on the other hand, the Government,
+army and aristocracy of Sweden not only have been consistently
+opposed to the Allies, but of the utmost service to Germany.
+
+Swedish iron ore goes into German cannon and makes the best
+steel for aeroplane engines, and the imports into Sweden from
+America of foods and fats from America increased one thousand per
+cent almost immediately. These imports, with great quantities of
+copper and other supplies, found their way to Germany to the
+great profit incidentally of Swedish business men. For the plain
+people of Sweden the cost of living increased without a
+corresponding increase in salaries and wages, so that the new
+prosperity was confined to the "goulash barons."
+
+There is no question but that, just as in Argentina, the Swedish
+diplomatic pouch was in all countries at the service of Germany,
+and that the orders to the German spies in Russia were sent by
+this means. In fact, it is believed German prisoners in Russia
+found their way to Petrograd, there to participate in revolution
+and counter-revolution under orders sent through the Swedish
+officials.
+
+Smuggling is winked at and at Lullia on the Swedish coast near
+the head of the Gulf of Bothnia great quantities of rubber, block
+tin and oil arrive from Russian Uleaborg across the gulf.
+
+The French wanted to send a consul to Lullia, but their request
+was refused, doubtless because the Swedish authorities did not
+care to have any official foreigners see this traffic.
+
+Cleverest of all has been the work of the German financial
+agents. Warburg, the Hamburg banker, is attached to the German
+legation in Stockholm. So skilfully has he managed his task, that
+Swedish firms and Swedish banks have been induced to take German
+paper money, commercial paper and securities instead of gold, in
+return for copper, rubber, tin, food, fats, wool and supplies and
+in this way the Swedish business men, by the touch of self-interest,
+have been made to favour Germany.
+
+I confess that it is hard to bring about, but as each nation has
+the right to choose with whom its citizens shall do business, we
+must mercilessly blacklist those firms which assist Germany by
+accepting, in lieu of the gold which would thus be drained from
+Germany, what amounts to the promise of Germany to pay if
+successful in war.
+
+The Queen of Sweden, herself a German and an admirer of the
+German Emperor, has great influence over her husband and the
+Court.
+
+At a time when she was visiting her family in Karlsruhe (for she
+is a Princess of Baden) a reprisal attack made by Allied
+aeroplanes narrowly missed the royal palace and, consequently,
+the Queen. This has added to her prejudice against the Allies.
+The Crown Princess of Sweden was a Princess of Connaught, the
+sister of "Princess Pat," but she does not dare take any stand
+against the anti-ally propaganda.
+
+I am sure that President Wilson appreciates the gravity of the
+situation and that means are being taken to place our position
+not only before the Swedish people but those of Swedish birth and
+descent in the United States whose influence should be brought to
+bear on their friends and relatives in the old country.
+
+The crew of every Swedish ship that lands here should be given
+our viewpoint; every Swede who returns to Sweden should go as a
+missionary--we must not permit Sweden, whose people are bound to
+us by ties of blood and friendship, by the hospitality which we
+offered to every Swedish immigrant, to be ranged among our
+enemies by the German-admiring aristocrats of Sweden who by
+birth, training and education are opposed to democracy, who hope,
+if Germany wins, to gain as great an ascendancy in the government
+as the Prussian Junkers possess in Germany.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Finns who occupy that part of Russia nearest to Sweden have
+quite a sympathy for the Swedes, Finland having been at one time
+a part of Sweden. The races, however, are not the same. The Finns
+are a Mongolian race and certain similarities of language make it
+plain that the Finns and the Hungarians came from the same
+mysterious place of origin somewhere in the great mountains and
+highlands of Central Asia.
+
+Three languages, three influences, fight for mastery in Finland.
+The official Russian, the language of the government; Finnish,
+now receiving a new lease of life; and Swedish, the language of
+those who once conquered and held Finland, and who so imposed
+their civilisation on the more ignorant Finns, that to-day
+Swedish is the language of the more prosperous classes and of
+most of the business men.
+
+The women of Finland received the suffrage in 1906, all voting
+who are over twenty-four and who have been for five years
+citizens of Finland. Many women thereafter were elected to the
+Finnish parliament.
+
+In two Scandinavian countries the women vote. Norway was the
+first sovereign state of Europe to give full citizenship rights
+to women. In 1913, all Norwegian women of twenty-five and
+citizens for five years were put on a voting equality with men,
+and the only positions under the national government for which
+women are not eligible are in the army and navy, the diplomatic
+and consular service and the Supreme Court.
+
+The Danish women received the full franchise in 1915, but in
+aristocratic Sweden only the women paying income taxes have
+rights in the communal councils.
+
+In 1908, in Norway, a law was passed providing that women doing
+the work of men shall receive equal pay.
+
+Military service in all three northern nations is universal and
+compulsory.
+
+Possibly on a "tip" from Berlin to a fellow autocrat, there
+occurred in February, 1914, an extraordinary political event,
+arranged and "accelerated" by the Government, when thirty
+thousand farmers, meeting in Stockholm for the purpose, marched
+in procession to the Royal Castle to address the King and tell
+him that they were ready to bear any extra taxes imposed for the
+purpose of providing for national defence.
+
+Russia was the power particularly feared by Sweden who thought
+she desired to annex a part of Northern Sweden and Norway in
+order to get an outlet to the sea on the Norwegian coast.
+
+But recent events in Russia have ended this fear and the only
+question for the Swedes is the same, one with which the whole
+world is faced--Kaiserism or Democracy.
+
+Sven Hedin, the explorer, who was the leader in this movement for
+national defence, has appeared as a German propagandist so
+violent as to have become popular with the Germans. It is hard to
+understand why so intelligent a man should range himself on the
+side of autocracy. Now that the Russian danger, if danger there
+was, is past it is to be hoped that this celebrated man will be
+found in the ranks of those opposed to the autocracy which
+ordered the murders of many Swedish seamen.
+
+Norway, although it has often met the submarine of the Kaiser,
+which, defying all law, has sent to death so many Norwegian
+sailors and fishermen, suffers also from German propaganda and a
+certain self interest because of the forty-five million kronen
+sale of fish this last year to German buyers.
+
+Germany works, too, in Denmark with the Socialists and deliveries
+of coal are used to obtain food from that country.
+
+The jolly, free, brave Scandinavians are naturally opposed to all
+that Pan-Germanism and German rule means. It is necessary for us,
+especially our citizens of Scandinavian descent, not to lose this
+initial advantage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+SWITZERLAND--ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL
+
+
+Free Switzerland! You cannot imagine the feeling of relief I
+experienced as I passed from the lands of the Hohenzollerns and
+Hapsburgs to a free republic.
+
+It was February 11, 1917. To go into the railroad station
+restaurant and order an omelette and fried potatoes without a
+food card and with chocolate on the side seemed in itself a
+return to liberty.
+
+Our Minister, Mr. Stovall, gave us a dinner and evening reception
+so that we could meet all the notables and we lunched with the
+French Ambassador (for France maintains an Embassy in Switzerland)
+and dined with the British Minister, Sir Horace Rumbold, a very
+able gentleman who had been Chancellor of the British Embassy in
+Berlin before the war.
+
+As war had not yet been declared between Germany and the United
+States the correspondents of German newspapers waylaid me. Some
+seemed to think that in spite of the insulting blow given us by
+Germany, we nevertheless, scared to whiteness by the U-boat
+ultimatum, would lend all our energies to bring about a German
+peace.
+
+I received a letter from one of the editors of a Swiss newspaper
+published in Berne, probably inspired by the German Legation
+there, asking me if President Wilson, in spite of the break in
+relations, would not continue his work for peace.
+
+We all know that Switzerland is a republic but even those of us
+who have travelled there, probably because we were on a holiday,
+gave little thought to the Swiss political system. Indeed before
+this war we cared little about the government of any country
+except our own.
+
+The present constitution of Switzerland was adopted in 1848 and
+in many particulars is modelled after that of the United States.
+
+There are the same three great Federal powers, the Federal
+Assembly, representing the legislative branch, the Federal
+Council, representing the executive branch, and the Federal
+Court, representing the judicial branch.
+
+The lower Chamber is made up of representatives elected directly
+by the people, and the other Chamber of members elected, as in
+our Senate, two by each canton or state. The Bundesrat or Federal
+Council which has all the executive powers, is elected by the
+Federal Assembly and it is the Chairman of this body who is known
+as the President of Switzerland. In reality he does not possess
+the powers of our President, but it is the Bundesrat as a whole
+which exercises the powers. Each member of this Council is
+minister or head of some separate department, such as Military,
+Justice and Police, Foreign Affairs, Posts and Railways, etc. The
+Swiss Cantons have much power, and there is a distinct jealousy
+by each canton of states' rights.
+
+It is in Switzerland that we encounter two little friends,
+sponsored by William Jennings Bryan--the Initiative and
+Referendum--means by which the Swiss people are given a direct
+voice in their government. By the Initiative a certain number of
+voters may propose new legislation and when the requisite number
+sign a petition the proposed law must then be submitted to
+popular vote. This rule applies both in the separate cantons and
+in the Republic as a whole.
+
+The Referendum, more often used, provides that if the requisite
+number of signers be obtained any law passed by a cantonal
+legislative body or by the Federal Assembly shall be submitted to
+the voters. In certain cantons the Referendum is obligatory and
+every law is thus submitted to the people. In practice the
+Referendum has acted as a check to advanced legislation.
+
+The Swiss have reason to fear the designs of Prussia. As late as
+1856, Prussia and Switzerland were on the edge of war. Prior to
+1815 Neuchatel acknowledged the King of Prussia as its overlord;
+the Congress of Vienna, however, included this territory in the
+Swiss Confederation as one of the Swiss Cantons. But Prussia, in
+spite of this formal arrangement, with its usual disregard of
+treaties, continued to claim Neuchatel.
+
+In 1848 the revolutionary influence resulted in more democratic
+rule in Neuchatel but the Prussian propagandist of that day was
+at work and, in 1856, Count Pourtales' plot was discovered and
+several hundred prisoners seized by the Swiss government. All
+but a score were released. Frederick William IV of Prussia
+demanded their instant pardon and release and ordered the
+mobilisation of his army but, finally, through the intervention
+of Napoleon III, the affair was settled, the prisoners released
+by way of France, and the Prussian King renounced all rights over
+Neuchatel.
+
+The Kulturkampf of Bismarck, his contest against the Roman
+Catholics, had its echoes in Switzerland and it probably was due
+also to German influence that until 1866 full freedom was
+withheld from the Jews.
+
+The Red Cross had its origin in Switzerland and the Geneva
+Conventions have done much to bring about the adoption of better
+rules of war. The Geneva Cross is the badge of international
+charity and help.
+
+Switzerland always has opened her doors to the politically
+oppressed. Over ten thousand revolutionists from Baden took
+refuge in Switzerland in 1848. Austria, in 1853, as a reprisal
+for the alleged actions of Italians in Switzerland in conspiring
+against Austria, drove thousands of Swiss citizens from that part
+of Italy occupied by Austria. Also in the Franco-Prussian war the
+French General Bourbaki and his army of nearly one hundred
+thousand men sought an asylum in Switzerland.
+
+The army of Switzerland is a true citizen army--an army of
+universal service--and it is due to the existence of this force
+that Switzerland remains an independent state in the midst of
+Europe.
+
+To stand apart in Europe is the very essence of life for
+Switzerland. It is regrettable therefore that German money and
+German propaganda and some sympathy for Germany among the
+officers of the army should have touched the fine flower of Swiss
+neutrality. A triumphant Prussia and a free Switzerland cannot
+exist in the same Europe.
+
+In Switzerland, it is in the military that we find the greatest
+sympathy for Germany. In 1915, Swiss officers were discovered
+working out the ciphers of other nations for the benefit of the
+German armies and the punishment given, at the ensuing Court
+Martial, was not only incommensurate with the offence, but was a
+plain indication of the early sympathies of the Chiefs of the
+Swiss Staff.
+
+The food question between the United States and Switzerland
+requires delicate handling. We like the Swiss and do not wish
+them to suffer, but the Swiss must understand that our food is
+our own and that we do not propose it shall go to nourish Germans
+or that it shall take the place, in Switzerland, of Swiss food
+sold by the Swiss to our enemies.
+
+The President of Switzerland related to me the difficult position
+in which Switzerland found herself. Iron and coal, necessary to
+the industries of Switzerland, to keep the population warm and to
+cook the food, came, he said, from Germany, while food was
+shipped to the French Mediterranean port of Cette from America
+and the Argentine, and transported across part of France to
+Switzerland, so that since the war Switzerland, as the President
+explained, has been dancing about; first on one side, then on the
+other, in the attempt to get food through France and coal and
+iron through Germany.
+
+Everything in the office of the President was the extreme of
+republican simplicity. He questioned me about the situation in
+Germany, especially from the food standpoint. And I learned of
+the difficulties of the Swiss. It must not be forgotten that in
+Switzerland about seventy per cent of the people speak German,
+twenty-three per cent, French, and seven per cent, Italian. Many
+of the German-speaking Swiss, of course, sympathise with Germany.
+They are the farmers, dairymen, etc., but in French-Switzerland,
+in the neighbourhood of Geneva and Lausanne, the industrial
+population sides with the Allies. Millions of the delicate fuses
+used on shells have been manufactured in that part of Switzerland
+for the Entente. In retaliation for this the Germans boycotted
+Swiss watches.
+
+The usual German-paid propaganda newspapers operate in the
+principal towns. The army officers are the first to be influenced.
+It is the same in Switzerland as with the officers of many armies,
+solely because of the past reputation of the German military machine.
+
+We and the civil authorities of South America must not forget
+that Japan copied German military methods, that the armies of
+Argentina and Chili have been trained, for years, by German
+officers sent there on temporary leave of absence from the German
+army.
+
+Von Below, a German officer in Berlin who had been in the
+Argentine, used to make merry over the Argentine soldiers and
+said that they objected to drilling when it rained. I do not
+believe this officer, but I should like to have the brave
+Argentine officers hear his jokes and gibes.
+
+We left, after three or four days in Berne, on the evening train,
+for the French frontier. In the train corridors, outside the
+compartments, spies stood staring at us, spies pretending to read
+newspapers came into each compartment; police spies, betrayed by
+heavy boots; general staff spies, betrayed by a military
+stiffness; women spies; spies assorted and special. And these
+gentry had followed me all over Berne--for in the neutral
+countries of Europe as well as the belligerents are we constantly
+reminded of the insidious methods of Kaiserism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE
+
+
+At Pontarlier, on the French frontier, a special train was
+waiting for my party and into this train a German-American
+inserted himself after first mixing his baggage with mine. I went
+through the train and this enterprising gentleman and another
+German-American were detained for some days at Pontarlier. One of
+them, later, on reaching Spain, reported immediately to the head
+of the German secret service there, thus justifying my suspicions.
+Fortunately when he subsequently arrived in Spain we had already
+sailed, so that if he bore any sinister message from Berlin to
+the German agents in Spain to hinder our voyage, he was too late.
+
+The night trip to Paris was uneventful. At the Gare St. Lazare we
+were met by our Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, with several of his staff
+and a representative of the French Foreign Office.
+
+Paris was indeed a changed Paris since I had last seen it in
+October of 1913. The pavement in the Place Vendome, in front of
+the Hotel Ritz, where we stopped, was full of holes, but
+taxicabs, almost as extinct as the dodo in Berlin, rushed merrily
+through the crowded streets. The boulevards were lively, full of
+soldiers looking far more cheery, far more snappy, than the heavy
+footed German soldiers who so painfully tramped down Unter den
+Linden. Many soldiers were to be seen without an arm or leg,
+something impossible in Germany where, especially in Berlin, it
+has been the policy of the Government to conceal those maimed by
+war from the people at home. Although constantly walking the
+streets of Berlin I never saw a German soldier without an arm or
+leg. Once motoring near Berlin I came upon a lonely country house
+where, through the iron rails of the surrounding park, numbers of
+maimed soldiers peered out, prisoners of the autocratic
+government which dared not show its victims to the people.
+
+At night in Paris the taxicabs and autos rushed dangerously
+through streets darkened to baffle the Zeppelins. In the hotel
+there was little heat, only wood fires in one's room. In the
+homes a single electric light bulb was permitted for each room;
+violation of this rule meant loss of electric light from that
+apartment for three weeks.
+
+In the Ritz Restaurant there were lights on the table only. And
+the gloomy dining room, where a few Americans and British
+officers and their families conversed in whispers, resembled but
+little the gay resort so often filled, before the war, with
+American millionaires. Olivier, the head waiter, appeared only at
+night, absent during the day on war duties. No lights, no music,
+it is hard to think of Paris without these, Paris which calls
+itself the "Ville Lumiere"--the City of Light.
+
+On our first Sunday in Paris a grand concert was held in the
+Trocadero--a great government owned auditorium on the banks of
+the Seine,--under Canadian auspices. When Ambassador Sharp and I
+entered the centre box the vast audience rose and cheered--a new
+sensation for me to be so welcomed after my war-years in Berlin,
+where I had been harried and growled at, the representative of a
+hated people, of a people at once envied for their wealth, hated
+because they had dared to keep their rights and treaties and sell
+goods to the enemies of Germany, and despised because the Germans
+believed them too rich and cowardly, too fat and degenerate, to
+fight in the great war for the mastery of the world.
+
+Lord Esher called on me at the hotel and invited me on behalf of
+Field Marshal Haig, to visit the British line. I am sorry that I
+did not have time to accept this invitation, especially as in
+Germany I had not even heard the distant firing of cannon.
+
+The Great General Headquarters at Charleville-Mezieres where I
+had visited Emperor William at the end of April, 1916, was only
+about seventy kilometres from the battle front near Rheims. I was
+naturally anxious to inspect, if not the front trenches, at least
+the vicinity of the front, but the army officers attached to the
+German Foreign Office, who had accompanied me, informed me that
+the Chancellor had telephoned all the Generals in the vicinity to
+ask permission for me to visit the lines but that not one of them
+would permit me to visit his sector. This was a fairly certain
+indication that sooner or later the hate for America must lead
+to war or that the U-boat settlement made at the time was only a
+stop gap until the increased number of submarines would enable
+Germany to commence ruthless U-boat war once more in defiance of
+law and humanity, and with a greater hope of military success.
+
+Compared to Berlin, Paris seemed a land of abundance. In the
+restaurants, however, the customer was limited to two courses,
+but with the privilege of a second helping.
+
+I called on Lord Bertie, the British Ambassador, to ask him to
+convey my acknowledgments to the Honourable Arthur James Balfour,
+from whom I had received a most complimentary communication. I
+found him in the beautiful home of the British Embassy on the Rue
+St. Honore, a house so cold for want of coal that I was compelled
+to make my visit short for fear of pneumonia.
+
+With Mrs. Gerard we lunched with our friends from Berlin, Jules
+Cambon, a former French Ambassador there, and his family, at the
+La Rue restaurant, opposite the Madelaine. Cambon seemed as game
+as ever, but fatigued.
+
+Briand, who was then Premier, invited me to breakfast at the
+Minister of Foreign Affairs. The other guests included our
+Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, Cambon and the Ambassadors of Britain,
+Italy, Russia and Japan and several distinguished Frenchmen.
+
+[Illustration: AMBASSADORS WILLIAM G. SHARP AND JAMES W. GERARD
+FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN PARIS, FEBRUARY, 1917]
+
+I did not sit next to Briand as I ranked after the Ambassadors
+accredited to France, but after lunch I sat alone with him
+before the fire in one of the large and beautiful salons and
+there we had a long talk, as, naturally, he wanted to know about
+the situation in Germany. He impressed me as a strong man, with
+the vigour of an orator, a man of temperament, a man endowed by
+nature to become a leader of the French--as the French were
+before the war.
+
+Lord Esher, at the request of General Lyautey, then at the head
+of the military force of France, took me to see that General. I
+had to wait for him some time, as he was appearing before a
+committee of the Chamber of the Senate. His inability to agree
+with the Chamber caused his resignation not long afterwards.
+
+I was struck in France by the fact that the leaders, civil,
+military and naval, seemed older than those in similar positions
+in other countries.
+
+The present Premier, Clemenceau, is an example of this fondness
+of the French for government by old men. Clemenceau is seventy-six
+years old, but is a vigorous fighter.
+
+Mrs. Gerard and I lunched with Gabriel Hanotaux and his
+attractive wife at their home. Cambon was there, and Ribot, since
+become Premier of France, a good old man; also the Secretary of
+the Navy and several learned French philosophers and members of
+the Academy and one of the heads of the Credit Lyonnais, perhaps
+the greatest financial institution of France.
+
+War, war--who could talk of anything else? Hanotaux said that in
+our time we had been unusually fortunate, unusually free from
+war, that there was underneath France, underneath even the fair
+city of Paris, under the smiling sunlit fields, another France, a
+France of caves and catacombs, excavated by the poor people, the
+plain people who, during the One Hundred Years' War, had sought
+in marching armies, the far-riding plunderers and the depths of
+the earth refuge from the harassing, camp followers, the roving
+bands of "White Companies," the robber barons who, English and
+French, Gascon and Norman, harried the lands of France.
+
+I said that I had heard the statement made, and there seemed no
+reason to doubt it, that since the birth of Christ the world has
+only in one year out of every thirteen enjoyed a rest from war.
+
+Mr. Fabre-Luce, Vice-President of the Credit Lyonnais, told us of
+an interesting book written by a Russian and published before the
+war which predicted much that has happened in this war with
+almost the foresight of a Cassandra. I was so impressed that I
+secured a copy.
+
+This book, "The Future War," by Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch,
+counsellor of the Russian Empire, and published in 1892, had so
+great an effect on the Czar of Russia that it was the reading of
+it which impelled him to call the Peace Conference at The Hague.
+In the course of his book the author explains that it is
+impossible for the Powers to continue longer in the path of
+armaments and that they ought to look each other in the face and
+demand where these great armaments and this extension of forces
+are conducting them. He writes:
+
+     "How can one believe it possible to solve
+     international questions by means of the veritable
+     cataclysm which will constitute, with the present
+     means of destruction, war waged between the five
+     great Powers, by ten millions of soldiers?... In
+     this war explosives so powerful will be employed
+     that every grouping of troops on the flat country
+     or even under the protection of fortifications
+     will become almost impossible and that, therefore,
+     the preparations of this character made in
+     expectation of the war will become useless....
+
+     "The future war will see the use of a great
+     quantity of new aids to war, bicycles, pigeons,
+     telegraph, telephones, optical instruments and
+     photographic instruments for the purpose of
+     mapping from a great distance the positions
+     occupied by the enemy and means to observe the
+     movements of the enemy such as observing ladders,
+     balloons and so on....
+
+     "In the future war every body of troops holding
+     itself on the defensive or found taking the
+     offensive, when it is not the question of sudden
+     assault, will have to fortify itself in a chosen
+     position and the war will be confined principally
+     to the form of a series of combats in which the
+     possession of fortified positions will be
+     disputed, and in which the assailant will have to
+     meet the accessory defensives in the neighbourhood
+     of the fortifications such as barricades, barbed
+     wire, etc., the destruction of these objects
+     costing many victims.... The infantry, when on the
+     defensive, will dig itself in. The conduct of the
+     war will depend, in a large measure, on the
+     artillery."
+
+According to our author, who foresaw "No Man's Land" between the
+two opposing forces, "there will be formed a certain zone
+absolutely impassable in consequence of the terrible fire with
+which it will be inundated from a short distance from each side."
+Bloch adds: "This war will last a long time and entire nations
+will be seen in arms or rather the flower of each nation. Germany
+will begin the war by throwing itself on France and then, using
+the many German railroads, will turn against Russia. By virtue of
+its military force Germany will take the initiative of operations
+and will make the war on the two fronts."
+
+His prophetic eye saw even the submarine war of the future. "It
+will happen, possibly, that the future war will produce engines
+of war completely unknown and unexpected up to the present time;
+in any event one can foresee the advent in a short time of
+submarines destined to carry below even ironclads, torpedoes
+powerful enough to wreck the strongest ships."
