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FACE TO FACE
WITH KAISERISM

BY

JAMES W. GERARD

LATE AMBASSADOR TO THE GERMAN IMPERIAL COURT,
AUTHOR OF "MY FOUR YEARS IN GERMANY"

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE PUBLIC LEDGER COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1918, BY THE PUBLIC LEDGER COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
COLONEL EDWARD M. HOUSE
STATESMAN AND FRIEND
THE AUTHOR
DEDICATES THIS BOOK

FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION OF THE KAISER'S VISITING CARD

THE VISITING CARD OF THE CROWN PRINCE, REPRODUCED IN FACSIMILE

THE KAISER AND VON TREUTLER TAKEN IN THE NORWEGIAN TOWN OF ODDE IN 1910

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

In some measure this book is a continuation of MY FOUR YEARS IN GERMANY, the narrative here being carried up to the time of my return home, with some observations on the situation I have found in the United States.

What I want especially to impress upon the people of the United States is that we are at war because Germany invaded the United States—an invasion insidiously conceived and vigorously prosecuted for years before hostilities began;—that this war is our war;—that the sanctity of American freedom and of the American home depend upon what we do NOW.

James W. Gerard.

New York,
April First, 1918.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACE TO FACE WITH KAISERISM

CHAPTER I

PERSONALITY OF THE KAISER AND SOMETHING OF THE KING BUSINESS

To the American mind the Kaiser is the personification of Germany. He is the arch enemy upon whom the world places the responsibility for this most terrible of all wars. I have sat face to face with him in the palace at Berlin where, as the personal representative and envoy of the President of the United States, I had the honor of expressing the viewpoint of a great nation. I have seen him in the field as the commanding general of mighty forces, but I also have seen him in the neutral countries through which I passed on my return home and in my own beloved land—in the evidence of intrigue and plotting which this militaristic monarch has begotten and which is to-day "the Thing," as President Wilson calls it, which has brought the American people face to face with kaiserism in the greatest conflict of all history.

What manner of man is he? What is his character? How much was he responsible for what has happened—how much his General Staff? What of the Crown Prince and what of the neutral peoples and their rulers whom Germany has intimidated and would fain subjugate if it suited her purpose? These are the questions I shall attempt to answer out of my experiences in Germany and my contacts with the rulers of other countries in my journeys to and from Berlin and Washington.

To illustrate the craft of the Kaiser, I believe I can perform no better service to Americans than to reveal an incident which has not hitherto been published. It occurred at the New Year's reception of 1914 when the Ambassadors of all the foreign countries represented at the German court, were ranged in a large room at the Palace. They stood about six feet apart in the order of their residence in Berlin. The Kaiser and his aides entered the room, and the Emperor spoke a few minutes to each envoy. He tarried longest with the Turkish Ambassador and myself, thereby arousing the curiosity of the other diplomats who suspected that the Kaiser did more than merely exchange the greetings of the season. He did.

What the German Emperor said to me interests every American because it shows his subtlety of purpose. The Kaiser talked at length to me about what he called Japan's designs on the United States. He warned me that Mexico was full of Japanese spies and an army of Japanese colonels. He also spoke about France, saying that he had made every effort to make up with France, that he had extended his hand to that country but that the French had refused to meet his overtures, that he was through and would not try again to heal the breach between France and Germany!

All this was in 1914, six months before the outbreak of the European War. Little did I know then what the purpose was back of that conversation, but it is clear now that the Emperor wished to have the government of the United States persuaded through me that he was really trying to keep Europe at peace and that the responsibility for what was going to happen would be on France. The German is so skilful at intrigue that he seeks even in advance of an expected offensive to lay the foundation for self-justification.

But the reference to Japan and alleged hostility against us on the part of fanciful hordes of Japanese in Mexico made me wonder at the time. There were many evidences subsequent to that New Year's Day reception of an attempt to alienate us from Japan. As a climax to it all, as a clarification of what the Emperor had in mind, came the famous Zimmermann note, the instructions to the German Minister in Mexico to align both Japan and Mexico against us when we entered the war against Germany!

Plotting and intriguing for power and mastery! Such is the business of absolute rulers.

I believe that had the old Austrian Kaiser lived a little while longer, the prolongation of his life would have been most disastrous both for Austria and Hungary. I believe after the death of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo and after a year of war the German Emperor and autocracy were brooding over a plan according to which, on the death of Francis Joseph, the successor should be allowed to rule only as King or Grand-Duke of Austria, the title of Emperor of Austria to disappear and German Princes to be placed upon the thrones of Hungary and of a new kingdom of Bohemia. These and the king or grand-duke of Austria were to be subject-monarchs under the German Kaiser, who was thus to revive an empire, if not greater, at least more powerful, than the empires of Charlemagne and of Charles the Fifth. Many public utterances of the German Kaiser show that trend of mind.

Emperor William deliberately wrote and published, for instance, such a statement as this: "From childhood I have been influenced by five men, Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Theodoric II, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream of world empire. They failed. I have dreamed a dream of German world empire and my mailed fist shall succeed."

Could any declaration of a life's ambition be more explicit? It seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged animal or ambition drives him always on—he is never content with any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million, when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and desire, presses on insatiably with the first million in his pocket, more restless, more dissatisfied, than the hungry farmer's boy who first carries his ambitions to the great city.

When these zealous, scheming men gain the power of kingship, they usually bring disaster to their country. Their subjects find no compensation in the personal ambitions which hurry a nation into the miseries of war. Better Charles II, dallying with his ringletted mistresses, than an Alexander the Great; better Henry the Fourth of France, the "ever-green gallant," than Frederick the Great, bathing his people in blood. "Happy nations have no history."

William the Second, the present German Emperor, might well be called the Restless Emperor. He is never satisfied to remain more than a few days in any place or in any occupation. He commands his armies in person. He has won distinction as a writer and a public speaker. He is an excellent shot. He has composed music, written verses, superintended the production of a ballet, painted a picture; the beautiful Byzantine chapel in the Castle of Posen shows his genius for architecture; and, clothed in a clergyman's surplice, he has preached a sermon in Jerusalem. What ruler in all history has exhibited such extraordinary versatility?

In my conversations with the Emperor I have been struck by his knowledge of other countries, lands which he had never visited. He was familiar not only with their manners, customs, industries and public men, but with their commercial problems. Through his conversation one can see the keen eye of the Hanseatic trader looking with eager envy on the trade of a rival merchant. The Emperor, incidentally, while instinctively commercial, has an inborn contempt, if not for the law, at least for lawyers. In October, 1915, for instance, he remarked to me, "This is a lawyers' war, Asquith and Lloyd George in England, Poincaré and Briand in France."

In appearance and conversation Emperor William is very manly. His voice is strong, with a ring in it. He is a good rider. Following the German custom, he puts on his nightshirt every afternoon after lunch and sleeps for two hours—for the German is more devoted to the siesta than the Spaniard or Mexican. The hours of the Berlin Foreign Office, for example, were from eleven to one and from four to eight. After a heavy lunch at one o'clock all the officials took a nap for an hour or two. Also, the hours of the bank where I did business were from ten to one and from four till six. This meant that after six o'clock the clerks had to sit until perhaps eight making up the books for the day.

In 1916, the Olympic games were to have taken place at Berlin, and in September, 1913, before sailing for Germany, I attended a luncheon at the New York Athletic Club, given by President Page, with the members of the German Commission who had come to America to study athletics and to see what could be done in Germany so that the Germans could make a good showing at the games in their own city.

After my arrival in Germany one of the members of this commission told me that it was impossible, he believed, to organise the Germans as athletes until German meal and business hours had been changed. He said that with us in America young men leaving business at four-thirty, five or five-thirty, had time in which to exercise before their evening meal, but that in Germany the young men ate so much at the midday meal that they required their siesta after it, and that they did not leave their offices until so late in the evening that exercise and practice were impossible.

On the Emperor's table his wine glasses or rather cups are of silver. Possibly this is because he has been forbidden by his physician to drink wine. The Germans maintain the old-fashioned custom of drinking healths at meals. Some one far down the table will lift his glass, look at you and smile. You are then expected to lift your glass and drink with him and then both bow and smile over the glasses. As the Emperor must reciprocate with every one present, his champagne and wine are put in silver cups in order that those drinking wine with him do not see that he consumes no appreciable quantity of alcoholic liquor on the occasion of each health drinking. Some people in America may have often wished for a similar device.

The Emperor is out of uniform only on rare occasions. Occasionally, when in a foreign country, he has appeared in civilian dress, as shown in the accompanying photograph, taken in 1910 at the small town of Odde in Norway, where he had landed from his yacht. He appears to much better advantage in uniform than in civilian attire. Although uniformed while at sea as an Admiral, his favourite uniform is really that of the Hussars. In this picture he is accompanied by Baron von Treutler, Prussian Minister to Bavaria and Foreign Office representative with the Kaiser. Von Treutler is a German of the world. I met him at the Great General Headquarters, at the end of April, 1916, when the submarine question was being discussed. He came to dinner several times at the Chancellor's house, undoubtedly reporting back what was said to the Emperor, and I believe that his voice was against the resumption of ruthless submarine warfare and in favour of peace with America. Shortly after this period he fell into disfavour and went back to occupy his post of Minister in Munich.

In conversation, the Emperor reminds one very much of Roosevelt, talking with the same energy, the same violence of gesture and of voice so characteristic of our great ex-President. When the Emperor talks all his attention is given to you and all his mental energy is concentrated on the conversation. In this violence of manner and voice he seems not at all German. The average German is neither exuberant nor soft-spoken.

His favourite among his ancestors is William of Orange. Once he attended a fancy-dress ball in costume and make-up copied from the well-known picture of that Prince. The Emperor is strongly built and is about five feet nine inches tall. He sits well on his horse and walks, too, with head erect and shoulders thrown back—a picture of military precision.

A friend of mine who was present at Kiel with his yacht, in 1910, tells me that when all the yachts and warships had been assembled along the long narrow waterway which constitutes that harbour, with the crews lined up on deck or manning the yards, with bands crashing and banners floating, the Hohenzollern slowly steamed into the harbour and passed lazily and majestically through the waiting ships. Alone on the upper bridge stood the Monarch, attired in full military uniform, with white coat and tight breeches, high top boots, shining silver breastplate and silver helmet, surmounted by an eagle, the dress of the Prussian Guard Regiment so dear to those who portray romantic and kingly rôles upon the stage, a figure on whom all eyes were fixed, as splendid as that of Lohengrin, drawn by his fairy swan, coming to rescue the unjustly accused Princess. And, alas, the Germans like all this pomp and splendour. It appeals to something in the German heart and seems to create a feeling of affection and humility in the German breast.

