Chapter I (3)

A year preceding men were arrested for failing to stand by the President, as treason to the institutions of the country; now the tide had turned, the rallying cry had lost its force. The country was witnessing the spectacle of its President stepping down from his pedestal to play the game of European politics in the secrecy of a closet, not with his equals, but with mere envoys of sovereign powers, guided by radically different interests from our own.

Thence on the President was at open war with the Senate, which had been kept in ignorance of the peace negotiations and discovered that a draft of the League of Nations covenant, including the treaty with Germany, had been in the hands of the Morgan banking group while the high treaty-making body of our government had been ignored in its demand for information.

A few courageous Senators, notably Reed of Missouri, Democrat, and Borah of Idaho and Johnson of California, Republicans, began to analyze the treaty, and showed that while Great Britain was accorded six votes the United States would have but one vote in the League, and that China had been ravaged by the ceding to Japan of the Shantung Peninsula as the price of her adherence to the League of Nations. Senator Knox directed attention to the ravagement of the German people by the terms of the treaty, and, though a conservative, evidenced the vision of a statesman and patriotic American.

The outlook for the treaty began to darken from day to day. The administration was still confident, and statements from the White House declared the treaty to redeem all of the Fourteen Points of the President’s peace program. But the constant assaults upon it by Senators Reed, Borah and Johnson in speeches in various parts of the country eventually aroused the administration to its danger.

A conference with the President was brought about at the White House in the summer of 1919, at which the Chief Executive expressed himself ready to answer all questions, and a committee from the Senate waited upon him to submit a series of inquiries. It was in the course of this interview that the following colloquy occurred:

=Senator McCumber: “Would our moral conviction of the unrighteousness of the German war have brought us into this war if Germany had not committed any acts against us without the League of Nations, as we had no League of Nations at that time?”=

=The President: “I hope it would eventually, Senator, as things developed.”=

=Senator McCumber: “Do you think if Germany had committed no act of war or no act of injustice against our citizens that we would have got into the war?”=

=The President: “I do think so.”=

=Senator McCumber: “You think we would have gotten in anyway?”=

=The President: “I do.”=

The Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Representative Mann, in 1916 had declared “Wilson is determined to plunge us into war with Germany.” Three years later the admission that we would have been in the war even “if Germany had committed no act of war or no act of injustice against our citizens” came from the White House, and Senators stood appalled at the revelation.

The President’s frank admission that the administration would have drifted into war regardless of what Germany had done or might do, is strangely in accord with statements contained in the great historic work on the World War by the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hanotaux, who writes:

=Just before the Battle of the Marne, when the spirits
of many of the leading politicians in France were so
depressed that they were urging an immediate peace with
Germany, three American ambassadors presented themselves
to the government--the then functioning ambassador, his
predecessor and his successor--and implored the government
not to give up, promising that America would join in the
war.=

“=At present there are but 50,000 influential persons in
America who want it to enter the war, but in a short time
there will be a hundred million.=”

The description makes it easy to identify the three diplomats who gave France this assurance; they were Robert Bacon, Roosevelt’s ambassador; Myron T. Herrick, Taft’s ambassador, and William G. Sharp, Wilson’s ambassador to Paris. This promise was given in September, 1914. There had then been no alleged outrages against American rights. The U-boat war had not been started. The Lusitania was not sunk until May, 1915. Obviously, then, the sinking of the Lusitania, the U-boat raids, and other alleged offenses, were mere pretexts of these “50,000 influential persons” in a propaganda to precipitate their hundred million fellow-citizens into the bloody European complication.

No compromise now seemed possible. The Senate was determined to take charge of the treaty, and the President prepared to appeal to the country by a series of speeches which carried him through the West as far as the Pacific Coast. During the trip he denounced the opposition Senators with strong invective, culminating in violent outbreaks of temper. But apparently his spell over the public mind, the seduction of his phrases, had been broken. Suddenly came the news of his physical breakdown, followed by his immediate return to Washington under the care of physicians, and a long period of confinement with the attendance of various specialists. Still he continued to direct the fight in the Senate for the ratification of the League of Nations and the treaty with Germany without the crossing of a “t” or the dotting of an “i.”

On November 19, 1919, the question came to a vote on a resolution of Senator Underwood, resulting in the defeat of the administration measure by a vote of 38 for and 53 against it. The only Republican voting with the administration was McCumber of North Dakota, seven Democrats voting against ratification with the Republicans. They were Gore of Oklahoma, Reed of Missouri, Shields of Tennessee, Smith of Georgia, Thomas of Colorado, Trammell of Florida and Walsh of Massachusetts.

=English Opinion of Prussians in 1813-15.=--The British, as is well known, revise their opinions of other nations according to their own selfish interests. The ambition of England to crush Prussia is in strong contrast to England’s gratitude to Prussian military genius for saving Wellington from annihilation by Napoleon at Waterloo. The sinister years of 1806-13 speak an eloquent language. The Corsican conqueror thought he had crushed Prussia for all times. He had stripped Prussia of half her territory and trampled the rest under the hoofs of his cavalry. But Prussia was not dead, and from 1813 to 1815 Prussia was the wonder of the world. The London “Times” said: “Almost every victory that led to the fall of the conqueror was a Prussian victory. At Lutzen and Goerzen always the Prussians. At the Katzbach, always the Prussians; at Grossbeeren and Leipzig, always the Prussians; in the battles in France, always the Prussians, and finally at Waterloo, always the Prussians. The Prussian soldier has proved himself the best soldier of these campaigns.”