+
+He quotes the opinions of Jomini, who says that future armies
+will not be composed of troops recruited voluntarily but of
+entire nations called by a law to arms and who will not fight for
+a change of frontier but for their existence. Jomini states "that
+this state of affairs will bring us back to the third and the
+fourth centuries, calling to our minds those shocks of immense
+peoples who disputed among themselves the European continent,"
+and "that if a new legislation and a new international law do not
+come to put an end to these risings of whole peoples that it is
+impossible to foresee where the ravages of future war will stop.
+It will become a scourge more terrible than ever, because the
+population of civilised nations will be cut down, while in the
+interior of each nation the normal economic life will be
+arrested, communications interrupted and if the war is prolonged
+financial crises will come with a fearful rise in the price of
+everything and famine with all its consequences."
+
+Bloch, in depicting the future war, says that "in 1870, the
+struggle was between two Powers, while in the war of the future
+at least five great nations will take part without speaking of
+the intervention of Turkey and England.... The comparing of the
+coming war with any war of the past is impossible because the
+increase in the effective fighting forces has been of a rapidity
+so unexampled and this increase brings with it so great an
+augmentation of expenditures and of victims that the future war
+will have the character of a struggle for the existence of
+nations.... It is true that the war of 1870 gave us something of
+an example of this character. That was a war without mercy,
+brought on by secular hate, a war of revenge on the part of the
+Germans because of the ancient victories of the French, a war
+where volunteers were shot and villages burned and where unheard
+of exactions were imposed on the conquered whom the conqueror
+sought to wrong and weaken for a long period of time. A new war
+in Central Europe will be a second edition of the same struggle
+but by how much will it not surpass the former wars by its
+magnitude and by its length and by the means of destruction
+employed."
+
+Does not Bloch give a better prediction of this war than the
+often quoted Bernhardi?
+
+The table conversation at Hanotaux's was in French; few Frenchmen
+and hardly any public men in France speak English.
+
+At this lunch, Ribot, since Premier, said to me, "In men, in
+fighting, we can hold out, but we must have help on the credit
+side."
+
+How much more than credit have we sent since to help beloved,
+beleaguered France!
+
+My interview with President Poincare of France was set for
+five-thirty in the Elysee Palace. I had to wait some minutes in
+an ante-room, hung with splendid tapestries, where the secretary
+in charge introduced me to Deschanel, the Secretaire perpetuel of
+the Academie Francaise, with whom I had a few minutes' talk.
+
+The President sat in a small, beautifully decorated room in this
+historical Elysee Palace. A small fire burned in the grate, a bit
+of grateful warmth in almost coalless Paris. He, too, plied me
+with questions, but not as closely as others, about the land I
+had left behind. He spoke of a great gift of money made by James
+Stillman, a fund to help the families of members of the Legion of
+Honour.
+
+Poincare is a man of fifty-seven, wears a small beard growing
+grey, and is a little under medium height (of this country) and
+has much the manner of an American lawyer. What a contrast those
+polite, agreeable Frenchmen were to the stiff, formal, overbearing
+Germans. There are "well born" Germans with charming international
+manners and the lower classes in Germany have kindly, natural
+manners, but the manners of the minor members of the merchant
+class and of the lesser officials is rude to boorishness.
+
+And here I want to say a word about the democracy of my own
+countrymen. Before the war and during it we entertained countless
+Americans in the Embassy; all sorts and under a variety of
+conditions, Jew and Gentile, business men and students,
+travellers and musicians. They carried themselves with ease,
+whatever the occasion. I was proud of them always and of our
+system of education that had given them such pleasant equality.
+
+After my arrival in Berlin a magnificent darkey, named George
+Washington Bronson, called in search of a job. Over six feet four
+and well built, I thought he would make an impressive appearance
+opening carriage doors or taking hats in the hall. So I engaged
+him. But he did not get on well with the other servants, and his
+discharge followed. Great consternation was caused shortly
+afterwards at our Lincoln day reception when Mrs. Gerard and the
+ladies of the Embassy were receiving the American Colony, by the
+report that George Washington, dressed up to the nines,
+accompanied by a coloured friend, presenting the appearance of a
+new red buggy, was on his way up stairs. I decided that on
+Lincoln's birthday all were welcome; so George Washington and his
+friend, resplendent, received the same greeting accorded all
+Americans and the manners of George Washington excelled those of
+a Grand Duke. But although one could see his mouth water, he did
+not approach the table where our local Ruggles presided over the
+refreshments. There was "that" about Ruggles' eye which told
+George Washington he would have to "go to the mat" before his
+former superior officer would serve him with champagne.
+
+The cold in Paris was bitter, biting into the very bones, and all
+classes of the population suffered intensely from the lack of
+coal. In the theatres, for instance, there was absolutely no
+heat. Theatrical performances were permitted in each theatre
+three times a week. Evening dress was prohibited. I went to the
+Folies Bergeres, arriving so late that the crowded house had
+warmed itself and it was possible to stay until the end in spite
+of the want of ventilation.
+
+At one of the theatres I arrived early, but the cold was so
+bitter that even sitting in fur overcoat and with my hat on I was
+so chilled I had to leave after twenty minutes. This play was a
+_revue_, the actresses appearing in the scanty costumes peculiar
+to that form of entertainment, but the cold was of such intensity
+that they had added their street furs, presenting a curiously
+comical effect.
+
+I spoke to many of the soldiers in the streets. All were animated
+by a new spirit in France, an obstinate calm, a determination to
+see this thing through, to end forever the fear of Prussian
+invasion which for so many years had impended. If any sign of
+weakness was apparent it was among the financiers; not among the
+poor and the men of the trenches.
+
+At the railway station I talked with a blue-clad French soldier,
+calm, witty, but determined. He said, "My family comes from the
+East of France, my great grandfather was killed by the Prussians
+in 1814, my grandfather was shot in his garden by the Prussians
+in 1870, my father died of grief, in 1916, because my two sisters
+in Lille fell into Prussian hands and were taken as their slaves
+with all that that means. I have decided that we must end this
+horror once and for all, so that my children can cultivate their
+little fields without this constant haunting fear of the invading
+Prussian."
+
+We left Paris on the evening train for the Spanish border.
+Newspaper men taking flashlights and "poilus" in uniform crowded
+the station platform as the train with our still numerous party
+pulled out.
+
+How France has disappointed German expectations! France to-day is
+not the France that calls out, "We are betrayed," and runs away
+after the failure of its first assault. France to-day is a calm
+France that seeks out its traitors, and deliberately punishes
+them, that organises with an efficiency we once thought a
+Prussian monopoly, a France that bleeds but fights on, a France
+that, standing with its back to its beloved, sunny fields, with
+many of her dearest sons dead, facing the Kaiser across No Man's
+Land, cries boldly, bravely to the world, the war cry of Verdun,
+"They shall not pass!"
+
+But even while war goes on, even while the French poilus hold
+fast the long battle line, the French people are beset within by
+agents of the Kaiser. Face to face they are with the secret
+agents, the spies, the informers, the buyers of newspapers and of
+public men, the traffickers in honour who, behind French
+citizenship or neutral passports, seek to divide France, to make
+the soldier at the front feel that he is betrayed by traitors at
+home, to render the French distrustful and suspicious of each
+other and thus to strike as mortal a blow at the French defence
+as was attempted at Verdun.
+
+Bolo Pasha and all his tribe slip past trench and barbed wire and
+do more damage than a German army corps to the cause of Liberty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+MY INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF SPAIN
+
+
+Neutrals--how obsolete the word seems!
+
+Yet there are some nations in Europe which will remain neutral no
+matter how great the hardship. How much this is due to inherent
+weaknesses of government, fears that the people may acquire too
+much of the infectious spirit of liberalism that war brings and
+thereby overthrow royalty, is hard to judge. But I must say that
+Kaiserism has omitted no word or act to impress upon the royalty
+of those countries, which might otherwise be inclined to aid the
+entente, the advantages to them of keeping out of the war unless
+they become allies of Germany.
+
+You will meet Kaiserism in Spain and the other neutral countries
+of Europe as much as you will in Austria or Bulgaria or Turkey. I
+do not mean that Spain, for instance, is by any means an ally of
+Germany, but I do mean that the German propagandist has had free
+rein.
+
+I shall never forget the fact that the King of Spain, during my
+talk with him, remarked: "Remember that while I am King of Spain,
+I am also an Austrian Archduke."
+
+And not only is the King of Spain by descent and in the right of
+his father an Archduke of Austria but his mother was an Austrian
+Princess of the House of Hapsburg. Study, for the moment, the
+genealogy of the King and Queen of Spain and you will see how
+royalty is inter-related in this war.
+
+The Queen of Spain was brought up at the court of the late Queen
+Victoria of England and is a Battenberg princess. In 1823,
+Alexander, Prince of Hesse and the Rhine, took in morganatic
+marriage a Countess von Hauke. He made her Countess of Battenberg
+and in 1858 she was given the title by the ruler of Hesse, of
+Princess Battenberg, her children and their descendants to take
+the same title. One of these Battenbergs, descendants of Countess
+von Hauke, married Beatrice, daughter of Queen Victoria, and the
+daughter of the marriage is the present Queen of Spain, who just
+before her marriage to Alfonso was created a Royal Highness by
+King Edward VII. Queen Victoria Eugenia has become quite Spanish.
+With a mantilla on her head, she attends bull fights and is very
+popular.
+
+The father of Alfonso XIII, Alfonso XII, was very intimate with
+the German Court. In 1883, he visited the old Emperor William I
+in Germany and accepted the colonelcy of a Uhlan regiment then in
+garrison in Strassburg, one of the towns taken from France in
+1870. On his return journey he stopped in Paris and was the
+object of a popular demonstration so violent that the President
+of France and his ministers called in a body to apologise.
+
+Shortly thereafter the Crown Prince (later Emperor) Friedrich
+paid a visit to Spain and an intimacy was maintained between the
+two courts.
+
+It is the inclination of those in the king business to keep
+together and a tradition of Prussia that fellow Kings must be
+sustained and, if possible, maintained against democracy. That's
+why the Kaiser finds reciprocal sympathy in Spain.
+
+Our popular Ambassador, Mr. Willard, and his staff, with a
+representative of the Spanish Foreign Office, met us at the
+station at Madrid on my arrival from Paris.
+
+Madrid is a handsome city, comparatively modern. From its highest
+point the great Royal Palace dominates the capital and from the
+palace the royal park stretches unbroken to the Guadarrama
+mountains sixty miles away.
+
+In many respects Spain seems a land upside down. We arrived at
+Madrid just at the close of the Carnival season. Masked balls
+began at three in the afternoon and many theatres not until ten
+or even eleven at night. Madrid sleeps late. The rich people get
+up only in time for lunch. The streets are full of noise and
+people until four in the morning, the sellers of lottery tickets
+making special efforts to swell the volume of night sounds.
+
+My visit to the King of Spain was at eleven in the morning.
+Ambassador Willard went with me. As we entered the palace and
+waited at the foot of an elevator, the car descended and one of
+the little Princes of Spain, about eight years old, dressed in a
+sailor suit, stepped out. Evidently he had been trained in royal
+urbanity for he immediately came up to us, shook hands and said,
+"Buenos dias."
+
+And as we strolled down a long corridor where Palace guards in
+high boots and cocked hats stood guard with halberds in their
+hands another little Prince, about eleven, also in a sailor suit,
+came out of a room and walked ahead of us; behind followed two
+nuns, walking side by side at a respectful distance. As he
+appeared in the corridor one of the guards stamped his halberd on
+the floor, calling out in Spanish, "Turn out the guard--the
+Infant of Spain." And in the guardroom at the end of the corridor
+the guards, forming in line, clashing their arms, did honour to
+the baby Prince.
+
+Ambassador Willard and I waited in the great, splendid room of
+the Palace. Inside, priests and officers, ladies, officials,
+diplomats, were waiting to present petitions or pay homage to
+their King. Outside in the court yard, the guard was being
+changed, infantry, cavalry and artillery all being represented. A
+tuneful band played during the ceremony of guard mount, which was
+witnessed by crowds of poor folk who are permitted to enter the
+Palace precincts as spectators.
+
+While waiting I was presented to the Archbishop of Toledo, head
+of the Spanish Church, resplendent in his gorgeous ecclesiastical
+robes. Finally a court official came and said that I was to go
+into the King alone; that Mr. Willard was to see him later.
+
+I found King Alfonso in a small room about twenty by fourteen
+feet. He wore a brown business suit, a soft shirt and soft
+collar fastened by a gold safety pin--quite the style of dress of
+an American collegian. He is tall and well built.
+
+The King speaks perfect English--without a trace of accent. After
+we had talked a few moments, I noted the difference between
+Teuton and Latin, the vast abyss which separates the polite and
+courteous Spaniard, thinking of others, anxious to be hospitable,
+and the rough, conceited, aggressive Junker of Germany. How often
+have I found that we ourselves, although good hearted and easy
+going, in comparison with our friends in South and Central
+America, do not measure up to the standards of Castilian
+courtesy.
+
+Some one knocked at the door and King Alfonso rose and answered.
+He returned with odd looking implements in his hands which I soon
+discovered to be an enormous silver cocktail shaker and two
+goblets. After a dexterous shake, the King poured out two large
+cocktails, saying, "I understand that you American gentlemen
+always drink in the morning."
+
+I had not had a cocktail for years and if I had endeavoured to
+assimilate the drink so royally prepared for me I should have
+been in no condition to continue the conversation. I think King
+Alfonso himself was quite relieved when, after a sip, I put my
+cocktail behind a statue. I noticed that he camouflaged his in a
+similar manner.
+
+Unfortunately, as Maximilian Harden said, the Germans think of us
+as a land of dollars, trusts and corruption; and other nations
+think of us as devotees of the cocktail and of poker. Their
+school boys dream of fighting Indians in Pittsburg and hunting
+buffalo in the deserts of the Bronx.
+
+The characteristic of Alfonso which impresses one immediately is
+that of extreme manliness. He has a sense of humour that will
+save him from many a mishap in his difficult post. He has a wide
+knowledge of men and affairs and, above all, as the Spaniards
+would put it, is _muy espanol_ (very Spanish), not only in
+appearance but in his way of looking at things, a Spaniard of the
+best type, a Spaniard possessing industry and ambition and
+bravery, a Spaniard, in fact, of the days when Spain was supreme
+in the world. His favourite sport is polo, which he plays very
+well. Indeed, the game, which requires dash, quickness of
+thought, nerve and good riding, is particularly suited to the
+Spanish character. The King showed at the time of the anarchistic
+outbreaks, that he was a brave man. Yet he must be careful at all
+times to remember that he is a constitutional king, that in a
+country like Spain leadership is dangerous, that he should always
+rather stand aside, let the representatives of the nation decide,
+thus taking no definite position himself. A king who abandons the
+council table to shoot pigeons or play polo is often acting with
+far more wisdom than a constitutional ruler who attempts by the
+use of his strong personality and lofty position to force upon
+his councillors a course which the majority of them do not
+recommend.
+
+The Spaniards are politically an exacting people. But it is to
+be hoped that they will not turn the heavy artillery of their
+criticism upon a king who serves them so gracefully and well.
+
+The king has a natural desire to take a prominent part in the
+negotiations for peace, but here again is dangerous ground for
+him. He should be given a part, if possible, in the preliminaries
+of peace, but while I believe that he sympathises with one of the
+Entente countries, the Allies are forced to recognise the fact of
+which he himself reminded me, that he is not only King of Spain,
+but Archduke of one of the Central Empires, the son of an
+Austrian Archduchess.
+
+The king told me that he was most desirous that American capital
+should become interested in the development of Spain. He did not
+tell me the reason for this desire but perhaps he fears that if
+German capital should take a great part in the development of
+industrial Spain that the tentacles of the German propaganda and
+spy system which go hand in hand with her commercial invaders
+would wrap themselves around the commercial, social and political
+life of Spain.
+
+Perhaps King Alfonso, when he wishes capital other than German to
+become interested in Spain, is thinking of the occurrences of
+1885, when Spain and Germany so nearly clashed. In that year the
+crew of a German warship hoisted the flag of the German Empire on
+the island of Yap, one of the Carolina group, an island long
+claimed by Spain. The act so stirred the people of Spain that a
+great meeting was held in Madrid, attended by over one hundred
+thousand people. Later the mob attacked the German Embassy and
+Consulate, tore down the shield and flag staff of the Consulate
+and burned them in the principal square of Madrid. In the end,
+Spain was compelled to humbly apologise to Germany for the insult
+to the German Ambassador.
+
+Some years before the war the King sent to this country a special
+emissary to interest American capital in Spain. Means of
+transportation are very meagre. Great mineral districts are as
+yet undeveloped and many other opportunities for foreign capital
+present themselves.
+
+I asked the Spaniards why Spain was not developed by Spanish
+capital and they told me that the rich put all their money in
+government bonds and lived as gaily as possible on the interest.
+
+Our own Government, whether Democratic or Republican, must always
+be careful to see that taxes are not so high as to prevent the
+naturally enterprising American from risking part of his capital
+in new ventures and such protection must be given to American
+citizens that they will continue to try their luck at business in
+foreign countries for the immediate benefit, of course, of
+themselves, but also for the commercial supremacy of the United
+States.
+
+The American who goes to Mexico and there develops a railroad or
+a plantation, a commercial business, a bank or a mine, is not
+only adding to the wealth of Mexico, but any money which he makes
+after paying his due share of taxes there, is brought back by him
+to the United States, is subject to taxation, and by just so
+much not only lightens the tax burden of other Americans, but
+adds to the power in trade of the whole country.
+
+A business man who is taxed too much on any profits that he makes
+will, like the Spaniard, invest his capital in Government bonds.
+He will stop taking up new enterprises because if he loses no one
+compensates him for his loss, while if he wins most of his profit
+is taken in taxes by the State.
+
+I do not think that the Spanish harbour any spirit of revenge
+against us because of the events of the Spanish-American war.
+There was nothing in that war to arouse particular resentment. No
+one used poison gas, or enslaved women or cut off the hands of
+babies. On our side, at least, there was an intense admiration
+for the splendid, chivalrous bravery of our enemies. Spain was,
+in reality, benefited by the loss of Cuba and the Philippines; in
+fact, they were practically lost to her before we entered the
+war. Thinking Spaniards believe the war with America benefited
+Spain; and the lower classes rejoice because their sons and
+husbands are not forced to serve in the Spanish Army in the
+fever-laden swamps of the tropics.
+
+On the war Spain is hopelessly divided: Conservative, against
+Conservative; Liberal, against Liberal. The usual German
+propaganda is furiously at work, all the paraphernalia, bought
+newspapers--bribes. Roman Catholic prejudice against former
+French Governments is a great stumbling block in the way of the
+Allies in Spain, for that country became the refuge of many
+orders and priests driven from France. Many of the Spanish
+Catholics still resent the action of previous French Governments
+towards the Catholic Church.
+
+But whatever may be the faults of the French Government in this
+particular, whether it or the teaching orders went too far--the
+Roman Catholics of Spain sooner or later will realise that, after
+all, the bulk of the French and Italian and Belgian people are
+their co-religionists, and they will recall the attempts of
+Bismarck to master the Roman Catholics of Germany and to bind its
+priests to the will of the Imperial Government, attempts recent
+enough to keep the Catholics of Germany still organised in the
+political party which they created in the dark days of Bismarck's
+"war for Civilisation," as he dared call his contest with the
+great Roman Catholic Church.
+
+Spanish and other Catholics throughout the world will remember
+this and will remember, too, that from every valley of the
+Protestant section of the German Empire the eye can see a
+"Bismarck Thurm," or Bismarck Memorial Tower, erected on some
+commanding height by the admirers of the dead Iron Chancellor.
+
+I believe that after the war the Roman Catholic Church in France
+and Belgium will be on a healthier, sounder basis, that it will
+have more and more influence with the people, that it will be
+more popular and respected than before, unless some act on the
+part of the Pope should lead the French and Belgians to believe
+that he favours Germany. Priests are not exempt from military
+service in France and these Abbes, fighting, dying, suffering
+wounds and privation, working cheek to cheek with the soldiers of
+France, will do much to bring about the change. I met a number of
+these priest-warriors in the prison camps of Germany. They are
+doing a great work and have earned the respect and love of their
+countrymen--their fellow prisoners.
+
+Several of these soldier Abbes were prisoners in Dyrotz, near
+Berlin, and I remember how they were looked up to by all the
+soldiers. What a consolation were these noble warriors who fought
+a two-fold winning fight--for their country and their faith.
+
+Spain has suffered much from the war. In the northeast part
+called Catalonia are located the manufacturing industries of
+Spain, cloth weaving, cotton spinning, etc. In Barcelona, the
+principal industrial town, are many manufacturing industries. If
+these plants cannot obtain raw materials or a market for their
+finished products, then industrial depression ensues and
+thousands are thrown out of employment.
+
+So in the north, where iron ore is produced, the submarine
+blockade of England, chief buyer of iron ore and the seller of
+coal, has made itself felt in every province; and in the south,
+the land of sun and gypsies, oranges and vines, the want of sea
+and land transportation, the diminished exports of wine and
+fruits to other countries have brought many of the inhabitants to
+the verge of ruin.
+
+In the coast cities sailors and longshoremen are out of
+employment, and this condition--these hundreds of thousands
+without work through disturbance of industry,--has ripened the
+field for the German propagandist and agent who threatens the
+King with revolution, should he incline to the Allies.
+
+In no country of the world has the German agent been so bold and
+no neutral government has been more forcibly reminded in its
+policy and conduct of the fact that it is always face to face
+with Kaiserism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+GERMAN SPIES AND THEIR METHODS
+
+
+German spies who looked like "movie" detectives hung about and
+followed us on the journey from Berlin to Switzerland, France and
+Spain. There were even suspicious characters among the Americans
+with German accent who came on our special train from Germany to
+Switzerland.
+
+Berne is now the champion spy centre of the world. Switzerland, a
+neutral country, bordering on Germany, France, Italy and Austria,
+is the happy hunting ground and outfitting point for myriads of
+spies employed by the nations at war. The Germans, however, use
+more spies than all the other nations together.
+
+Bismarck said that there are male nations and female nations, and
+that Germany was a male nation--certainly the German has less of
+that heaven-sent feminine quality of intuition than other
+peoples. The autocrat, never mingling with the plain people of
+all walks of life, finds the spy a necessity.
+
+Spy spies on spy--autocracy produces bureaucracy where men rise
+and fall not by the votes of their fellow citizens but by back
+stairs intrigue. The German office-holder fears the spies of his
+rivals. I often said to Germans holding high office during the
+war, "This strain is breaking you down,--all day in your office.
+Take an afternoon off and come shooting with me." The invariable
+answer was, "I cannot--the others would learn it from their spies
+and would spread the report that I neglect business!"
+
+While in Spain I met the then Premier, Count Romanones, a man of
+great talent and impressive personality. He told me of the
+finding of a quantity of high explosives, marked by a little
+buoy, in one of the secluded bays of the coast. And that day a
+German had been arrested who had mysteriously appeared at a
+Spanish port dressed as a workman. The workman took a first class
+passage to Madrid, went to the best hotel and bought a complete
+outfit of fine clothes. Undoubtedly the high explosive as well as
+the mysterious German had been landed from a German submarine.
+Whether the explosive was destined as a depot for submarines or
+was to help overturn the Spanish government was hard to guess,
+but Count Romanones was worried over the activity of the German
+agents in Spain.
+
+It has been very easy for German agents in America to communicate
+with Germany through this submarine post from Spain to Germany,
+the letters from America being sent to Cuba and thence on Spanish
+boats to Spain.
+
+At all times since the war the Germans have had a submarine post
+running direct from Germany to Spain. Shortly after our arrival
+in Spain Mrs. Gerard received mysteriously a letter written by a
+friend of hers, a German Baroness, in Berlin. This letter had
+undoubtedly been sent through the very efficient German spy
+system.
+
+Sometime in 1915 a German soldier, in uniform, speaking perfect
+English, called one day at the Embassy. He said that his name was
+Bode and that he had at one time worked for my father-in-law, the
+late Marcus Daly. Of course, we had no means of verifying his
+statements and Mrs. Gerard did not remember any one of that name
+or recall Bode personally. He said that he was fighting on the
+East front and that he had a temporary leave of absence. I gave
+him some money and later we sent him packages of food and tobacco
+to the front, but never received any acknowledgment.
