THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE
AS enthusiastic, war-mad crowd had gathered about an impromptu
speaker in the Ringstrasse, not far from the Hotel Bristol, in
Vienna, one pleasant August evening in 1914. His theme was the
military prowess of Austria-Hungary and Germany.
"And now," he concluded, "Japan has treacherously joined our
enemies. Yet we should not be disturbed, for her entrance will but
serve to bring us another ally too. You all know of the
ill-feeling between the United States and Japan. At any moment we
may hear that the great Republic has declared war." He called for
cheers, and the Ringstrasse echoed with _Hoch! Hoch! Hoch_! for
the United States of America.
That was my introduction to European opinion of my country during
the war. During my four weeks in the Austro-Serbian zone of
hostilities, I had heard no mention of anything but the purely
military business at hand.
The following evening from the window of an
"American-Tourist-Special Train" I looked down on the happy
Austrians who jammed the platform, determined to give the Americans
a grand send-off, which they did with flag-waving and cheers. A
stranger on the platform thrust a lengthy typewritten document into
my hands, with the urgent request that I should give it to the
Press in New York. It was a stirring appeal to Americans to
"witness the righteousness of the cause of the Central Powers in
this war which had been forced upon them." Three prominent
citizens of Vienna had signed it, one of whom was the famous Doctor
Lorenz.
Berlin, in an ecstasy of joyful anticipation of the rapid and
triumphal entrance into Paris, was a repetition of Vienna. True,
in the beginning, Americans, mistaken for Englishmen by some of the
undiscerning, had been roughly treated, but a hint from those in
high authority changed that. In like manner, well-meaning patriots
who persisted in indiscriminately mobbing all members of the yellow
race were urged to differentiate between Chinese and Japanese.
So I found festive Berlin patting Americans on the back, cheering
Americans in German-American meetings, and prettily intertwining
the Stars and Stripes and the German flag.
"Now is your opportunity to take Canada," said the man in the
street. In fact, it was utterly incomprehensible to the average
German that we should not indulge in some neighbouring
land-grabbing while Britain was so busy with affairs in Europe.
The German Foreign Office was, of course, under no such delusion,
although it had cherished the equally absurd belief that England's
colonies would rebel at the first opportunity. The Wilhelmstrasse
was, however, hard at work taking the propaganda which it had so
successfully crammed down the throats of the German citizen and
translating it into English to be crammed down the throats of the
people in America. This was simply one of the Wilhelmstrasse's
numerous mistakes in the psychological analysis of other people.
But the Wilhelmstrasse possesses the two estimable qualities of
perseverance and willingness to learn, with the result that its
recent propaganda in the United States has been much more subtle
and very much more effective.
The American newspapers which reached Germany after the outbreak of
war gave that country its first intimation that her rush through
Belgium was decidedly unpopular on the other side of the Atlantic.
Furthermore, many American newspapers depicted the Kaiser and the
Crown Prince in a light quite new to German readers, who with their
heads full of Divine Right ideas considered the slightest
caricature of their imperial family as brutally sacrilegious.
But the vast majority of Germans never saw an American newspaper.
How is it, then, that they began to hate the United States so
intensely? The answer is simple. In the early winter of 1914-15,
the German Government with its centralised control of public
opinion turned on the current of hatred against everything American
as it had already done against everything British, for the war had
come to a temporary stalemate on both fronts, and the
Wilhelmstrasse had to excuse their failure to win the short, sharp
pleasant war into which the people had jumped with anticipation of
easy victory. "If it were not for American ammunition the war
would have been finished long ago!" became the key-note of the new
gospel of hate, a gospel which has been preached down to the
present.
Just before I left Germany the "Reklam Book Company" of Leipzig
issued an anti-American circular which flooded the country. The
request that people should enclose it in all their private letters
was slavishly followed with the same zest with which the Germans
had previously attached _Gott strafe England_ stickers to their
correspondence.
The circular represented a 7000-ton steamer ready to take on board
the cargo of ammunition which was arranged neatly on the pier in
the foreground. The background was occupied by German troops,
black lines dividing them into three parts, tagged
respectively--30,000 _killed_, 40,000 _slightly wounded_, 40,000
_seriously wounded_. This, then, is the graphic illustration of
the casualties inflicted upon the German Army by a single cargo of
one moderate-sized liner.
Since at such a rate, it would take less than two hundred cargoes
of this astoundingly effective ammunition to put the entire German
Army out of action, one wonders why Britain troubles herself to
convert her industries.