=Espionage Act, Vote on.=--By a vote of 48 to 26, the Senate, on May 4, 1918, adopted the conference report on the Espionage Act. It accepted all recommendations of the conference, even to the extent of rejecting the France amendment, designed to protect from prosecution newspapers and other publications whose criticism of the Government was shown to be not based on malice.

The actual count showed the result as follows:

AYE: Democrats--Ashurst, Bankhead, Beckham, Chamberlain, Culberson, Fletcher, Gerry, Guion, Henderson, Hitchcock, Hollis, Jones, of New Mexico; King, Kirby, Lewis, McKellar, Myers, Overman, Owens, Phelan, Pittman, Pomerene, Ransdell, Salisbury, Shafroth, Sheppard, Shields, Simmons, Smith, of Georgia; Smith, of Maryland; Smith, of South Carolina; Swanson, Thompson, Tillman, Trammell, Underwood, Walsh and Williams.

Republican--Colt, Fall, Jones, of Washington; Lenroot, McCumber, McLean, Nelson, Poindexter, Sterling and Warren. Total, 48.

NO: Democrats--Hardwick and Reed--2.

Republicans--Borah, Brandegee, Calder, Curtis, Dillingham, France, Gallinger, Gronna, Hale, Harding, Johnson, of California; Kenyon, Knox, Lodge, McNary, New, Norris, Page, Sherman, Smoot, Sutherland, Wadsworth, Watson and Weeks--24. Total, 26.

=Exports and Imports to and from the Belligerent Countries, 1914.=--The following figures are taken from the “Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1915.”

Exports to-- Imports from--

Austria-Hungary 1913 $ 23,320,696 $ 19,192,414
1915 1,238,669 9,794,418

France 1914 159,818,924 141,446,252
1915 369,397,170 77,158,740

=Germany 1914 344,794,276 189,919,136=
1915 28,863,354 91,372,710

Italy 1914 74,235,012 56,407,671
1915 184,819,688 54,973,726

Russia 1914 31,303,149 23,320,157
1915 60,827,531 3,394,040

United Kingdom 1914 594,271,863 293,661,304
1915 911,794,954 256,351,675

1913 415,449,457 120,571,180
Canada 1914 344,716,081 160,689,790
1915 300,686,812 159,571,712

The table shows that the normal trade with Germany was the largest next to that with the United Kingdom, and that Germany took more of our products than Canada. It shows that Germany was not only one of our best customers but that the balance of trade was largely in our favor, the excess of American exports to Germany over imports in 1914 amounting to $154,875,140, or nearly as much as our entire exports to France in 1914.

The following table shows how the British arbitrary rule of the seas cut down our trade with the Scandinavian countries, all but that of Norway, whose neutrality was largely in favor of England. The figures are for the nine months ending March.

1915 1916
Denmark, exports and imports $ 63,103,962 $44,046,752
Netherlands, exports and imports 101,892,382 72,469,008
Norway, exports and imports 32,401,556 37,259,135
Sweden, exports and imports 65,880,749 43,156,027

=Under the Espionage Act--A Chapter of Persecution.=--The sudden decision of our government to enter the European war, on April 6, 1917, found the German element wholly unprepared for the outburst of bitter hate which in the course of a few weeks threatened to overwhelm every standard of sense and justice. Though a minority element, it approximated closely the dominant Anglo-American element; it far outnumbered every other racial element, and it was not conscious of anything that justified its being relegated to a class apart from the American people as a whole.

The German element had fought for the independence of America in the Revolution to the full limit of its quota, which was considerable; it had outstripped every other element in furnishing troops for the Union army; it had stood loyally by the government in every other crisis of its history, and it was not aware that the Germans living 3,000 miles away under a government of their own had ever followed any policy save one of pronounced friendship for the United States.

Having no political adhesion among themselves, having never contemplated the possibility of being turned upon by their fellow citizens, fostering the spirit of conviviality, sociability, and cultivating song and art rather than politics, they had relied confidently on the impartiality of laws of the land to protect them in their rights as well as to exact the performance of their duties as American citizens.

Their forefathers had been foremost in the winning of the West; more than any others they formed the far-flung battle line that encountered the invasion of the red hordes in the French-Indian wars; more of their number had perished in Indian massacres, from Canajoharie to New Ulm, than of any other race; they could defiantly challenge any other element to show a greater influence in educational, cultural and general academic directions, and in the words of that truly great American woman, Miss Jane Addams, the German American element was entitled to be heard.

It is unfortunately an Anglo-American trait to be easily lashed into a fanatical mob spirit by prominent spokesmen, in singular disregard of its avowed democracy. The history of our country teems with examples of unbridled violence against any non-conforming spirit that ever developed. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote:

The influential classes, and those who take upon themselves
to be the leaders of the people, are fully liable to all
the passionate error that has ever characterized the
maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen, the wisest,
calmest, holiest persons of their day, stood in the inner
circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work
of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived.

It began with the hanging of witches; it was continued in the mobbing of Quakers; at one time we mobbed English actors, and in the Astor Place riots of New York, because we abhorred an English actor, Macready, eighteen persons were killed. There were the anti-Masonic riots, the anti-Catholic emeutes, the Know Nothing riots; later the anti-abolitionist riots in Boston and elsewhere; the Copperhead mobs, the Sandlot riots, and dozens of others, down to the burning of negroes by demonstrative communities charging themselves with the administration of savage justice.