+
+In Madrid one of my assistants, Frank Hall, while walking through
+the street, ran across Bode, who was fashionably attired. His
+calling cards stated that he was a mining engineer from Los
+Angeles, California. He told Hall a most extraordinary fairy
+story, saying that he had been captured by the Russians on the
+East front and sent to Siberia, that from Siberia he had escaped
+to China and from there he had gradually worked his way back to
+America and thence to Spain.
+
+Of course, without any definite information on the subject it is
+impossible to say exactly what he was doing in Spain. But I am
+sure that it is far more likely he had landed from a German
+submarine on the coast of Spain and that he was posing as an
+American mining engineer for a particular purpose.
+
+I told certain people in Spain about Bode and of his intention to
+visit the mining districts of Spain where numbers of men are
+employed. Bode must have suspected that I had given information
+about him, for Hall and I received several postcards of a
+threatening character, evidently from him.
+
+My cables to and from the State Department passed through our
+legation at Copenhagen, and, of course, if the Germans knew our
+cipher these messages were read by them. On special occasions I
+made use of a super-cipher the key to which I kept in a safe in
+my bedroom and which only one secretary could use. The files of
+cipher cables sent and received were kept in a large safe in the
+Embassy. But before leaving Germany, knowing the Germans as I
+did, and particularly what they had done in other countries and
+to other diplomats, knowing how easy it would be for them to
+burglarise the safe after we left, when the Spaniards and Dutch
+were out of the building at night, I tossed all these despatches
+as well as the code books into a big furnace fire. Commander
+Gherardi and Secretary Hugh Wilson stood by and personally saw
+that the last scrap was burned. Of course, copies of all the
+cables are in the State Department.
+
+German spies are adepts at opening bags, steaming letters--all
+the old tricks. The easiest way to baffle them is to write
+nothing that cannot be published to the world.
+
+For a long time after the beginning of war I was too busy to
+write the weekly report of official gossip usually sent home by
+diplomats. I suppose the Germans searched our courier bags for
+such a report vainly. Anyway, its absence finally got on the
+nerves of Zimmermann so much that one day he blurted out, "Don't
+you ever write reports to your Government?"
+
+Sealed letters are opened by spies as follows:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+by inserting a pencil or small round object in the envelope,
+steamed a little, if necessary; the envelope is opened at the end
+flap and the contents pulled out without disturbing the seal, the
+contents are then read, put in their place again, the end flap
+re-inserted, a little gum used and the envelope is as intact as
+before.
+
+The only safe way to seal an envelope is thus:
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Even then a clever spy can open the letter, read the contents and
+seal it again. This is done by cutting through the seals with a
+hot razor--the divided seals are then united by pressing the hot
+razor against each side of the cut and then pressing the two
+parts of the cut seal together. This is, however, a very delicate
+operation and doesn't always work.
+
+From the outbreak of war we sent and received our official mail
+through England, and couriers carried it between Berlin and
+London through Holland via Flushing and Tilbury.
+
+On account of the great volume of correspondence between
+Ambassador Page and myself on the affairs of German prisoners in
+England and English prisoners in Germany, there were many pouches
+every week. These were leather mail bags opened only by duplicate
+keys kept in London and Berlin and, for the American mail, in
+Berlin and Washington. Our couriers did their best to keep the
+numerous bags in their sight during the long journey but on many
+occasions our couriers were separated, I am sure with malicious
+purpose, from their bags by the German railway authorities and on
+some occasions the bags not recovered for days.
+
+Undoubtedly at this time the Germans opened and looked over the
+contents of the bags. Later in the war our courier while on a
+Dutch mail boat, running between Flushing and England, was twice
+captured with the boat by a German warship and taken into
+Zeebrugge. Undoubtedly here, too, the bags were secretly opened
+and our uncoded despatches and letters read.
+
+German spies were most annoying in Havana and one of them, a
+large dark man, followed me about at a distance of only six feet,
+with his eyes glued on the small bag which I carried from a thick
+strap hanging around my shoulder. I brought it from Germany in
+that way. I never let it out of my hands or sight.
+
+What was in that bag? Among other things were the original
+telegrams written by the Kaiser in his own handwriting,
+facsimiles of which appear in my earlier book, "My Four Years in
+Germany," and the treaty which the Germans tried to get me to
+sign while they held me as a prisoner. Under the terms they
+proposed the German ships interned in America were to have the
+right in case of war, to sail for Germany under a safe conduct to
+be obtained from the Allies by the United States. Somewhat of a
+treaty! And quite a new, bright and original thought by some one
+in the Foreign Office or German Admiralty. There were also in
+this mysterious bag many other matters of interest that may some
+day see the light.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Poisonous propaganda and spying are the twin offspring of
+Kaiserism.
+
+There is in Mexico, for instance, one force that never
+sleeps,--the German propaganda. It is the same method as that
+used by the Teutons in every country, the purchase or rental of
+newspaper properties, bribing public men and officers of the army
+and the insidious use of Germans who are engaged in commerce.
+This propaganda is backed by enormous sums of money appropriated
+by the German government which directs how all its officers and
+agents, high and low, shall participate in the campaign.
+
+In the long run a paid propaganda always fails. It is like paying
+money to blackmailers. The blackmailer who has once received
+money becomes so insatiable that even the Bank of England will
+not satisfy him in the end. Sometimes the newspapers which are
+not bought, but are equally corrupt, become vehement in their
+denunciation of the country making the propaganda in the hope of
+being bought and in the hope that their bribe money will be in
+proportion to their hostility. Corrupted public men who are not
+bribed often become sternly virtuous and denunciatory with a
+similar hope. Those who have received the wages of shame, on the
+other hand, become more insistent in their demands, crying,
+"Give! Give!" like the daughter of the horse-leech.
+
+The blows of war must be struck quickly. Delays are dangerous and
+the temporary paralysis of one country by propaganda may mean the
+loss of the war. The United States has been at a great disadvantage
+because our officials have not had the authority, the means or
+the money to fight the German propaganda with effective educational
+campaigns, both offensive and defensive.
+
+Bernstorff in this country disposed of enormous sums for the
+purpose of moulding American public opinion. I, in Berlin, was
+without one cent with which to place America's side before the
+German people. It is a conflict of two systems. In Berlin I did
+not even have money to pay private detectives and on the rare
+occasions when I used them as, for instance to find out who was
+connected with the so-called American organisation, the League of
+Truth, which was engaged in a violent propaganda against America
+inside Germany, I was obliged to bear the expense personally.
+
+South of the Rio Grande the Germans are working against us, doing
+their best to prejudice the Mexicans against the United States,
+playing upon old hatreds and creating new ones and, in the
+meantime, by their purchase of properties and of mines creating a
+situation that will constitute for us in the future a most
+difficult and dangerous problem.
+
+The Germans cannot understand why we do not take advantage of
+conditions in Mexico in order to conquer and hold that unfortunate
+country. They could not believe that we were actuated by a spirit
+of idealism and that we were patiently suffering much in order
+really to help Mexico. They could not believe that we were
+waiting in order to convince not only Mexico but the other States
+of Central America and the great friendly republics of South
+America, that it was not our policy to use the dissensions and
+weakness of our neighbours to gain territory.
+
+On one occasion before the war I and several other Ambassadors
+were dining with the Kaiser and after dinner the conversation
+turned to the strange sights to be seen in America. One of the
+Ambassadors, I think it was Cambon, said that he had seen in
+America whole houses being moved along the roads, something of a
+novelty to European eyes where the houses, constructed of brick
+and stone, cannot be transported from place to place like our
+wooden frame house. The Emperor jokingly remarked: "Yes, I am
+sure that the Americans are moving their houses. They are moving
+them down towards the Mexican border."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+EN ROUTE HOME--KAISERISM IN AMERICA
+
+
+Our party was so numerous that we were compelled to charter a
+special train to take us from Madrid to La Coruna, the port in
+the extreme northwestern corner of Spain from which the _Infanta
+Isabela_ was to sail.
+
+Just before the train started, a Spanish gentleman from the
+Foreign Office, who had courteously come to see us off, said to
+me, "Do you know you have a Duke as engineer?" "The Duke of
+Saragossa is going to take out your train." So we ran forward to
+the engine and I shook hands with the Duke who was in blue
+overalls.
+
+This Duke of Saragossa, Grandee of Spain, often drives the engine
+of the King's train. Why he engineered our train I do not know,
+unless it was because of the rumours that German agents would try
+to stop my journey home.
+
+At any rate the Duke proved a most competent engineer, guiding us
+with velvet touch through the steep inclines and sharp turns of
+the Guadarrama mountains. At Venta de Banos his turn at the
+engine ended and on my invitation he came to dine with us in the
+dining car. He proved a most charming gentleman, speaking English
+well. He said that his great ambition was to visit America and
+see the big locomotives and the pretty girls. At dinner he was,
+of course, dressed in his overalls and carried out the professional
+touch by using clean cotton waste instead of a pocket handkerchief.
+
+Arrived at La Coruna in the morning, carriages sent by the
+Spanish government met us and the Mayor and the other officials
+were most polite. The Mayor accompanied us on board ship next
+day, giving to Mrs. Gerard a beautiful basket of flowers entwined
+with ribbons of the colours of the City of La Coruna.
+
+We found the _Infanta Isabela_ a clean splendid ship--her Captain
+competent and kind. I cheerfully recommend her to any who wish a
+safe voyage across the Atlantic during the war.
+
+My stay in Havana was brief and I was soon en route northward
+from Key West.
+
+As our train came north through Florida there were crowds and
+bands at the stations and at St. Augustine my eyes were delighted
+by the sight of Frank Munsey and Ex-Senator Chauncey Depew.
+
+At the station in Washington Secretary McAdoo met me. What a
+splendid record of achievement is his since the war, and now with
+the burden of all the railways in the country added to that of
+finance I suppose in no country at war has one man so successfully
+undertaken such gigantic tasks.
+
+President Wilson was ill in bed but next day got up on purpose to
+hear my report. I was with him for over an hour.
+
+[Illustration: THE "INFANTA ISABELLA," ON WHICH AMBASSADOR GERARD
+RETURNED FROM EUROPE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN HAVANA HARBOR,
+MARCH, 1917]
+
+The following day I arrived in New York, being met in Jersey
+City by a committee headed by the celebrated lawyer, John B.
+Stanchfield; Clarence Mackay, Herbert Swope (whose splendid
+articles in the _New York World_ were the first warnings to
+America and other countries respecting the ruthless submarine
+warfare), United States Marshal Thomas D. McCarthy, State Senator
+Foley, James J. Hoey,--a faithful trio of good friends who saw me
+off for Denmark only a few months before. I was escorted to the
+City Hall where I was welcomed by the Mayor. In a speech on the
+steps of the City Hall I said:
+
+     "We are standing to-day very near the brink of
+     war, but I want to assure you that if we should be
+     drawn into the conflict it will be only after our
+     President has exhausted every means consistent
+     with upholding the honour and dignity of the
+     United States to keep us from war. I left Berlin
+     with a clear conscience, because I felt that
+     during all my stay there I had omitted nothing to
+     make for friendly relations and peace between the
+     two nations.
+
+     "I am very glad to-day to see on the list of this
+     Reception Committee the names of people of German
+     descent. It is but natural that citizens of German
+     descent in the beginning of the war should have
+     had a sentimental feeling toward Germany, that
+     they should have looked back through rose-coloured
+     glasses on that land which, however, they left
+     because they did not have equality of opportunity.
+     We read to-day in the newspapers for the first
+     time that there is a prospect that after the war
+     the Germans will be given an equal share in their
+     own government. I believe that in our hour of
+     trial we can rely upon the loyalty of our citizens
+     of German descent, and if they would follow me I
+     would not be afraid to go out with a regiment of
+     them and without any fear of being shot from
+     behind.
+
+            *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "The nation that stands opposite to us to-day has
+     probably no less than 12,000,000 men under arms. I
+     have seen the Germans take more prisoners in one
+     afternoon than there are men in the entire United
+     States Army.
+
+     "Does it not seem to you ridiculous that the two
+     States of New York and New Jersey should have more
+     chauffeurs in them than there are soldiers in our
+     army? My companions from the Twelfth Regiment that
+     have honoured me by coming here to-day, and more
+     men like them throughout the country, have done
+     what they can. But they can't do it all. There
+     must be a public sentiment if we are to maintain
+     ourselves as a nation. If we had a million men
+     under arms to-day we should not be near the edge
+     of war.
+
+     "Gentlemen, I have tried in Berlin to be, as the
+     Mayor has told you, an American Ambassador, and I
+     thank you because you, an audience of patriotic
+     Americans, by your presence here set your seal of
+     approval upon my conduct during the last two and a
+     half years."
+
+I have never been able to understand why so many people did not
+sooner realise what Kaiserism meant for us. But now, at last, the
+nation understands that we must fight on until this menace of
+military autocracy has vanished and that not until then will the
+world enjoy a lasting peace.
+
+Almost as soon as I was settled in New York I was drafted.
+Drafted by a public curiosity which insisted on knowing
+something about Germany and the war.
+
+And so for me began a new life--that of a public speaker--I spoke
+first in New York at a lunch at the Chamber of Commerce--war had
+not then been declared and I was compelled to be careful--for
+even then there seemed a fear of Germany, a foolish desire to
+surrender all manhood to a fat neutrality.
+
+On April 2nd came President Wilson's message demanding war. I was
+in the opera house that night. Between the acts extras appeared.
+I telephoned Swope of the _World_ who confirmed the news. While I
+was receiving this information one of the directors of the
+Metropolitan Opera Company came in the room. I told him what had
+happened and asked if he was not going to do something--order the
+news read from the stage--for example, and the "Star Spangled
+Banner" played. He said, "No, the opera company is neutral."
+
+I returned to the box where I was sitting and stepping to the
+front called on the house to cheer President Wilson. There was,
+for a moment, surprise at such unconventional action, but the
+whole house soon broke into cheers.
+
+Conventionalism was gone.
+
+The opera was DeKoven's "Canterbury Pilgrims" and a few minutes
+after the curtain rose on the last act Frau Ober, a German
+singer, who was taking one of the principal parts, keeled over in
+a faint,--rage, perhaps, that the Yankees were at last daring to
+cheer, to assert themselves against the Kaiser!
+
+As I spoke in Albany, Buffalo, Harrisburg, Trenton and Boston, in
+Philadelphia, Providence and many times in New York and other
+places, I noted always an eagerness to learn about Germany, the
+war and foreign affairs. We Americans had travelled, but not with
+our eyes open--"seeing, we saw not."
+
+The first great, great question we faced was that of universal
+service for the war--or the selective draft--again how farsighted
+our President then proved himself. What would be our situation
+now if we had tried to go to war under the volunteer system? This
+question once solved, our President led us with a breadth of
+vision, an efficiency, and on a scale commensurate with the size
+of the undertaking in which we at last had become partners.
+
+Perhaps we are a little over indulgent, however, in the treatment
+of the German enemy alien within our gates. No American singer or
+musician could travel about Germany at will, unwatched by the
+police, collecting money from Americans to be used in propaganda,
+or things much worse, against America. Americans in Germany are
+compelled to report twice daily to the police and cannot leave
+their homes at night. November 17, 1917--seven months after we
+went to war with Germany--I met Hugo Schmidt, a director of the
+Deutsche Bank, riding in Central Park. He lived at the German
+Club, saw whom he liked and only reported to the police when he
+changed his residence. In January 1918, he was finally interned.
+
+Long before our break with Germany, American consuls and
+officials were insulted in the street and in opera houses because
+they made use of their own language, not at all because they were
+taken for British for every one knew that all British had been
+interned.
+
+The wife of our naval attache attended a reception presided over
+by a German admiral's wife. She was presented to this high
+personage by the wife of a German naval officer, who, in making
+the presentation, spoke in English. The admiral's wife rebuked
+both the wife of our attache and the officer's wife for daring to
+talk English. I am thankful to say that Mrs. Gherardi immediately
+left the house to receive later the officially ordered apologies
+of the admiral's wife.
+
+And while Americans did not dare use their own language in Berlin
+in time of peace between the two countries yet after the outbreak
+of war, newspapers in the United States, printed in German, owned
+by Germans and German sympathisers, dared to attack America and
+her President.
+
+The autocracy always hope to divide us, to make of us a Russia,
+torn by Maximalists and Minimalists, by Militarists and
+Bolsheviki and, consequently, impotent for war.
+
+In travelling through the United States in August and September
+of 1917, although I was on private business, I made speeches in
+many cities, such as Minneapolis, and Helena, Billings, Butte and
+Missoula in Montana, Spokane, Seattle and Tacoma in Washington,
+Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and surrounding country, Los
+Angeles, San Diego and Pasadena and then Milwaukee, Chicago and
+Cleveland. In all this territory I found great enthusiasm, great
+patriotism and a sincere desire to learn about Germany and the
+war. But I found everywhere also the trail of Germany's poisonous
+propaganda.
+
+The great majority of our citizens of German-American descent
+have been splendidly loyal to their country in this crisis of its
+history. But the fact must be faced that there are those who, for
+some unknown reason, still sympathise with the German Kaiser in
+his war of aggression.
+
+More unfortunately there are politicians in America who seek the
+votes of those disaffected, and approach treason in doing so. In
+all the history of sordid politics, there is nothing more
+nauseating than the effort of these cheap politicians thus to
+gratify their personal ambitions.
+
+Their shameful identity is known to all. A generation from now
+their own descendants will be applying to the courts for a change
+of name.
+
+If, when the test comes, it is found that the votes of these
+disaffected citizens count for something in our elections, we
+must find some means to disenfranchise them rather than have our
+low politicians outbidding each other within the law in order to
+get these votes.
+
+Have we not had examples enough from Russia of what the slimy
+bribe and the snaky propaganda can do?
+
+In Chicago, where one Thompson is Mayor, there is a censorship of
+moving picture films. The chief censor is Major Funkhouser. When
+I was in Los Angeles, at the end of September, like all strangers
+there, I visited movie-land to see the pictures made.
+
+At the house of my college chum, Dr. Walter J. Barlow, I met the
+beautiful and celebrated Mary Pickford.
+
+In conversation she told me about Major Funkhouser, and how he
+had refused an exhibition permit for one of her films called "The
+Little American." Curious to see the film rejected by Chicago
+officialdom, I asked Miss Pickford if she would have it run off
+for my benefit. I could see nothing in the film that could hurt
+the susceptibilities of any except the Germans with whom we are
+now engaged in war!
+
+Later the Fox Film Company informed me that their film called
+"The Spy" and which deals with the adventures of an American who
+is supposed to go to Germany to get a list of German spies and
+agents in America, was refused the right of exhibition in Chicago
+by this same Major Funkhouser. In this case the Fox Company
+appealed in the courts and obtained from Judge Alschuler an
+injunction preventing any one from interfering with the
+exhibition of this film. The decision of Judge Alschuler was
+affirmed on appeal.
+
+And yet the mass of the people in Chicago are splendidly
+patriotic as the record of Chicago for enlistment and Red Cross
+and Liberty Loan shows.
+
+When I spoke in the great Medinah Temple under the auspices of
+the Hamilton Club, on October twenty-second, I was able to show
+to the audience two German text-books used in the Chicago public
+schools, stamped with the royal arms of Prussia. The books had
+been approved by Ella Flagg Young, Superintendent of Schools, in
+1914.
+
+These books were furnished me by my friend, Anthony Czarnecki of
+the _Chicago Daily News_ whom I first met in Berlin where he came
+to do most excellent work for his paper. In one of these books is
+printed the German patriotic song, The Watch on the Rhine ("Die
+Wacht am Rhein"). What a howl there would have been if some
+public school superintendent had selected for the schools under
+her jurisdiction a text-book of English literature with the royal
+arms of England stamped on the cover and "Rule Britannia"
+prominently displayed inside!
+
+These text-books were cleverly compiled to impress children at a
+youthful age with a favourable idea of kings and emperors. In one
+of these was an anecdote about Frederick the Great and a miller,
+and in another, one about the Emperor Charlemagne and the
+scholar, of course, making Frederick and Charlemagne appear as
+good kindly people, and giving the impression that all kings and
+emperors are beneficent beings. But no word is there in these
+books quoting the present German Emperor's statement in which he
+puts Frederick in the same class as the four other bloody
+conquerors of history, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Theodoric and
+Napoleon, and says that where they failed in their dreams of
+world conquest, his mailed fist will succeed. Why was not
+Frederick the Great's statement printed in these books, his
+admission that he engaged upon the Seven Years' War "in order to
+be talked about"?
+
+These books contained quotations from Goethe. Why did they not
+contain Goethe's statement, "Amerika, du hast es besser."?
+(America, you are better off). Or his prophecy about the
+Prussians, "The Prussian was born a brute, and civilisation will
+make him ferocious."
+
+The only foreign language taught in the grammar schools of
+Chicago is German. Parents are compelled to sign a statement in
+which they answer the question as to whether they wish their
+children to be taught German or not.
+
+See how subtle this is! Doubtless if a Teuton parent answers that
+he does not desire to have his children taught German the paid
+agents of the German propaganda stir up feeling against these
+Germans who have dared to refuse to have their children taught
+the language of the fatherland.
+
+And when a parent has once elected that his children shall be
+taught German, not the principal of the school, not the district
+superintendent, but only the head of all the Chicago school
+system, on the application of the parent, can excuse the child,
+during his or her school course, from further study of German.
+
+Worst of all, however, is the Chicago official school speller, a
+book printed under the direction and compiled by the school
+authorities of Chicago. In this speller there is just one piece
+of reading matter and that a fulsome eulogy of the present German
+Emperor.
+
+This is an account of an alleged incident of the Kaiser's school
+days and the author concludes that the facts set forth (probably
+untrue) show that the Kaiser as a boy had the "root of a fine
+character in him," possessed "that chivalrous sense of fair play
+which is the nearest thing to a religion" in boys of that age and
+hated "meanness and favouritism." The Chicago Board of Education
+end the eulogy by stating, "There is in him a fundamental bent
+toward what is clean, manly and aboveboard."
+
+"Chivalrous sense of fair play and hates meanness!" "Fundamental bent
+toward what is clean, manly and aboveboard!" How about the enslavement
+of women and girls in France, the use of poison gas, the deportations
+of the Belgians, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the killing of
+women and babies by Zeppelins and submarines.--Sickening!
+
+A number of the books used in the public schools of New York have
+so much in them favourable to kings and emperors, have so much of
+German patriotism and fatherland, that the hand of the propagandist
+must have had something to do with the adoption of these books.
+
+Of course, it is only in the books of the advanced courses that
+propaganda appears. It is not possible, however clever the
+author, to incorporate much propaganda in simple exercises, or in
+such sentences as "Have you seen the sister of my cousin's
+wife?" or "The bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account
+of the rain."
+
+But the following extracts from books used in the public schools
+of New York should not be without interest to those who know that
+the impressions given to persons under the age of sixteen or
+seventeen are the impressions that often persist through life.
+
+For instance in the "Deutscher Lehrgang, First Year," by E.
+Prokosch of the University of Texas, "Die Wacht am Rhein" is
+printed with music.
+
+I should be very much surprised to hear that the "Star Spangled
+Banner," with music, had ever been printed in any school book in
+Germany.
+
+On page 109, of this book, there is an article in German
+entitled, "The German Constitution." It begins with the sentence,
+"The German Empire is a union State like the United States of
+America." How far the German Empire is from the United States of
+America in political liberty can be answered by any German
+immigrant or Jewish merchant who has voted under the circle
+system or been denied access to court because of his religion!
+
+The second paragraph commences with the sentence, "The German
+Kaiser is not monarch of the Empire. He only is President of the
+Union." I am quite sure that if the Kaiser ever saw this sentence
+he would very soon convince the author that he was something more
+than the President. The article continues:
+
+"He is the over-commander of the army. Through him is war
+declared and peace made, but he can declare war only with the
+consent of the Bundesrath."
+
+The Bundesrath had nothing to say about the commencement of this
+war. They never voted on the question. The German Constitution,
+as a matter of fact, gives the Kaiser the right to declare war
+himself, providing that the war is a defensive war. In 1914, the
+Kaiser first announced, without presenting any evidence, that
+Germany had been attacked, and then declared war on the strength
+of this statement, never since substantiated.