Ere the first winter of war drew to a close the official
manipulators of the public opinion battery had successfully
electrified the nation into a hate against the United States second
only to that bestowed on Great Britain. And so it came about that
the Government had the solid support of the people when the
original submarine manifesto of February 4th, 1915, warning neutral
vessels to keep out of the war zone, threatened a rupture with the
United States. When two weeks later Washington sent a sharp note
of protest to Berlin, the Germans became choleric every time they
spoke of America or met an American.
"Why should we let America interfere with our plan to starve
England?" was the question I heard repeatedly. Their belief that
they could starve England was absolute. What could be simpler than
putting a ring of U-boats round the British Isles and cutting off
all trade until the pangs of hunger should compel Britain to yield?
I heard no talk then about the "base crime of starving women and
children," which became their whine a year later when the knife
began to cut the other way.
In 1915 it was immaterial to the mass of Germans whether America
joined their enemies or not. Their training had led them to think
in army corps, and they frankly and sneeringly asked us, "What
could you do?" They were still in the stage where they freely
applied to enemies and possible enemies the expression, "They are
afraid of us." "The more enemies, the more glory," was the inane
motto so popular early in the war that it was even printed on post
cards.
The _Gulflight_, flying the Stars and Stripes, was torpedoed in the
reign of submarine anarchy immediately inaugurated. But two can
play most games, and when the British Navy made it increasingly
difficult for U-boats to operate in the waters near the British
Isles, the German Foreign Office and the German Admiralty began to
entertain divergent opinions concerning the advisability of pushing
the submarine campaign to a point which would drag the United
States into the war.
Only a few people in Germany know that von Bethmann-Hollweg
strenuously opposed the plan to sink the Lusitania. That is, he
opposed it up to a point. The advertisement from the German
Embassy at Washington which appeared in American newspapers warning
Americans could not have appeared without his sanction. In the
last days of July, 1914, backed by the Kaiser, he had opposed the
mobilisation order sufficient to cause a three days' delay--which
his military opponents in German politics claim was the chief cause
of the failure to take Paris--but in the case of the Lusitania he
was even more powerless against rampant militarism.
For nearly a year after the colossal blunder of the Lusitania,
there existed in the deep undercurrents of German politics a most
remarkable whirlpool of discord, in which the policy of von Tirpitz
was a severe tax on the patience of von Bethmann-Hollweg and the
Foreign Office, for it was they who had to invent all sorts of
plausible excuses to placate various neutral Powers.
The Kaiser after disastrously meddling with the General Staff
during the first month of the war, subsequently took no active hand
in military, naval and political policies unless conflicts between
his chosen chieftains forced him to do so.
One striking instance of this occurred when the Wilhelmstrasse
discovered that Washington was in possession of information in the
"_Arabic_ incident" which made the official excuses palpably too
thin. After the German authorities became convinced that their
failure to guarantee that unresisting merchantmen would not be sunk
until passengers and crew were removed to a place of safety would
cause a break with the United States, Tirpitz asserted that the
disadvantages to Germany from America as an enemy would be slight
in comparison with the advantages from the relentless submarining
which in his opinion would defeat Britain. He therefore advocated
that no concessions be made to Washington. Von Bethmann-Hollweg
was of the opposite opinion. A deadlock resulted, which was broken
when the Kaiser summoned both men to separate and secret
conferences. He decided in favour of the Chancellor, whereupon
Washington received the famous "_Arabic_ Guarantees." It is highly
significant that these were never made known to the German people.
Then followed six months of "frightfulness," broken pledges, notes,
crises, semi-crises, and finally the great crisis _de luxe_ in the
case of the _Sussex_. When, a few days after my return to England
from Germany, I used the expression "_Sussex_ Crisis" to a leading
Englishman, he expressed surprise at the term "crisis." "We did
not get the impression in England that the affair was a real
crisis," he said.
My experiences in Germany during the last week in April and the
first four days in May, 1916, left no doubt in my mind that I was
living through a crisis, the outcome of which would have a
tremendous effect upon the subsequent course of the war. Previous
dealings with Washington had convinced the German Government as
well as the German people that the American Government would stand
for anything. Thus the extraordinary explanation of the German
Foreign Office that the Sussex was not torpedoed by a German
submarine, since the only U-boat commander who had fired a torpedo
in the channel waters on the fateful day had made a sketch of the
vessel which he had attacked, which, according to the sketch, was
not the Sussex.
