Following the revolution of 1848 in Germany, multitudes of people fled
from Prussia and Bavaria, and these fugitives, settling in the United
States, organized colonies that grew until there were often one hundred
families in a single community. Strangely enough, as the years went on,
these Germans forgot the iron yoke they once had borne, until, when many
years had passed by, it came about that time and distance lent a glamour
to the landscape of the far-off Fatherland. Occasional letters from
their relatives kept them in touch with the old German home. At last
they quite forgot the militarism, the poverty, the cruel limitations and
the hypocrisy of Germany. Familiarity also with the institutions of the
Republic bred a kind of contempt. Through the imagination Germany became
an enchanted land. When, therefore, war was declared these
German-Americans came together in their clubs, beer gardens and German
churches, to pledge unswerving fealty to the Kaiser and to the
militarism from which once they had fled as from death itself.
Last summer brought the Government draft to the young men of one of
these German colonies. The week was approaching when the German boys
must have their physical examination. American officers, American
physicians and the members of the draft board were already in session
in a certain town. One Sunday a German-American physician appeared in
that community. That night some twenty or more young German-Americans
met that physician. He told them plainly how deeply he sympathized with
their unwillingness to turn their guns against their own German cousins
and relatives in the Fatherland. Out of pity and compassion had been
born his plan to save their limbs and perhaps their lives, and also to
serve the Fatherland and the beloved Kaiser. "I have here," said the
physician, "a certain heart depressant. It will slow your heart like the
brake on an automobile. It is a simple coal-oil product. It is quite
harmless. It was made by the well-known German firm of Baer & Company,
chemists, and it is so cheap. I shall see to it that you are rejected
for the draft. And--think of it!--only twenty-five dollars! For that
little sum I will keep you from being wounded or killed. You will each
one give me twenty-five dollars; then I will give you this bottle,
holding five grains for Monday, ten grains for Tuesday, fifteen grains
for Wednesday, twenty grains for Thursday, twenty-five grains for
Friday, and on Saturday you will be rejected." Ten minutes later the
necromancer had juggled twenty-five dollars out of the pocket of each
newly drafted boy and into his own right-hand pocket.
On Saturday these young men appeared before the draft board and the
Government physicians. All the boys were in a dreadful condition
nervously. Now the heart would drop to forty, and then at the slightest
exertion run up to two hundred and twenty. All were dizzy, nauseated,
yellow and green, feverish. But the Secret Service men knew every detail
of what had taken place, and all the facts were in the hands of the
draft board. A certain farmer's son, young Heinrich H----, was first
examined. The United States physician counted a pulse that varied from
forty to two hundred and twenty. The physician kept his face perfectly
straight. "Marvellous heart! Regular as a clock! Strong as the throbbing
of a locomotive. Seventy-two exactly! Absolutely normal. I congratulate
you, young men, upon your fine heart action. A man is as old as his
heart engine. A boy with a heart like yours ought to live to be a
hundred years old. All you need is a change of climate. France will do
the world for you. You may need a little heart stimulant, but I think
that nothing hastens the pulse beat like a few rifle balls and bomb
shells from Hindenburg." He sent every one of the twenty boys into the
service, but separated them, one going to Camp Ayer, in Massachusetts;
one to Camp Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, and the rest to camps in States
between. In one Middle West community a German father and son went so
far as to deaden pain through cocaine and then cut off the finger of the
right hand. It is generally understood that both the father and son are
now in two widely separated penitentiaries, reflecting each in his own
cell upon the folly of treason and the crime of becoming a traitor to
the kindest and best Government that has ever been organized upon our
earth.