+
+The text book writer adds: "The people are represented in the
+Reichstag as the American people are represented in Congress." If
+the American people were represented in Congress under the same
+unfair representation from which the German people suffer, there
+would soon be a revolution in this country. The districts which
+elect members to the Reichstag have not been changed since 1872,
+so that millions of Germans are not represented at all in the
+Reichstag.
+
+"Professor" Prokosch remarks: "The Bundesrath is like the Senate
+of the United States. It is composed of representatives of the
+particular States."
+
+Of course, the only _difference_ is that our Senators are elected
+by the people and the members of the Bundesrath are appointed by
+the ruling kings and princes of the German states and vote
+exactly as they are told by these rulers.
+
+This is only to show how carelessly, if not maliciously,
+Professor E. Prokosch of the University of Texas and his helper,
+C. M. Purin of the State Normal School at Milwaukee, have handled
+the German Constitution, doubtless to give the impression to
+school children in America that the German empire instead of
+being a despotic autocracy, is ruled in very much the same manner
+as our own republic.
+
+Frederick the Great, who admitted that he went to war "in order
+to be talked about," who boasted that he had only one cook and a
+hundred spies, who was one of the most tyrannical kings of all
+history, has a whole book dedicated to him for use in the Public
+Schools of New York. Frederick Betz, head of the Department of
+Modern Languages in the East High School of Rochester, New York,
+is the author of a book called, "About a Great King and Others."
+The author in the preface states that the anecdotes which he
+prints do not narrate the story of the lives of these famous
+Germans, but, nevertheless, give glimpses of what they did and
+may help to show why the Germans held them in such high esteem.
+The book contains four anecdotes about King Frederick William I,
+the father of Frederick the Great, a villainous king who was
+prevented from executing his own son only by the protests of the
+other kings of Europe.
+
+Then follow forty-nine anecdotes about Frederick the Great, all
+of them, of course, revealing him as a good king and a popular
+character; eight anecdotes about Beethoven, Mozart, Schiller, and
+Lessing, and the remainder of the book is made up of one
+anecdote about Queen Louise, one about Field Marshal Bluecher,
+eighteen anecdotes about Bismarck, three about the Emperor
+William I, and three about the present Emperor.
+
+The booklet entitled "German Poems for Memorizing," with music to
+some of the poems, edited by Oscar Burkhard, Assistant Professor
+of German in the University of Minnesota, contains a number of
+German patriotic poems and prints the "Wacht am Rhein" twice,
+once in the text and once with music. "Deutschland ueber Alles" is
+printed twice in the same way.
+
+I should like to be present at the trial in the secret court in
+Germany of a schoolmaster who dared to teach his pupils to sing
+the "Star Spangled Banner" or the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
+Prokosch and Purin seem to be popular with the Board of
+Education, for they are represented by another book called
+"Conversation and Reading Book," which is full of stories and
+patriotic anecdotes. Charlemagne, Barbarossa and Frederick the
+Great are all exhibited as great men to be emulated. There is a
+picture of the coronation of Charlemagne which represents the
+Pope about to place the iron crown on Charlemagne's head while
+the Deity, attended by seraphim and cherubim, floating on clouds
+overhead, lends his presence to the ceremony; only another
+example of how the Prussians believe that God is the tribal Deity
+of their nation who takes a personal interest in all their
+ceremonies and wars.
+
+A long article appears in these books entitled, "The Germans in
+the United States." It implies that William Penn had no success
+until he called in Dr. Daniel Pastorius of Frankfort. Among the
+bits of history set forth the author alleges that, in 1760, there
+were more than a hundred thousand Germans in Pennsylvania, and
+that on account of their importance in this State it was proposed
+to make German the official language, the proposition being
+beaten by only one vote! The article says further: "The only
+reason why the contentious Puritans succeeded in making English
+the language of the country and in impressing their character on
+its politics was because the German immigrants were poor,
+downtrodden people."
+
+But it is when we come to the description of the War of the
+Revolution and other wars that the authors really turn loose. We
+learn that Washington's bodyguard was composed of Germans and
+that Baron von Steuben apparently reorganised the American army,
+so that Washington moved Congress to name General von Steuben,
+Inspector General, and to make his position almost independent.
+The writers say that the siege of Yorktown and surrender of the
+English army was in a great part the work of Steuben.
+
+I think that other historians might have something to say on this
+subject. The authors fail to tell that Baron von Steuben, a
+soldier of fortune, who sold his services to the highest bidder,
+was hired to join the American army by a Frenchman, Beaumarchais,
+who sympathised with the United States.
+
+Attention is also called to the fact that 190,000 Germans fought
+against the South and the authors observe in conclusion:
+
+     "If to-day the United States of America is a power
+     of world political importance, if its industry,
+     agriculture and commerce betoken a powerful danger
+     commercially over the old Europe, so have they to
+     thank the political power and the methodical
+     perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants from
+     England as well as the industry, the bravery and
+     the cheerfulness of the Germans who have placed
+     themselves politically in the service of the Anglo
+     Saxons."
+
+It is noteworthy that of the four books I have set forth as
+examples, three apparently have been produced since the
+commencement of the World War.
+
+Does not all this show the hand of the German propaganda--the
+same hand which sends from Berlin every year a large sum of money
+to the German colonists in the southern states of Brazil in order
+that the German schools may be maintained there, German ideas
+inculcated and the population prevented from losing its German
+identity?
+
+From the time of the visit of Prince Henry to this country the
+German system of propaganda has been at work smoothing out
+traditional differences and feuds between Germans and doing its
+best to make Germans from Bavaria, Saxony and Hanover and
+Wuerttemberg, and Hesse forget that their countries were conquered
+by the Prussians in 1866.
+
+When Prince Henry was here on his trip through the country he
+spent very little time with Americans. He was chiefly occupied
+with German-Americans and German-American Societies.
+
+Prince Henry's visit to the United States in 1902 was primarily
+to attend the christening of the racing yacht of the Emperor
+which was being built in this country. One of the members of his
+suite was von Tirpitz, then secretary of state of the German
+Navy. After having been officially received by President
+Roosevelt he visited Annapolis, Brooklyn Navy Yard and West Point
+and then toured the middle west stopping at twenty cities between
+New York and St. Louis. During the entire trip he continually
+asked questions of all the delegates sent with him by the U. S.
+Government, such as for instance facts about the shops at
+Altoona, the coal mines, farms, factories and handsome women!
+
+At every station he was met by the Mayor of the city and the
+German Societies, and greeted with German music. The Deutscher
+Kriege Verein, a German Society consisting of military veterans,
+always had a place of honour in the celebrations. In many cities
+the German-American citizens gave the Prince albums or souvenirs
+in which were engraved pretty pledges of devotion to the
+Fatherland. For instance in Chicago, the German Roman Catholic
+Society presented the following address: "The German Roman
+Catholic Staats-Verband of Illinois begs your Royal Highness to
+permit it to express its great joy for your visit to the United
+States and to assure your Royal Highness of its respect and
+regard."
+
+     "We extend to your Royal Highness our heartiest
+     greeting as the illustrious guest of this country
+     and _the envoy of the wise and noble ruler of our
+     Fatherland_, whom the world recognises and
+     respects as prince of peace and as the
+     representative of a great and mighty nation that
+     by its own power has united its people and
+     achieved its present prominent position among
+     nations of the earth.
+
+     "May the Almighty grant that the visit of your
+     Royal Highness bear a rich fruit, that rulers and
+     their people may join together and thereby promote
+     peace, harmony and good-will throughout the world!
+     May God grant this prayer!"
+
+Everywhere the Prince went he was surrounded by German-American
+and German influences. In St. Louis, where the Prince spent about
+three and a half hours, the German-Americans gave him a great
+reception in the Grand Hall and lunch at the St. Louis Club which
+was attended by many Germans. In Chicago, a reception was given
+after the Mayor's banquet, in the First Regiment Armory, and
+attended by ten thousand Germans. The following day in Chicago he
+went to a large luncheon at the Germania Club. In Milwaukee the
+officers of the Deutscher Kriegebund gave a reception at the
+Exposition where ten thousand German-Americans cheered the
+Prince, and also a luncheon at the Hotel Pfister where many
+German-American officials were invited.
+
+The speeches throughout had the same tone, those of the
+German-Americans expressing their respect for the Fatherland and
+those of the Prince spurring on loyalty in the hearts of the
+German-Americans. The Prince's speech in the Armory in Chicago is
+quite typical. In reply to a speech made by a German-American,
+the Prince said:
+
+_"You have left your Fatherland, but if you still have some love
+for the Fatherland then I ask you to give three cheers for the
+one who has sent me here as the representative of Prussia to
+bring this greeting--the German Emperor and King of Prussia."_
+
+In another speech which the Prince began with "Mr. Chairman and
+Fellow-Germans," he said: "I would like to say that the Germans
+in this country have done a great deal for the literature and
+science of this country and I hope they will continue in this
+good work." The whole attitude of the Prince seemed to be one of
+benevolence to his "Fellow-Germans" and personal interest in
+them. Wherever the Prince discovered a German wearing the Iron
+Cross in the crowd, he would ask an aide to bring the man up to
+him so that he could shake hands and converse with him.
+
+Talking with Prince Henry one day before the war he told me he
+regretted that on his trip to America he had seen so little of
+the Americans. He said: "You know the Ambassador kept me always
+with the Germans and German Societies." I suppose the poor Prince
+did not himself know what was the real object of his visit. But
+undoubtedly his shrewd trip manager and the clever propagandists
+who accompanied him knew only too well.
+
+It is hard to understand why any German-Americans should take
+sides with German autocracy. There are many merchants of
+Frankfort and Hamburg and Bremen and the great industrial towns
+of Germany who do not approve of the cruelties practised in this
+war and many of these will leave Germany as soon as peace is
+concluded.
+
+Any one had a right to sympathise, to side with Germany, before
+our entrance into the war. But now what the lawyers call "the
+time of repentance" has gone by, there is no middle course and
+every citizen must declare himself American or be thought a
+traitor.
+
+It is hard to understand what the pro-Germans in our country
+want. They left Germany because of a lack of opportunity there,
+because of their dislike for military service under Prussian
+conditions, because of the caste system which kept them under the
+heel of autocracy and because here every avenue of business, and
+social and political advancement is thrown wide open for them and
+their children. And I am quite sure that if one of these
+prosperous Germans were deprived of the money that he has won
+here, given back the rags and wooden shoes in which he landed and
+told that he was on his way to Germany, no wild animal in all the
+mountains and swamps of the United States would scratch and bite
+and kick and squawk more vigorously than he would. These
+German-Americans do not want to be sent back to their Kaiser and
+their fatherland!
+
+Certainly we Americans will not stop the war nor surrender our
+rights nor invite the invasion of our shores because of their
+stubborn devotion to a country which they were so glad to
+abandon. We must appeal to their sons and their daughters--to
+those who have become part and parcel of our nation, to see that
+these obstinate old codgers do not persist in an attitude which
+may end in creating a prejudice against those of German descent
+in America.
+
+Those of us who are of Scotch or Irish or English descent can
+urge this with greater insistence because our ancestors were much
+nearer, in 1766, to the English fatherland, than German-Americans
+are to the German Empire and these ancestors did not hesitate in
+that year to turn against Great Britain on a mere question of
+commerce--did not hesitate again, in 1812, to face Great Britain
+in arms on a question of sea rights; and on account of this we
+expect all those of German-American descent to stand unreservedly
+by their adopted country,--forced into war by an autocracy that
+not only murdered our women and children in defiance of
+international law and common humanity but which threatens, if
+successful in this war, to invade our shores.
+
+Do these stubborn German-Americans think that if a German force
+should occupy America their position would be any better than
+that of the other citizens of this country, that they would be
+put to rule over the rest of us and allowed to save their goods
+and houses from the indemnities that would be put upon this
+nation in case of our defeat?
+
+Let me tell them one thing and that is, if by any remote
+possibility the Germans did gain a foothold in this country
+through the aid of those of German descent here, before we, of
+other descent in this country submitted to German rule we would
+attend to every traitor!
+
+We did not lure any citizens of foreign nations to our shores.
+They came here to escape serfdom and starvation and forced
+military service in an army where they could never be officers.
+We sent them no excursion tickets when they came here as
+half-starved peasants. We opened to them the doors of hospitality
+and of opportunity, and we do not propose that they shall pay us
+like the frozen snake in AEsop's fables.
+
+Some of our finest citizens came from Germany in 1848 after the
+failure of the revolution against autocracy. Where do you think
+that General Siegel and Carl Schurz would stand if they were
+alive to-day?
+
+The daughter of General Siegel has answered in giving her son, on
+whom she was dependent, to the army of the United States, saying,
+"His grandfather fought under Lincoln for liberty and he must
+take his place to-day in the great fight for freedom."
+
+We are too good-natured, too soft, too easy in this country. Our
+great ex-President, that splendid American and patriot, Theodore
+Roosevelt, said not long ago of one of our United States
+Senators, if that Senator were a German and acted in Germany the
+way he acted in America as an American he would be put at digging
+a trench. I do not like to differ with Theodore Roosevelt, but
+from my knowledge of German conditions during this war, I know
+that if this Senator acted as a German in Germany as he has been
+acting as an American in America, he would not be put by the
+Germans at digging a trench but that with the ten bullets of a
+firing squad in his chest he would be filling one!
+
+Are these Germans in America imbued with the belief that the
+German Kaiser has been sent by heaven to rule the German Empire
+and bend the world under German "Kultur"? President Wilson, in
+one of his notes in 1916, referred to the German government as
+"the mouthpiece of the people." A German conservative newspaper,
+I think the _Tages Zeitung_, commenting upon this said that "the
+German Emperor is not our 'mouthpiece' but our truly beloved
+Emperor sent to us by God."
+
+Does the German-American ever stop to consider how the
+Hohenzollerns obtained possession of the Mark of Brandenburg, the
+basis of modern Prussia? Five hundred years ago the Hohenzollerns
+were Counts of Nuremberg, then as now a rich trading city.
+Sigismund III wanted ready money and this was advanced by the
+Hohenzollerns, Counts of Nuremberg, on the security of the mark
+of Brandenburg pledged as collateral to the loan which totalled
+only $100,000. Later the Counts of Nuremberg foreclosed their
+mortgage and took possession of the Mark of Brandenburg and have
+held it ever since.
+
+Does a German-American in this country who has placed a mortgage
+on his house think when he fails to pay the interest or
+principal of the mortgage that the man who has sold him out was
+sent by God?
+
+This calls to mind one of the great failures of the war--the
+failure of religion in the German Empire. I attended a great
+service, in the Protestant cathedral of Berlin, held to celebrate
+the five hundredth anniversary of the occasion when the first
+Hohenzollern, having foreclosed his mortgage, entered into
+possession of Brandenburg. The Emperor sat in an elevated gallery
+and across the great cathedral Dr. Dryander, the Court preacher,
+mounted the pulpit to deliver an eulogy on the Hohenzollern rule
+and the Hohenzollerns.
+
+What an opportunity then if Dr. Dryander, lifting an accusing
+finger, had spoken of the rivers of innocent blood sacrificed to
+the Prussian Moloch of conquest, if he had demanded in the name
+of Christianity that the barbarities of Prussian rule should
+cease, that the Belgian workingmen, dragged from their homes to
+manufacture shells to be used against their own brothers, sons
+and fathers in Prussian factories, should be sent back; if he had
+demanded that the twenty thousand women and girls driven into
+worse than slavery from Lille and Tourcoing and Roubaix in the
+North of France should be given their freedom once more; if he
+had spoken of the whole nation of the Armenians, of the Syrians,
+of the Jews, massacred by the Turks while the German Generals in
+command of the Turkish armies stood by; if he had denounced the
+invasion of Belgium, the breaking of treaties, the starvation of
+Poland, the horrors of poisoned gas and the cruelties exercised
+upon those of the opposing armies unfortunate enough to become
+prisoners of the Germans.
+
+But no, Dr. Dryander droned on. No pastor in Germany has dared to
+risk his state-paid salary to stand up for Christianity and the
+right.
+
+The Prussians cannot get away from the belief that they have a
+sort of personal God who takes a direct and kindly interest in
+their destinies, especially in the ordering of their bloody
+battles. Countless sermons were preached through Germany during
+the war, but the most ridiculous was that of a Protestant pastor
+in Berlin early in the war. He announced the title of his sermon
+as, "Is God neutral?", and in his fourteenthly proved to his own
+satisfaction, that the Deity, abandoning neutrality, had declared
+Himself unequivocally for the success of German arms!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THAT INTERVIEW WITH THE KAISER
+
+
+After the appearance, in August, 1917, in the _Philadelphia
+Public Ledger_ and other newspapers in America and the _Telegraph_
+in England of the message of the Kaiser to President Wilson, the
+official _North German Gazette_, evidently unaware of the fact
+that the original message of the Kaiser in his own hand was in my
+possession, published the following:
+
+     "The _London Daily Telegraph_ publishes from the
+     memoirs of former Ambassador Gerard a telegram
+     that His Majesty the Kaiser is alleged to have
+     sent to President Wilson on August 10, 1914, and
+     in which the events before the participation of
+     England in the present war are set forth.
+
+     "We are, in these circumstances, in the position
+     TO GIVE THE ASSURANCE THAT A TELEGRAM OF THE
+     KAISER OF THIS NATURE DOES NOT EXIST.
+
+     "It is correct that an audience was granted to
+     Ambassador Gerard on August 10, 1914, in order to
+     give the opportunity to spread before His Majesty
+     the peace mediation offer of President Wilson.
+
+     "The personal message of President Wilson to the
+     Kaiser runs as follows: 'As official head of one
+     of the Powers which signed the Hague Convention, I
+     feel according to Article III of this Convention
+     it is my right and my duty to declare to you in
+     the spirit of the truest friendship that I would
+     welcome every opportunity to act in the interest
+     of the peace of Europe whether now or at another
+     more fitting time....'
+
+     "This proposition came at a time when the opposing
+     armies had already crossed the frontiers and when
+     it seemed out of the question to halt the march of
+     events.
+
+     "His Majesty could, therefore, only transmit to
+     the President his thanks for the mediation offered
+     and to add thereto that it was too early for the
+     mediation of a neutral Power, but that later the
+     friendly proposition of President Wilson could be
+     taken up again.
+
+     "His Majesty, the Emperor, then talked for some
+     time with the American Ambassador and set forth to
+     him separately the events which led to the
+     outbreak of the war. Particularly did the Kaiser
+     call attention to the equivocal and unloyal
+     position of England which had destroyed the hope
+     of a peaceful issue.
+
+     "The setting forth by Ambassador Gerard in his
+     memoirs seems to be a contradiction of this
+     conversation.
+
+     "If the press of enemy countries sees revelations
+     in this that only shows that they are not
+     acquainted with the German White Book which sets
+     forth these events.
+
+     "Possibly, during the interviews, the Emperor
+     wrote down notes for the Ambassador, in order that
+     the latter should not send anything incorrect to
+     Washington. In this case we have to do only with
+     certain notes to aid the memory of the Ambassador,
+     not with a communication of the Emperor to
+     President Wilson."
+
+The _Tageblatt_ reprinted this lame and silly explanation in its
+issue of August 13, 1917, and complained that, although its
+correspondent at the Hague sent, on August 7, 1917, this part of
+my first book in a telegram, only on August 11, did the
+Government permit the delivery to the _Tageblatt_ of this story
+from the correspondent. Then the newspaper despatch had to be
+submitted to the Censorship officials who only released it for
+publication at midnight. The _Tageblatt_ says, "The form of the
+explanation which has now appeared in the _North German Gazette_
+can hardly be called very happy. What does this mean--'possibly
+during the interview the Kaiser wrote down notes for the
+Ambassador in order that the latter should not send anything
+incorrect to Washington'? Now, after a week the occurrence must
+have been fathomed and it was not necessary to make use of a
+'possibly.' Could Mr. Gerard consider these 'notes' in the
+handwriting of the Emperor as a draft for a telegram? And do
+these notes read, as a telegram of the Emperor to Wilson--as Mr.
+Gerard repeats them?"
+
+Does not the _Tageblatt_ article give a glimpse not only of how
+the newspapers of Germany are hampered and censored, but of the
+positively glorious incompetency of the Government officials who
+denied the existence of an original document in the Kaiser's own
+hand which the most elementary inquiries in their own circle
+would have disclosed not only was in existence but in my
+possession?
+
+The redoubtable Reventlow writing in the Conservative _Tages
+Zeitung_ commented as follows:
+
+     "Kaiser William had possibly for his answer
+     written down notes and given them to Gerard, but
+     these were only helps for Gerard's memory and it
+     was not a question of a direct communication of
+     the German Kaiser to the President. In accordance
+     with the Gerard reports it now seems that
+     nevertheless the Ambassador telegraphed the
+     Imperial notes immediately and literally to
+     Washington. Mr. Gerard has, therefore, again in
+     this respect lied, which is not surprising."
+
+Reventlow, of course, had not then seen the facsimile of the
+Kaiser's telegram which is headed in his own hand "To the
+President, personally."
+
+Later the other German newspapers took the Foreign Office to task
+for making such a weak denial of an incontrovertible fact. And
+note the charming parliamentary language of dear old Reventlow!
+
+The article, which appeared in the _Tages Zeitung_ of August 14th
+last, is interesting because Reventlow is without doubt the
+oracle and mouthpiece of the Prussian Conservatives. He continues
+to attack me in this article but much of the attack is in reality
+praise, and, as we say in expressive slang, "every knock is a
+boost." The article continues:
+
+     "It is very desirable to know if the former
+     Chancellor was present at the audience; it is
+     regrettably not inconceivable, but is a new proof
+     of the incompetence of the Chancellor, that he did
+     not, according to his duty, inform his Imperial
+     Lord of the political personality and character of
+     a man like Gerard.
+
+     "In the U-boat crisis Mr. Gerard had been able to
+     play a quite decisive part. He was like Mr. von
+     Bethmann-Hollweg entirely of the view that the
+     German Empire must give in to the demands of the
+     United States and constantly showed himself
+     wonderfully informed about what step each inner
+     circle would for the moment take.
+
+     "The influence of Mr. Gerard is all the more a
+     shameful and heavy reproach for the official
+     leadership of Mr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, since this
+     American Ambassador, while an intriguer, was not a
+     personality.
+
+     "But when Gerard said anything, wished anything or
+     threatened anything, that imported always a
+     fear-exciting event, and he was finally sly enough
+     to seize and use this halo to the limit. That a
+     man like Gerard has been able through all these
+     years to win and keep such a position and such an
+     influence over German affairs is without example."
+
+But I must really put aside the halo which Reventlow so
+graciously hands me. While I was informed of what was going on, I
+certainly did my best to persuade Bethmann-Hollweg and von Jagow
+and Zimmermann as well as the Emperor and numberless others from
+defying America. If von Bethmann-Hollweg and any of the others
+were against ruthless submarine war, seeing that to adopt any
+other policy would bring America into this war, then they took
+this position because it seemed to them best for their country
+and history will prove them right.
+
+Reventlow says further:
+
+     "In the winter of 1916-17 one dreamed already of
+     loans and imports from the United States during
+     the peace negotiations. Mr. Gerard came back from
+     America with alms for the wounded and the result
+     of his sublime patience and of the sublime
+     patience of Mr. von Bethmann-Hollweg was
+     pictured by the Gerard celebration in Berlin.
+
+     "Then came the decision for ruthless submarine
+     war. The first time in his ambassadorial service
+     was Mr. Gerard surprised and the men who
+     entertained him were also surprised for they
+     dreamed of and wished for quite other things. It
+     is incorrect, if it has been stated, that at the
+     time of the Gerard celebration ruthless submarine
+     war had already been agreed on. That came later."
+
+[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AFTER THE BANQUET GIVEN
+AMBASSADOR GERARD IN BERLIN ON JANUARY 6TH, 1917. PROBABLY THE
+ORDERS FOR THE RESUMPTION OF "RECKLESS" SUBMARINE WAR HAD BEEN
+GIVEN WHEN THIS LOVE-FEAST TOOK PLACE.
+
+_Sitting, left to right_--Von Wermuth, Mayor of Berlin;
+Ambassador Gerard; Zimmermann; Von Sydow, Minister of Commerce.