When I talked at length one day with President Wilson on my visit to America in October, 1916, he remarked, half to himself, in surprise at my tale of war, "Why does all this horror come on the world? What causes it?" "Mr. President," I answered, "it is the king business."

I did not mean nominal kings as harmless as those of Spain and England. I was thinking of the powerful monarchs. A German republic would never have embarked on this war; a German Congress would have thought twice before sending their own sons to death in a deliberate effort to enslave other peoples. In a free Germany teachers, ministers and professors would not have taught the necessity of war. What German merchant in a free Germany would have thought that all the trade of the East, all the riches of Bagdad and Cairo and Mosul could compensate him for the death of his first-born or restore the blind eyes to the youngest son who now crouches, cowering, over the fire, awaiting death? For there was no trade necessity for this war. I know of no place in the world where German merchants were not free to trade. The disclosures of war have shown how German commerce had penetrated every land, to an extent unknown to the best informed. If the German merchants wanted this war in order to gain a German monopoly of the world's trade, then they are rightly suffering from the results of overweening covetousness.

Experts in insanity say that the Roman Emperors as soon as they attained the rule of the world were made mad by the possession of that stupendous power. The sceptre of Emperor William is mighty. No more autocratic influence proceeds from any other monarch or ruler. But you will say how about our President in time of war? Great power can safely be given to a president. Our presidents have all risen from the ranks. Usually they have gone through the school of hard knocks. And there are ways of keeping them abreast of the people.

It is told that hidden from public view, crouched down in the chariot in which the successful Roman pro-consul or general drove triumphantly through the crowded streets of Rome, was a slave celebrated for his impertinence, whose duty it was to make the one honoured feel that, after all, he was nothing more than an ordinary mortal blessed with a certain amount of good luck. Probably as the chariot passed by the forum the slave would say, after a thunderous burst of applause from the populace: "Do not take that applause too seriously. That is the T. Quintus Cassius Association whose chief received a hundred sesterces from your brother-in-law yesterday, on account, with a promise of a hundred more in case the Association's cheers seemed loud and sincere."

So in America the press, serious and comic, takes the place of the humble slave and throws enough cold water on the head of any temporarily successful American to reduce it to normal proportions. Besides, the President knows that some day he must return to the ranks, live again with his neighbours, seek out the threads of a lost law practice or eke out a livelihood on the Chautauqua circuit in the discomfort of tiny hotels, travelling in upper berths instead of private cars and eating on lunch stools in small stations instead of in the sumptuous surroundings of presidential luxury. These are sobering prospects.

Kings, on the other hand, come to look on their subjects as toys. A post-card popular in Austria and Germany showed the old Emperor, Francis Joseph, seated at a table with a little great-grand-nephew on his knee, teaching the child to move toy soldiers about on the boards; and it is unfortunately true that the same youngster—should the system of the Central Empires be perpetuated—will be able to move his subjects across the map of Europe just as he did the toy soldiers on his great-grand-uncle's table. He will be able to tear men from their work and their homes, to seize great scientists, great chemists, great inventors—men who may be on the eve of discoveries or remedies destined to rid the human race of the scourge of cancer or the white plague—and send them to death in the marshes of Macedonia or the fastnesses of the Carpathians because some fellow-king or emperor has deceived or outwitted him.

In a monarchy all subjects seem the personal property of the monarch and all expressions of power become personal. This extends throughout all countries ruled by royalty.

When, for example, a member of the royal family dies, even in another country, it must be lamented by the court circle of other lands. Here is the official notice sent to all diplomats and members of the Imperial German Court on the occasion of the death of the Queen of Sweden.

"The Court goes into mourning to-day for Her Majesty the Queen-Mother of Sweden for three weeks up to and including the 19th of January, 1914.

"Ladies wear black silk dresses, for the first fourteen days, including January 12th, with black hair ornaments, black gloves, black fans and black jewelry; the last eight days with white hair ornaments, grey gloves, white fans and pearls.

"Gentlemen wear the whole time a black band on the left sleeve. Civilians wear with the embroidered coat, during the first fourteen days, including January 12th, on occasions of Grand Gala, black buckles and swords with black sheathes. During the last eight days bright buckles; on occasions of 'Half Gala' gold or silver embroidered trousers of the color of the uniform and in the one as in the other case gold or silver embroidered hat with white plume; with the 'small' uniform, however, black trousers (or knee-breeches, black silk stockings, shoes with black bows and the 'three-cornered' hat with black plume). During the first fourteen days gentlemen wear black woolen vests and black gloves, in the last eight days black silk vests and grey gloves.

"Berlin, December 30, 1913.
"The Ober-Ceremonienmeister.
"Graf A. Eulenburg.

"By command of His Majesty the Emperor, mourning will be suspended for New Year's Day and the 17th and 18th of January."

So, it is apparent what a close corporation all the royal families make and the peoples are simply viewed as the personal property of the ruling princes. In his telegram which the German Kaiser wrote to President Wilson on August tenth, observe that all is personal. The Kaiser says, "I telegraphed to His Majesty the King, personally, but that if, etc., I would employ my troops elsewhere.... His Majesty answered that he thought my offer...." He speaks of the King of the Belgians "having refused my petition for a free passage." He refers to "my Ambassador in London."

This telegram shows, on the other hand, another thing,—the great ability of the Kaiser. Undoubtedly he knew why I was coming to see him—to present the offer of mediation of President Wilson—but from our conversation I do not think that he had even in his mind prepared the answer, which sets forth his position in entering the war.

He said, "Wait a moment, I shall write something for the President." Then taking the telegraph blanks lying on the table, he wrote rapidly and fluently. It was a message in a foreign language, and, whatever we may think of its content, at any rate it is clear, concise, consecutive and forceful.

The personal touch runs through that extraordinary series of telegrams in the famous "Willy-Nicky" correspondence between Kaiser Wilhelm and the last of the Romanoffs, discovered in Petrograd by Herman Bernstein. These reveal, moreover, the surpassing craft of the German Kaiser. He was the master schemer. Touting for German trade, always for his advantage, he twists the poor half-wit of the Winter Palace like a piece of straw.

Emperor William was not satisfied with a quiet life as patron of trade. As he studied the portraits of his ancestors, he felt that they gazed at him with reproachful eyes, demanded that he add, as did they, to the domains of the Hohenzollerns, that he return from war in triumph at the head of a victorious army with the keys of fallen cities borne before him in conquering march.

One-tenth of Frederick the Great's people fell, but to the poverty-stricken peasant woman of Prussia, lamenting her husband and dead sons, did it matter that the rich province of Silesia had been added to the Prussian Crown? What was it to that broken mother whether the Silesian peasants acknowledged the Prussian King or the Austrian Empress? Despots both. And what countless serfs fell in the wars between the King and the Empress! I once asked von Jagow when this war would end. He answered, "An old history of the Seven Years' War concludes, 'The King and the Empress were tired of war, so they made peace.' That is how this war will end." Will it? Will it end in a draw, to be resumed when some king feels the war fever on him? No, this war must end despots, and with them all wars!

It is all such a matter of personal whim. For instance before Bulgaria entered the war on the side of Germany, even the best informed Germans predicted that King Ferdinand would never join Germany because of an incident which occurred in the Royal Palace of Berlin. This is how it happened:

It is the custom for one monarch to make his pals in the King business officers of his army or navy. Thus the German Emperor was General Field Marshal and Proprietor of the 34th "William the first, German Emperor and King of Prussia" Infantry, and of the 7th "William the Second, German Emperor and King of Prussia" Hussars, in the Austro-Hungarian Army; Chief of the "King Frederick William III St. Petersburg Life Guards," the 85th "Viburg" Infantry and the 13th "Narva" Hussars, and the "Grodno" Hussars of the Guard, in the Russian Army; Field Marshal in British Army; Hon. Admiral of the British Fleet and Colonel-in-Chief 1st Dragoons; General in the Swedish Army and Flag Admiral of the Fleet; Hon. Admiral of the Norwegian and Danish Fleets; Admiral of the Russian Fleet; Hon. Captain-General in the Spanish Army and Hon. Colonel of the 11th "Naumancia" Spanish Dragoons; and Hon. Admiral of the Greek Fleet.

The King of Bulgaria was Chief of the 4th Thuringia Infantry Regiment No. 72, in the Prussian Army. As per custom, on a visit to Berlin he donned his uniform of the Thuringian Infantry. He had put on a little weight, and military unmentionables, be it known, are notoriously tight. So as he leaned far out of the Palace window to admire the passing troops, he presented a mark so tempting that the Emperor, in jovial mood, was impelled to administer a resounding spank on the sacred seat of the Czar of all the Balkans. Instead of taking the slap in the same jovial spirit in which it was given the Czar Ferdinand, a little jealous of the self-assumed title of Czar, became furiously angry—so angry that even the old diplomats of the Metternich school believed for a time that he never would forgive the whack and even might refuse to join Germany. But Czar Ferdinand, believing in the military power of Germany, cast his already war-worn people in the war against the Allies, much to the regret of many Bulgarian statesmen who, having been educated at Robert College, near Constantinople, a college founded and maintained by Americans, and having imbibed somewhat of the American spirit there, were not over-pleased to think of themselves arrayed against the United States of America.

But there is no monarch in all Europe who is more wily than Czar Ferdinand. At a great feast in Bulgaria at which Emperor William was present, Czar Ferdinand toasted the Emperor in Latin and alluded to him as "Miles Gloriosus"—which all present took to mean "glorious soldier"; but the exact Latin meaning of "gloriosus" is "glorious" in its first meaning and "boastful" in its second, a meaning well known in Berlin where, at the "Little Theatre," in a series of plays of all ages, the "Miles Gloriosus" of Plautus had just been presented—a boastful, conceited soldier, the "Miles Gloriosus," the chief character of the comedy.

Nothing illustrates more vividly the belief of the royal families of the Central Empires in their God-given right to rule the plain people than those few words of Maximilian written before his ill-fated expedition to Mexico. Speaking of the Palace at Caserta, near Naples, he wrote, "The monumental stairway is worthy of Majesty. What can be finer than to imagine the sovereign placed at its head, resplendent in the midst of these marble pillars,—to fancy this monarch, like a God, graciously permitting the approach of human beings. The crowd surges upward. The King vouchsafes a gracious glance, but from a very lofty elevation. All powerful, imperial, he makes one step towards them with a smile of infinite condescension. Could Charles V, could Maria Theresa appear thus at the head of this ascending stair, who would not bow their heads before that majestic, God-given power?"