It happened to be the turn of the Germans, forming 26 per cent. of the total population, and so intermixed that nothing can ever segregate the cross-currents of blood that courses through the veins of the American people.

In the Revolution Prussia had given refuge to American cruisers at Danzig, the port which, under the treaty we are helping to distrain from her German motherland, and had bribed Catherine the Great’s minister to prevent the sending of Russian troops to help England fight the American colonists; in the Civil War, besides giving their sons to the cause of the Union, the Germans had come to our rescue with their money when most needed. Was it astonishing that the so-called German element was stunned and staggered by the sudden reversion of sentiment from one of complete spiritual and national accord to one of vindictive malice by neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend?

It is perhaps true, as has been assumed, that certain influential members of the administration received an inordinate shock at the suggestion, from whatever source it came, that the German Americans would be likely to rise in revolution, and that a panic seized Washington at such a prospect, so that all measures were considered fair that would tend to put down the Germans and keep them in complete subjection by a system of terrorism. It is certain that no evidence has been disclosed by the endless investigations that have been going on which tended to establish the guilt of any member of the race as to plots against the government.

The Attorney General called for 200,000 volunteers to act as agents of the Department of Justice to report all disloyal talk or on the identity of persons suspected of being “pro-German.” To be known as having sympathized with the Central Powers, no matter what one’s action was after we entered the war, was to insure one’s footsteps and movements to be dogged by spies. No home was sacred, and the least indiscreet utterance was ground for a report, arrest and indictment under the so-called Espionage Act, which the New York “American” of February 24, 1917, described as “simply the infamous Alien and Sedition laws under another name,” passed in 1789, during the presidency of John Adams, which consigned the party that passed it to eternal oblivion.

Senator Cummings of Iowa said:

This measure is the most stringent and drastic law ever
proposed to curb a free people in time of peace or war.
The Government would have absolute power in war time to
suppress newspapers and prevent debate in Congress. It
might even be held a criminal offense for two citizens to
discuss with each other questions of military policy.

The New York “Call” of July 2, 1919, described the effect of the law in no exaggerated language when it said:

Free discussion became a memory, and rubber stamp opinions
became a badge of “patriotism.” Men and women were hunted
out of their homes for having an idea higher than a rat.
In some states a White Terror raged which deported whole
families to adjoining states. Blood flowed. Men were mobbed
and some lynched because they insisted on using their
brains, instead of the brains of others. Public officials
applauded, refused to interfere, and newspapers glorified
the carousal of hate and terror.

Spying upon your friends became an honorable calling.
The coward who hated his fellow man in packs became the
popular “hero.” Papers and magazines had their mailing
privileges withdrawn and some were suppressed. Libraries
were repeatedly ransacked for “seditious” literature. The
schools became a refuge of servile teachers, who taught
what was told them, no matter how absurd it might be.
Censorship barred the masses from the real news of the
world. The “news” was manufactured in government bureaus
and in the editorial offices of the daily newspapers. The
theater and the “movie” became agencies for enforcing
standardized opinions. The churches tied their creeds to
the chariot of the imperialists and made their Christ speak
for reaction. The lecture platform became defiled. The
reversion back to the primitive permeated politics. The
blackest enemies of human progress had the public ear; its
friends were damned and assaulted. Historical works were
“revised” or suppressed to make them square with the brutal
mania of the hour.

All this was glorified in the name of “democracy,” in the
name of “liberty,” in the name of “freedom.” A shadow fell
upon the intellectual life of the nation. For the time
being it was blotted out. All thinking had ceased, except
for a courageous few, and they were mobbed or sent to the
penitentiaries. Yet the editors, politicians, preachers,
capitalists, bankers, exploiters, profiteers, patrioteers,
“labor leaders,” all, looked upon their work and called
it good. Missions went abroad to tell the European yokels
of our “ideals.” The masses were intellectual prisoners,
marching in the lockstep of capital’s chain gang.

There was a phase of this spy activity that went even beyond this: The invasion of the homes of German Americans whose sons were fighting in the ranks and dying in France--there were 17,000 of the latter. They were harried by ill-bred patriots of the sort we read of in the history of the French revolution, who, disregarding the fact that these parents were citizens, treated them as suspects and kept them under surveillance because they were not rushing out into the open and shouting “Huns.”

Many a case occurred in which a lad in the American army was fighting against his own brother in the ranks of the German army and his mother over here was harrassed by members of the National Security League, the American Defense Society or the American Protective League, while the father was cast out of employment for being of German blood.

Many a crippled boy returned from France to find that his family had been impoverished and persecuted by secret agents or self-constituted spies. In the breast of many a young German American were then and there planted the seeds of hate for his tormentors, and, sad to relate, doubts of the virtue of American liberty. He had given his blood to make the world safe for democracy and found his home in the grip of despotism.

There are those who account for the persecution of the German element by the reminder that the war offered the first opportunity for Southern-thinking Americans to repay the German element for its share in the Civil War in aiding the Union to win the final victory in 1865. Be that as it may, in the end this element was gloriously vindicated by ample proof of its loyalty, no matter what the test. Despite the most unrelenting enforcement of every phase of the objectionable act, mass meetings were held in twelve cities during Lincoln’s birthday in 1919, to protest against the law and demand its repeal. The meetings were called in the name of Lincoln, the liberator, but not by German Americans.