+
+_Standing, left to right_--Unknown; Consul General Lay; Commander
+Gherardi, U. S. N.; First Secretary Grew; Unknown; Count
+Montgelas; Solf, Colonial Minister; General Friedrich, in charge
+of prisoners of war; Isaac Wolf, President of American Association of
+Commerce and Trade; John B. Jackson, former Minister to Cuba.]
+
+But I did know that ruthless submarine war was coming, knew of
+the orders given, and this is proved not only by my reports which
+are still secret, but by what I told not only many people in
+America but several editors who with my full approval published
+articles showing this belief.
+
+I am obliged to Reventlow for what he says of me. I admire him as
+a powerful writer for whose ability I have a deep respect and
+perhaps if I were a Prussian Junker I would follow him as blindly
+and confidently as do the army and navy officers, the nobles,
+great and small, and the land-holding squires of Prussia, to whom
+his writings are as seductive as the pipings of the Pied Piper to
+the townsfolk of Hamlin.
+
+Reventlow's charge of lying was made in the line of his duty as a
+Prussian Junker, according to the best traditions of Prussian
+government and diplomacy but it is so thoroughly disproved and
+the authenticity of the Kaiser's telegram so universally admitted
+in Germany, even in official circles there, that I feel only
+sorrow for a Prussian nobleman and Junker and editor compelled by
+the exigencies of his position to make so ridiculous a statement.
+
+I think that the Germans just now are beginning to realise that I
+always told them the truth and treated them fairly, a procedure,
+I admit, far more disconcerting and disturbing to them than the
+most subtle wiles and moves of the old diplomacy.
+
+Von Bethmann denied that the peace terms as set forth in my book
+were his (he did not deny that they are the terms of the Junkers)
+and criticised me for "unethically" publishing an account of my
+experiences in Germany. This is what he said:
+
+     "In his published report of this particular
+     conversation Mr. Gerard attributed utterances to
+     me which may have been made in other quarters in
+     Germany and to which he frequently referred in the
+     progress of our conversation but which were not my
+     own. This applies especially to those references
+     to Germany's alleged intentions to seize Liege and
+     Namur, and of Germany's plans to take possession
+     of the Belgian ports, the railways and to
+     establish military and commercial dominion over
+     that country.
+
+     "I never unfolded such German war aims to Mr.
+     Gerard. In the course of my several conversations
+     with him as also in our discussion last January I
+     invariably referred to my Reichstag speeches in
+     which I stated that Germany would exact positive
+     guarantees that Belgian territory and politics
+     would not in the future be exploited as a menacing
+     factor against us. I did not make any statement as
+     to the nature of these guarantees.
+
+     "In the progress of our conversation Mr. Gerard
+     suggested that the realisation of far-reaching
+     aspirations in Belgium would give King Albert
+     merely a sham authority and asked whether it
+     would not be better for Germany to forego such
+     plans and instead of them endeavour to acquire
+     Liege which Mr. Gerard thought possible of
+     achievement.
+
+     "Perhaps this suggestion was a bait intended to
+     provoke a reply from me. If so, the attempt
+     failed. In all my discussions with the Ambassador
+     on this subject I referred to my public utterances
+     in which I emphasised that I was endeavouring to
+     procure a peace that would permit us to live in
+     cordial and neighbourly relations with Belgium.
+
+     "Mr. Gerard's memory would seem also to have
+     served him faultily when he wrote down what was
+     said about Russia. He dealt but superficially with
+     Germany's eastern war aims, observing that the
+     United States' interest in this direction was very
+     limited and that Germany undoubtedly would have a
+     free hand there. For Roumania and Serbia he also
+     revealed very slender sympathy. Mr. Gerard did not
+     obtain out of my mouth any of the statements
+     concerning these countries which he attributes to
+     me.
+
+     "When diplomats undertake to exploit their
+     official career for journalistic purposes they are
+     very apt to be misled into putting into mouths of
+     foreign statesmen utterances which either are the
+     creation of an ample imagination or are based on
+     faulty memory. Discussion of political opinions is
+     bound to be transitory and fleeting.
+
+     "You Americans are impetuous people. You do not
+     seem to permit even your retiring diplomats to
+     observe the traditional silences nor have you the
+     patience to abide the post mortem publication of
+     their memoirs. Sir Edward Goschen (former British
+     Ambassador to Germany and Austria) or Jules Cambon
+     (former French Ambassador to Germany, the United
+     States and Spain) probably could excel Mr. Gerard
+     in revelations of entertaining diplomatic history
+     and gossip. Count von Bernstorff, former
+     Ambassador to the United States, too, I imagine
+     might startle us with a diary of his Washington
+     experiences.
+
+     "In Europe, however, it was seen that publication
+     of such matters was best postponed by common
+     consent to a later period when judgments are both
+     calm and more mature. Mr. Gerard, however, may
+     hold the special license conferred by shirtsleeve
+     diplomacy, as you call it, and I shall not dispute
+     his prerogatives. But he must not give his
+     imagination the free rein."
+
+And this was my answer: published in the _New York Times_ for
+September 2, 1917:
+
+     "Dr. Hollweg apparently did not have the exact
+     copy of my articles for if he had read them he
+     would have seen clearly that I said the peace
+     terms described were the German peace terms and
+     not the opinions of the Chancellor. Dr. Hollweg
+     said he himself was subject to the rule of the
+     military party of Germany and could not follow his
+     own desires.
+
+     "In the second place, Dr. Hollweg admits that the
+     German government intended to exact guarantees
+     from Belgium and makes the admission himself after
+     the interview in which he so sharply criticises
+     me.
+
+     "Thirdly, I ask if those terms as cited are not
+     the German peace terms, then what are the German
+     peace terms?
+
+     "Dr. Hollweg gives nothing different from these
+     and so it might be assumed they are the German
+     terms after all. I consider it a matter of great
+     regret that the German government put Dr. Hollweg
+     out of office and I feel that personally he is
+     bitterly opposed to the ruthless submarine warfare
+     of the German government and that he only
+     refrained from resigning his office out of
+     deference to the wishes of Emperor Wilhelm.
+
+     "I presume he was put out because his ideals were
+     too liberal for the German authorities to endure.
+     This liberality is shown in the interview. I am
+     sorry to take issue with Dr. Hollweg on this
+     subject because I have a great admiration for him
+     and I think he is a fine old fellow.
+
+     "The old-time diplomacy, which Dr. Hollweg
+     advocated, has succeeded in plunging almost the
+     whole world into the bloodiest war of history.
+     When the people of a nation know what is going on
+     in the seats of government such wars cannot
+     happen.
+
+     "I do not believe in backstairs diplomacy any more
+     than Dr. Hollweg. I believe the people of a nation
+     are entitled to know what is going on. This German
+     diplomacy may be all right in a monarchy of the
+     most limited type but it will not go at all in a
+     modern democracy.
+
+     "As to the ethics of publishing my memoirs now, I
+     pass over the obvious repartee that to hear a
+     German speak of ethics borders on the ludicrous
+     and especially the man who openly in the Reichstag
+     announced that necessity knows no law and that the
+     German troops were at that moment deliberately
+     violating the neutrality of Belgium.
+
+     "But I believe that the old style diplomacy in the
+     dark caused this war. Of course, it is hard for a
+     German ex-official to conceive that the people
+     have a right to be enlightened about this awful
+     calamity. But I hope one of the results of this
+     war will be the end of backstairs diplomacy. When
+     the Germans with the Chancellor's approval
+     violated the usage of all nations and times and
+     kept me as a hostage after I had demanded my
+     passports, I think to talk of ethics comes with a
+     bad grace from the German side."
+
+Understand that Bethmann-Hollweg is not a bad man, but for one
+who openly announced that necessity knows no law and defended the
+invasion of Belgium, failed to stop the cruelties of the prison
+camps and gave official, if not private, consent to the murder of
+women and babies not only on the high seas but in undefended
+towns, to talk of ethics because I dared to tell the world what
+was happening in Germany is more than ridiculous. It verges on
+the ludicrous--but why attack poor Bethmann? Opportunity knocked
+at his door, but the want of a backbone prevented his becoming a
+great figure.
+
+History will laud him for opposing ruthless submarine war so
+long, but will blame him for weakly yielding in the end. As for
+the "ethics," I have been careful to give only official
+conversations with the Emperor, interesting as the others are,
+and never shall disclose my private conversations with Bethmann,
+von Jagow, Zimmermann and others, including my talks with
+Bethmann and Zimmermann on the day I left Germany, because it was
+understood that these conversations should never be disclosed
+whatever happened.
+
+And as time goes on more and more do I believe that history will
+vindicate von Jagow and teach the Emperor and the people of
+Germany that a faithful and skilful servant should never be
+sacrificed to the intrigues of a few gossiping politicians. It is
+part of the strength of President Wilson that he backs up his
+officials and refuses to listen even to widespread popular
+clamour for their heads. It was the business of von Jagow to
+conduct the Foreign policy of Germany, but the intriguers
+demanded his removal because he was too occupied to waste time
+talking to amateur politicians, and because his voice did not
+charm the Reichstag.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE FUTURE KAISER--THE CROWN PRINCE AND HIS BROTHERS
+
+
+In a country where the supreme power swings between the Emperor
+and the impersonal General Staff, all are interested, since even
+an Emperor is mortal, in learning something about the heir who
+succeeds in case of death. And we who face with the rest of the
+world the forces of Kaiserism desire to know about this heir.
+
+The Crown Prince is about five feet nine, blond and slim. In
+fact, one of his weaknesses is his pride in an undeniably small
+waist which he pinches and his characteristic pose is with one
+foot thrown forward and one hand at the waist, elbow out and
+waist pressed in. He is well built, his face much better looking
+than his photographs show, nose rather long and eyes very keen
+and observing. Possessed of a great youthfulness of manner and a
+boyish liveliness and interest in life, his traits are somewhat
+American rather than German. He is a good sportsman and excels at
+many sports, is proud of his trophies but not afraid to meet
+other men in contest for them.
+
+His manners are open and engaging and because of this he is very
+popular in Germany. Unlike his father on whom a pretty woman
+makes no impression whatever, he is a great admirer of female
+beauty, so much so that when he is playing tennis, for example,
+if there is a good looking girl watching he can hardly keep his
+eye on the game. This weakness for the feminine has been the
+foundation for countless stories linking his name with that of
+various women, in all countries and of all classes of life, but
+personally, I think these rumours are untrue and that he is fond
+of his lovely wife, who is not in the least disturbed by his
+frank and open admiration of other members of the fair sex. A
+brood of strong, good-looking children have been born to the
+Crown Prince and Crown Princess.
+
+A Prince so fond of a good time, one who loves dancing and
+racing, hunting and shooting, with a shrewd eye and cool head,
+might make an ideal king, but the one dark shadow in the
+background is the Crown Prince's real love for war. From his seat
+in the Royal Box in the Reichstag, he has applauded violently and
+ostentatiously utterances looking toward war: he had made himself
+the head of the war party, and the Militarists look to him as
+their chief. The great danger is that if this war ends in the
+defeat of Germany without the democratisation of Germany then the
+Crown Prince will lead the party of revenge, of preparation for
+war, and if the war ends in what the Germans can call a success
+or ends in a draw (which means German success) then the Crown
+Prince and the Militarists, crying that the military system has
+been justified, will seek new excuses to enter once more on a
+war of conquest. All paths or speculations turn to one gate; if
+the German people continue slavishly to leave the power to drive
+them into war in the hands of the Crown Prince, or the Emperor,
+or the General Staff, there will be no prospect of such a world
+peace as can justify a universal disarmament. Absolute monarchs
+and Emperors and Crown Princes and their attendant nobles, all
+spell war. They are the products of war and they can only
+continue to rule if the desire for war animates their people.
+
+While the Crown Prince has not set himself in direct opposition
+to his father or at any rate taken a part in public affairs with
+the view either to force his father's hand or take a dominant
+political part, nevertheless he has allowed no occasion to pass
+when he could encourage the army and war party even if this
+brought him into conflict with the policy of the Emperor, and so
+there have been periods of coolness between the Emperor and the
+Crown Prince son.
+
+Thus after one scene in the Reichstag when the Crown Prince
+applauded those in favour of aggression it was reported that he
+was banished to Dantzig. At any rate during the winter of 1913-14
+the Crown Prince and his family were at Dantzig, the headquarters
+of the regiment he commands, the famous "Death's Head Hussars."
+
+Some say that it is a tradition in the Hohenzollern family for
+the Crown Prince to appear to oppose the King. Then, when the
+King dies, the Crown Prince enjoys a certain popularity in the
+first years of his rule from those who have been against the
+Government, and by the time this popularity has waned the new
+ruler is firmly seated on the throne.
+
+The Crown Prince, born in 1882, will be thirty-five in May next.
+His military education began long before he was ten years old. In
+accordance with Hohenzollern custom, on his tenth birthday, he
+became an officer of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards and on this
+birthday was introduced to the other officers and took part in a
+regimental dinner. Before this great event he had learned enough
+of military drill and usages to carry himself as an officer.
+
+In 1895, he and his brother Eitel entered as cadets at Ploen in
+Schwerin, where they were subjected to very strict discipline.
+After leaving Ploen the Crown Prince entered Bonn University, and
+there became a member of the "Borussia" student corps.
+
+I never heard that he took part in the corps duels. His face is
+not scarred, so I imagine as heir to the throne he was excused
+from a custom in which other corps members are compelled by
+public sentiment to take part. From photographs I have seen and
+from what I have heard I believe that the Crown Prince entered
+cheerfully into the student life of the place and lived on terms
+of college equality with his brothers of the "Borussia" corps.
+These corps members, however, hold themselves aloof from other
+students.
+
+The Crown Prince attended the Technical High School of
+Charlottenburg, that large building just across the canal which
+separates Berlin from Charlottenburg. Here he gained some
+knowledge of machinery, chemistry, etc. In 1909, he went to work
+in the Ministry of the Interior, where he learned something of
+government administration, how to manage the constabulary and
+their activities,--something quite necessary for an absolute
+ruler in a country where every citizen's acts is noted in the
+copy books of the police.
+
+Meantime, his military activities continued. He was gradually
+promoted and finally, in 1911, became Colonel in command of the
+Dantzig Black Hussars. This regiment owes its black uniform and
+white death's heads to the thrift of Friedrich II who utilised
+the black funeral hangings at the elaborate funeral of his father
+to make uniforms for this regiment. It has been in existence
+about 175 years. The white death's heads and bones which appeared
+in the funeral trappings were used to make ornaments for the
+front of the regimental headgear.
+
+While stationed at Dantzig the Prince was taught agriculture so
+as to understand the needs of the Prussian Junkers. He even
+studied the methods of brewing beer in the Dantzig brewery. His
+education has been strenuous. He has not been coddled or spoiled
+and is far better fitted for the battle of life than most
+graduates of our colleges.
+
+The father of the Crown Princess was a Grand Duke of
+Mecklenburg-Schwerin and her mother a Russian Grand Duchess. In
+appearance the Crown Princess is very attractive, her face rather
+Russian, with an expression of good nature and cleverness.
+Although the Crown Prince is tall (about five feet ten), the
+Crown Princess overtops him, and on occasions when they appear
+together she wears shoes with very low heels and keeps her head
+bowed.
+
+[Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCE AND CROWN PRINCESS. FROM A
+PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN THEIR PALACE ON THE NIGHT OF A FANCY DRESS
+BALL. THE CROWN PRINCESS IS IN RUSSIAN COSTUME, AND THE CROWN
+PRINCE WEARS A UNIFORM OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO OF HIS REGIMENT,
+THE DEATH'S HEAD HUSSARS]
+
+The marriage took place in 1905 and was undoubtedly a love match,
+the young couple having met in 1904 and become devotedly attached
+to each other.
+
+There is only one defect in the character of the Crown Prince and
+that is his fondness for war, his regard for war not as a horror,
+but as a necessity, an honourable and desirable state.
+
+I have long been apprehensive that when he came to the throne the
+world might again be hurried into a universal conflict and that
+vast military preparations would burden every State.
+
+The Crown Prince and I often talked over shooting in various
+parts of the world. He wishes to see America and especially to
+kill game in Alaska where the heavily horned heads and enormous
+bears make such magnificent trophies. When I told him once how my
+friend, Paul Rainey, had killed seventy-four lions in Africa he
+could talk of nothing else at that interview.
+
+The Crown Prince has been pictured as a libertine and a pillager.
+His face has been caricatured so often that people have the
+cartooned impression of him and believe him to be a sort of
+monstrous idiot.
+
+On the contrary, he is a good sport, a clever man, a charming
+companion, but the shadow of military ambition hangs over all
+and I doubt if the effect of his infernal military education,
+commencing when he was a child, can be entirely removed.
+
+If some day he learns the idiocy of war, if he recognises that
+the world has progressed, and allows the people some share in
+their own government, he will make a splendid constitutional
+ruler of Prussia and the German Empire.
+
+Should the German people fail to take unto themselves the
+war-making power, they will, before long, be decimated again for
+the amusement of the Crown Prince, or as he once put it, "for his
+fun."
+
+The favourite son of the Kaiser is presumed to be Prince Eitel
+Friedrich. A large, fat, healthy, good natured young man, married
+to the daughter of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, a rather pretty
+but discontented looking Princess. It is said of him that he has
+shown not only great bravery in this war but real military
+capacity. Ridiculous scandals have been circulated about him in
+Berlin, but this is only the usual gossip circulated about
+persons in prominent positions.
+
+Adalbert, the sailor Prince, is now married to a German Princess.
+He is the best looking of the Kaiser's sons, possessing all the
+charm, and vivacity of manners of the Crown Prince, but is
+without that Prince's absurd ideas about the necessity of war.
+Any one of those three sons of the Kaiser can give yards to any
+other young Royalty in Germany and win easily in capacity for
+administration and the King business.
+
+Certainly if the German people insist on being ruled by some one
+and on being occasionally dragged out to be shot or maimed in an
+unnecessary war, they could not find more capable rulers than the
+Hohenzollerns.
+
+Prince August Wilhelm is of a milder character. He, of course,
+wears the uniform of an officer, but has entered the civil
+service of the government. He is now a landrat or government
+official, and some day will be given charge of one of the
+provinces of Prussia such as Silesia or Posen. He is married to
+his first cousin, a niece of the Empress, the Princess Alexandria
+Victoria, daughter of H. H. Frederick Ferdinand, Duke of
+Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluecksburg. They have one son, a
+fine healthy specimen. The August Wilhelms live very simply in a
+palace in the Wilhelmstrasse, very plainly furnished. They are
+fond of amusements, riding, theatres and dancing. August Wilhelm
+has none of that desire of war so characteristic of the Crown
+Prince.
+
+Of Princes Oscar and Joachim, little is known. Oscar, during the
+war, married Countess Bassewitz, who has been a Maid of Honour in
+the Palace. The marriage was of course morganatic, and on
+marrying the young Countess was given the title of Countess
+Ruppin. Her children will be Count and Countess Ruppin and cannot
+inherit in any contingency, the Kingdom of Prussia.
+
+Adalbert had no resting place in Berlin, but perhaps now that he
+is married a palace may be assigned to him. Eitel Fritz and his
+wife occupy the Bellevue Chateau between the Tiergarten and the
+River Spree. His wife is childless.
+
+The Kaiser, the Crown Prince or some of the numerous Princes of
+Prussia are always rushing about the streets in motors, each one
+heralded by a blast on the cornet. Beside the chauffeur on each
+royal motor sits a horn player who plays the particular few notes
+of music assigned to that Prince. The Kaiser's call goes well to
+the words fitted to it by the Berliners, "celeri salade" (celery
+salad) and has quite a cheerful sound.
+
+On days of an outdoor function the streets ring with these calls
+as the royal automobiles whizz back and forth. It is forbidden by
+law for any one other than royalty to announce his coming by more
+than one note on a Gabriel horn, or other device. I do not know whether
+out of town or suburban royalties from Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Strelitz,
+Lippe, etc., are allowed this privilege when in Berlin; I think
+not, and that is perhaps one reason why they so consistently shun
+the capital of Prussia.
+
+When the Kaiser motors to Potsdam he usually sits in one of three
+motors which travel very fast, one behind the other. I do not
+know whether this is by design or not, but of course, it makes an
+attempt on his life more difficult.
+
+I used one of the Kaiser's motors in occupied France--a large
+Mercedes, run by a skilful driver at a great rate of speed.
+
+The Crown Prince is especially fond of horses and if he succeeds
+to the throne will undoubtedly keep up the Royal stable or
+Marstall. This is situated on the bank of the Spree across the
+square from the Royal Schloss in Berlin. There are kept the
+carriages of state, those sent to bring Ambassadors to the Palace
+when they first present their letters, two hundred splendid
+saddle and driving horses, with modern carriages, four-in-hand
+coaches, dog carts, etc. Most of the Foreign Ambassadors use
+state carriages for great occasions, with bewigged coachmen and
+standing footmen. I think Ambassador White was the last American
+who indulged in the luxury of a state carriage. As a plain dress
+suit did not exactly fit with a Cinderella coach, I went to
+functions, such as the Emperor's birthday reception, in a large
+automobile, retaining only of the former state the necessary body
+huntsman who acted as footman on these occasions and who wore a
+livery of hunting green, a cocked hat, with red, white and blue
+plumes and a long hunting dagger in his belt.
+
+Out of consideration for the feelings of others I retained the
+porter in his old finery, a Berlin institution. At state dinners
+the porter of a Royalty or Ambassador stands at the house
+entrance, clad in a long coat, wearing a silver belt diagonally
+across his chest, and crowned by an enormous cocked hat worn
+sideways. The porter carries also a great silver headed staff,
+like a drum major's baton, and when guests of particular
+importance arrive he pounds this stick three times on the
+pavement.
+
+It used to amuse the Berlin crowd lining Unter den Linden to see
+the Ambassadors and Ministers leave the Palace or Cathedral on
+the Kaiser's birthday, New Year's day, etc., to see the state
+carriages of the other Ambassadors overtaken by the modern
+automobile from America.
+
+The Berlin lower classes are renowned for their dry wit and they
+find much to amuse them in the tasteless statues and monuments of
+Berlin.
+
+In the square outside our house was a statue of one of Friedrich
+the Great's generals which seemed to afford the boys great fun.
+The General is shown in the act of reflectively feeling his chin
+and by chance is gazing uncertainly at the barber shop of the
+neighbouring hotel Kaiserhof.
+
+Nobody knows, of course, whether the present Crown Prince will
+succeed Emperor William--nobody knows the fortunes of war or the
+fate that this war has in store for the Hohenzollerns but while I
+personally like the Crown Prince, admire his skill in sports, his
+amiable ways, his smiles to the crowd, I know also of his crazy
+belief in war. And so long as a ruler persists in this, he is as
+dangerous to the peace of the world as a man with a plague to the
+health of a small community.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WHEN GERMANY WILL BREAK DOWN
+
+
+I remember a picture exhibited in the Academy at London, some
+years ago, representing a custom of the wars of the Middle Ages.
+
+A great fortress besieged, frowns down on the plain under the
+cold moonlight. From its towering walls the useless mouths are
+thrust forth--if refused food by the enemy, to die--the children,
+the maimed, the old, the halt, the blind, all those who cannot
+help in the defence, who consume food needed to strengthen the
+weakened garrison.
+
+Every country of the world to-day is in a state of siege, is
+conserving food and materials, but not yet has Germany sent forth
+her useless mouths, to Holland, to Scandinavia and to Switzerland,
+a sign that not yet is the pinch of hunger in the Empire imperative.
+
+Since I arrived in America in March, 1917, I have been like
+Cassandra, the prophetess fated to be right, but never believed.
+I said then Germany would never break because of starvation, or
+fail because of revolution, and that her man-power was great.
+
+We have not made sacrifices enough in this war, there are too
+many useless mouths. I believe that there are in the States of
+New York and Pennsylvania alone 175,000 professional chauffeurs,
+a great number of them employed on automobiles not used for
+business or trucking. And then think of the thousands of skilled
+mechanics employed in garages and factories repairing and making
+mere pleasure vehicles. If all these chauffeurs (nearly all with
+some knowledge of machinery) and mechanics were put at work
+building ships or making rifles there would be no loss to the
+country, but certain overfed women and their poodles would have
+to walk, greatly to the advantage of their health and figures.