What was the condition of the people under Maria Theresa, whom Maximilian spoke of as possessing a power that, according to him, was so God-given no one could fail to bow the head before her majestic presence? The peasants, under her rule, were practically slaves, as they could not leave the lord's lands nor even marry without his permission, nor could they bring their children up to any profession other than that of labourer. In other words, the children of the slave must remain slaves.

Poor Maximilian! He was a brother of the late Emperor Francis Joseph and a member of that Kaiserbund and royal system which, while America was busy with domestic difficulties between the North and South, sought to wrest from Mexico her liberty. I wonder if the Mexicans have forgotten the incident and its implications.

But one-man power always fails in the end. No man, king or president, whatever he may himself think, has a brain all powerful and all knowing. There is wisdom in counsel. Too much of some favourite dish may lead to indigestion and that to bad judgment at a critical time and disaster. Napoleon III, just before 1870, was suffering from a wasting disease and so allowed himself to be ruled by the beautiful, narrow, fascinating, foolish Spanish Empress whom he gave to the French in a moment of passion because, as she said to him, "The way to her room lay through the church door." Colonel Stoffel, the French Military Attaché to the Berlin Embassy, wrote confidentially report after report to the Emperor telling him of the immense military strength of Prussia and of her readiness for immediate war. But most of these reports were afterwards found unopened in the desk of the doting, sick and fallen Emperor.

For, after all, however divine the King, Emperor or Kaiser may consider himself, he is but a vulnerable human being—and no accident of birth should give even a small number of people on this earth into the hands of a single mortal.

CHAPTER II

WHO DOES THE KAISER'S THINKING AND WHO DECIDED ON THE BREAK WITH AMERICA?

Because the German Emperor possesses talents of no mean order, because of his fiery energy, because of the charm of his conversation and personality, his ambitions for world conquest are most dangerous to the peace of the world.

Certainly of all the ruling houses of the world, the Hohenzollerns have shown themselves the most able, and of the six sons of the Kaiser there is not one who is unable or unworthy from the autocratic standpoint to carry on the traditions of the house. They are all young men who in any field of human endeavour are more than a match for men of their age, and by reason of these qualities, so rare in kings and princes, it has been easy to arouse a great feeling of devotion for the royal house of Prussia among all classes in Germany, with the possible exception of the Social Democrats. The other kings and princes of Germany have been overshadowed, mere puppets in the king business, by the surpassing talents of the Hohenzollerns, and so the task of those who, in Germany and out, hope for that evolution towards liberalism or even democracy which alone can make the nations of the world feel safe in making peace with Germany, is beset with numerous difficulties.

Before the war the Emperor turned much of his enterprising talent into peaceful channels, into the development of commercial and industrial Germany. No one has a greater respect for wealth and commercial success than the Emperor. He would have made a wonderful success as a man of business. He ought to be the richest person in the Empire, but the militaristic system which he fostered gave that distinction to another. For the richest person in Germany before the war was Frau Krupp-Bohlen, daughter of the late manufacturer of cannon. She inherited control of the factories and the greater part of the fortune of her father and was rated at about $75,000,000. It was a contest between Prince Henckel-Donnersmarck and the Emperor for second place, each being reputed to possess about sixty to sixty-five million dollars. Most of the Emperor's wealth is in landed estates, and of these he has, I believe, about sixty scattered through the Empire. The Emperor is credited with being a large stockholder in both the Krupp works and the Hamburg-American Line. What a sensation it would make in this country were the President to become a large stockholder in Bethlehem Steel or the Winchester Arms Company!

The earnings of the Krupp's factory since the War have been immense and doubtless the fortune of the Krupp heiress since then has more than doubled. The subscriptions to war loans and war charities, thrown by Frau Krupp-Bohlen and the Krupp directors as sops to public opinion, are mere nothings to the fat earnings made by that renowned factory in this war.

And what a sensation, too, would be caused in America if the Bethlehem Steel Company or the United States Steel Corporation were to purchase newspapers or take over The Associated Press in order to control public opinion! Yet the German nation stands by, apathetic, propagandised to a standstill, stuffed and fed by news handed them by the Krupps and the alliance of six great industrial iron and steel companies of western Germany.

A question which interests every inhabitant of the world to-day is, where does the ultimate power reside in Germany?

Where is the force which controls the country? The Reichstag, of course, has no real power; the twenty-five ruling princes of Germany, voting in the Bundesrat through their representatives, control the Reichstag, and the Chancellor is not responsible to either but only to the Emperor.

Consider, for a moment, the personality of von Bethmann-Hollweg, Chancellor of the Empire for eight or nine years. He lacked both determination and decision. Lovable, good, kind, respected, the Chancellor, to a surprising degree, was minus that quality which we call "punch." He never led, but followed. He sought always to find out first which side of the question seemed likely to win,—where the majority would stand. Usually he poised himself on middle ground. He could not have been the ultimate power in the State.

I have a feeling that the Kaiser himself always felt in some vague way that his luck lay with America, and I imagine that he himself was against anything that might lead to a break with this country. What, then, was the mysterious power which changed, for instance, the policy of the German Empire towards America and ordered unrestricted submarine war at the risk of bringing against the Empire a rich and powerful nation of over a hundred million population?

The Foreign Office did not have this decision. Its members, made up of men who had travelled in other countries, who knew the latent power of America, did not advise this step—with the exception, however, of Zimmermann, who, carried away by his sudden elevation, and by the glamour of personal contact with the Emperor, the Princes and the military chiefs, yielded to the arguments of military expediency.

The one force in Germany which ultimately decides every great question, except the fate of its own head, is the Great General Staff.

On one side of the Königs-Platz, in Berlin, stands the great building of the Reichstag, floridly decorated, glittering with gold, surrounded by statues and filled, during the sessions of the Reichstag, with a crowd of representatives who do not represent and who, like monkeys in a cage, jibber and debate questions which they have no power to decide. Across the square and covering the entire block in a building that resembles in external appearance a jail, built of dark red brick without ornament or display, is the home of the Great General Staff. This institution has its own spies, its own secret service, its own newspaper censors. Here the picked officers of the German army, the inheritors of the power of von Moltke, work industriously. Apart from the people of Germany, they wield the supreme power of the State and when the Staff decides a matter of foreign policy or even an internal measure, that decision is final.

The peculiar relations of the Emperor to the Great General Staff make it possible for him to dismiss in disgrace a head of the Staff who has failed. But at all times the Kaiser is more or less controlled in his action by the Staff as a whole and at a time when the chief of the Great General Staff is successful, the latter, even on questions of foreign policy, claims the right then to make a decision which the Emperor may find it difficult to disregard. This is because in an autocratic government, as in any other, personality counts for much. Von Tirpitz controlled all departments of the navy, although only at the head of one. The Ludendorff-Hindenburg combination, especially if backed by Mackensen, can bend the will of the Emperor.

THE IRON CROSS. IN THE EXPECTATION OF A SHORT WAR THOUSANDS OF THESE CROSSES WERE DISTRIBUTED IN THE FIRST MONTHS OF THE WAR AND THE PRECEDENT THUS ESTABLISHED HAS LED TO THE GIVING OF PERHAPS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THESE DECORATIONS

Yet while the head of the Great General Staff may fall, the system always remains. An unknown, mysterious power it is, unchanging, and relentless, a power that watches over the German army with unseen eyes. It seeks always additions to its own ranks from those young officers who have distinguished themselves by their talents in the profession of arms. What does it mean to them?

It is January twenty-seventh, the birthday of the Kaiser in a German garrison town. The officers of the regiment are assembled in the mess-hall, the regimental band plays the national air of Prussia, "Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz" (Hail, thou, in the conqueror's wreath). (The music is familiar to us because we sing it to the words of "America." The British sing the air to the words of "God Save the King." This music was originally written for Louis XIV.) The health of the Emperor is proposed and drunk with "Hurrahs" and again "Hurrahs," and then comes a telegram from Berlin announcing the promotions and decorations granted to some of the officers of the regiment: the most envied of all is that younger officer, perhaps the student among them, who receives the laconic despatch telling him that he is detailed to the Great General Staff!

Then commences for the young officer a life of almost monastic devotion. No amusements, no social obligations or entertainments must interfere in the slightest with his earnest work in that plain building of mystery which so calmly, and with such mock modesty, faces the garish home of the Reichstag on the Königs-Platz, in Berlin.

Who decided on the break with America? It was not the Chancellor, notoriously opposed; it was not the Foreign Office, nor the Reichstag, nor the Princes of Germany who decided to brave the consequences of a rupture with the United States on the submarine question. It was not the Emperor; but a personality of great power of persuasion. It was Ludendorff, Quartermaster General, chief aid and brains to Hindenburg, Chief of the Great General Staff, who decided upon this step.

Unquestionably a party in the navy, undoubtedly von Tirpitz himself, backed by the navy and by many naval officers and the Naval League, advocated the policy and promised all Germany peace within three months after it was adopted; unquestionably public opinion made by the Krupps and the League of Six (the great iron and steel companies), desiring annexation of the coal and iron lands of France, demanded this as a quick road to peace. But it was the deciding vote of the Great General Staff that finally embarked the German nation on this dangerous course.

I do not think the Emperor himself, unless backed by the whole public opinion of Germany, would dare to withstand the Great General Staff which he himself creates. They are so much his devotees that they would overrule him in what they consider his interest.

Whatever thinking the Emperor does nowadays is more or less on his own account. There is to-day no shining favourite who has his ear to the exclusion of others. The last known favourite was Prince Max Egon von Fürstenberg, a man now about fifty-four years old, tall, handsome, possessed at one time of great wealth and a commanding position in Austria as well as Germany, with the privilege of citizenship in both countries. The Prince in his capacity as Grand Marshal accompanied the Emperor, walking in his train as the latter entered the White Hall at a great ball early in the winter of 1914. The Emperor was stopping at the Prince's palace in southern Germany at Donnaueschingen when the affair at Zabern and the cutting down of the lame shoemaker there shook the political and military foundations of the German Empire. Prince Max together with Prince Hohenlohe, Duke of Ugest, embarked, however, on a career of vast speculation in an association known as the Princes' Trust. They built, for instance, the great Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, and a hotel of the same name in Hamburg, and an enormous combined beer restaurant, theatre and moving picture hall on the Nollendorff Platz in Berlin. They organised banks, and the name of the princely house of Fürstenberg appeared as an advertisement for light beer. They even, through their interest in a department store on the east end of the Leipziger Strasse, sold pins and stockings and ribbons to the working classes of Berlin. As this top-heavy structure of foolish business enterprise tumbled, the favour of Prince Max at the Imperial Court fell with it. For the Emperor never brooks failure.

