One of the things that no patriot can ever understand is the ingratitude
of the Germans who fled from the Fatherland to escape German militarism
and autocracy.
Lecturing in a Western State, I met a banker who had returned from a
schoolhouse in a rural district where he had been talking about the
Liberty Bonds to a German audience. One old German refused to attend
this meeting. He was very bitter in his attacks upon our Government. He
had made no subscription to the first two Liberty Loans; he had refused
to help in the campaign for the Red Cross Fund; he insisted that he paid
his taxes and that was all that the Government had any right to demand
from him.
He went one step further: The old man said that he had not read a single
American newspaper since the war began, and that nothing but a German
newspaper should cross his threshold until the war ended. Not until that
banker descended upon this pro-German with the indignation of an
outraged patriot did the rich old farmer capitulate.
The story of that German is typical. He came to this country about 1859.
When the homestead act was passed he received from the United States one
hundred and sixty acres of land in the very centre of one of the richest
States in this Union, and his one hundred and sixty acre farm is now
worth about $100,000.
When he ran away from Germany he was receiving twenty cents a day. He
rose at daybreak, cleaned stables, milked cows, toiled in the field,
began his milking after dark, worked sixteen hours a day, had nothing to
eat except what could not be sold by his employer. He was a German
plebeian, with no chance ever to improve his condition. He was ignorant,
stupid, a mere beast of burden.
So the German boy slipped across the line into Holland, came steerage to
this country, slept among the rats of the ship, but the people of the
United States welcomed that miserable refugee. The American school,
without any charge, gave him four months' instruction every winter until
he was twenty. The American people gave him a farm as a free gift. This
Republic educated his children, his grandchildren and enriched them with
land, office, honours and wealth. Once he hated autocracy and militarism
in the Fatherland--but in 1918 he loved them.
No sooner did the Kaiser invade Belgium and commit rape upon that land
than this German farmer passed through a revulsion. Whatever the Kaiser
did was right. If Germany did a thing it was proper. Germany had a right
to break her solemn treaties; Germany had a right to sink the
_Lusitania_; if Germany was out of iron ore she had a right to invade
France and steal her iron mines. What had been crimes suddenly became
virtues.
Fleeing from the German tyrant in 1859, in 1918 the old farmer turned
upon the United States that had befriended him.
"If I have to make my choice, I choose the Kaiser."
Mentally, it seems absurd. Morally, his was a monstrous position. But
blood was thicker than water. Gratitude had no place in his heart.
This old German regarded the gift of his farm by our people as a sign of
weakness. The Republic gave him a homestead because he was a superior
man. He actually had a belief that Germany would soon overrun the world;
that the Kaiser would soon be enthroned in Washington; that some German
in Iowa would supersede the Government in Des Moines, and he was simply
getting ready, having made friends with the Kaiser's Government, to
receive reward when the United States became a German colony.
Who can explain the obsession?
It is clear that the German-Americans had been drilled for forty years
through their German newspapers in these ideas. Little by little they
have been alienated from the institutions of the Republic. Slowly they
have been led to believe that Berlin is soon to be a world capital and
Kaiser Wilhelm the world emperor, while only Germans shall be allowed in
this country to hold office or land, while all Americans become tenants
and servitors thereto.
Plainly this is what Siebert meant in his book, published five years ago
in Berlin:
"When we have reached our goal Germany must see to it that no race save
the German race can have a title deed in land or carry weapons, just as
in the first world empire no one but a Roman was allowed to own land or
have a sword or spear."