+
+Private automobiles disappeared very quickly in Germany. At first
+a man who could not reach his business in any other way was
+allowed to use his own automobile but even these soon went out of
+commission and then bicycles were forbidden except for rides to
+and from business, work or school. A few ramshackle taxicabs
+still survive in Berlin at the railway stations, driven by benzol
+instead of gasoline and shod with spring tires. No one can keep a
+taxi waiting, it is subject when waiting to be commandeered by
+the first comer.
+
+Gradually as we realise the gravity of the conflict our lives
+will become more earnest and luxuries will be given up to meet
+the changed condition. There must be a committee who will tide
+over the workers in luxury industries and help them to learn new
+war trades. This was done in Germany by the great organisation of
+the Woman's Service. Already Fifth Avenue dressmakers have
+dismissed many of their workers, who, being without resources,
+should receive assistance and advice until they have learned
+other trades.
+
+Our farmers are entitled to cheaper labour. Why should not enemy
+aliens work our farms? We do not propose to make the Austrian and
+German and Hungarian women agricultural slaves as the Germans
+made the Russian women caught by the war within the borders of
+Germany, nor have we the right, I believe, to force civilian
+prisoners to work. But we can give these civilian men instead of
+meat twice a day, now given them, the same food which the Germans
+give their prisoners, until the enemy aliens volunteer to work in
+our fields. They should, of course, work as in Germany under
+guard. They should be used also in mines, factories, etc. The
+sooner we use every ounce of war energy, the sooner we shall beat
+Germany and obtain a lasting peace.
+
+Eventually forced by the hopelessness of the economic situation,
+the nerve of Germany will break. There is a suicide point in the
+German character. The German has been sustained since the war by
+victories somewhere. No defeats were brought home to the German
+people. Viewed from inside the German Empire what are the loss of
+a few villages on the West front or even of distant colonies
+compared to the conquest of Belgium, of the richest part of
+France, of thousands of square miles of Russia, of Roumania,
+Montenegro and Serbia? With the exception of a very small bit of
+Alsace the war is being fought far from German territory. The
+German can swagger down the streets of the capitals of his
+enemies, in Brussels, Belgrade, Bucharest, Warsaw and Cettinje
+and Prussian greed exacts tribute from rich cities from Lille on
+the West to Wilna far within the frontiers of Russia.
+
+Our President has never faltered. He will convince the Germans at
+last that we are unfaltering, in the war, that nothing can swerve
+us from our goal,--the destruction of the autocracy which looks
+on war as good and seeks the dominion of the earth. When the
+Germans grasp that, then will come the suicide point.
+
+There is nothing in the war for the German who is not a noble or
+a junker, an officer or an official. German victory will only
+bend the collar of caste and servitude, low wages and militarism
+tighter on the German neck. Sooner or later the deceived German
+will discover this; revolution will not come during the war, but
+after it, unless it closes with a German peace, or unless in
+anticipation of revolt, rights are granted to the people.
+
+We cannot stop, we cannot bear the burden of the debts of this
+war and at the same time burden ourselves with future military
+preparation to meet a confident conquering Germany ready to carry
+the sword into South America. Whatever the sacrifice, we must go
+on.
+
+And for each country and for the Allies as a whole there is one
+word, Unity.
+
+When all had signed our Declaration of Independence, Benjamin
+Franklin said, "And now we must all hang together or we all
+shall hang separately."
+
+Russia has, for the moment, failed and unless she recovers
+herself she will pay the penalty by submission to German rule.
+
+Is there a defect in the Russian character? Is persistency
+lacking? In 1760, the Russian troops had taken Berlin. If Russia
+had gone on strongly with the war, the power of Frederick the
+Great might have been broken. But apparently the Russian troops
+simply turned around and went back to Russia. In 1854, in the
+Crimean War, after a long siege and bitter losses, the French,
+Turks, English and Sardinians succeeded in taking one Russian
+city, Sebastopol, in the extreme southern part of Russia. With
+this exception, Russian territory was intact and yet the Czar
+Alexander II, shortly after the death of Nicholas, begged for
+peace. As a result the Black Sea was made for a time neutral and
+no state could have warships or arsenals on it with the exception
+of small gunboats for police purposes.
+
+In 1878, after the Russo-Turkish war, when the Russian troops
+were in sight of the minarets of Constantinople, the Russians
+allowed themselves to be bluffed by the diplomats of Europe from
+obtaining the fruits of victory.
+
+Secretly or openly, Germany will propose to the world to take her
+pay from the skin of the Bear, from the conquered territories of
+Russia which remain in her possession. The inhabitants of those
+territories would have to become the slaves of Prussia as did
+the inhabitants of Belgium and Northern France. Prussians of
+Russia paid the agitators to talk about peace without indemnities.
+Germany, since the first days of the war, has been taking
+indemnities not only in money, but in property and in labour from
+the conquered countries. Belgium alone has been compelled to pay
+a tribute of forty-million francs a month (lately sixty million)
+to her conquerors and vast sums have been exacted from Lille and
+other conquered cities. Property, including machinery, has been
+seized and transported to Germany in the effort, not only to
+obtain a temporary advantage, but to destroy forever factories
+that compete with German manufacturers.
+
+Especially do the German autocrats hope to obtain the so-called
+Baltic provinces as a spoil of war. Of Courland, Livonia and
+Esthonia now largely occupied by the German invaders, Courland
+and Livonia were originally possessions of the Teutonic Knights,
+then became a part of Poland and finally passed to Russia. The
+three provinces were governed semi-independently, until 1876,
+when they became in all respects an integral part of the Russian
+Empire. The land in the provinces is held by great landowners,
+mostly of German blood--and the mass of the population belongs to
+the Lutheran Church. The peasants have been kept down by the
+lords of the soil, whose sympathies turn to Germany.
+
+In 1913-1914 I met in Berlin several landlords from these
+provinces who acted in Berlin and were treated in Berlin like
+Germans, although subjects of the Russian Czar. So backward were
+these provinces in liberty under their German landlords that it
+was not until 1848 that the infamous "right of the lord" (_droit
+du Seigneur_ or _Jus primae noctae_) was abolished.
+
+What Tannenberg has to say about Courland, Livonia and Esthonia
+is well worth studying. He writes:
+
+     "The most precious portions for us of the Russian
+     heritage are the German Baltic provinces,
+     Courland, Livonia, Esthonia.
+
+     "To the north in Esthonia and in the northern part
+     of Livonia live the Esthonians. In the South, the
+     Livonians of the Lithuanian branch. Esthonians and
+     Livonians are Lutherans and form the principal
+     part of the population. There are 250,000 Germans.
+     But the civilisation is German and gives to the
+     whole country a German stamp. In the rural
+     districts, the great landlords, the ministers of
+     the Gospel and the school masters are German. In
+     the cities the middle classes are Germans. But the
+     workingmen are Esthonians or Livonians. The
+     Russians are only represented in the large cities
+     by officials.
+
+     "It was in the middle of the twelfth century that
+     the first German settlements were made at the
+     mouth of the Dina. In 1201, Riga was founded, and,
+     in 1202, the Order of the Knights of the Sword. In
+     1237 this Order was united with the powerful Order
+     of the Teutonic Knights. There was no thought then
+     of the Muscovites. From Marienburg to Riga it is
+     five hundred kilometres, from Koenigsburg to Riga,
+     three hundred and fifty, to Moscow eight hundred
+     and fifty. Moscow was then going through a very
+     difficult period. In 1225, the battle of the
+     Kalka took place which put an end to the power of
+     the great Russian Princes.
+
+     "From Riga to Kalka, Dantzig, Stettin and Lubeck,
+     there was sea communication. The all powerful
+     merchant marine of the Hanseatic League was at its
+     height...."
+
+Tannenberg describes how these provinces finally became part of
+Russia and adds:
+
+     "Courland, Livonia and Esthonia became the model
+     provinces of the whole Empire. The German nobility
+     furnished Russia with its generals and its high
+     officials: the University of Dorpat was founded
+     and was the model of the high schools created
+     later in Russia.... The University of Dorpat
+     exchanged its professors with the other German
+     high schools of the Russian Empire. The students
+     of the Baltic provinces passed several terms in
+     the German Universities of the South and East of
+     Germany and then returned to Dorpat to undergo
+     their examinations to enter in the service of the
+     Baltic or Russian State.
+
+     "One encounters constantly in our literature
+     allusions to the Baltic provinces. Kant, the
+     philosopher of pure reason, published his work at
+     Riga.... In the time of Goethe students from
+     Courland and Livonia visited the great of Weimar.
+     Richard Wagner commenced at Riga his theatrical
+     and musical career."
+
+Tannenberg speaks of the revolution after the defeat by the
+Japanese of the Russian troops in these provinces when the
+castles of the German Barons were besieged by the people and
+says, "The cry of indignation resounded through all Germany. A
+military German intervention was generally expected. Against all
+expectation nothing of the kind happened." ... "When the Russian
+Government finally got control the Russian troops treated the
+rebels mildly and it was finally the sparkling on the horizon of
+five million German bayonets that hastened matters so well that
+superficially, at least, order was re-established."
+
+Speaking on the annexation of those provinces to Germany he says:
+
+     "There is no money to be seized in the East but
+     there is something which is of more value than
+     cash and that is lands, lands of colonisation for
+     new German peasants." And he points out that the
+     Baltic provinces are about the same size as
+     Bavaria and Wuerttemberg, but in Bavaria and
+     Wuerttemberg there are eight and a half millions of
+     inhabitants while the Baltic provinces support a
+     little over two millions.
+
+     "The Baltic provinces have always occupied an
+     important place in the thought and sentiments of
+     the German people. The public as a whole does not
+     inquire if it's true that only fifteen per cent of
+     the population is German. For the public they are
+     simply the German provinces of the Baltic and the
+     German people are right, because since seven
+     hundred years the proprietors of the land there
+     are Germans and the civilisation has always been
+     German."
+
+Should Germany be allowed to seize these provinces, to increase
+her population and man power enormously, a second great war like
+this one will not be far off and Russia, deprived of what Peter
+the Great called "His window on the Baltic," will lose her place
+as an European Power.
+
+The Germans will endeavour, during any peace negotiations, to
+keep their troops there in the hope that they will be permitted
+to occupy these provinces or that, if a vote should be taken to
+determine to which country the inhabitants wish to be annexed,
+the latter would be coerced through the German landlords, and by
+the use of money and terror made to appear as desirous of
+annexation to Germany.
+
+Prince Muenster, who had been in this section during the war, told
+me once how easy it was to observe that the more prosperous
+sections of the population were German and how anxious these
+people were to become Germans. In this case I think he was right
+to the extent that the feudal landlords of the Baltic provinces
+believe that as Prussian Junkers they would have a greater chance
+to continue to oppress the people than as Russian citizens,
+especially citizens of a new Russian republic.
+
+The Allies must guard against any move which can add to the man
+power of the Central Powers, and this reason alone is sufficient
+reason never to permit the Arabs and Syrians, who have been so
+oppressed by the Turks, to suffer again under the rule of the
+Young Turks.
+
+The world must not be disturbed again by Prussian dreams of world
+conquest, nor must Jerusalem and the Holy Land, towards which the
+eyes of all Christians have turned for twenty centuries, be
+voluntarily given back to the Turks.
+
+To allow the Germans access to Bagdad is to invite trouble--a
+second attempt of the Kaiser to don the turban and proclaim a
+Holy War in the interest of the fat merchants of Hamburg and
+Frankfort.
+
+If this were an old time war, when sly diplomats sat at a green
+table, exchanging territories and peoples like poker chips, we
+might consent to the partition and destruction of Russia as most
+natural. But this war is between two systems, and wars either
+will be continued or cease hereafter. We who hope for the end of
+war cannot permit Germany to add to her man power any part of the
+rapidly multiplying population of that great territory which we
+now call Russia.
+
+It is probable that Russia will go through the stages of the
+great French Revolution. We have had already the revolution made
+by the whole nation, Duma, army, and the control of the
+respectable moderate Republicans. The period of the Jacobins, the
+extremists, has come, too, and we must in the end expect the
+appearance of the military leader, a strong man who will bring
+order. That is what will happen, for Russia cannot remain a
+nation under the control of any government which cheerfully
+consents to dismemberment of her territory. Perhaps Trotzky will
+be clever enough to transform himself into a patriotic militant
+leader, if not, then he will not long remain at the head.
+
+All these movements of lesser so-called nationalities are
+fostered by Prussian propagandists.
+
+The region of the Ukraine, in Southern Russia, is supposed to be
+clamouring for freedom and independent existence. Long before
+the Russian revolution, I and all the diplomats of Germany were
+flooded with newspapers, pamphlets and literature about the
+longing of the Ukraine--all as plainly issued by the Germans as
+if they had been stamped with the Royal arms of Prussia and the
+seal of the General Staff.
+
+The Lithuanians, too, stir uneasily. There is, perhaps, more in
+their claim; they request the world not to confuse them with the
+Poles and they protest against incorporation with Poland. But
+should a number of little states be created, sliced from the map
+of Russia, they would enjoy but a short independence before
+falling, one by one, into the maw of Prussia.
+
+Every one sympathises with the Poles and hopes for the
+establishment of a really free and independent Poland, and not a
+Poland under the rule or protection of either Austria or Germany.
+It will be a great experiment, because in the past the great
+state of Poland, one of the greatest in Europe, was broken
+because of the incapacity of the Poles to rule themselves. Their
+armies showed great bravery, the Polish cavalry, winged like
+angels, terrified enemy cavalry horses and charged often to
+victory; but the Polish aristocrats, camped with thousands of
+retainers at the place where the King was elected, sat patiently
+waiting for the highest bidder before giving their votes.
+
+And the King once elected, the Polish diet accomplished nothing,
+because any noble who voted against a proposition could defeat
+it. This was the so-called "liberum veto" so fatal to Poland.
+Katharine of Russia, that clever, wise, dissolute but great
+German Princess, placing a puppet favourite on the Polish throne,
+insisted on the retention of the "liberum veto" in the Polish
+Constitution, because she knew that by the mere existence of this
+asinine institution Poland could be counted on to commit suicide
+for the benefit of the watching spoilers, Russia, Prussia and
+Austria.
+
+But a new, real Poland would not be governed by its aristocracy,
+and under a democratic government the splendid Polish race could
+be trusted to work out successfully their political salvation.
+
+Should the strong man fail to appear in Russia and the Bolsheviki
+continue to rule, then the confusion of Russia may not prove an
+immediate help to Germany.
+
+In the first place, no one now works in Russia; the population
+will be in want of food and will not have any great surplus to
+export; and it will be a long time before Germany can draw any
+material help from the Steppes of incompetency. Had Russia
+immediately settled down to a new form of government, the case
+might have been different, but now Germany or some power in
+Russia must first organise that vast country for production under
+new conditions before Germany can begin to profit from the
+withdrawal of Russia from the war except, perhaps, in that
+important factor--the release of German troops from the Eastern
+frontier. But as time passes the Germans may use food from
+Russia to bribe northern neutral nations into an alliance with
+the Central Empires.
+
+Revolutions are contagious. In 1848, the movement started in
+France spread all over Europe. The burdened horse on the road
+evinces a tendency to get out of hand at the mere sight of
+another horse cavorting about a pasture. The Germans are in
+blinders and driven by heavy hand, but forgotten as liberty is in
+Germany, the German Michael, the peasant chained to the soil, the
+hard-driven, poorly paid worker of the cities, at least, will
+exhibit a spirit of uneasiness, when across the line he sees
+Ivan, the Russian moujik, capering about, free from restraint and
+running things at his own sweet will. The yoke fits tight to
+Michael's neck, the German Kaiser drives hard from his All
+Highest Place; but no Emperor seemed more secure than the head of
+the Romanoffs, and the very fact that the chains of the yoke seem
+so strong may make the driven cattle all the more ready to toss
+the yoke aside when knowledge of power comes to the lower castes
+of Germany and Austria.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the question of war Prussia is a civilisation as different
+from that of France, Great Britain and America as is China.
+
+Ministers of the Gospel, professors, poets, writers, teach war;
+the necessity, the glory, the nobility of war. Long before
+Nietzsche wrote and Treitschke taught war as a part of the
+Prussian creed the teachings of these mad philosophers expressed
+an indigenous feeling in Germany. It is not some abstract
+belief to be studied. It is a vital, burning, ever-present
+question which affects deeply, intimately, every man in this
+world. For until the Prussians are made weary of this belief and
+converted to a milder life, there is no woman in any corner of
+the earth, however remote, who may not have to see her son or
+husband go out to die in the fight against Prussian aggression,
+who may not, if this fight fails, be dragged away with her
+daughters to become slaves or endure that which is far worse than
+slavery.
+
+[Illustration: REPRODUCTION OF A POST CARD CELEBRATING THE
+PROWESS OF THE ZEPPELIN, SOLD IN GERMANY]
+
+[Illustration: ZEPPELIN POST CARD OF PATRIOTIC SENTIMENT SOLD IN
+GERMANY POPULARIZING THE AIR RAID ON DEFENSELESS CITIES]
+
+If the Prussian people themselves cling to their Gods of War, if
+Kaiser and Crown Prince fulfil their ideals, if the Prussian
+leave the reins in the hands of these warlike task masters and
+refuse to join the other peoples in stamping out the devil of
+war, then the conflict must go on, go on until the Germans get
+their stomachs full of war, until they forget their easy
+victories of the last century, until their leaders learn that war
+as a national industry does not pay, until their wealth and their
+trade has disappeared, until their sons are maimed and killed and
+their land laid waste, until the blinders fall from their eyes
+and they sicken of Emperor and Crown Prince, of the almost
+countless Kings and Grand Dukes and Princes, Generals and
+Admirals, Court Marshals and Chamberlains and Majors and
+Adjutants, Captains and Lieutenants, who now, like fat, green,
+distended flies, feed on the blood of Germany. What is there in
+war for any one but those men of froth at the top? It is this
+infernal king business that is responsible; so much of the king
+tradition is bound up with war that a king with power feels that
+he is untrue to the traditions of his ancestors if he fails at
+some period of his career to give the court painters and the
+court poets and the court historians a chance to portray him as a
+successful warrior.
+
+The British air minister recently announced that reprisal raids
+were to be made on German towns. Who is not sorry for the poor
+people who may suffer, but the war must be brought home to them.
+They have made no protest while Zeppelins killed babies and women
+and children in the "fortress" of London. The "fortress" of
+London, indeed! First the Germans attack an open town, contrary
+to every rule, and then, when guns are mounted to ward off future
+attacks, the Germans christen the town a "fortress" and claim the
+right to continue this slaughter of non-combatants.
+
+Postcards were sold and eagerly bought all over Germany showing
+the Zeppelins bombing towns. When some German father sits by the
+hospital bed of his dying daughter, who sobs out her life torn
+with a fatal wound, let him tack one of these postcards over the
+bed and in looking on it remember that "he who lives by the sword
+shall perish by the sword," that it was at the command of the
+Kaiser and the Crown Prince when they thought only the German
+Zeppelins could make a successful air raid that these massacres
+were ordered and that the German people at the time yelled their
+approval of deliberate dastardly murder.
+
+"Te Deum" has been always the favourite psalm sung in cathedrals
+for all Christian conquerors, but neither psalms nor the paid
+pastor's praises of the Emperor will satisfy the German people,
+who have made awful sacrifices for intangible victories.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE ERRORS OF EFFICIENT GERMANY
+
+
+The Yankee finding himself, like Mark Twain's hero, suddenly
+transported back to King Arthur's Court is landed in a surprising
+and unknown world. But one of King Arthur's knights brought to
+life at the court of the present German Emperor aside from steam,
+electricity, gun powder, telegraph and telephones would find the
+system as despotic as in the days when the enchanter, Merlin,
+wove his spells and the sword Excalibur appeared from the depths
+of the magic lake. But while the system is as royal and as
+despotic as in King Arthur's day, while the king and his military
+nobles look down on the merchants and the toilers and the plain
+people, no knights ride forth intent upon good deeds, to protect
+the poor or avenge the wrongs of the innocent.
+
+It was the cold realists of the General Staff who battered down
+the defences of Belgium and the forts of France, destroyed the
+monuments of art and levied a tax of sixty million francs a month
+upon a little country deprived of its means to produce wealth,
+took the food from the inhabitants, shipped the machinery and raw
+material into Germany, deported the men and insulted the women
+and drove whole populations from their homes to work as slaves
+for the conquerors.
+
+But while they can plan military successes in the first rush of
+assault on the chessboard of Europe they have failed to
+understand other nations--failed even to learn the lessons of
+history. They did not know that in every land, in every walk of
+life, there are men who will "reject a bribe and who will die for
+an idea."
+
+Imagine a German Staff officer reporting in Berlin that over a
+hundred thousand Alsatians were armed and organised and that they
+threatened, unless certain proposed legislation uniting them, for
+example, with Baden, was withdrawn, to resist forcibly any
+attempt to incorporate them in that Grand Duchy. Would not this
+look to a German officer like real revolution and nothing else?
+And when, in addition, there came news of the landing of arms for
+the Nationalists in Ireland and of the organisation of the
+Nationalist army, the Germans, without knowledge of the
+psychology of other peoples, believed that Great Britain had her
+hands full and that the moment had come when they could go to war
+and leave Great Britain out of all calculations. So studying only
+the German mind, believing that all peoples in national character
+are like the Germans, the Great General Staff, the greatest
+military aggregation the world has ever seen, failed lamentably,
+whenever the human element became the factor in the situation.
+Its military successes have been marvellous; its judgments of
+mankind ridiculous. Its errors of judgment may be arranged as
+follows:
+
+
+_Error Number One._
+
+Italy was in alliance with Germany and Austria, although there
+was no greater hate before the war than that between Italians and
+Austrians; and the Great General Staff believed that Italy would
+remain in this unnatural alliance, would fight in order to give
+the Germans and the German-Austrians the domination of Europe.
+The victory of the Central Empires would have placed Italy under
+that Austrian influence from which in her struggle for freedom
+under the leadership of Cavour, Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel she
+had liberated herself.
+
+Prince Buelow, who early in his career romantically married a
+charming Italian of good family, was sent to Rome to keep Italy
+neutral. But he failed.
+
+
+_Error Number Two._
+
+Germany's belief that because of the Carson movement Great
+Britain was immobilised and could take no part in the war.
+
+
+_Error Number Three._
+
+The theory cherished especially in military circles that because
+the Japanese army had been trained by Prussians Japan would join
+Germany. Indeed, at the moment when the Japanese were packing
+their trunks and preparing to leave their Embassy, a German crowd
+with flags and torches was assembled in front cheering Japan,
+the latest ally of the Entente.
+
+
+_Error Number Four._
+
+The belief by the General Staff that the British Colonies would
+render no assistance to the mother country.
+
+In the first days after England entered the war many German
+statesmen said to me, "Of course, now Canada will be incorporated
+in the United States." The Germans believed that the practical
+thing, for the moment, for the Canadians was to avoid war, to
+disavow all their obligations and ties of blood and permit
+Britain to be destroyed. The General Staff thought that because
+the world did not have actual proof of the German designs of
+world conquest, because that design had not been publicly
+proclaimed, that no people or nation would either know or
+understand the vast enterprise of conquest on which Prussian
+autocracy had embarked.
+
+
+_Error Number Five._
+
+The unexpected resistance of the Belgians.
+
+The German armies were held only a few days, yet the delay of
+those few days changed the fortunes of the world.
+
+
+_Error Number Six._
+
+The splendid stand of France which was a complete surprise to the
+Great General Staff. They believed that France was degenerate,
+torn by scandals, and that a sudden assault would land the
+German army in Paris. In this connection it was another great
+error for the Germans to have sought Paris, important from a
+sentimental but not a military point of view. They might better
+have occupied first the north coast of France, and from there
+could have conducted the German submarine campaign with deadly
+effect.
+
+
+_Error Number Seven._
+
+We have seen what a shell the Russian Empire was, but in July,
+1914, the Great General Staff believed that Russia was on the
+edge of a revolution. Barricades had been erected in the streets
+of Petrograd and the Staff believed that the revolution, which
+has since divided Russia, was in the making. Instead of this the
+Russian Empire lasted for nearly three years and the Russian
+troops and generals inflicted many a hard blow not only on the
+Austrians but on the German forces.