Reviewing the prosecutions under the Espionage Act, the Civil Liberties Bureau, 41 Union Square, which itself was repeatedly raided, on February 13, 1919, issued the following summary:

The bureau has had, since the beginning of the war, a
standing order with a newspaper clipping company covering
all references in the press of the United States to
disloyalty, sedition, espionage and the Espionage law. As
a result, we have the most illuminating record of cases
which it has been possible to complete without access to
the records of the Attorney General. We have no record of a
single instance when a spy has been imprisoned under this
law.

Furthermore, in the cases cited in the Attorney General’s
report as typical of those prosecuted under the Espionage
law, there is not one case in which the prisoner was
convicted of being a paid German spy, or of even trying to
find out military secrets. All the convictions which are
reported arose under section 13 of the Penal Code, under
which the maximum sentence is two years. So far as we have
any record, cases of this nature which have arisen under
the Espionage act have been terminated by the internment
of the accused, without imprisonment. On the other hand,
American citizens exercising (perhaps without discretion)
the right of free speech in war time have been sentenced
to as high as twenty years in the penitentiary. According
to the data in our possession, about two-thirds of the
convictions have been for remarks in private conversation.
The remainder have been for statements made in public
speeches and in literature publicly circulated.

The daily press, with the very rarest exceptions, was in accord with the mob and the spirit of the Espionage Act. If ever it was evident how little the German Americans had been taken into consideration by their fellow citizens, it became undeniably patent in the refusal of the press, though largely dependent on the support of this element, to cry a halt to the persecutions. Every man arrested on some charge was glaringly pictured in the character of a dangerous spy, and fanatical women were given much space in their columns for organized assaults on German toys and German music. The German people were described as moral lepers. The New York “Herald” advocated the hanging of German Americans to lamp posts. The New York “Sun,” late in October, 1918, soberly printed this:

Yet by not a few are we ominously told that the German is
a man of like nature with ourselves and that as such we
must be prepared to live with him after the war. This is
not the truth; it is rather the most menacing lie upon the
horizon of the conflict and its conclusion.... Scrutinized
historically and presented boldly, the German cannot be but
recognized as a distinctly separate and pathological human
species. =He is not human in the sense that other men are
human.=

Societies were formed for the Suppression of Everything German, and there exists at present in all parts of the United States a secret society pledged not to buy of any German American or to give employment to any member of that race.

The German Americans manifested an utterly helpless spirit in the situation. No uniform demand was formulated to be presented to Congress demanding the repeal of the Espionage Act after the excuse that called it into existence had ceased to exist, or calling on the authorities for protection. Some formed a society known as “The Friends of German Democracy,” under Mr. Franz Sigel, which adopted resolutions pledging complete and unreserved loyalty. It was rewarded with a letter from a woman heading an anti-German movement who subsequently was shown to be an English subject, in which the Friends of German Democracy were roundly told that “the only good German-American is a dead one.”

Another woman, the daughter of German parents, Mrs. William Jay, gained great notoriety by her campaign against German music, and was instrumental in stopping German plays, operas and symphonies in New York before and after the armistice had been signed, and also in sending many well-established German musicians into exile, or to an internment camp. Many, courting favor and recognition from persons having some social standing, seeing their own race utterly helpless in counteracting the feeling of contempt, joined with their detractors in order to remove all doubt as to their own loyalty.

In many States the teaching of the German language was prohibited by the legislatures. In New York City, though the Germans have a total vote of 1,250,000, including the women, they were unable to prevent--and made no attempt to prevent--an order forbidding the teaching of German or the introduction of new books of history in the schools in which their race is described as Huns and made responsible for every atrocity ascribed to it in the heat of war.

The only outstanding resistance to the spirit of Anglicising the country was recorded in New Jersey, where the German language was put under the ban in the Masonic lodges, and where John J. Plemenik, Master of Schiller Lodge, in Newark, refused to comply with the order of the Grand Lodge on the ground that for fifty years the lodge had worked in German, under the sanction of the Grand Lodge. Rather than submit to the edict of the Grand Lodge of the State the master walked out of the lodge room, followed by 200 Masons, some of them from English-speaking lodges. The example found a near parallel in one of the twenty-seven German lodges in New York City, one of them above 125 years old, after which an order extending the time for discontinuing the German language of the lodges was promptly issued. All the lodges were, however, unanimous in support of steps against obedience to the edict.

The New York Liederkranz Society, one of the largest German social organizations in the United States, cheered the late Col. Roosevelt to the echo in his attacks on their race. The New York “Times” of October 16, 1918, says that although all members of the club are of German descent, every statement made by Col. Roosevelt, and the other speakers, William Forster, president of the club, and Ludwig Nissen, chairman of the Liberty Loan Committee, were cheered again and again. Col. Roosevelt said there was room here for but one language, meaning, of course, the King’s English.

A few months later we read a dispatch from Philadelphia (New York “Tribune,” April 26, 1919): “President Wilson’s attitude on the Fiume situation has so aroused Italians in this city that they will not hold their Victory Liberty Loan parade.... Leaders here fear that the attitude of the Italians toward President Wilson will result in cutting down their subscriptions to the loan.”