The German people were so supremely satisfied with this explanation
that they displayed chagrin which quickly changed to ugliness when
the German Press was allowed to print enough of the news from
Washington to prepare the public mind for something sharp from
across the Atlantic. I have seen Berlin joyful, serious, and sad
during the war; I have seen it on many memorable days; but never
have I seen it exactly as on Saturday, April 22nd, the day when the
_Sussex_ Ultimatum was made known through the Press. The news was
headlined in the afternoon editions. The eager crowds snapped them
up, stood still in their tracks, and then one and all expressed
their amazement to anybody near them, "President Wilson began by
shaking his fist at Germany, and ended by shaking his finger," was
the way one of the President's political opponents summarised his
Notes. That was the opinion in Germany. And now he had "pulled a
gun." The Germans could not understand it. When they encountered
any of the few Americans left in their country they either foamed
in rage at them, or, in blank amazement, asked them what it was all
about.
It was extremely interesting to the student of the war to see that
the people really did not understand what it was all about.
Theodor Wolff, the brilliant editor of the _Berliner Tageblatt_,
with great daring for a German editor, raised this point in the
edition in which the Ultimatum was printed. He asserted that the
German people did not understand the case because they purposely
had been left in the dark by the Government. He said, among other
things, that his countrymen were in no position to understand the
feeling of resentment in the United States, because the meagre
reports permitted in the German Press never described such details
as the death agonies of women and children struggling helplessly in
the water.
This article in the _Tageblatt_ was the striking exception to the
rest of the Press comment throughout Germany, for the German
Government made one of its typical moves at this point. "To climb
down or not to climb down," was a question which would take several
days to decide. Public opinion was already sufficiently enraged
against America to give the Government united support in case of a
break, but it must be made more enraged and consequently more
united. Thus on Easter Sunday the full current of hate was turned
on in the German Press. President Wilson was violently attacked
for working in the interest of the Allies, whom he wished to save.
Germany would not bow to this injustice, she would fight, and
America, too, would be made to feel what it means to go to war with
Germany. The German Press did its part to inflame a united German
sentiment, and the Foreign Office, which believes in playing the
game both ways when it is of advantage to do so, with
characteristic thoroughness did not permit the American
correspondents to cable to their papers the virulent lies, such as
those in the _Tagliche Rundschau_, about the affair in general and
President Wilson in particular. These papers were furthermore not
allowed to leave Germany.
On the evening preceding the publication of the Ultimatum,
Maximilian Harden's most famous number of the _Zukunft_ appeared
with the title "If I Were Wilson." On Saturday morning it was
advertised on yellow and black posters throughout Berlin, and was
quickly bought by a feverish public to whom anything pertaining to
German-American relations was of the sharpest interest. The
remarkable article was directly at variance with all the
manufactured ideas which had been storming in German brains for
more than a year. The British sea policy was represented in a
light quite different from the officially incubated German
conception of it. President Wilson was correctly portrayed as
strictly neutral in all his official acts. This staggered Harden's
readers quite as much as his attacks on the brutal submarine policy
of his country.
A careless censor had allowed "If I Were Wilson," to appear. But a
vigilant Government, ever watchful of the food for the minds of its
children, hastened with the usual police methods to correct the
mistake. The _Zukunft_ was _beschlagnahmt_, which means that the
police hastily gathered up all unsold copies at the publishers,
kiosks, and wherever else they were to be found. If a policeman
saw one in a man's pocket he took it away.
Why did the Government do everything in its power to suppress this
article? The Government fully understood that there was nothing in
it that was not true, nothing in it of a revolutionary character.
It divulged no military or naval secrets. It was a simple
statement of political truths. But the German great Idea Factory
in the Wilhelmstrasse does not judge printed matter from its truth
or falsity. The forming of the public mind in the mould in which
it will best serve the interests of the State is the sole
consideration. While the Directors of Thought were deliberating on
the relative disadvantages of a curtailment of submarine activity
and America as an enemy, and the order of the day was to instill
hatred, no matter how, they decided that it would be inadvisable
for the people to read the true statements of Harden.
One American correspondent began to cable five thousand words of
"If I Were Wilson" to his paper. The Censor stopped him after he
had sent thirteen hundred. A rival correspondent, when he glanced
at the article immediately after it had appeared, decided that it
was more suitable for mail matter than cable matter, put it in an
envelope, and actually scored a scoop over all opponents.
During the following days, when the leaders of Germany were in
conference at the Headquarters of the General Staff, I travelled as
much as possible to find out German sentiment. The people were
intoxicated with the successes against Verdun, and were angrily in
favour of a break. One German editor said to me "The Government
has educated them to believe that the U-boat can win the war.
Their belief is so firm that it will be difficult for the
authorities to explain a backdown to Wilson."