+
+
+_Error Number Eight._
+
+Germany was confident that the United States had been so
+propagandised, so covered by bribes, by paid newspapers, that the
+export of supplies to the Allies could be prevented. Another
+error was the barbarity shown in the sinking of the _Lusitania_
+by which it was sought to terrorise Americans into withholding
+from England and France the privileges of international law, and
+of the definite treaty of The Hague in 1907, in which Germany had
+joined and which gave to private individuals the right to supply
+munitions of war to any belligerent.
+
+
+_Error Number Nine._
+
+Thinking that the Emperor, by posing as a Mohammedan in the East,
+could with the aid of the Turks stir all Mohammedans to a Holy
+War.
+
+The Germans laboured with the Mohammedan soldiers captured by
+them. I saw many fine looking old Sheiks from the desert entering
+the Foreign Office in Berlin. The Eastern world was filled with
+German spies. But the Holy War was a failure, and the hope that
+the races of Asia and Africa would rise in favour of Germany was
+not borne out by events. The men of the East are wise, the rulers
+of India are enlightened and were not silly enough to place
+themselves voluntarily under the harsh rule of Prussia.
+
+
+_Error Number Ten._
+
+The belief that President Wilson had been elected with an
+absolute mandate to keep the peace at all costs, the Germans
+declared for unrestricted submarine warfare, expecting a craven
+neutrality from the United States.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+PRESIDENT WILSON AND PEACE
+
+
+Once the Kaiser said to me, "I wish I had as much power as your
+President. He has far more power than I have."
+
+What would the Kaiser say of the power and prestige now enjoyed
+by the President of the United States?
+
+At first blush it seems almost ridiculous for us to rush to war
+shouting against autocracy while the man with the greatest power
+the world has ever seen announces to the world that we fight "to
+make the world safe for Democracy."
+
+Charles I must turn enviously in his grave when his spirit sees
+the obedient Parliament of Washington; and a line of fallen
+Kings, from Charles to Nicky Romanoff, must wish that they had
+had the opportunity to attend lectures at Princeton University
+where our President, Woodrow Wilson, once held forth on the
+science of government.
+
+But it is characteristic of the high intelligence of our people
+that we have recognised that war to be waged effectively must be
+directed by one head. We know that after the war we shall be able
+to recover all the powers delegated to the President. We have
+gained by our temporary surrender all the efficiency of
+autocracy and risked none of its dangers, and have simply
+followed the custom of the free German tribes which elected a
+leader for war and gave him a power never given the chiefs in
+time of peace.
+
+How much more enduring is our Government! Since the war the
+government cabinets of England have twice changed radically, that
+of France five times, and Italy very frequently indeed. Few
+realise that our Constitution is the oldest in the world to-day.
+Since its adoption the government of every land in some material
+particular has changed many times, France, for instance, from
+King and Republic, then to citizen kingship, then to Republic,
+then to Empire, and finally to Republic. In England the form has
+remained the same, but the power passed, in 1830, with the
+passage of the Reform Bill, from nobles to commoners, as great a
+revolution as any in France.
+
+And I admire the very inaccessibility of President Wilson. He
+does not waste time on non-essentials, on useless polite
+conversation or pointless discussion. This may add to his enemies
+but makes for efficiency.
+
+When I saw the President on one occasion about German affairs we
+talked for four and a quarter hours without intermission. In that
+period he extracted from me all the information he required at
+the time. He is a wonderful man to have at the head of our nation
+in war or peace.
+
+Gradually the splendid peace message of our President (Jan. 8,
+1918) will sink into the consciousness of the German people.
+
+There are liberal and reasonable men among them striving for
+peace and for disarmament.
+
+In January of 1917, just at the moment when the military
+autocracy brought on war with America by their sudden announcement
+of ruthless submarine warfare, the liberals of Germany were
+preparing to co-operate with our President in the efforts that he
+was then making for peace.
+
+A Socialist member of the Reichstag, a man whose name is known
+throughout the world, wrote at that time two articles to be used
+in the effort for peace, and I print them in order that those
+outside of Germany may obtain a glimpse of the mind of one of the
+leading Socialists of that country. These articles have never
+before been published.
+
+I feel that now when we are at war with Germany perhaps it would
+cause embarrassment to this man should I publish his name. In a
+country where a man may be sent to jail for speaking without
+respect of some act of the Kaiser's ancestors, committed more
+than four hundred years ago, it is dangerous for any German to
+put his name to utterances which might not march with the wishes
+of despotic Germany.
+
+It has always been the desire of the Kaiser's government to draw
+the Allies into a peace conference with the hope of detaching
+some of the Allies from their combination. Perhaps these
+articles, although written by a Socialist, were part of a clever
+governmental peace propaganda to which the majority Socialists
+so readily lent themselves during the year 1917. But on the other
+hand I think these articles represent the sincere real expression
+of the writer who is still a member of the Minority or Haase
+faction of the German Socialist Party. Though written a year ago
+they discuss points still unsolved and which must come before the
+peace conference that settles the war:
+
+     HOW AMERICA CAN HELP EUROPE.
+
+     BY ---- ----, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG
+
+     The immediate reply of the Central Powers to
+     President Wilson's note (Dec., 1916) has been a
+     polite refusal to indicate, beyond some
+     generalities open to the blame of ambiguity, in a
+     clear way what their demands of peace would be. It
+     has been followed by their note to the neutrals of
+     the 11th of January, which also avoids giving a
+     distinct delineation of their demands. The Central
+     Powers maintain that only a peace conference of
+     the belligerents themselves would be the proper
+     place to bring forth the respective peace
+     conditions, and they state they would produce
+     theirs when once the conference has met. Putting
+     aside every insinuation of motives one cannot help
+     being reminded by this of the attitude of the
+     Central Powers during the fateful twelve days of
+     July-August, 1914, when they refused any outside
+     mediation and insisted on direct conversations
+     between Russia and Austria, whilst the punitive
+     military expedition of the latter against Servia
+     had to take its course. In so far their suggestion
+     would not augur well for the execution.
+
+     The Entente Allies, on their side, have been
+     somewhat more explicit. Their answer to President
+     Wilson includes the delineation of demands that
+     certainly are open to criticism, but just for this
+     call for a reply or even compel it. At the time
+     these lines are written only newspaper comments
+     have so far come forward, and it is not necessary
+     to dwell upon these. Nor does it seem appropriate
+     to anticipate the reply of the Chancellor, which
+     in some form or other will surely be given in the
+     course of the next weeks. What matters is that
+     there is a programme given for discussion and we
+     are able to scrutinise its nature and bearing.
+
+     The demands explicitly or implicitly contained in
+     the note of the Allies can be summarised under
+     five heads, viz.:
+
+         1. Restitution of occupied territory to its former
+            political community,
+
+         2. Reparation for inflicted material and moral
+            wrongs,
+
+         3. Territorial changes motivated by alleged
+
+            a. rights of nationality,
+
+            b. need for freeing suppressed or protecting
+               consistently maltreated nationalities,
+
+         4. Reform of International Law,
+
+         5. National and international treaties for the
+            protection of inland and maritime boundaries.
+
+     Of these the demands under 1 and 2 are certainly
+     in their principle quite reasonable, and if it
+     comes to actual and exact formulation are apt to
+     lead to a fair agreement.
+
+     The demands under 3 are partly on principle also
+     unobjectionable, whilst some, as e.g., the cession
+     of the Polish provinces of Prussia to a Polish
+     state under Russian tutelage or the cession of the
+     European vilayets of Turkey to Russia or some
+     newly created community under Russian tutelage,
+     can hardly be supported by reasonable argument in
+     the face of the fact that they could only be
+     carried out by dictation after a complete and
+     crushing victory of the Allies over the Central
+     Powers. That is to say, after a prolonged war more
+     murderous and more embittered than that behind us.
+     It is to be expected that public discussion will
+     in regard to demands of this nature create an
+     opinion resulting in their reduction if not
+     disappearance. What is reasonable in them falls
+     either under number 3, letter "a," or under
+     numbers 4 and 5.
+
+     Now as regards the demands under 4 and 5, the
+     settlement of most of them belongs rightly to an
+     International Conference of all the nations. In
+     their good and efficient regulation all are
+     interested. They are also of the greatest concern
+     to the future of mankind as a whole. The demands
+     or questions can as regards their general
+     character also be divided under three other heads,
+     viz.:
+
+     Firstly, questions of justice to nations or
+     nationalities as political or sociological
+     entities,
+
+     Secondly, questions of the most expedient
+     settlement of disputes between individual Powers
+     or groups of such where no fundamental principles
+     of nationality or similar rights are concerned,
+     and
+
+     Thirdly, questions which concern all the nations
+     through their common interest in general security
+     and protection against the disturbance of
+     international peace and traffic.
+
+     Both the Allies and the Central Powers agree to
+     the idea of settling these latter questions in a
+     better way than before; i.e., by an International
+     League of the Nations to enforce peace. But both
+     want the creation of this League to be settled
+     after the war. It can, however, with good reason
+     be upheld that there is in this a fault against
+     logic which would have to be paid dearly by them
+     as well as by the neutral world. Both base a
+     number of their demands on the necessity of
+     protecting themselves against renewed onslaughts
+     by their opponents. Now such protection might be a
+     necessary thing under the present state of an
+     International Law which has been outraged and
+     partly been made inane by themselves and has
+     partly turned out not to meet the conditions of
+     modern warfare as they result from the modern
+     weapons of destruction. But it would be made
+     unnecessary or its requirements be greatly reduced
+     if the League of the Nations, such as is in
+     principle accepted by them, did already exist or
+     had its rules and regulations already laid down in
+     detail. Is it reasonable to allow this
+     contradiction to cause now innumerable deaths and
+     mutilations of human beings and unbounded
+     destruction of material wealth instead of seeking
+     means to dissolve it as early as possible? Ought
+     not all our wits be exerted to find this earlier
+     solution?
+
+     There are within the means of the neutrals, if
+     acting together, two ways to bring the war to an
+     earlier end than that to be expected from the free
+     decision of the belligerents. The one is to drop
+     all considerations of neutrality such as at
+     present regarded and, without directly supporting
+     the one section to the detriment of the other,
+     withdraw from both of them all supplies in food,
+     raw material, half and wholly manufactured goods,
+     not minding which section would by this be more
+     damaged than its opponents. In fact, it would most
+     likely be a decidedly unneutral measure against
+     the one section which now benefits more than the
+     other by these supplies, and because of this and
+     from other reasons there is little probability
+     that it would find general acceptance. The other
+     way is to reduce the justification of the
+     continuation of the war by minimising the objects
+     for which it is led in the belief of the great
+     masses of the people engaged as much as in the
+     eyes of the outside world.
+
+     Both belligerents, to say it again, put in the
+     first line of their requirements security against
+     renewed attacks, protection against the
+     continuation of the insecurity of peace. Both
+     admit that the proposed League of the Nations has
+     become a necessity; both admit that it might
+     indeed protect mankind against new wars and a
+     state of incessantly endangered peace. Why then
+     wait and let the disaster go on instead of
+     proceeding at once to lay the foundation of this
+     League?
+
+     The step is not so impossible as it might appear.
+     Supposing one neutral state took the matter in
+     hand and, after having ascertained the consent of
+     the other neutrals or at least a majority of
+     them--which it is almost sure to obtain--would
+     invite all the nations, the belligerents included,
+     to a conference or a congress at a neutral place
+     for the discussion and the arrangement of the
+     principles and rules of the proposed League of the
+     Nations. Would the belligerent nations refuse to
+     send their delegates to such a conference? Could
+     they do it without damaging their case before the
+     world of the neutrals and the masses of their own
+     people? It is most improbable that they would do
+     such a thing. And even if they did they would not
+     by this put the conference to naught. It would be
+     there and would give palpable substance to an idea
+     which until now lived, in spite of great and most
+     ingenuous work spent on it, politically only in
+     the sphere of lofty speculation or projects.
+
+     And the conference could do more. Starting from
+     the maxim which finds such impressive accentuation
+     in President Wilson's note that war in general
+     must not, and the present war in particular can
+     not, be regarded as the private affair of the
+     individual states that engage in it, the
+     conference could also take into consideration some
+     questions of consequence connected with the
+     present war. It could, e.g., whilst laying the
+     foundations for the security of countries against
+     wilful attacks lay down opinions about the just
+     settlement of disputed questions of nationality
+     and the liberation of nations or part of such from
+     allegiance to a state or empire of different or
+     mixed nationalities. It seems to become a
+     necessity to make clear whether a Power or
+     coalition of such can be justified to put in the
+     list of their war aims the liberation of
+     nationalities without sufficient proof that the
+     latter all want to sever their connection with the
+     state or empire to which they just belong.
+
+     The Tcheques in Austria and the Finns in Russia
+     strive for their full autonomy within these
+     empires, but they have very little shown of a
+     desire to become a separate state. An opinion that
+     wars for abstruse benefits never asked for can
+     under no circumstances be regarded as liberation
+     wars would wrong nobody because it would apply to
+     all, but it may contribute much to have designs
+     given up which otherwise would uselessly cause
+     bloodshed and prolonged enmities.
+
+     The conference would also be justified in taking
+     measures to procure an impartial expert opinion on
+     the origin and the legal conduct of the war and
+     the general principles of national and
+     international right involved.
+
+     If the conference would invite neutral experts in
+     international law of general renown to investigate
+     the questions indicated above and draw up reports
+     it would not by this offend in the smallest degree
+     against the requirements of impartiality. But the
+     reports could, if based on careful examination and
+     considerately worded, contribute very much to
+     soften the excited minds in the countries engaged
+     and facilitate the preliminaries of a genuine
+     peace.
+
+     There are, no doubt, all sorts of objections that
+     could be raised against this suggestion. But they
+     can be met satisfactorily if the matter is taken
+     up in earnest and with practical mind. The
+     principal difficulty to overcome is _time_; no
+     time must be wasted by research in far-fetched
+     details. It is a comparatively short list of
+     pertinent questions which would have to be
+     answered, and the materials of their examination
+     are already at hand in the declarations and
+     documentary publications of the different
+     governments themselves which want to be verified
+     by juxtaposition with the corresponding
+     publications of the other side and to be
+     scrutinised upon their intrinsic significance.
+     Works of conscientious legists and historians that
+     could serve as specimens are not missing. But they
+     are occasioned by private enterprise and express
+     opinions not always in the measured language that
+     would alone fit the purpose here in view.
+
+     This purpose is to direct the minds of the
+     greatest possible number of people in the affected
+     countries to such way of regarding the questions
+     of the war and to such comprehension of the
+     feeling of the other side as are the necessary
+     conditions of a sane and sober appreciation of the
+     nature and the possibilities of a reasonable
+     peace. The present feeling in these sections of
+     the public which form public opinion in this
+     country as in England and in France, is as full of
+     bitterness as can be. A cure is badly wanted, but
+     it does not proceed automatically. Weariness of
+     the war is there, but it is counteracted partly by
+     the manifold incidents of the war itself, by the
+     appetites it has awakened, by the mutual distrust
+     it has created.
+
+     It might be objected that one can hardly expect a
+     number of even neutral experts to come to a
+     concerted opinion on these points. But it would be
+     of little consequence if the experts, instead of
+     agreeing on a common report, would publish
+     majority and minority reports. What matters is
+     that opinions of qualified experts are at all
+     drawn up and published, so that discussion is as
+     much as possible free from the effects of the
+     biased speeches of interested statesmen and other
+     politicians and their press. The report or reports
+     would also be of use when an armistice at least
+     had been agreed upon and a conference for the
+     conclusion of a peace is sitting. And even if the
+     work of the invited experts should take more time
+     than the conclusion of the peace itself, the
+     reports might still be of considerable value. For
+     what matters is not only that a peace is come to
+     but also that the nations should afterward possess
+     authoritative impartial opinions on the main
+     questions of consequence connected with the origin
+     and the conduct of the war. For such opinions
+     would educate the poisoned minds to an objective
+     and argumentative discussion of the means to
+     prevent a repetition of the present disaster.
+
+     Only those who live in the affected countries can
+     be aware how great the need is for providing the
+     general public with unbiased authoritative
+     expositions of these questions.
+
+     Finally the conference could and should also
+     discuss in a pertinent way the question of
+     _disarmament_. This question has to-day reached a
+     stage much beyond that of mere desirability. It is
+     now a question of commanding necessity, one can
+     justly say of life and death of the reached stage
+     of civilisation. Not pious wishes or theoretical
+     expositions will in regard to it now suffice. We
+     must have practical proposals, proposals of a
+     scheme to put disarmament into practice and
+     proposals of the means to induce the different
+     states to accept the scheme and to carry it out.
+
+     It is a big and pretentious programme here
+     suggested, the first to be decided by breaks with
+     the old principle of non-interference in state
+     affairs. But the times are so exceptional that
+     extraordinary measures cannot be shunned. If one
+     sees two lads fight each other with their fists or
+     even sticks one may well say, "Let them first
+     fight it out and then we shall see to bring them
+     to reason." But if they stand on board a ship and,
+     mad with rage, and, without interruption and
+     unremittingly, throw incendiary matter at each
+     other you would rather stop them before the ship
+     is in flames. Under other conditions it might be
+     the right thing to convoke a conference to be held
+     after the war is over. As it is now, reason would
+     demand not to adjourn the term to that juncture.
+     This is not the place to adjudicate
+     responsibilities. Suffice it to say that the
+     present aspect of the conflict is the worst since
+     its beginnings and threatens aggravations of its
+     horrors.
+
+     Of all the neutrals none is more predestined to
+     take the initiative in this grave matter than the
+     United States of America, by their great power, by
+     their geographical position, by the ethnological
+     composition of their citizens and last, but not
+     least, by their historical traditions they before
+     all are called to act. The small European nations
+     are already, as it were, too much under the fire
+     around them to be so free in their action as is
+     the government of the giant republic on the
+     western hemisphere. But that they would with the
+     greatest readiness join in the convocation of a
+     conference for the settlement of at least the two
+     first of the described subjects is sure beyond any
+     doubt.
+
+     The leader in the arrangement of this conference
+     is, in my opinion, the least objectionable, and at
+     the same time it is the most promising help that
+     in the present appallingly entangled situation
+     America can give Europe. The Old World is
+     poisoned. The virus of the most irrational hatred
+     of its component sections against each other,
+     inoculated into them by all sorts of false
+     leaders of opinion, eats deeper and deeper and
+     threatens to mortify all the roots of a wholesome
+     life. May the United States of America help a
+     disunited Europe to find the way out of the deadly
+     miasmatic jungle into which it has lost itself.
+
+
+     THE HELPLESSNESS OF EUROPE
+
+     BY ---- ----, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG
+
+     Europe is in the position of a wanderer who has
+     gone astray into a swamp. In vain he labours to
+     regain firm ground. The more frantically he
+     struggles the surer he is to become submerged.
+     Like an infant child he is unable to help himself.
+     Help must come from people outside the swamp.
+
+     We are now in the third year of the biggest, the
+     most fratricidal and the most hopeless war the
+     world has ever seen. It is hopeless in so far as
+     on the one side none of the two coalitions is
+     likely to be in a visible time as much the victor
+     over the other that it can dictate it its own
+     terms, and as on the other side there is no common
+     basis to be seen for a sensible compromise. It is
+     not the extravagance of demands that forms an
+     insuperable barrier for peace. Extravagant terms
+     of peace have indeed been formulated by
+     unauthorised persons or groups but they have
+     nowhere received the sanctioning stamp of the
+     responsible governments. The latter prefer rather
+     to shine by the moderation of their demands, at
+     least as far as territory is concerned. But it is
+     just this apparent moderation that makes peace
+     such an almost insoluble problem.
+
+     Far behind this moderation in regard to
+     territorial demands looms the desire to destroy
+     the opponents' chances of political predominance.
+     The war is, for the present at least, in the
+     first instance a struggle about the supremacy in
+     Europe. And this perhaps more in a negative sense
+     than otherwise. Jingoes are, of course, everywhere
+     in high and low quarters, but it is very doubtful
+     whether one of the responsible heads of the
+     belligerent nations pursues for himself or his
+     nation seriously and consistently what might be
+     called the mastery of Europe. All are, however,
+     dead against the idea that this mastery might pass
+     into the other camp. Comparatively easy as it is
+     to settle a dispute on questions of territory by
+     arbitration or to work out schemes for compromise
+     in regard to such, so difficult or almost
+     impossible it would be to arbitrate on a question
+     of actual supremacy or to settle it by compromise.
+
+     Particularly in the camp of the Allies is the
+     possibility lest Germany might emerge out of the
+     war the actual arbiter of Europe conceived as an
+     unbearable thought. None of the allied Powers,
+     neither England nor France and not even Russia,
+     Italy being in this respect quite out of question,
+     has during the last decades shown a disposition or
+     a pretence to play up to such a part.
+
+     But Germany is suspected of nourishing ideas of
+     this kind, and utterances of some of their
+     prominent men, _occasional sayings of the Kaiser
+     included_, tend to give substance to this
+     suspicion. In vain Germans object that their
+     country has all the 44 years since 1870 kept the
+     peace in Europe. We have done the same, would the
+     others reply, and we have not, as Germany has
+     done, again and again threatened war when things
+     did not run according to her wishes or humours.
+     _Germany has in fact abstained from actual peace
+     breaking. But she was regarded and has not a
+     little done to acquire the fame, as the latent or
+     virtual disturbing element in European politics._
+
+     This view in regard to political Germany has
+     greatly been enhanced through many of her actions
+     during the present war. It is natural enough,
+     though not particularly edifying, that in a war
+     each party ascribes all the guilt thereof to the
+     opponents and poses as the innocent who
+     maliciously was surprised when not dreaming of any
+     harm. But the cantankerous way in which almost the
+     whole political and intellectual Germany has
+     handled this question and has treated it as a
+     crime not to take in every respect the German view
+     of the case and of all the details of warfare has
+     strengthened the feeling that this nation has come
+     to regard itself as a sort of high judge of
+     Europe. People were reminded of that
+     ill-considered harangue to German soldiers at the
+     time of the China expedition when they were
+     entreated to act towards the Chinese like the Huns
+     under Attila. _This and the eagerness to crush by
+     overwhelming power every small nation that
+     ventures to take sides with the Allies as well as
+     the proclaiming of rights for submarines and
+     Zeppelins upon her own authority--these and
+     similar measures have only been too suited to
+     nourish the conception that Germany places herself
+     in the role of the scourge of God._
+
+     How this feeling reacts upon political thought is
+     illustrated by a conversation a German socialist
+     has had in the summer of 1915 on neutral ground
+     with a French socialist politician of no jingoish
+     leanings at all on the possibilities of peace.
+     Even if Germany declared herself ready to
+     relinquish Belgium and to return to France every
+     inch of ground occupied, his countrymen would not
+     accept peace from her, explained the Frenchman.
+     And on the question, "Why not?" he replied
+     passionately: "Because it would be the German
+     peace; because it would yet leave Germany the all
+     powerful of Europe; because it would make us
+     depend upon the whims and tempers of that
+     conceited military nation."
+
+     "But are you going to bleed yourself to death?"
+     was the next question, and the reply, uttered in a
+     voice where sadness mingled with determination,
+     was:
+
+     "Yes, rather be ruined!"
+
+     This is a specimen of the feeling created by the
+     present war, and I am afraid the sentiment has not
+     abated a whit yet. Germans have done a good deal
+     in attempts to detach the French from the English.
+     They have told them that they are only the poor
+     seduced tools of the base and egotistic
+     Britishers, that Germans did not bear them any
+     malice, that they rather pitied them and would
+     fain be ready to come to terms with them. But
+     declarations of this sort proved only how little
+     the French mentality was understood this side of
+     the Vosges. The French nation is too much
+     impressed by the memory of her great past and the
+     part played by her in European politics to stand
+     being pitied and patted like children of tender
+     age. It will be respected as an equal who acts
+     with the full knowledge of the state of things and
+     is too much given to political reflection to
+     accept willingly any view of the war that visibly
+     is coloured by the interest of Germany in the
+     dissension between the two great Powers of Western
+     Europe. The anti-German feeling runs still very
+     high in France; her leading papers excel without
+     any exception in extremely harsh language against
+     everything German, and the great mass of those who
+     in former years had propagated the idea of a
+     Franco-German understanding are now dead against
+     it.