Before one Justice Cropsey, of the Queens County Supreme Court, ten Germans out of eleven who applied for citizenship one day in May, 1919, six months after the signing of the armistice, had their petitions denied. A girl who was earning her living as a stenographer was included in the list because she had not invested in the first two Liberty loans, though she was unemployed at the time. The learned Justice dismissed her petition with the statement: “You get the benefit of this country and increase your pay through its entrance into the war, and yet you will not support it.”

Out of 215 staff officers named among the personnel of the new general staff of the army, announced October 3, 1918, only nine bore German names. Of the service men aboard an American ship destroyed in action during the war, 36 per cent. bore German names. The highest distinction conferred on any American aviator during the active fighting was given to Capt. Edward V. Rickenbacker, popularly called “the American Ace of Aces,” of Columbus, Ohio.

Any one resisting the current of hatred and abuse, as Henry Ford, whose contribution to the success of the American army is certainly incontestible, was exposed to the same attacks as those directly of German descent who were everywhere summoned before boards of inquisition; a headline in the “Evening Sun” of July 2, 1919, runs like this: “Ford Kept 500 Pro-Germans--Staff Men Say They Worked at Plant During the War--Motor Defects Were Passed--Didn’t Try to Correct Errors.”

That citizens of German origin were assigned a status independent of other citizens is apparent from a statement filed with the United States Senate by Mr. George A. Schreiner, the war correspondent of the Associated Press, who, upon his return here for a visit, was refused a passport for two years to go back to his post of duty. He writes:

I will terminate my report with a few remarks that seem
greatly in order. These remarks concern the status of the
naturalized citizen. On the very report issued to me on
August 30, 1919, there appears personal data denouncing
me which was formerly not placed on passports, =and
which during the last two years has done much injury
to naturalized citizens=. I refer to the fact that in
the lower left-hand corner of the passport is noted the
citizen’s place of birth and former nationality. As things
are constituted and as they have been for some time, the
notice referred to constitutes a discrimination against
citizens of the United States of immigrant origin. The
passport is given to the citizen as a means to identify
himself as a citizen of the United States, =not as signal
to those hostile to his racials elsewhere, that the
Government of the United States sees a distinction between
native and those of foreign birth=.... The elimination of
all personal data from the passport would be the first
step on the part of the Government in serving notice
upon foreign governments that there is but one class of
citizens in the United States, and that all of them are
equally entitled to protection, as was the stand taken by
the Senate when some years ago it abrogated the commercial
treaty with the Imperial Russian Government, because that
government had refused to recognize fully the American
passports given to citizens of the United States of Jewish
origin.

Men in the Department of State have thought it presumptuous
on my part that I should claim the rights of a native-born
citizen, and do that in the manner in which I was forced
to do it. To that I will reply that no other avenue was
open. In the first place, =I am either a citizen of the
United States in every sense of the word, and in every duty
and right, or I am not=. So long as there is not set up,
let me say, immigrant citizens, or whatever designation
may be deemed proper, which class a person can join, fully
cognizant of what he or she is doing, the citizen admitted
on the basis of full citizenship, the reservation of the
presidency duly considered, would show his utter unfitness
for his national status did he relinquish, in the least
degree, his rights and guarantees, as constitutionally
fixed and legally defined.

One German American army officer was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor at Leavenworth for having written a letter to the War Department, declaring that as his sympathies for Germany did not fit him to act a soldier in the fighting line, he desired to resign. He was nevertheless sent to France in the hope that it “would cause his sense of propriety to reassert itself.” Later, when Pershing reported that there had been no change, he was sent back to the United States for trial, with the above result. The “Times” said the papers and documents seized in his home would not be published. “These papers are said to show that the convicted man was an active friend of Germany in this country (his wife was born there), and that in the early part of the war he subscribed to one of the German war loans, paying his subscription in installments.” This was the extent of the proof, so far as known. Another officer of German descent could not be confirmed when his name was sent in for promotion to brigadier general.

One of the most sensational trials was that against Albert Paul Fricke, in New York, charged with high treason. Delancey Nicol, a famous attorney, was specially engaged to prosecute the case. Fricke was acquitted by a jury. This result was noticed in an obscure part of the papers, whereas Fricke’s arrest, indictment and the details of the case at many stages was spread under screaming headlines invariably. Paul C. H. Hennig, holding a responsible position as superintendent in the E. W. Bliss Co. plant in Brooklyn, was announced to have been caught red-handed tampering with the gyroscopes for torpedoes manufactured by the company for the Government. It was described as a plot so to manipulate the gyroscope as to reverse the course of the torpedo and discharge it against the vessel from which it was released, thus blowing the ship out of the water. At the trial it was testified that Hennig could not have accomplished any such purpose had he desired, as the torpedoes passed through numerous other hands after leaving his and were carefully inspected at every stage of their manufacture. He was acquitted by a jury, but the trial had ruined him financially.

Two years before the war, a Lutheran minister, Rev. Jaeger, was assassinated in his home in Indiana for being pro-German. On April 5, 1918, Robert B. Prager was lynched by a mob of boys and drunken men at Collinsville, Illinois, for being a German. The acquittal of the men was received with public jubilation, bon fires and concert by a Naval Reserve band. At West Frankfort, Ill., according to a press dispatch of March 25, 1918, “500 men seized Mrs. Frances Bergen, a woman of Bohemian birth, from municipal officers, rode her on a rail through the main street of the town, and compelled her to wave the American flag throughout the demonstration. At frequent intervals the procession paused while Mrs. Bergen was compelled to shout praise for President Wilson.”