It was not. The Government can explain anything to the German
people. The back-down came, causing sentiments which can be
divided into three groups. One, "We were very good to give in to
America. England would not be so good." Two, "Americans put us in
a bad position. To curtail our submarine weapon means a
lengthening of the war. On the other hand, to add America to the
list of our enemies would lengthen the war still more." Three, "We
shall wait our opportunity and pay back America for what she has
done to us." I heard the latter expression everywhere,
particularly among the upper classes. It was the expression of
Doctor Drechsler, head of the Amerika-Institut in Berlin, and one
of the powerful propaganda triumvirate composed of himself, Doctor
Bertling, and the late Professor Munsterberg.
With the increasing deterioration inside the German Empire the
resolve of the Chancellor to avoid a clash with the United States
strengthened daily. His opponents, however, most of the great
Agrarians and National Liberals, the men behind Tirpitz, continue
to work for a new submarine campaign in which all neutrals will be
warned that their vessels will be sunk without notice if bound to
or from the ports of Germany's enemies. They are practical men,
who believe that only through the unrestricted use of the submarine
can Britain, whom they call the keystone of the opposition, be
beaten. The Chancellor is also a practical man, who believes that
the entrance of America on the side of the Entente would seal the
fate of Germany. He is supported by Herr Helfferich, the
Vice-Chancellor, and Herr Zimmermann, the foreign Secretary, men
with a deep insight into the questions of trade and treaties. They
believe that peace will be made across the table and not at the
point of the sword, and they realise that it is much better for
Germany not to have the United States at the table as an enemy.
In September, 1916, the Chancellor began to lay the wires for a new
campaign, a campaign to enlist the services of Uncle Sam in a move
for peace. It is significant, however, that he and his Government
continue to play the game both ways. While Germany presses her
official friendship on the United States, and conducts propaganda
there to bring the two nations closer together, she at the same
time keeps up the propaganda of hate at home against America, in
order to have the support of the people in case of emergency.
The attacks against Washington in the _Continental Times_ show
which way the wind blows, for this paper is subsidised by the
German Foreign Office through the simple device of buying 30,000
copies of each issue--it appears three times weekly--at 2 1/2d.
per copy. The editors are Aubrey Stanhope, an Englishman who even
before the war could not return to his native country for reasons
of his own, and R. L. Orchelle, whose real name is Hermann
Scheffauer, who claims to be an American, but is not known as such
at the American Embassy in Berlin. He has specialised in attacks
against Great Britain in the United States. Some of the vicious
onslaughts against Washington in Germany were made by him.
American flags are scarce in Berlin to-day, but one always waves
from the window of 48, Potsdamerstrasse. It is a snare for the
unwary, but the League uses it here as in countless other instances
as a cloak for its warfare against the U.S.A.
The League started early in the war by issuing booklets by the ton
for distribution in Germany and America. Subscription blanks were
scattered broadcast for contributions for the cause of light and
truth. Donations soon poured in, some of them very large, from
Germans and German-Americans who wished, many of them sincerely, to
have what they considered the truth told about Germany.
The ways of the League, however, being crooked, some of the charter
members began to fall away from one another and many of the doings
of the ringleaders are now coming to light.
The League must be doing well financially, as William Martin, the
chief of the Potsdamerstrasse office, jubilantly declared that no
matter how the war ended he would come out of it with a million.
Any real American, whether at home or abroad, deeply resents the
degradation of his flag. Yet the League of Truth in Berlin has
consistently dragged the Stars and Stripes in the mire, and that in
a country which boasts that the police are not only omniscient but
omnipotent.
A constant attempt, in accordance with the policy of most German
newspapers, I may add, is made to depict us as a spineless
jelly-fish nation. They have regarded principles of international
custom as little as the manipulators of submarines under the reign
of Tirpitz.
Last fourth of July, Charles Mueller, a pseudo-American, hung from
his home in the busy Kurfurstendamm a huge American flag with a
deep border of black that Berlin might see a "real American's"
symbol of humiliation. On the same day, dear to the hearts of
Americans, a four-page flyer was spread broadcast through the
German capital with a black border on the front page enclosing a
black cross. The Declaration of Independence was bordered with
black inside and an ode to American degradation by John L. Stoddard
completed the slap in the face.
The League selected January 27th, 1916, the Kaiser's birthday, as a
suitable occasion for Mueller and Marten, not even hyphenates,
solemnly and in the presence of a great crowd to place an immense
wreath at the base of the statue of Frederick the Great on the
Linden, with the inscription "Wilson and his Press are not America."
The stern Police Department of Berlin does not permit the
promiscuous scattering of floral decorations and advertising matter
on the statues of German gods, and the fact that the wreath
remained there month after month proved that somebody high up was
sanctioning the methods of the League.