During the present war Von Gontard, related by marriage, I believe, to brewer Busch in St. Louis; von Treutler, who represented the Foreign Office; von Falkenhayn, for a while head of the Great General Staff and Minister of War, and the Prince of Pless, and von Plessen with several minor adjutants, have constituted the principal figures in the surroundings of the Emperor. Falkenhayn fell because of his failure in the attack of Verdun, ordered by him or for which he was the responsible commander. Von Treutler probably told the truth; he was against the breaking of the submarine pledges to America; and Prince Pless, who remains still in favour, never took a decided stand on any of these questions. Prince Pless, as Prince Max was, is rich. His fortune before the war, represented mostly by great landed estates in Silesia, mines, etc., amounted approximately to thirty million dollars. His wife is an Englishwoman, once celebrated as one of the great beauties of London, daughter of Colonel and Mrs. Cornwallis-West, and sister of the Duchess of Westminster and Cornwallis-West, formerly married to Lady Randolph Churchill, and now the husband of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the well-known actress. And therefore the position of Princess Pless has not been enviable during this war.

Emperor William does not, like many kings and dictators, confine himself in his search for general information regarding men and conditions to the reports of a few persons. He always has been accessible, seeking even to meet strangers, not merely his own people but foreigners, thus escaping the penalty of those rulers who shut themselves up and who have all their information and thoughts coloured for them by the preferences and desires of prejudiced counsellors.

The chiefs of the army are always in close touch with the Kaiser, but he is consulted on army commands and promotions much less than on civil and even naval promotions.

Always with him is the head of the Civil Cabinet, who advises with the Emperor on all appointments and promotions on the civil side of the Government, helping even to make and unmake Ambassadors and Chancellors. Admiral von Mueller, head of the Marine Cabinet, is constantly in the Emperor's company. He is a shrewd, capable, reasonable man; for a long time Admiral von Mueller was against taking the chance of war with America and perhaps, even to the end, persisted in this course. After the fall of von Tirpitz, von Mueller acquired more real power. But in a sense it is incorrect to speak of the forced retirement of von Tirpitz as a "fall," because from his retirement he was able to carry on such a campaign in favour of "ruthless" submarine war that the mass of the people, Reichstag deputies, the General Staff, and all came over to his point of view and von Bethmann-Hollweg, who had brought about his dismissal, was forced officially to adopt the policy first sponsored by this skilful old sea-dog and politician.

CHAPTER III

WHO SANK THE "LUSITANIA"?

Who is responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania, for the deliberate murder which has always remained deep in the consciousness of every American, and which at the outset turned this great nation against Germany?

In the first place there was no mistake—no question of orders exceeded or disobeyed. Count von Bernstorff frankly, boldly, defiantly, and impudently advertised to the world, with the authority of the German Government, that the attempt to sink the Lusitania would be made. The Foreign Office, no doubt, acquainted him with the new policy. Von Tirpitz, then actual head of the Navy Department and virtual head of the whole navy, openly showed his approval of the act, and threw all his influence in favor of a continuation of ruthless tactics. But a question which involved a breach of international law, a possible break with a friendly power, could not be decided by even the Foreign Office and Navy together.

The Great General Staff claims a hand in the decision of all questions of foreign policy which even remotely affect the conduct of the war. Similarly it was the duty of the Foreign Office to point out the possible consequences under the rules of international law; but when the question of submarine warfare was to be determined, the consultation was usually at the Great General Headquarters. At these meetings von Tirpitz or the navy presented their views and the Great General Staff sat with the Emperor in council, although it was reported in Charleville at the time of the settlement of May, 1916, that Falkenhayn, speaking in favour of submarine war, had been rebuked by the Emperor, and told to stick to military affairs.

All the evidence points to the Emperor himself as the responsible head who at this time ordered or permitted this form of murder. The orders were given at a time when the Emperor dominated the General Staff, not in one of those periods, as outlined in a previous chapter when the General Staff, as at present, dominated the Emperor. When I saw the Kaiser in October, 1915, he said that he would not have sunk the Lusitania, that no gentleman would have killed so many women and children. Yet he never disapproved the order. Other boats were sunk thereafter in the same manner and only by chance was the loss of life smaller when the Arabic was torpedoed. It is argued that, had the Emperor considered beforehand how many non-combatants would be killed, he would not have given the order to sink that particular boat. But what a lame excuse! A man is responsible for the natural and logical results of his own acts. It may be too that Charles IX, when he ordered, perhaps reluctantly, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, did not know that so many would be killed, but there can be no Pilate-washing-of-the-hands,—Emperor William was responsible. He must bear the blame before the world.

Blood-shed in honorable war is soon forgotten; but the cowardly stroke by which the Kaiser sought to terrorise America, by which he sent to a struggling death of agony in the sea, the peaceful men and women and children passengers of the Lusitania, may ever remain a cold boundary line between Germany and America unless the German people utter a condemnation of the tragedy that rings true and repentant.

We want to live at peace with the world when this war is over, to be able to grasp once more the hands of those now our enemies, but how can any American clasp in friendship the hand of Germans who approve this and the many other outrages that have turned the conscience of the world against Germany?

To Americans in Berlin, the sinking of the Lusitania came like a lightning stroke. No Bernstorff warnings had prepared us. I believed I would be recalled immediately. In making preparations to leave, I sent a secretary to see the head of one of the largest banks in Germany, a personal friend, to ask him, in case we should leave, to take for safe-keeping into his bank our silver, pictures, etc. He said to my secretary, "Tell Judge Gerard that I will take care of his valuables for him, but tell him also, that if the Mauretania comes out to-morrow we shall sink her, too."

That was the attitude of a majority of the business men of Germany. German casualties at that time had been great so that the mere loss of human life did not appal as would have been the case in a country unused to the daily posting of long lists of dead and wounded. Consequently the one feeling of Germany was of rejoicing, believing indeed that victory was near, that the "damned Yankees" would be so scared that they would not dare travel on British ships, that the submarine war would be a great success, that France and England deprived of food, steel and supplies from America soon would be compelled to sue for peace, especially since the strategically clever, if unlawful, invasion of France by way of Belgium had driven the French from the best coal and iron districts of their country.

I do recall that one Imperial Minister, a reasonable individual whose name I think it best not to mention, expressed in private his sorrow, not only for the deed itself, but for the mistaken policy which he saw, even then, would completely turn in the end the sympathies of America to the Entente Allies. And there were others,—among the intellectuals, and, especially, among the merchants of Hamburg and Frankfort who had travelled in the outer world both on pleasure and business, who realised what a profound effect the drowning of innocent men, women and children would have on our peace-loving people.

Many of these men said to me, "The sinking of the Lusitania is the greatest German defeat of all the war. Its consequences will be far-reaching; its impression, deep and lasting."

The Teutonic Knights, from whom the ruling class of Prussia is descended, kept the Slavic population in subjection by a reign of physical terror. This class believes that to rule one must terrorise. The Kaiser himself referring to the widespread indignation caused by German outrages of the present war, has said: "The German sword will command respect."

Terrorism—"Schrecklichkeit"—has always formed a part, not only of German military inclination, but of German military policy. I often said to Germans of the Government, "Are you yourselves subject to being terrorised? If another nation murdered or outraged your women, your children, would it cause you to cringe in submission or would you fight to the last? If you would fight yourselves, what is there in the history of America which makes you think that Americans will submit to mere frightfulness; in what particular do you think Americans are so different from Germans?" But they shrugged their shoulders.

I have heard that in parts of Germany school children were given a holiday to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania. I was busy with preparations, too anxious about the future to devote much time to the study of the psychology of the Germans in other parts of Germany at this moment, but with the exception of the one Cabinet Minister aforementioned, and expressions of regret from certain merchants and intellectuals, it cannot be denied that a great wave of exultation swept over Germany. It was felt that this was a master stroke, that victory was appreciably nearer and that no power on earth could withstand the brute force of the Empire.

Mingled with this was a deep hate of all things American inculcated by the Berlin Government. And we must understand, therefore, that no trick and no evasion, no brutality will be untried by Germany in this war. It was against the rules of war to use poison gas, but first the newspapers of Germany were carefully filled with official statements saying the British and French had used this unfair means. Coincidentally with these reports the German army was trying by this dastardly innovation to break the British lines. It was not a new procedure. Months before the Lusitania crime, the newspapers and people had been poisoned with official statements inflaming the people against America, particularly for our commerce with the Entente in war supplies.

It was the right, guaranteed by a treaty to which Germany was a signatory, of our private individuals to sell munitions and supplies, but as Prince von Buelow once remarked on December 13th, 1900, in the Reichstag, "I feel no embarrassment in saying here, publicly, that for Germany, right can never be a determining consideration."

Indeed the tame professors were let loose and many of them rushed into government-paid print to prove that, according to law, the murders of the Lusitania were justified. A German chemist friend of mine told me that the chemists of Germany were called on, after poison gas had been met by British and French, to devise some new and deadly chemical. Flame throwers soon appeared together with more insidious gases. And it is only because of the vigilance of other nations that German spies have not succeeded in sowing the microbes of pestilence in countries arrayed against lawless Germany.

Remember there is nothing that Kaiserism is not capable of trying in the hope of victory.

CHAPTER IV

THE KAISER AND "LÈSE-MAJESTÉ"

The talents and ability and agreeable personality of the German Emperor must not blind us to the fact that he is the centre of the system which has brought the world to a despair and misery such as it never has known since the dawn of history. We must remember that all his utterances disclose the soul of the conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a conspicuous place in the gallery of human events; envious, too, of the great names of the past, his ears so tuned for admiration and applause that they fail to hear the great, long drawn wail of agony that echoes around the world. His eyes are so blinded with the sheen of his own glory that they do not see the mutilated corpses, the crime, the pestilence, the hunger, the incalculable sorrow that sweeps the earth from the jungles of Africa to the frozen plains of the North, from Siberia to Saskatchewan, from Texas to Trieste, from Alaska to Afghanistan—everywhere he has brought the dark angel of mourning to millions upon millions of desolate homes.

