To quote again from _The German Secret Service in America_:
“Many of the peace movements which were set going during the first
three years of the war were sincere, many were not. A mass meeting held
at Madison Square Garden in 1915 at which Bryan was the chief speaker,
was inspired by Germany. In the insincere class falls also the ‘Friends
of Peace,’ organized in 1915. Its letterhead bore the invitation:
‘Attend the National Peace Convention, Chicago, Sept. 5 and 6,’ and
incidentally betrayed the origin of the society. The letterhead stated
that the society represented the American Truth Society (an offshoot
of the National German-American Alliance), The American Women of
German Descent, the American Fair Play Society, the German-American
Alliance of Greater New York, the German Catholic Federation of New
York, the United Irish-American Societies and the United Austrian and
Hungarian-American Societies. Among the ‘honorable vice-chairmen’
were listed Edmund von Mach, John Devoy, Justices Goff and Cohalan (a
trinity of Britonophobes), Colquitt of Texas, ex-Congressman Buchanan
(of Labor’s National Peace Council fame), Jeremiah O’Leary (a Sinn
Feiner, mentioned in official cables from Zimmermann to Bernstorff as a
good intermediary for sabotage), Judge John T. Hylan, Richard Bartholdt
(a congressman active in the German political lobby), and divers
officers of the Alliance.
“The American Truth Society, Inc., the parent of the Friends of Peace,
was founded in 1912 by Jeremiah O’Leary, a Tammany lawyer later
indicted for violation of the Espionage Act, who disappeared when his
case came up for trial in May, 1918; Alphonse Koelble, who conducted
the German-American Alliance’s New York political clearing house;
Gustav Dopslaff, a German-American banker, and others interested in
the German cause. In 1915 the Society, whose executives were well and
favorably known to the German embassy, began issuing and circulating
noisy pamphlets, with such captions as ‘Fair Play for Germany,’ and ‘A
German-American War.’ O’Leary and his friends also conducted a mail
questionnaire of Congress in an effort to catalogue the convictions of
each member on the blockade and embargo questions. Their most insidious
campaign was an effort to frighten the smaller banks of the country
from participating in Allied loans, by threats of a German ‘blacklist’
after the war, to organize a ‘gold protest’ to embarrass American
banking operations, and in general to harass the Administration in its
international relations.
[Illustration: Prize Winning War Savings Poster]
“So with their newspapers, rumor-mongers, lecturers, peace societies,
alliances, bunds, vereins, lobbyists, war relief workers, motion
picture operators and syndicates, the Germans wrought hard to
avert war. For two years they nearly succeeded. America was under
the narcotic influence of generally comfortable neutrality, and a
comfortable nation likes to wag its head and say ‘there are two sides
to every question.’ But whatever these German agents might have
accomplished in the public mind—and certainly they were sowing their
seed in fertile ground—was nullified by acts of violence, ruthlessness
at sea, and impudence in diplomacy. The left hand found out what the
right hand was about.”