The protests of the American Ambassador were of no avail, until he
determined to make an end of the humiliation, after three months,
by threatening to go down to this busy section of Berlin, near the
Royal Palace, and remove the wreath himself. Force is the only
argument which impresses the Prussians, and we are extremely
fortunate that our Ambassador to Germany is a man of force.
The League, however, had printed a picture of the wreath in its
issue of _Light and Truth_, which it endeavours to circulate
everywhere.
Stoddard, mentioned above, is the famous lecturer. He has written
booklets for the League, one of which I read in America. His last
pamphlet, however, is a most scurrilous attack against his country.
He raves against America, and, after throwing the facts of
international law to the winds, he shrieks for the impeachment of
Wilson to stop this slaughter for which he has sold himself.
It is no secret in Berlin that the League have systematically
hounded Mr. Gerard. I do not know why they hate him, unless it is
because he is a member of the American Government. I have heard it
said that one way to get at Wilson was through his Ambassador.
Their threats and abuse became so great that he and one of the
American newspaper correspondents went to 48, Potsdamerstrasse
during the _Sussex_ crisis to warn the leaders. They answered by
swearing out a warrant against Mr. Gerard with the Berlin
police--paying no heed to international customs in such
matters--and circulating copies of the charge broadcast.
Readers who are familiar with Germany know that if a man does not
instantly defend himself against _Beleidigung_ society judges him
guilty. Thus this and countless other printed circulations of
falsehood against Mr. Gerard have cruelly hurt him throughout
Germany, as I know from personal investigation. Next to Mr. Wilson
and a few men in England he is the most hated man among the German
people. He finally felt obliged to deny in the German Press some
of the absurd stories circulated about him, such as that of Mrs.
Gerard putting a German decoration he received on her dog.
Mueller, however, was not content with mere printed attacks, but
has made threats against the life of the American Ambassador. A
prominent American has sworn an affidavit to this effect, but
Mueller still pursues his easy way. On the night that the farewell
dinner was being given to a departing secretary at our Embassy,
Mueller and a German officer went about Berlin seeking Mr. Gerard
for the professed purpose of picking a fight with him. They went
to Richards' Restaurant, where the dinner was being given, but
fortunately missed the Ambassador.
The trickery of the League would fill a volume, for Marten
especially is particularly clever. He leapt into fame in Berlin by
going to Belgium "at his own risk," as he says, to refute the
charges of German cruelty there. His book on Belgium, and a later
one claiming to refute the Bryce report, are unimpressive since
they fail to introduce facts, and the writer contents himself for
the main part with soliloquies on Belgian battlefields, in which he
attacks Russian aggression and Britain's perfidy in entering the
war. The Belgians, we gather, are more or less delighted with the
change from Albert to Wilhelm.
Marten prints testimonials of the book from leading Germans, most
of whom, such as General Falkenhayn, content themselves with
acknowledgment of receipt with thanks and statement of having read
the work. Count Zeppelin goes further, and hopes that the volume
will find a wide circulation, particularly in neutral countries.
And now for the vice-president of this anti-American organisation.
He is St. John Gaffney, former American Consul-General to Munich.
He belongs to the modern martyr series of the German of to-day.
All over Germany I was told that he was dismissed by Mr. Wilson
because he sympathised with Germany. The Germans as a mass know
nothing further, but I can state from unimpeachable authority that
he used rooms of the American Hospital in Munich, while a member of
the board of that hospital and an officer in the consular service
of the United States, for propaganda purposes. His presence became
so objectionable to the heads of the hospital, excellent people
whose sole aim is to aid suffering humanity, that he was ousted.
He returned from his American trip after his dismissal last year
and gave a widely quoted interview upon arrival in Germany which
sought to discredit America--through hitting Mr. Wilson and the
Press--in the most tense point of our last altercation in February
with Germany over the Lusitania. Such men as Gaffney are greatly
to blame for many German delusions.
Mr. Gerard is not the only official whose path has not been strewn
with roses in Germany. Our military attache has not been permitted
to go to the German front for nearly a year, and the snub is
apparent in the newspaper and Government circles of Berlin. He is
probably the only one left behind.
The big Press does not use League of Truth material and certain
other anti-American copy which would be bad for Germany, to reach
foreign critics' attacks. Many provincial papers, however,
furiously protested against the recent trip of the American
military attache through industrial Germany. It was only the
American, not other foreign attaches, to whom they objected.
All this is useful to the German Government, for it keeps the
populace in the right frame of mind for two purposes. In the first
place, a hatred of America inspired by the belief that she is
really an enemy, gives the German Government greater power over the
people. Secondly, should the Wilhelmstrasse decide to play the
relentless submarine warfare as its last hand it will have
practically united support.