A law evidently designed to hurt citizens of German descent was passed in Chicago, and a dispatch of March 26, 1918, gleefully announced that “six thousand aliens will lose their rights to conduct business in Chicago, May 1, when the ordinance passed by the City Council refusing licenses to all persons not United States citizens takes effect. Brewers, saloon keepers, restaurant keepers, tailors, bakers, junk dealers and others for whom a license from the city is required will be affected by the new law.” In this manner judges were forced from the bench and even compelled to fly for their lives, teachers were ousted out of their places, and professors frozen out of their professorships in universities. Citizens to the number of thousands were made outcasts in the country of their birth or adoption, and they were asking themselves “why?” without getting an answer. The German plotters spoken of by leading officials of the government as menacing the safety of the government, had not materialized; the danger of the “hyphen” had been exaggerated.

Under the extraordinary power given to irresponsible organizations and individuals by the repressive legislation enacted by Congress, the abuses which ensued were harrowing to any one with the least conscious regard for the institutions of his country. In New York a boy was sentenced to three months in jail for circulating a leaflet containing extracts from the Declaration of Independence, emphasis being laid on the fact by the court that certain passages, construed to be an incitement to sedition, were printed in black type. An appeal to a higher court fortunately nullified the verdict. A woman was knocked down in the streets of New York by a man for speaking German, and the court discharged the brute without a reprimand. From all parts of the country reports of outrages against citizens with German names were of daily occurrence. Men were carried off by groups of hooligans, stripped and whipped, or tarred and feathered. The same individuals who had themselves expressed sympathy for the cause of the Central Powers in conversations with their neighbors, suddenly turned informers, and professed to be proud of their betrayal of confidence. Everywhere men were indicted for treason who on trial were acquitted by the juries who heard their cases.

Not until the mob spirit everywhere assumed such a menacing aspect that no citizen dared trust his own friend, and bloodshed and violence began to run rampant, came any utterance from administration sources designed to check the reign of terror, and then the warnings were couched in such conservative language that they could be applied as a rebuke only to extreme cases of fanatical madness.

Not only was the press doing yeoman’s duty in the suppression of human rights, but the pulpit, the bar and the theaters and film companies combined to lash the ignorant into a state of maniacal fury and incited them to further outrages. A few judges, here and there, stood out in bold relief for their attitude in defense of constitutional government and the right of the individual under the same.

One of the most dastardly outrages was enacted near Florence, Ky., October 28, 1917, when a masked mob seized Prof. Herbert S. Bigelow, a prominent citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio, tied him to a tree in the woods and horse-whipped him for advocating the constitutional rights of American citizens.

The manner in which terrorism was carried out is well illustrated by events in New York City. Bazaars were everywhere held in aid of the cause of army and navy and the associated governments, and committees scoured the city for subscriptions and support. Among the events organized for this ostensible purpose was the Army and Navy Bazaar. The sum of $72,000 was taken in, but only $700 went to Uncle Sam’s soldiers and sailors. The rest went for commissions and expenses. This affair was used to terrorize German Americans on a large scale in order to press money out of them. An investigation brought out evidence, supplied by William S. Moore, secretary of the Guaranty Trust Company, who was treasurer of the bazaar, that “German citizens and citizens of German descent had been threatened with accusations of disloyalty by collectors of the bazaar.” An evening paper stated: “He admitted to the prosecutor that during the preparations for the bazaar several complaints that New Yorkers of German blood had been solicited, with the threat that they would be reported for internment if they refused to contribute, had been made to the bazaar officials.”

Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, during the war declared that 600 liberal periodicals had been interfered with by the Post Office Department under the power given the Postmaster General to censor the American press. A large number of papers were harrassed, their editors arrested, some charged with treason or other high crime; and a few--a very few--were indicted. One effectual way of putting a stop to a publication which, though no grounds existed for its suppression, yet proved offensive by its outspoken defense of American principles, was to cancel its second-class mailing privilege. Under this privilege a paper enjoys a pound-rate postage, instead of being obliged to pay one cent or more for every copy mailed.

This was the course pursued toward the weekly, “Issues and Events,” which, with “The Fatherland” (now Viereck’s “American Monthly”), was started in 1914 to combat the pro-Ally campaign under Lord Northcliffe. After some five or six issues were stopped from going through the mails, the paper taking steps to reincorporate, became “The American Liberal,” but after only four issues was denied the second-class mailing privilege, and was forced to suspend.

The issue of March 23, 1918, was stopped for printing Theodore Sutro’s plea before the Senate Committee as attorney for the German-American Alliance, which was having its charter canceled by a bill introduced by Senator King, of Utah. The issue of April 6, 1918, was stopped. It contained a compilation of the outrages against German Americans in all parts of the country under the heading, “A Reign of Terror.” The issue of April 13 was stopped. It contained a quotation from Carl Schurz on the freedom of speech and press, and a statement of Abraham Lincoln on reverence for the law; also an article on the seizure of a list of 40,000 subscribers to the German war bonds by the then attorney general of New York.

The next number to be stopped was the issue of May 11, containing an article, “The Right of Free Speech Defined by a Distinguished Federal Judge to Roosevelt and by Judge Hand to the Jury Trying ‘The Masses’ Case,” and an article showing that the Germans had subscribed a larger amount to the Liberty Loan than any other group of foreign-born citizens.