Do you remember that picture of the Conquerors, Cæsar and Alexander, Attila and Napoleon, Charlemagne and Cambyses, astride their horses or in chariots in the centre of the picture, dark, gloomy, menacing? On each side of them, lining a vast plain that fades in the distance, lie the dead—stiff, cold, grey, reproachful;—yet all the victims of those conquerors, as well as all their battalions do not equal the countless number that have already drenched a forgiving earth with their dying blood in this war:—victims all of the vain-glorious ambition of a single mortal—the German Kaiser.

But the despot who sends his subjects to die, as Frederick the Great said, "in order to be talked about" is not indigenous to any one particular country. Like conditions produce like results. The career of Louis XIV, the "Sun King," for instance, whose wars and extravagances sowed the seeds of the French Revolution, is epitomised in two phrases uttered by him: "I am the State" and "I almost had to wait."

After the French Revolution, another despot, the first Napoleon, not only sought the conquest of the world, but made his ex-waiter and ex-groom marshals and his washerwomen duchesses ape the manners and customs of the old régime. Despotism has been characteristic of many generations but the world had thought itself rid of the worst offenders.

Royalty still lives to torture and retard civilisation. Its methods of perpetuation are unchanged from the middle ages. What is lèse-majesté but a survival of feudalism, a kind of slavery to inviolable tradition—the immunity of the monarch and his family from that criticism and freedom of discussion which is the essence of democracy?

THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY STAFF, BERLIN: MR. GERARD IN THE CENTER

To commit lèse-majesté, to speak slightingly of royalty in Germany, is a very serious offence.

I have taken the following examples of decisions in lèse-majesté cases not from the records of the lower courts, the decisions of which may be reversed, but from the records of the Imperial Supreme Court at Leipzig, the highest court in the land.

For instance: The defendant, a speaker at a meeting consisting chiefly of sympathisers with the socialist cause, made the following statement in reference to a speech of the Kaiser:

"Under the protection of the highest power of the State the gauntlet has been flung before the (socialist) Party, the gauntlet which means a combat for life and death. Well, then, so far as the insult concerns our Party, we are so far above it, that the mudslinging—no matter from what direction it may come—cannot touch us."

The defence pointed out that the defendant "had considered each word carefully before he had made the speech, and that in doing so, wanted to avoid any possibility of lèse-majesté."

The Supreme Court held that although the defendant carefully selected his words and tried to evade prosecution, he must be adjudged guilty, because his audience could not have misunderstood the insinuation. The sentence was affirmed.

Dangerous as it is to say anything that can be construed as derogatory of the authority, of the Kaiser it is equally dangerous to attack the dead members of the Royal House.

The editor of the Volkswacht had published in his paper an article entitled "The German Characteristics of the Hohenzollerns" which the Lower Court interpreted to be a reply to a statement of the Kaiser, which had referred to a group of people considered unworthy by him to be called "Germans." Without doubt the editor was alluding to the Kaiser's speech, made at Koenigsberg to the newly enlisted army recruits, in which he called the socialists "vaterlandslose Gesellen," i.e., scoundrels without any country. The writer, however, discussed "the conduct of the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg and of his brother Albrecht, Elector of Mainz, before and during the election of Emperor Charles V."

The defence claimed that the defendant could not be held guilty of lèse-majesté against the Kaiser since the defendant "criticised the Kaiser's ancestors and not the Kaiser himself." But the Court held that it was the intent of the defendant to discredit the "House of the Hohenzollerns, and that the Kaiser by implication, being the living head of the Hohenzollern family, was thereby insulted." The Court further states that the defendant's article could not be regarded as a scientific or historical contribution since the Volkswacht's subscribers, consisting chiefly of workingmen, had neither any understanding of nor interest in dynastic intrigues of the sixteenth century.

Even those Americans who have expressed themselves freely about the Kaiser will, after the war is over, be compelled to take their "cures" in some country other than Germany, for in one case it was held that an American citizen was rightfully convicted in Baden of lèse-majesté because of statements made by him in Switzerland.

The Court held that the judgment of the Lower Court must be sustained, since the German Imperial Laws have precedence over any treaties engaged in by the Grand Duchy of Baden and the United States and "that the fact that the defendant had become a citizen of the United States does not exempt him from prosecution in the German Imperial Courts."

In another case a newspaper editor criticised a speech delivered by the Kaiser before the Reichstag on December 6th, 1898. The defendant did not refer to the person of the emperor himself, but simply attacked and ridiculed the propositions and proposals made by His Imperial Majesty. The defence pointed out that the Kaiser's speech was not an act of the Kaiser's own personal will, but only an act of government for which the Imperial Chancellor should be responsible, and that the defendant was not conscious of the fact that the criticism contained in his article could be an insult to the person of the Kaiser.

It was held, however, by the Court that a criticism of the Kaiser's speech at the opening of the Reichstag is always to be regarded as a criticism of the Kaiser's person, and that the plea that the Imperial Chancellor should be responsible for acts of government of this sort is not sustained.

In other words it is, in Germany, a crime to criticise or ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred lips of the Kaiser.

If the Kaiser announces that two and two make five, jail awaits the subject who dares to ridicule that novel arithmetical proposition.

It is because of these convictions for lèse-majesté that the Berliners, when discussing the Emperor at their favourite table or "Stammtisch" in the beer halls and cafés, always refer to him as "Lehmann."

CHAPTER V

WHEN THE KAISER THOUGHT WE WERE BLUFFING

An Unpublished Diary

Kaiserdom is an institution with which the American people are really unacquainted—a complex institution the parallel of which does not exist elsewhere. How it sought to play double with the United States is in a general way familiar to Americans, but I think the record of what happened in the eighteen months preceding our break with Germany will illustrate exactly the currents and cross-currents of official opinion which led the United States to be scrupulously cautious in its course before entering the war. As I talked with the Emperor or the Chancellor or the Foreign Minister, I jotted down from time to time notes of their conversation as well as brief summaries of the information available to me from other sources. Naturally I cabled to the Department of State the most significant news, but much of this was not published because our Government was proceeding cautiously and did not wish to be embarrassed by publicity of its negotiations. There is every reason now, however, why the facts should be known. I am reproducing here the diary I kept from June, 1915, to the end of January, 1917, when unrestricted submarine warfare was resumed and our break with Germany came. I did not have the idea then of ever publishing my memoranda, so my comments were written without restraint. They show, I am sure, what the general trend of sentiment was in Germany for and against submarine warfare and disclose, too, that while the Emperor was often in the background and seemingly not the most powerful factor in the situation, it was his system that dominated Germany, his spirit that bred the lust for military gain at whatever cost—even the respect of the whole civilised world. Here are the notes as I penned them at the time:

June, 1915. Lincoln never passed through a crisis greater than that with which the President is contending. He is fighting, first, for humanity and some decency in war, and, second, determining whether a European Emperor shall or shall not dictate the political attitude of certain of our citizens.

It is regrettable to be compelled to think that the German nation knows no treaty or law except the limit of its own desires.

We are still awaiting the second Lusitania note and I fear that Germany will never consent to abandon its present hideous method of submarine war. It is extraordinary to hear Germans of all classes extoll mere brute force as the only rule of international life. It is a warning to us to create and increase our fleet and coast defences.

The Germans not only do not fear war with us, but state frankly they do not believe we dare to declare it, call us cowardly bluffers and say our notes are worse than waste paper. Breaking diplomatic relations means nothing.

Von Wiegand, the newspaper correspondent, is just back from Przemysl and says the Russians were defeated by woful lack of artillery and ammunition. Their power for offence is broken for many months. From the West I hear the French are rather discouraged.

Germany has ample food and gets all copper, etc., necessary for war purposes through Sweden in exchange for potash and other commodities.

An officer of the war ministry, who comes to see me about prisoners, etc., told me last night that because the French have kept several hundred Germans as prisoners in Dahomey and other places in Africa, fifteen thousand French prisoners will be sent to work in the unhealthy swamps of Holstein. I have cabled the State Department often about this Dahomey business, transmitting the request of Germany that these prisoners be sent to Europe. Germans cannot be beaten on reprisals.

Two or three German-Americans have attacked the President, Secretary Bryan and our Government, some publicly. I have ordered their passports taken away and hope to be sustained. To permit them to continue poisoning the atmosphere would be taken as a sign of weakness here. No one who abuses his own country, its government or its Chief is entitled to protection from that country.

We have the visiting of British prisoners in good shape now, that prohibition put on our visiting and inspecting the camps was abolished in March by the "treaty" I arranged between England and Germany. It was not until March twenty-ninth that we finally got passes to visit camps under the "treaty." The prisoners say they are badly treated when they are first captured, but we know only of their treatment in the camps.

I do not believe all the atrocity stories; but one of our servants in this house came back from the East front recently and said the orders were to kill all Cossacks. Our washerwoman reports that her son was ordered to shoot a woman in Belgium and I myself have heard an officer calmly describe the shooting of a seven-year-old Belgian girl child, the excuse being that she had tried to fire at an officer.

If the Lusitania business settles down, I hope the suggestion made to me by the authorities here and cabled to the State Department, will be carried into effect. This was that each American and Spanish Ambassador, having charge of prisoners in belligerent countries, should meet in Switzerland and discuss the whole prison situation. Each Ambassador would be accompanied by representatives of whatever authorities deal with prisoners (here the War Ministry) in the country to which he is accredited. To prevent unseemly discussions the actual talking would be done by the Ambassadors (coached by those representatives). In addition to doing away with many misunderstandings and helping the prisoners, there are great possibilities in such a meeting. We could all give each other useful "tips" on the caring for prisoners, inspections, camps, package delivery, mail, etc.

There is plenty of food in Germany now and enough raw materials to carry on the war. Raw materials for peaceful industries are needed.

A suggestion—why not start a great government chemical school or give protection for a certain number of years to dyestuffs, medicine, chemical, and cyanide material? All these industries are run here by the trustiest trusts that ever trusted, and by their methods keep American manufacturers from starting the business. A Congressman represents one of the best firms, hence his statements that it is impossible to start such manufactures in America. Our annual tribute to these trusts is enormous. One dyestuff company here employs over five hundred chemists. Only big or protected business can compete. This war has shown that we should not be dependent on other countries for so many manufactures.