+
+     A similar feeling has step by step got hold of the
+     British nation. From not being very popular at its
+     beginning in England, the war has come to be
+     regarded as a greater national concern than any of
+     its predecessors. The frantic if not hysterical
+     outbursts of hatred against England in Germany
+     when the former decided to stand by France in the
+     war were at first not taken too seriously. But by
+     and by the unceasing utterances of spite have,
+     together with the known acts of German aerial and
+     submarine warfare, deeply reacted on the British
+     mind. The feeling is now general that England has
+     never before had an enemy so full of hatred
+     against her, so ardently desirous of causing her
+     irreparable harm as she now has in present day
+     Germany.
+
+     Even such socialist papers as the _New Statesman_,
+     which before the war had no anti-German bias at
+     all, have arrived at the same conclusion
+     concerning what may be called a German peace as
+     the French socialist politician whose opinions
+     were given above characterised it. In an article
+     called "The Case for the Allies," and especially
+     addressed to Americans, the _New Statesman_
+     explains in its number of December 30th that peace
+     with an unbeaten Germany would mean "Mittel Europa
+     from the Baltic to the Black Sea," that nothing
+     would prevent its expansion through the Balkans to
+     El Arish and Bagdad, that throughout this vast
+     area the authority, if not the suzerainty, of
+     Berlin would be acknowledged and that the small
+     European States north and northwest of Germany
+     would without any resistance--by the mere force of
+     things--come to be subjected to the dictate of
+     Germany. In the words of the _New Statesman_, as
+     the result of an inconclusive peace, "militarism
+     would be more firmly established than ever by the
+     record of its marvellous success and by the
+     manifest need for a military organisation
+     proportionate to so vast an expansion."
+
+     Is this feeling justified? Does it appreciate
+     facts at their exact value? _There is undoubtedly
+     an influential section in Germany which entertains
+     feelings of this kind._ It has its adherents
+     particularly in naval circles and amongst the
+     intellectuals of the nation and in a considerable
+     degree also in the financial world. These sections
+     hate in England partly the happy possessor of what
+     in their opinion ought by right to belong to the
+     German race and partly the power without which
+     German expansion would meet with no resistance
+     worth speaking of by European nations. _This
+     section of anti-English on principle or by deeply
+     rooted hatred, influential as it is, is, however,
+     not the whole nation._ It has only now the hold of
+     her mind because it has succeeded in instilling
+     into her the belief that England is the secret
+     manufacturer of the present war, that she is the
+     selfish fermenter of hatred in Europe, the
+     scheming brewer of strife on the Continent.
+     England has become to the average German mind a
+     real nightmare, a sort of a Frankenstein or any
+     such spookish monster, and as she now, by the
+     vicissitudes of the war, has indeed become the
+     most dangerous of Germany's opponents it is not
+     possible to educate people from the inside to a
+     more rational view of her part in this war and in
+     European politics altogether.
+
+     There you have the greatest hindrances to peace in
+     Europe. I did not mention Russia. But the war
+     between Germany, inclusive of Austria-Hungary, and
+     Russia is of quite a different nature. It is more
+     of a war of the older order. It has, of course,
+     also evoked a good deal of hatred. But on the
+     whole it is as wars go, more of an objective
+     nature. There are material differences on which it
+     would not be impossible to compromise. But there
+     is no such deeply-seated irrational opposition,
+     which now sets Germans and English and French and
+     Germans against each other. The war between the
+     Central Powers and Russia is, comparatively
+     speaking, an accident in the political history of
+     Europe. _The war between England, France and
+     Germany is a catastrophe in European civilisation.
+     As a war it is most irrational, and just because
+     of its absurdity it is so utterly difficult to
+     find a solution for it, and there is little hope
+     that unless some outside force intervenes, it may
+     end otherwise than by absolute general
+     exhaustion._
+
+     Things would be otherwise if there were reasonable
+     hopes of a concerted action on the part of the
+     international union of the socialist parties. But
+     such hopes, if they ever could be entertained,
+     have by now become a thing of the past. In the
+     three countries named the majority of the leaders
+     of organised labour have taken sides in the war
+     alongside of their governments and have by this
+     more or less given up independency and lost the
+     confidence of their former comrades in the
+     opposite camp. Distrust, which in general has so
+     much contributed to bring about this war, prevails
+     also in the ranks of the socialists in regard to
+     the leaders of the movement on the other side of
+     the frontier. Minorities everywhere work for a
+     greater independency as a step to a better
+     international understanding. But they have as yet
+     nowhere succeeded in winning the majority of the
+     movement over to their views and policy, and even
+     if they did, all sorts of hindrances would by the
+     governments be put in the way of these Socialists
+     to assemble internationally in sufficient number
+     for work of this nature.
+
+     Nor is it to be expected that revolts of the
+     discontented masses will be vast enough to force
+     the governments into peace negotiations against
+     their will. The possibilities of centralised
+     governments against revolutionary upheavals as
+     long as these remain locally isolated, which in
+     the face of the enormous extent of the section of
+     the globe directly drawn into the war is most
+     probable, are too great to let these movements
+     have a great chance of changing the policy of the
+     rulers. This would only happen when at least some
+     of these classes or parties which at present
+     support the war come round to their opinion, of
+     which very few signs are at present to be seen.
+     The work of small minorities everywhere, the war
+     has got hold of the minds of the millions in all
+     countries and has filled nations against nations
+     with such distrust and spite as in the history of
+     civilised mankind never before have been
+     witnessed.
+
+     How little we are justified to expect peace from
+     the action of these socialists who stand by
+     governments in the war is, as far as my own
+     country is concerned, shown by the fact that the
+     big meetings now (and, I am willing to admit, it
+     is the intention of the initiators to hold them in
+     favour of peace) led by the leaders of the
+     majority of the social-democratic party, such as
+     Messrs. Scheidemann, David, Ebert and others, turn
+     out in practice as meetings in support of the
+     policy of the government in regard to the question
+     of war and peace. In order to defend their own
+     political attitude the speakers are compelled to
+     shift the responsibility for the war and its
+     continuation wholly on the shoulders of the
+     governments of the opposite countries and their
+     supporters, and by this they increase in the mind
+     of their hearers the conviction that nothing short
+     of a defeat of these countries will bring the war
+     to a desirable end. In England the majority of the
+     Labour Party and a considerable number of the best
+     known socialist leaders and in France the most
+     influential leaders of socialist party support
+     also the war policy of their respective
+     governments in all principal issues. The well
+     meant and praiseworthy attempts to convene a full
+     International Socialist Congress for the purpose
+     of settling these differences by finding a common
+     line of action are, I am sorry to say, under the
+     circumstances most likely to prove abortive. _They
+     will founder on the self-contradiction that the
+     Socialists of the Entente countries argue that
+     their governments hate the idea of German
+     militarism coming out unbeaten and unreduced out
+     of this war which in their opinion was provoked by
+     it, whilst the leaders of the German Socialists in
+     power would rather see this same militarism which
+     they in former years have so violently attacked
+     and denounced, come out victorious than have it
+     interfered with by outside influence._
+
+     In short, sections of the socialist movement will
+     assist other forces in the action for peace, but
+     the movement as a whole is incapable to act in the
+     matter as a force of compelling strength.
+
+     Help must in the main come from outside.
+     Consequently President Wilson's action in his note
+     to the belligerents of December 20th would have
+     been the right thing, even if it had offended in
+     some way against the rules of diplomatic
+     procedure. Under so exceptional circumstances as
+     these occasioned by the present war extraordinary
+     steps are certainly justified and breaches of
+     etiquette of little significance. But the note was
+     faultless in this respect, and it can moreover be
+     said that in no way did it endanger legitimate
+     interests of the one or the other section of the
+     belligerents. It offends only in spirit against
+     Cain's word, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and in
+     distinct words against the conception that war is
+     a private affair of states may it ever so much
+     interfere with the material and moral welfare of
+     other nations.
+
+     The step has not at once succeeded. But it has
+     opened the way; nay, it has forced the door open
+     for discussion in a fashion that nobody will be
+     strong enough to shut it again. True, the Central
+     Powers have by their offer of peace negotiations
+     forestalled the note by a week. But this offer
+     would have come to naught without Mr. Wilson's
+     action. Harsh as the reply of the Allies is to the
+     offer, it would most likely have been put in much
+     more negating terms had not the American note
+     caused the Entente Allies to avoid a blunt "No"
+     and content themselves with raising objections and
+     interjecting accusations. By this they have
+     willy-nilly provoked a debate and instead of
+     shutting the door kept it well open.
+
+     People may call this a small success. In fact it
+     is a beginning, and for the first as such
+     sufficient. The question is now what shall the
+     next step be and how can the debate be directed to
+     positive proposals?
+
+Of course, as these articles were given by this Socialist-Author
+for publication any one is at liberty to reproduce them.
+
+In conducting the peace negotiations, President Wilson will have
+the benefit of the services of Colonel House, the one man who, I
+believe, is best fitted to protect the interests of America and
+of humanity at such a conference. I, of course, saw Colonel House
+during the war in Berlin and in America and I consider that no
+man alive is his superior in either knowledge of the whole
+situation or in ability to cope with the trained diplomats of
+Europe. Human nature is much the same and the gentle mannered
+Texan who has been so successful in American politics will not
+fail when representing us at the table of Peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+AFTER THE WAR, WHAT?
+
+
+No one but a fortune teller or professional seer dares to predict
+the condition of the world after this war. Only mere suggestions
+can be thrown out, shadows of prophecy as to what may come.
+
+Will the tide of emigration turn from Europe and the United
+States to other countries or will people of German birth and
+descent leave America to return to the Fatherland after the war?
+
+I made it my business after I had learned German to talk to many
+of the plain people in Berlin and elsewhere, to get their views.
+I found that the common soldiers, especially those representing
+the class of skilled workingmen in the industrial centres were
+almost unanimous in saying that after the war and at the first
+opportunity they intended to leave Germany, to turn from a
+country capable of perpetrating this calamity on the world, a
+country where they have been subject not alone to military
+service but to a cruel and oppressive caste system of discipline.
+I believe that Germany will enact laws against emigration and
+that there will be zones of espionage on all German frontiers
+designed to watch and keep back such Germans as may seek to
+escape to other countries.
+
+In Austria even more stringent laws will be necessary to keep the
+unmarried males from leaving.
+
+I know that experts of the United States Government believe at
+least three millions of Slovaks, Greeks, etc., will leave America
+after the war, taking with them the money they have earned, for
+investment in new opportunities in the Old Country.
+
+With this view I cannot agree. The soil of the European continent
+is too poor, wages too small, hours too long, and distaste for
+the military and caste systems too great, to tempt those who have
+tasted the equality and the freedom of America. Why to-day an
+ordinary coal miner in Pennsylvania can earn $5,000 a year--a sum
+greater than the pay of a Prussian or Austrian general! Why
+should this miner go back to insult and slavery?
+
+The greatest problem of Germany comes after the war--when these
+millions of men, trained for four years or more to murder, shall
+return. It will be hard for them to settle down to regular work,
+impossible for them to submit again to the iron discipline of
+German civil life. Will they not, as Bloch predicts, possibly,
+re-enact the horrors of the French Commune, or even those of the
+French Revolution?
+
+It is hard to understand why Prussian autocracy does not freely
+offer what it will be compelled to give after the war--equal
+suffrage in Prussia, fair representation in the Reichstag--a
+government responsible to the Reichstag. Is it not better for the
+Emperor to offer this--following Bismarck's saying that "in
+Prussia the revolutions are made by the rulers."
+
+And who of all rulers in history seemed to sit more securely on
+his throne than Nicholas who is now learning from his keepers
+what a Czar really is?
+
+The Emperor said to me once, "Is it not wonderful how the German
+people bear their sufferings in this war?" I said I thought it
+was wonderful. It is that and more,--it is almost a miracle--that
+a whole nation can so nearly approach this delirium.
+
+The autocratic idea survives in Germany--on November 22, 1917,
+the Conservative Union of the Province of Brandenburg unanimously
+adopted the following resolution.
+
+"The Prussian State, fundamentally a people of its Princes, is
+the foundation on which the German Empire rests.
+
+"Not sovereignty of the people but Kingship by Divine Right is
+its corner stone.
+
+"We implore our deputies to do their best to prevent the Kingship
+being debased into a sham Kingship and being replaced by that
+sovereignty of the people by means of the alteration of the
+Prussian franchise."
+
+After reading this can any one wonder that the Kaiser believes he
+is called by God to rule the Germans?
+
+"Kingship by Divine Right"--is quite a development of a Kingship
+that originated in foreclosure proceedings, when Prussia was
+taken for a debt by the crafty, rich Hohenzollern Burgraf of
+Nuremberg.
+
+Is it any wonder that the Kaiser once said to me during the war,
+"Everything seems to be going my way--don't you think God is
+helping me?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The efforts of those in charge of the German propaganda to sow
+dissensions among the Allies are more than awkward.
+
+For some time after the landing in force of the British troops in
+France, the newspapers of Germany were filled with cartoons
+representing the British refusing to leave Calais; and now that
+America has entered the war even so intelligent a philosopher as
+Chancellor Hertling speaks as follows:
+
+     "If those who hold power in France forcibly
+     repress every suggestion of peace, and try to
+     rouse fresh will for war by a show of assurance of
+     victory, in spite of the frightful sacrifices the
+     war has cost the country, and must cost still
+     further, it is because they are sustained by the
+     hope of help from America. In this hope they
+     patiently tolerate the Americans also making
+     themselves at home in France, turning Bordeaux
+     into a great American harbour with immense loading
+     and unloading wharves, and cutting down the
+     forests of the Gironde in order to build a camp in
+     the neighbourhood of Bordeaux for the expected
+     army. French workmen tolerate in their factories
+     the competition of American workmen, with whom
+     they are not in sympathy, and the owners allow
+     them to look into the secrets of their business,
+     all so that the new Ally may help to take the
+     revenge on the hated Germans."
+
+Misguided old Philosopher!
+
+The most stupid peasant of the Bordeaux country does not believe
+that the Americans have come to France in order to occupy
+permanently a section of that sandy, barren scrub pine desert
+which stretches to the south of Bordeaux.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And President Wilson and his cabinet, Lloyd George and the
+statesmen of France and Italy, Portugal and Russia must be on
+their guard--Wolff's agency is at work, spreading poisonous
+propaganda. Here is an excerpt that speaks for itself:
+
+"The Imperial and Royal Propaganda Department, Section of Foreign
+Affairs, calls the editor's attention to the practice of the
+enemy press in caricaturing the Kaiser, the Crown Prince,
+Hindenburg and alleged German militarism, with the evident
+intention of an odius anti-German propaganda. It would,
+therefore, be important from the patriotic point of view for the
+daily newspapers also to occupy themselves by means of caricatures
+with the principal events of the day.
+
+"The idea of such propaganda has been conceived by the supreme
+military command. And it is therefore desirable that all should
+conform to it. The official cinema has been ordered by the
+supreme command to enter into direct communication with the daily
+press, and many leading newspapers have hastened to express
+their readiness to insert these patriotic caricatures, for the
+drawing of which the service of the best artists in Munich and
+Berlin have been secured. These caricatures will regard chiefly
+the heads of state of the Entente powers, their political leaders
+and those who make no mystery of their hatred for Germany. The
+blocks will be supplied free of expense."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+German employers will never be able to grind down their workmen
+as before the war. The men who have fought in the trenches will
+return with a new feeling of independence, a new spirit of revolt
+against the caste prejudices, a disinclination to do the same
+work in the same hours and for the same wages.
+
+My tailor in Berlin told me that several of his men who had
+returned after being discharged from the army because of some
+physical disability or wounds took an entirely different attitude
+and that one of them, for example, had said to him: "Do not think
+that I have come back to work as before. I have the Iron Cross, I
+have helped to save Germany. I am a hero and I do not propose
+again to be your industrial slave."
+
+That is the new spirit which after the war will animate the
+deceived, hitherto down-trodden lower classes of Germany.
+
+In our own country, the balance of political power may be held by
+the soldiers who are enlisted in the war and who, like the G. A. R.'s
+after our Civil War, may doubtless organise not only for protection
+but for political purposes. And this great restless body of returned
+troops, veterans of wars beyond the seas, may change our whole
+foreign policy in ways of which we do not dream. We shall be a
+more warlike nation, less patient to bear insult, more ready for
+war, unless this war ends all wars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The war after the war, in trade and commerce, may be long and
+bitter. The rivers of Germany are lined with ships of seven or
+eight thousand tons, many of them built or completed since the
+war, and Germany designs as her first play in this commercial war
+to seize the carrying trade of the world. The German exporter has
+lost his trade for years. Alliances have already been made in
+great industries, such as the dyestuff industry, in preparation
+for a sudden and sustained attack upon that new industry in
+America. Prices will be cut to far below the cost of production
+in order that the new industry of America fighting single handed
+against the single head German trust may be driven from the
+field. The German Government will take a practical hand in this
+contest and only the combination of American manufacturers and
+the erection of a tariff wall of defence can prevent the
+Americans, if each fights single handed and for his own end, from
+falling before the united, efficient and bitter assault of German
+trade rivals.
+
+The war has brought new power and new responsibility to women.
+Armed with the franchise they will demand not only equal rights
+but equal pay. In Great Britain alone, before the war, there
+were less than five hundred thousand women workers where now
+over five million carry the burden even of the war industries of
+the country.
+
+Unless the war ends with a victory so decisive for the Allies
+that an era of universal peace shall dawn for the world, each
+nation will constitute itself an armed camp fearing always that
+the German, with his lust for war and conquest, will again
+terrorise the world by a sudden assault.
+
+And a necessary sequence of this preparation for war will be the
+desire of each nation to be self-sufficient--to produce within
+itself those materials indispensable for the waging of war.
+Capital will be wasted because each nation will store up
+quantities of these materials necessary to war which it is
+compelled to import from other countries.
+
+For instance, Germany will always carry great stocks of grain and
+of fats, of copper and cotton and wool, all of the materials for
+the lack of which she suffered during the present war.
+
+In my first book, I touched on the change in the industrial
+system that will be brought about by the socialised buying and
+selling introduced first by Germany and which must be copied by
+the other nations if they desire to compete on equal terms with
+that country. In Germany for several years after the war at
+least, and perhaps as a permanent regulation, the purchase of all
+luxuries outside of Germany will be forbidden because of the
+desire to keep German gold and credits at home.
+
+Germans have even stated to me that they do not fear in a trade
+way any prejudice created against them in other countries by
+their actions during this war. They say that a man always will
+buy where he can buy the cheapest, and that however much a
+merchant may hate the Germans after the war, if he can buy the
+goods he wants for his use from Germany at a cheaper rate than
+anywhere else, he will forget his prejudices in the interest of
+his pocketbook.
+
+This is a question which each reader will have to solve for
+himself. Personally, I believe that in England, in France, and in
+America, too, if the war should last a long time, the prejudice
+against German trickery and brutality in war will become so great
+that many a merchant will prefer to lose a little money than deal
+with German sellers. However, the appeal of the pocketbook is
+always so earnest and so insistent that the Germans may be right
+in the view that financial considerations will weigh down the
+balance as against the prejudice engendered in this struggle. And
+if there comes a change of government in Germany, if the
+Hohenzollerns no longer control, or if in a liberalised Germany
+the ministers are responsible to a popular parliament, while
+kings sink to the political position of the kings of Great
+Britain or of Spain, then the commercial prejudice certainly will
+not last long. The boycott of Germany for fifty years suggested
+by the American Chamber of Commerce is a most powerful weapon.
+
+And why, if wars are to continue after this one, should we
+contribute to German trade profits and consequently to German
+preparations for another war? The nations of the Allies must
+reckon, too, with the bitter, bitter hate felt for them by the
+whole German people--and only one who has been in Germany since
+the war can realise its intensity.
+
+One great factor in forcing a change of government will be the
+desire of the individual German after the war to say that the
+government of his country existing then is not the government
+that ordered the shooting of Edith Cavell, the enslavement of the
+women and girls of northern France, the deportation of the
+Belgian workingmen, the horrors of the prison camps, the burning
+of Louvain and all the other countless barbarities and cruelties
+ordered by the German military commanders.
+
+Imagine after this war in some distant island, perhaps, a
+Frenchman, an Englishman, an American, a Portuguese, an Italian
+all seated at the dining table of a little hotel. A German comes
+in and seeks to join them. Will he be treated on an equality?
+Will he be taken into their society? Or will he be treated as a
+leper and a pariah?
+
+The Germans will wish to be in a position to say: "Why,
+gentlemen, I was against all these cruelties. I was against the
+sinking of the _Lusitania_, and the murder of its women and
+children. I was against the starving of Poland and the slaughter
+of the Armenians and the crucifixion of prisoners, and we Germans
+have thrown out the government that was responsible for these
+horrors."
+
+Stronger than any other consideration will be the desire of the
+German to repudiate these acts which have made the Germany of
+to-day a Cain among the nations,--an outcast branded with the
+mark of shame.
+
+The Russian author Bloch whom I have quoted, says, referring to
+the future war:
+
+     "Behind all conflicts of interest between nations
+     statesmen must balance the chances of success of
+     their nation, promised by the recourse to arms,
+     against the terrible miseries of the victims
+     caused by war as well as the social peril which
+     can be the consequence of war.
+
+     "They who ask themselves when it will be possible
+     to propose to the people of any nation after the
+     war a compensation for its enormous sacrifices,
+     forget that the conquered will be so exhausted
+     that there will be no question of being able to
+     draw from a conquered nation the least pecuniary
+     indemnity. All that can be imposed on the
+     conquered will be the abandonment of some rags of
+     frontier territory.
+
+     "In these conditions, up to what point can calm be
+     counted on to reign among the millions of men
+     called to the colours, when in their ranks there
+     is not more than a handful of old officers and
+     when the command will be in the hands of those
+     newly promoted from among the non-commissioned
+     officers? That is to say, men belonging to the
+     working classes. Will these workingmen surrender
+     their arms in the states of Central Europe where
+     the propaganda has spread already among the
+     masses?
+
+     "Will they allow themselves to be disarmed after
+     the war and could there not come events more
+     horrible than those which signalised the rapid
+     triumph of the Commune of Paris?"
+
+Just as to-day it is not isolated armies but whole peoples in
+arms that are opposed, so in the war of commerce after the war
+not single producers and exporters, corporations or individuals,
+but whole nations will meet in the markets of the world.
+
+Germany has favoured trusts--controlling prices and unfair
+competition--and we shall encounter in buying and in selling the
+whole German nation ranked behind their Central Buying Company in
+buying and their Kartels in selling.
+
+Isolated firms and individuals cannot on our side cope with such
+an offensive--but we are hampered in effectiveness by the
+so-called Sherman law--a law from which England is free.
+
+The war will produce great and sudden alterations and President
+Wilson in meeting new problems has pursued a progressive course;
+witness his support of the Webb law, which enables our manufacturers
+to combine in export trade.
+
+Every sign points to a new era in business--an era in which the
+Government will permit--even encourage--enlightened business
+combinations.
+
+The railroads of the country in the efficient hands of McAdoo
+have already bettered service, and the rights of the Savings
+Banks and of other holders of the securities of each road have
+been secured.
+
+We must, on the one hand, permit the abolition of ruinous
+competition and on the other safeguard the public from high
+prices, and the smaller firms and corporations from the unfair
+competition of a powerful rival.
+
+Great changes are coming in the social structure of the world. We
+are on the threshold of a great readjustment. Whatever else our
+entrance into the war may accomplish, let us hope that it will
+have made of us a nation with the throb of a single patriotism
+and the steady pulse of an energetic efficiency that shall not
+merely seek in honest rivalry to compete with other nations but
+in an enlightened and helpful way shall strive truly to heal a
+wounded civilisation in the God-given days of peace.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: EXACT SIZE REPRODUCTION OF A PAGE OF THE FAMOUS
+"DIE ZUKUNFT" PUBLISHED BY MAXIMILIAN HARDEN, THE ONE UNCENSORED
+EDITOR OF GERMANY]
+
+[Illustration: COVER OF PROGRAM OF SERVICE IN PROTESTANT
+CATHEDRAL, BERLIN, IN CELEBRATION OF THE FIVE-HUNDREDTH
+ANNIVERSARY OF THE LORDSHIP OF HOHENZOLLERNS IN
+BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA]
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM***
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