The June 1 issue was next stopped. It contained the address of Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press, before the St. Louis Commercial Club, in which he denied the truth of the stories of Belgian atrocities after a personal investigation of numerous cases in France and Belgium. The June 8 issue also was stopped. The offensive material obviously consisted of extracts from a pamphlet issued by the National Civil Liberties Bureau, “The Truth About the I. W. W.” It presented a compilation of extracts from the works of industrial investigators and noted economists, and was printed as a matter of news with no idea of propagandizing the cause of the I. W. W.

The paper was rapidly losing its footing under this heroic treatment of the Post Office censorship, although no notoriety was attached to the course. On June 22 the first issue of “The American Liberal” appeared, in which an attempt was made to avoid anything that could give excuse for interference, the chief desire being to protect the stockholders and creditors. But after the fourth issue a peremptory order canceling the second-class mailing privilege put an effectual stop to further efforts to continue the uneven struggle.

Immediately after, the affairs of the paper became a subject of serious concern in various secret service branches of the government. A raid was made on a prominent citizen in the town of Reading and letters were found showing that he had at one time aided the paper in the sum of $100. This was heralded as evidence of some sinister conspiracy to destroy the government. A raid was made on the office of the paper and every letter on file was seized to discover proof of fraud and bad faith on the part of certain employes of the office, and to establish some connection with German plotters. Investigations were instituted; the daily papers were supplied with information that contained one part fact and nine parts suggestion, innuendoes and insinuations. Lawyers who examined the reports said they were vicious, but just within the law--that action for libel would probably not stick. And that was obviously the purpose of the raids. The prominent citizen of Reading was allowed to go the even tenor of his ways, and the seized documents in the office of the paper were returned in due season and pronounced harmless. The public had been lashed into a feverish state of indignation against some imaginary plotters, a legitimate enterprise had been ruined, all the employes of the paper had been turned into the street, some filth had been flung at the head of the editor, and the country was saved!

The paper was instrumental, after its suspension, in raising sufficient money to satisfy an indebtedness of more than $600 due a private benevolent institution in which it had placed a large number of children of distressed aliens affected by the rigorous legislation of Congress against alien enemies, and the Mount Plaza Home, which it had started for the same purpose, took care of between 800 and 900 children during the season of 1918 with its own resources. This charity had formed a special object of attack and suspicion.

Even more drastic was the treatment accorded Viereck’s “American Monthly,” though for reasons which need not be detailed here, it was not interfered with by the Post Office Department. The principal cause for the inquisition, which kept the daily press well supplied with Monday morning articles of sensational interest, was Mr. Viereck’s connection with German propaganda before our entrance in the war. The inquisition was conducted by Assistant State’s Attorney Alfred Becker, then a candidate for Attorney General, who was apparently making political capital for himself out of the investigation. Later Senator Reed showed that Becker’s associate in the investigation was an individual named Musica, an ex-convict, who with a number of associates had, also under Mr. Becker’s auspices, sought to “frame up” William Randolph Hearst with Bolo Pasha, the press being furnished with statements that Mr. Hearst, Bolo Pasha, Capt. Boy-Ed and Capt. von Papen had foregathered over a supper at a prominent New York hotel for some undefined evil purpose. The whole story was shown to be a fabrication.

The daily press teemed with headlines like this: “Letters Seized by Millions in Raid--Alleged Seditious Matter Taken After Over 300 Search Warrants Are Issued Secretly--Anti-War Bodies on List.” (New York “Times,” August 30, 1918.) “Teuton Propaganda Board Now Known--Attorney General Promises that Names of Americans Involved Will be Made Public--Kaiser’s Machine Worked Under the Cloak of the German Red Cross;” “Teuton Propaganda Paid for by Rumely--Gave Hammerling $205,000 in Cash for Space in Foreign Language Newspapers--Germans Planned $1,500,000 Good Will Campaign, Expecting U-Boats to End War in June, 1917;” “‘Charity’ Millions a Propaganda Fund--Becker Exposes Fraud of German Agents Here--Deputy Attorney General Says He Expects to Implicate ‘Journalists’ Among Others;” (New York “Evening Post,” August 19, 1918); “Propaganda Hunt by Federal Agents--Homes and Offices Searched in Cities Wide Apart Under Government Warrants--Visit Plants in Reading--Correspondence and Documents of Dr. Michael Singer Seized in Chicago,” etc.

All books bearing on the European struggle, written long before our entrance into the war, many of them of a sociological character, others dealing with historical subjects, were placed in an index expurgatorious. Books discontinued the day we entered the war were sent for by reputable persons in the hope of obtaining evidence of violation of law against those issuing them. Indiscriminately, everywhere, names of well-known citizens of German descent, many of them native-born, were bandied about in the newspapers as spies and plotters, their homes and offices were raided, their papers seized--and there matters ended. Among the books described as seditious were works by Prof. John W. Burgess, Frank Harris, Prof. Scott Nearing, Frederic C. Howe, W. S. Leake, Sven Hadin, Theodore Wilson Wilson, Arthur Daniels, E. G. Balch, Capshaw Carson, E. F. Henderson, Roland Hugins.