Gifts from America within the last week have been refused in Saxony.

I fear that Germany will not give up its present method of submarine war. Each month new and more powerful submarines are added.

Perhaps it is worth a war to have it decided that the United States of America is not to be run from Berlin.

Germans in authority feel that our "New Freedom" is against their ideas and ideals. They hate President Wilson because he embodies peace and learning rather than war.

In regard to prisoners, Mr. Harte reports prisoners in Russia and Siberia better treated than was reported.

I hear for the first time of growing dissatisfaction among the plain people, especially at the great rise in food prices. Germany is getting everything she wants, however, through Sweden, including copper, lard, etc. Von Tirpitz and his Press Bureau were too much for the Chancellor; the latter is not a good fighter. Zimmermann, if left to himself, would, of course, have stopped this submarine murder.

I hope the President never gives in on the embargo on arms; if he ever gives in on that, we might as well hoist the German Eagle on the Capitol.

July, 1915. I think that the firm tone of the President's note (of June 9, 1915) will make the Germans climb down. There seems a general disposition to be pleased with the note and an expectation that matters can be arranged. The great danger is that the Germans may again get the idea that we do not dare to declare war. In such case they will again become difficult to handle.

Zimmermann and von Jagow are both quite pleased with the tone of the note.

They both talk now of keeping Belgium, the excuse being that the Belgians hate the Germans so that if Belgium again became independent it would be only an English outpost. Meyer Gerhard, Bernstorff's special envoy, has arrived and has broken into print over the sentiment in America. I am afraid he makes it too peaceful, and, therefore, the Germans will be encouraged to despise America.

While the authorities here think the idea of freedom of the seas good, they think the idea of freedom of land too vague. They want to know exactly what it means and say the seas should be free because they belong to no one, but that land is the private property of various nations. They compare the situation to a city street, where every one is interested in keeping the streets free but would resent a proposal that private houses also should be made common meeting ground if not common property. Unfortunately for Germany and the world, the German armies are winning and this will be considered a complete vindication of the military and caste system and everything which now exists. As Cleveland said, we are confronted by a condition, not a theory. Germany, unless beaten, will never directly or indirectly agree to any freedom of land or disarmament proposal.

The Emperor probably will see me soon. He has been rabid on the export of arms from the United States to the Allies, but like all Germans, when they see we cannot be scared into a change of policy, he is making a nice recovery.

Was told by a friend at the Foreign Office that the German note would contain a proposition that regular passenger ships should not be torpedoed without notice, but must carry no cargo other than passengers' baggage. Have heard Marine Department rather opposes this, but may favor proposition as to ships inspected and certified to carry no arms or ammunition. No note until after July fourth, they say at Foreign Office, on tip from Washington. (Note—German note was delivered to me July 8, 1915.)

Chancellor and von Jagow have been in Vienna, probably over Balkan question. The situation there hinges on Bulgaria. Germany wants a direct strip of territory for itself or Austria to Constantinople. Thirteen million pounds in gold sent recently by Germany to Turkey to keep the boys in line. Principal Socialist paper, the Vorwaerts, has been suppressed because it spoke of peace; reason given is that this kind of talk would encourage enemies of Germany.

The Germans are becoming more strict, even women now entering Germany must strip to the skin and take down their back hair. The wife of Hearst's correspondent here had to submit to this the other day.

At first, newspaper correspondents had to promise they would not go to enemy territory, next that they would not go to neutral territory (after one correspondent went to Denmark and sent out dispatches about the movement against annexing Belgium). Now the correspondents must promise not to go home. This is to keep secret the internal conditions. The women stormed a butter shop here the other day and our Consul reports, in Chemnitz, quite a serious food riot. The military were called out and the fire department turned hose on the crowd.

In Austria, I hear men up to fifty-five are being called to the colours and even the infirm taken for the army. There are said to be seven German and five Austrian army corps invading Servia. The losses of the invaders are reported to be heavy. To date, the German dead in this war number about seven hundred thousand. People who offered private hospitals at the beginning of the war and who were told these were not needed, have been requested to open them. I was told the remaining civil population of Vouziers, France (in German hands), had been removed to make room for German wounded.

The note of July 21, 1915, in which the President said he would regard the sinking of ships without warning as "deliberately unfriendly," is received with hostility by press and Government. Of course, the party of frightfulness has conquered those of milder views, owing largely to the aggressive newspaper campaign conducted by von Tirpitz, Reventlow and Company. The Germans generally are, at present, in rather a waiting attitude, perhaps anxious to see what our attitude toward England will be—but this will not affect their submarine policy. The Foreign Office now claims, I hear, that I am hostile to Germany, but that claim was to be expected. Of course, I had no more to do with the American note than they did, but it is impossible to convince them of that, so I shall not try.

Germany has the Balkan situation well in hand. Roumania can do nothing in the face of recent Russian defeats and has just consented to allow grain to be exported to Austria and Germany, but has, I think, not yet consented to allow the passage of ammunition to Turkey. The pressure, however, is great. If not successful, perhaps German troops will invade Servia so as to get a passage through to Turkey.

A minister from one of the Balkan States told me the situation of Roumania, Greece and Bulgaria was about the same, each state can last in war only about three months, so all are trying to gauge three months before the end and then come in on the winning side.

The Bulgarian Minister of the Public Debt got in here by mistake the other day, insisting he had an appointment; he had an appointment with the Treasurer, Helfferich, whose office is nearby. This shows, perhaps, that Bulgaria is getting money here.

Also the Germans are sending back to Russia, Russians of revolutionary tendencies, who were prisoners here, with money and passports in order that they may stir up trouble at home.

The Germans are making a great effort to take Warsaw, even old Landsturm men are in the fighting line; I think they will get it, and then they hope to turn two million men and strike a great blow in France—thus they expect to end the war by October.

I notice now a slight reaction from annexation toward giving up all or part of Belgium; but I must say I hear very little of popular dissatisfaction with the war. Everything seems to be going smoothly; but they are scraping the bottom of the box on getting men for the army.

It is not pleasant to be hated by so many millions. The Germans naturally make me the object of their concentrated hate. I received an anonymous letter in which the kindly writer rejoices that so many Americans were drowned in the Chicago disaster. This shows the state of mind.

The Emperor is at the front, "Somewhere in Galicia." They keep him very much in the background, I think, with the idea of disabusing the popular mind of the idea that this is "his war." After all, accidents may happen, and even after a victorious war there may be a day of reckoning. The Chancellor went to the front yesterday, probably to see the Emperor about the American question.

August, 1915. I had a conversation last week of one hour and a half with the Chancellor. He sent for me because I had written him to take no more trouble about my seeing the Emperor. He explained, of course, first that he did not know I wanted to see the Emperor, and second that it was impossible to see the Emperor. They keep the Emperor well surrounded. Now I do not want to see him. He is hot against Americans and the matters I wanted to talk of are all settled—one way. I cabled an interesting report on the Emperor's conversation re America.

The Chancellor is still wrong in his head; says it was necessary to invade Belgium, break all international laws, etc. I think, however, that he was personally against the fierce Dernburg propaganda in America. I judge that von Tirpitz, through his press bureau, has egged on the people so that this submarine war will continue. An official confessed to me that they had tried to get England to interfere, together with them, in Mexico, and Germans "Gott strafe" the Monroe Doctrine in their daily prayers of hate.

Warsaw, as I predicted officially, long ago, will soon fall.

No great news—we are simply waiting for the inevitable submarine "accident."

Unless there is a change of sentiment in the Government I think the submarine commanders will be careful.

The Chancellor talked rather freely but again said it was impossible to leave Belgium to become an outpost of the English, but possibly with Germans in possession of the forts, the railways and with commercial rights in Antwerp it might be arranged.

There is a faction here led by deputy Bassermann, Stresemann, Fahrmann, etc., who are attacking the Chancellor. They represent great industrials who want to annex Belgium, Northern France, Poland and anything else that can be had, for their own ultimate advantage. A man named Hirsch is hired by the Krupp firm to "accelerate" this work. Krupps also pay the expenses of the "Oversea Service" which is feeding news to America.

A paper against annexation of Belgium has been signed, I am told, by Dernburg, Prince Hatzfeld and others, and will be presented to the Chancellor to-day. I believe many are to sign it; but of those who have signed are Hatzfeld, who is one of the three big Dukes of Prussia; Prince Henckel-Donnersmarck, who is the second richest subject in Germany—(85 years old, he was in 1870 first Governor of Lorraine)—von Harrach, who is a man of great ability, highly respected, as is also Professor Delbrück.

The Reichstag meets in a few days. The Socialists are holding daily caucuses, but have not yet decided on any party action. Undoubtedly they will vote for the new ten milliard loan, with Liebknecht and a few others dissenting. Probably a split will also develop in the National Liberal Party; Bassermann and others have been attacking the Chancellor, but I think other members will dissent. It is quite probable that there will be a discussion about the object of the war, and permission will be asked for public discussion, the Socialists perhaps claiming that they have consented to a defensive war only, and that now that the war is on enemy territory peace should be at least discussed. There may also be talk about the annexation of Belgium and food prices. The Socialists are greatly incensed at those who are holding food for high prices.

Personally, I think that Germany now wants peace but does not want to say so openly.

A relative of a Field Marshal told me to-day that Germany's killed to date were 600,000 and 200,000 crippled for life.

I must say that the plain people still seem perfectly tame and ready to continue the war. However, there may also be a protest in the Reichstag about the treatment by non-commissioned officers of Landsturm men who have never served but who now, in the process of scraping the box, are called to the colors.

The Germans hope by a great movement to capture a great part of the Russian army; probably they will fail. They also entertain hopes that in such case Sweden will enter Finland and two Balkan States declare for them. Balkan Ministers here tell me the defeat of Russia makes it impossible for Roumania to enter, but they fear an invasion by the Germans. All diplomatic work is now centred in the Balkans.

Successes in Russia have made the people here very cocky. Hence, probably, the torpedoing of the Arabic. Also great hope of Bulgaria coming in with Germany; there is no more dissatisfaction heard over the war. I have as yet received nothing from Washington regarding the Arabic.

I have just spent four half days at Ruhleben, where civilian Britishers are interned, so as to give every prisoner a chance to speak to me personally.

There is much talk of creating an independent Poland. The Reichstag session has developed no opposition.