The reaction came when before the Overman Senate Committee a list of “suspects” was given out by an agent of the Department of Justice. It was headed by Miss Jane Addams. People began to realize that if the efforts of this great American woman, actuated in her philanthropic work by the most impartial and benevolent motives, could be impudently pronounced those of a German plotter and propagandist, the indictment against every other person on the list must be of uncertain consistency. By slow degrees it became apparent that certain officials had blundered. When “The Nation” had an issue held up for criticizing Samuel Gompers, the zealous Solicitor for the Post Office Department, William H. Lamar, was suddenly overruled by the President. In addition, Lamar made a bad impression by excluding “The World Tomorrow,” representing the Fellowship of Reconciliation, of which Jane Addams is president. It was practically ordered to cease publication. By the President’s order it was restored to its rights.

DeWoody, in charge of the Federal investigations in New York, resigned and disappeared from public notice. Bielaski, head of the secret service at Washington, resigned. Many of the officials had been handsomely advertised but had failed to effect convictions. They had been principally occupied in loading odium on American citizens who had acted wholly within their rights.

Much blame fell to them that attaches legitimately to the American Protective League, the National Security League and other voluntary spy organizations, whose members did not know the difference between testimony and evidence and were continually embarrassing the federal officers with over-zealous efforts to convict people, so that ultimately Attorney General Palmer, on succeeding Gregory, issued notice repudiating these private organizations.

A fatal blunder was made on a certain day in New York; thousands of young men were halted on the streets by men in khaki and publicly dragged to a station as “slackers.” Attorney General Gregory repudiated all responsibility and soon after retired from office.

The principal agent in keeping the excitement at fever heat in New York City was Deputy Attorney General Alfred L. Becker, and much of his activity was due to his candidacy for the position of Attorney General of the State. His “revelations” were all timed with his eye on the primary election, to take place September 3, 1918. When the United States entered the war he helped to draft the radical “Peace and Safety Act,” and took charge of investigations under its authority. A campaign pamphlet issued by him, entitled “A Brief Account of the Exposure of German Propaganda and Intrigue by Deputy Attorney General Alfred L. Becker, Candidate for Attorney General at the Republican Primary,” cites the following cases having come under his investigations: Bolo Pasha, Joseph Caillaux, former Premier of France; Adolf Pavenstedt, Hugo Schmidt, Eugen Schwerdt, German ownership or affiliation of two great woolen mills placed under control of the Alien Property Custodian; German secret codes, Dr. Edward A. Rumely’s ownership of the New York “Mail;” German and Austria-Hungarian war loan subscribers, George S. Viereck, Dr. William Bayard Hale and Louis Hammerling, and he dwelt on his efforts toward “fearlessly exposing the activities of the above and many others =who sought to keep the United States out of the war=.” Among the subjects investigated by him were enumerated the following offenses: “Praising German ‘kultur’;” “defending Germany against the charge of instigating the war;” “cursing England and Japan and sneering at Italy;” “advocating war with Mexico;” “whining that France was ‘bled white’;” “hypocritical appeals for German peace;” “preaching that Germany was sure to win.” The pamphlet carried the endorsement of Col. Roosevelt: “I am heartily in favor of the nomination of Mr. Becker because as Deputy Attorney General in charge of investigating war conspiracies, he has done more to expose and stamp out German propaganda than any other city, state or federal official.”

When Becker’s unscrupulous methods were exposed by Senator Reed before the Overman Committee of the United States Senate and it was shown that he had been employing a number of ex-convicts parading under assumed names as his assistants, in order to procure evidence on which to convict men summoned before him, his star began to set. In the primaries he was decisively defeated and shortly after he retired to private practice as a lawyer.

=England Threatens the United States.=--On September 7, 1916, some remarkable statements were made in the Senate by Senator Chamberlain, of Oregon, and later replied to by Senator Williams.

The moment for war had not arrived, the Presidential election was still two months off. Senators were speaking their minds concerning the arbitrary acts of England against the United States, and Senator Chamberlain, representing the great salmon and other fishing interests of the Northwest, told how they were being destroyed by the Canadian railways and other agencies. “How?” asked Mr. Chamberlain, “not by any act of Parliament of the Canadian Government, but by orders in council, pursuing the same course in Canada that the British Government pursues in England and on the high seas for the purpose of destroying not only the commerce of our own country but the commerce of any other neutral country that it sees fit to destroy.”

The Senator said: “There is absolutely too much Toryism in the Congress of the United States, both in the House and in the Senate.”

In the course of his speech, he reviewed in detail England’s aggressions and diplomatic victories over the United States, and it developed that in the most high-handed manner England was actually threatening us. Senator Jones, of Washington, being conceded the floor by his colleagues, said:

“I read the other day an extract from a letter I received from the Acting Secretary of State, in which he said this:

“‘On July 12 the department received an informal and
confidential communication from the British Ambassador
stating that the Canadian Government has requested him to
say that =the passage of the House Bill 15839 would affect
the relations of the two countries, and might cause the
Canadian Government to enact retaliatory legislation=.’”

Nominally a question of issue between this country and Canada, the part that England was prepared to play in the matter was shown by the fact that the British Ambassador was acting as the agent of Canada, a British colony.

Senator Chamberlain resumed his speech, saying:

“It is the same old threat that is always made when America
undertakes to assert her rights against the British
Government. We do not want to get into trouble with Great
Britain, nor any other country, but we do want to protect
our own rights; and if in order to do it we must suffer
retaliation in some other line or at some other place, why,
Mr. President, let us at whatever cost make the effort to
protect ourselves and let these retaliatory measures come
whenever and wherever they see fit to bring them.