A fac-simile of that infernal advertisement[A] of the Cleveland Automatic Tool Company in the American Machinist was laid on the desk of every member of the Reichstag; and the papers are full of accounts of great deliveries of war munitions by America, possibly preparing people for a break. If Bulgaria comes in, Germany will undoubtedly take a strip in Servia and keep a road to Constantinople and the East. The new Turkish Ambassador has just arrived. The old one was not friendly to Enver Bey and so was bounced; he remains here, however, as he fears if he went to Turkey he would get some "special" coffee. The hate for Americans grows daily.

[A] This was an advertisement in an American newspaper about machines for the manufacture of particularly deadly shells and was much used in Germany to show how America was helping the Entente.

All rumours are that in the recent council at Posen the Chancellor, advocating concessions in submarine war, won out over von Tirpitz. But von Tirpitz will die hard, and there will be trouble yet, as the Navy will be very angry if the present methods are abandoned. Members of the Reichstag have telegraphed backing up the Chancellor; but it is hard for any civilian idea to prevail against Army or Navy.

Probably the Admiralty will say that the submarine which torpedoed the Arabic was lost, in order to avoid disgracing an officer.

If the Arabic question is not complicated with the Lusitania a solution will be easier. The common people have been aroused by von Tirpitz's press bureau and it will be simpler for the Chancellor to "back track," taking as an example a case like the Arabic when the ship was going West and carried no ammunition.

The defeat of the Russians is undoubtedly crushing. Is England waking up too late? There will be a big offensive soon against the West lines.

I have heard nothing up to to-day from the State Department re the Arabic, except one cable asking me to request a report.

A correspondent has just been in and says that the General Staff people threaten to expel him because he went to Copenhagen and sent out news about the petition to the Chancellor not to annex Belgium. The Foreign Office had no objection; this shows how the line is forming between the Chancellor and the Military. All correspondents to-day say the Germans are trying to dragoon them into sending only news which the General Staff wants sent, and the Military have added their censorship to that of the Foreign Office.

An official told me that Bernstorff, while not exactly exceeding his instructions in his "Arabic Note" (of Sept. 1, 1915), had put the matter in a manner they did not approve.

Orders have now, apparently, been given to all German officials to say that the war will last a long time—at least a year and a half.

It is expected that Persia will come in under German leadership and attack India.

Our Military Attaché, Colonel Kuhn, was finally presented to the Kaiser and had a pleasant chat with him. Colonel Kuhn says all fighting on the West is with artillery and hand grenades. Rifles are thrown aside.

Germans have spies "piking off" our Embassies in Paris, London and Petrograd.

Great airship attacks on London may be expected. In one of the recent attacks nine thousand eight hundred bombs (fire and explosive) were dropped. I get this from good authority.

Foreign Office quite elated over their Balkan triumph. Personally, I think it was one of the most effective bits of German "diplomacy" in the history of the Empire.

CHAPTER VI

THE INSIDE OF GERMAN DIPLOMACY

The Diary Continued

October, 1915. There is a tendency here to say Bernstorff went too far. But this is all for the public, von Jagow told a correspondent so to-day; but, of course, he did not know about the note of Austria to Servia either! The Marine people are positively raging. The paper which Reventlow writes for, the Tages Zeitung, was suppressed yesterday; I hear on account of an article on this Arabic settlement, but I am not yet sure.

There is talk now of marching to Egypt.

More and more men are being called to colours. But Germany seems to be able to take care of all fronts. The Emperor is now in the West. The Foreign Office leads the rejoicing over the Entente's invasion of Greece and the violation of its neutrality and says that talk about Belgium is now shown to be cant.

Weather is rotten and we shall have a melancholy winter. Feel the war more—deaths and prices. Six hundred and eighty thousand killed to October first, and many crippled. Food way up, but they cannot starve Germany out.

Suppression of the Tages Zeitung means that the Chancellor has at last exhibited some backbone and will fight von Tirpitz. The answer of Germany depends on the outcome of this fight. It is possible that von Falkenhayn and the army party may sustain the Chancellor as against von Tirpitz. It is quite likely that a sort of safe conduct will be offered in the note for ships especially engaged in passenger trade. Much stress will be laid on English orders to merchant ships to ram submarines.

The Kaiser is at Pless, a castle of Prince of Pless, in Silesia, near Breslau, where he moved after the attempt of French fliers to bombard him at Charleville on the West Front. The Germans probably will have Lemberg in a few days. This may prevent Roumania coming in. There is talk here of an attempted revolution in Moscow. There is said to be jealousy of Hindenburg and on account of this, Mackensen was put forward to be the hero of the Galician Campaign. Captain Enochs, one of our observers in Austria, was forced out of Austria because of German pressure and our other military observers will follow soon.

Many commercial magnates have arrived in town to argue with the government against war with America; but some are in favor of the continuance of bitter submarine war, notably one who sees his Bagdad railway menaced by possible English success in the Dardanelles.

November, 1915. A man who saw Tisza tells me the Serbs inquired if they could get peace and retain their territories. They were answered, "No."

It is said that Italy has also felt out for peace, but was answered that she must deal with Austria alone—and Austria says that she will not include Italy in any general peace but will wallop her alone after general peace is made.

I am working hard to get British prisoners properly clothed. Winter is already here. Efforts to starve Germany will not succeed. We shall be on meat and butter cards, but that is only a precaution. The people still are well in hand. Constant rumours of peace keep them hopeful. Men over forty-five not yet called. They seem to have plenty of troops. The military are careless of the public opinion of neutrals; they say they are winning and do not need good opinion. I am really afraid of war against us after this war—if Germany wins. We had snow, ice, and cold weather at the end of October.

There have been uneasy movements among the people in Leipzig, a great industrial centre, and the Volkzeitung, a Socialist paper there, has been put under permanent preventive censorship.

All these movements start with the question of the price of food.

The Prussian Junkers, however, are really benefited by the war. They get, even with a high "stop price," three times as much as formerly for their agricultural products and pay only a small sum, sixty pfennig daily, for the prisoners of war who now work their fields. They may, in addition, have to pay the keep of the prisoners, but that is very small. Camp commanders are allowed sixty-six pfennig per head per diem.

There is much talk of peace. The shares of the Hamburg-American Line and the shares of the Hamburg-South American Line have risen enormously in price from fifty-six to one hundred and forty in one case. This may be caused by an advantageous sale of some shares of the Holland-American Line or by promise of a subsidy, or by hopes of peace.

There is no question but that every man under forty-five that can drag a rifle has been drafted for the army, with the possible exception of men working in railways, munitions, etc.

Yesterday I noticed many women working on the roadbed of the railway.

The new Peruvian Minister is named von der Heyde; his father was a German.

The Greek Minister still thinks Greece will stay out of the war. His father is one of the cabinet.

The Germans are very glad to get rid of Brand Whitlock. For some time they have been looking for an excuse to expel him.

The dyestuff and other chemical manufacturers are getting quite scared about possible American competition. I hope the Democrats will give protection to these new industries and will also enact some "anti-dumping" legislation.

The German cities are adding to the general weight of debt by incurring large debts for war purposes, such as relief of soldiers' families, etc.

The former Turkish Ambassador, who is against the Young Turks, is living here. He is afraid to go back and also the Germans are keeping him in stock in case the Young Turks go out of power, and possibly to stir up trouble in Egypt, as his wife is a daughter of one of the Khedives.

There are lots of suspicious looking Spaniards about, possibly cooking up an attack on Gibraltar.

Any German peace talk includes payment of a large subsidy by England, Russia, and France; Italy to be left to Austria to finish.

The export of gold has now been formally forbidden.

There is no doubt whatever that the population in the conquered portion of Poland has been for a long time in need of food.

Our Military Attaché, Colonel Kuhn, just back from Servia, says the Germans have, literally, stacks of ammunition and had begun preparing last spring for the present attack, even little mountain wagons and new harness being all ready. Only about six German corps are there.

The hate against Americans here is deep-seated and bitter. Hans Winterfeldt, a prominent German banker, with American citizenship, just came in to tell me that at the annual meeting to-day of the great Allegemeine Electricitäts Gesellschaft a fight was started against him because of his American citizenship, and he was not, therefore, re-elected a director. He thinks of resigning from all banks, etc., and returning to America.

December, 1915. Red Cross Doctor Schmidt just in from Servia says Belgrade was completely plundered.

Having lots of difficulty getting the Germans to give the English prisoners clothes.

Hate of Americans worse than ever.

Germans are not resentful when I fight to get things for English prisoners; they only say they hope our Ambassadors are doing the same for Germans.

Much disappointment at Dr. Snoddy's mission not yet being permitted to work in Russia.

Last Tuesday night I ran into quite a peace demonstration, called by placards the night of the Peace Interpretation in the Reichstag. Soon disbanded by the police with many arrests. One man told me that they were tired of a silly war and days without meat. There has been nothing in the papers about these demonstrations; of course, each arrest makes an anarchist for life.

It is hard to get butter. The women storm the butter shops and market.

In a new building (where the Consulate is) they are taking off the copper roof.

FACSIMILE OF AN ORDER ISSUED BY COMMANDER OF GERMAN PRISON CAMP OF DOEBERITZ. MANY CAMP COMMANDERS, WITHOUT AUTHORITY, UNDERTOOK TO MAKE PRISONERS SUFFER FOR ALLEGED AND UNPROVED MISDEEDS OF THE BRITISH. I HAD GREAT TROUBLE IN WATCHING FOR ORDERS OF THIS CHARACTER AND SECURING THEIR ANNULMENT

ORDER.

The unheard-of and rough treatment, which, according to reliable information, has been accorded to civilian prisoners, and particularly German women and children who remain in England, has caused the withdrawal of all privileges formerly granted to English Prisoners of War. On this account, permission for all kinds of amusements and games has been cancelled.

The time for bathing has been limited to 10 minutes.

The English Prisoners of War, Mc Lachlan, was shot dead early on the 7th. August, whilst attempting to escape.

The English Prisoner of War, Orton, has been summoned to a Military Trial owing to resistance agairest to Authority.

Alberti

Oberst und Kommandant
des Gefangenenlagers Döberitz.

Of a sudden—peace talk. The Chancellor is waiting to address the Reichstag, waiting to get the sentiment of the members who are all in Berlin, and then swim with it. Many members, who are not Socialists, favour peace, and the Chancellor will be forced to make some sort of a declaration on why they are fighting and for what.

A Reichstag member told me the Reichstag will say and do things it did not dream of doing six months ago. There are many quiet meetings of members going on.

Hindenburg is out with an interview saying it is not yet time for peace. This is a Government measure to stamp out peace talk among the Reichstag members.

Am having a hard fight to get the British prisoners properly clothed for the winter. Of course, the Germans have rather a difficult time with so many prisoners, but that is no excuse if men die of cold. The weather is and has been bitterly cold.

Saw von Jagow lately, but only on business and commercial questions. Zimmermann lunched here to-day. Roeder, of the World, is here making a study of German industrial conditions. I introduced him to Gutmann, of the Dresdner Bank; Rathenau, head of the Allegemeine Electricitäts Gesellschaft; Dr. Solf, Colonial Minister, and others. I think his report will be very sound and worth reading.

There is no question but that there is a deep-seated hatred of America here, which must be reckoned with sooner or later.

I don't expect things to be easy, but I wish to goodness all Americans would stay at home.

Greek Minister still thinks Greece will remain neutral.

Probably greatest need of Germany is lubricating oil for machines, etc. Germans claim to have a copper mine in Servia. I never heard of one there.

Dr. Ohnesorg, U. S. N., and Osborne back from inspecting camps. They report bad conditions; they were not allowed (contrary to our "treaty") to talk out of hearing of camp officers to the prisoners in Lemburg Camp. These prisoners are 2,000 Irish, and the reason, of course, for the refusal of the usual permission is that the Germans, through the notorious Sir Roger Casement, have been trying to seduce the Irish, and do not want the soldier prisoners to tell us about it. I have learned, through other sources, that the Germans seduced about 30 Irish. I told von Jagow what I had learned and asked what the Germans had done with these victims—whether they were in the German army or not. He said, "No, most of them had been sent to Ireland to raise hell there." I suppose they were landed from submarines.

I think the German press has received orders to step softly on the von Papen-Boy-ed recall. The greatest danger now lies in Austria, and over the Ancona note. There is a large body of manufacturers, ship-owners, etc., here who at the last moment declare themselves against war with the U. S. A. and use their influence to that end, but in Austria no such interests exist to help toward peace. However, pressure from Germany may be brought to bear.

I think Germany will not send successors to von Papen and Boy-ed even with safe conduct; whether they will ask the recall of our attachés is another question not yet decided.

An official tells me confidentially that Rintelen was sent to America to buy up the product of the Dupont Powder Company, and that if he did anything else he exceeded his instructions.

Shop people in Berlin with whom I have talked are getting sick of the war.

I hear rumours that Germany is trying, through its Minister in China, to come to an understanding with Japan and Russia.

The banks are sending circulars to all safe-deposit box holders, trying to get them to give up their gold.

An American clergyman has just told me the German church body has refused to receive an American Church deputation and has written a very bitter letter.

An official has told me that no new Military Attaché will be sent to America. The naval people have not yet decided.

I am very glad to hear Colonel House is coming over. There are many things I want to tell the President but which I do not dare to commit to paper.

A newspaperman supposed to be of the New York —— had an interview with Zimmermann the other day, and Zimmermann sent some messages by him to the President. I do not know what the messages are. We all suffer much from amateur diplomats.

Anthony Czarnecki, a very intelligent Chicagoan, an American of Polish descent, is here representing Victor Lawson and the Chicago Daily News. He informs me that the Spy Nest is contemplating an attack on the Administration because of the taking away of Archibald's and others' passports.

My impression is that the Austrians, owing to pressure from here, will eventually give in on the Ancona business. I think the present a good time to force the settlement of the Lusitania question.

Note. I do not suppose that any Ambassador ever suffered as much from amateur "super Ambassadors" as I did.

The German Foreign Office, trying to be modern and up-to-date at times, paid more attention to the tales of pro-German American correspondents than they did to the utterances of President Wilson.

Of course, the Germans succeeded in taking many of those correspondents in their camp. In the Hotel —— in Berlin an agent of the German Government who possessed American citizenship was always ready to arrange trips to the front or to make an advance of money to an American correspondent who would promise to be "good."

Some received cash, some were paid in interviews with prominent officials, some received both, before all was continually dangled the blue ribbon—the hope of an interview with the Kaiser—and some, thank God, were real Americans and refused all the offered temptations—news or money.

An American gentleman who lived for a time at this hotel has given me a written statement which throws a light on the activities of certain of these gentry and which I may some day use. In this he states how one of these gentlemen claimed that the Imperial Chancellor always sent for him to consult him on his attitude towards America and that he had advised him to make a bold front and bluff. Hence, perhaps the note of January thirty-first which suddenly announced the ruthless submarine war.

I have proof that one of this traitorous gang went about Berlin personating me. What scheme he was cooking up I do not know.

Zimmermann was particularly weak in being advised by one of these shady individuals.

I think the German Government will allow Ford or any of his angels to come here, but the Peace Ark seems pretty well wrecked.

Provincial and small newspapers are much more bitter against America than the larger ones.

Von Jagow told me the other day that he thought the feeling here against America was so bitter that, eventually, war would be inevitable.

Received following anonymous letter:

"I am enabled to-day to give your Excellency news of the utmost importance, Germany is at the end of its forces and the Imperial Government is inclined to make peace cost what may! One of the most prominent and influential members of the Reichstag has assured me, that the general conviction of the parliament is dominated by the absolute necessity, to pull back and to strive for peace as soon as possible. The financial aspect given by Dr. Helfferich is disastrous, the military situation, taken in the whole, unsatisfactory and the confidential information, given by Herr von Jagow in the committee with regard to the Egyptian expedition, discouraging if not hopeless. The Government and particularly Herr von Bethmann wish for peace, but believe themselves restrained by public opinion and by the fear of the Pan-Germanists. It's now the psychological moment for intervention by the United States and there can be no doubt, that it should and will be exercised in favour of humanity, culture and freedom, in favour of the prevalence of the Anglo-Saxon race and the future development of the new world against Prussian barbarity, Imperial despotism and Teutonic slavery!

22. XII. 1915.
Old Gentleman."

CHAPTER VII

GERMANY'S PLAN TO ATTACK AMERICA

The Diary Continued

January, 1916. Many of the intelligent rich are expressing the fear that after this war the Socialist high price system, governmental seizure of food, control of raw materials, etc., will be continued and also that the owners of large landed estates will be compelled to subdivide them.

We are getting vague and conflicting reports in the newspapers here about the sinking of the Persia. There seems to be no end to this business. Perhaps it is best to have the inevitable come now. The hate of America has grown to such an extent under careful Government stimulus that I am quite sure we will be the first attacked after the war. Therefore, if it is to come, it had better come now when we would start with a certain fleet in command of the seas, making it impossible for agitators, dynamiters, and spies to be sent to Mexico and South America and into the U. S. A. through Canada and Mexico. From the highest to the lowest I get intimations that at the first chance America will be attacked.

There is still a spirit of confidence in ultimate success, amply justified, it would seem, by the military situation.

A lot of dyestuffs mysteriously left Germany recently in spite of the embargo, and got to Holland, billed to America, where it remains, awaiting a permit from the British. Perhaps the Germans are getting worried about the possible building-up of the industry at home. The profits of the German dyestuff "trust" are certainly great enough to tempt the trust to do anything to keep the monopoly. Hardly a company pays less than 24 per cent. dividends.

The Kaiser is still laid up with a boil on his neck.

I am waiting the arrival of Colonel House, who, I suppose, will be here in ten days or so.

S. S. McClure of the good ship Nutty (Proprietor Ford), Herman Bernstein and Inez Milholland Boissevain, likewise of the crew, have been here. Their stories are most amusing. Apparently, now, the nuttiest have voted to remain a permanent committee at The Hague; salary (five thousand suggested) to each to be paid by Ford—with washing and expenses.

The Reichstag, sitting in "Budget Commission," is getting quite worked up over the censorship and the Socialists are demanding the freedom of the press.

Yesterday one member said he thought it would do the U. S. A. good if they knew what the Germans really thought of Americans.

The spy system here is very complete and even the President and Cabinet at home in America are surrounded. Heydebrand, leader of the Conservative Party, called the uncrowned King of Prussia, said yesterday in the Prussian Chamber that "America was among the worst enemies of Germany." I am convinced that Germany, as now advised, either will attack America or land in South America, if successful in this war. Falkenhayn, Chief of the General Staff, said, referring to America, "It is hard to stop a victorious army."

I have just returned from three days in Munich. I visited two prison camps and the American Red Cross Hospital in Munich and conferred with Archdeacon Nies (of the American Episcopal Church), who is permitted to visit Bavarian prison camps, talk to prisoners, and hold services in English. These Bavarian camps are under Bavarian, not Prussian, rule.

Munich seems lively and contented. I saw great quantities of soldiers there and at Ingolstadt.

I expect Colonel House about the 26th, and shall be very glad to see him.

Morgenthau was here for a day. I took him to see von Jagow, where we talked for an hour. Later, through some Germans, he met Zimmermann, who asked him if he did not think the German-Americans in America would rise in rebellion if trouble came between Germany and America.

Von Jagow was very explicit in saying that Germany had made no agreement with us about submarine commanders. He said distinctly that Germany reserved the right to change these orders at any time. On the general question, he again said that the submarine was a new weapon and that the rules of international law must be changed, apparently claiming the right for Germany to change these rules at will and without the consent of any other power involved.

Morgenthau sailed Sunday, the sixth, from Copenhagen. The newspapers to-day and last night print articles to the effect that the negotiations are taking a more favourable course.

February, 1916. I dined last night at von Jagow's. He said I would get a note to-day which would accept all Bernstorff's propositions except, as he put it, one word, viz.: Germany will acknowledge liability for the loss of American lives by the sinking of the Lusitania, but will not acknowledge that the act of sinking was illegal. He said that international law had to be changed, that the submarine was a new weapon, and that, anyway, if a break came with America, that they had a lot of new submarines here and would make an effective submarine blockade of England. To-day a cipher from the German Foreign Office came in to be forwarded to the State Department for Bernstorff, so I suppose this is what he referred to. Probably the Germans are in earnest on this proposition. It is now squarely up to the American people to decide.

Of course, I am very much disturbed at the turn of affairs, but I am doing nothing except repeating to Lansing what is said to me, and trying to convince the Germans that we are in earnest.

I was very glad to see Colonel House in Berlin, for many reasons, and, especially, that the President may get his view of the situation here. He had long talks with the Chancellor, von Jagow, and Zimmermann, and also met Dr. Solf, the Colonial Minister; von Gwinner, head of the Deutsche Bank; Gutmann, of the Dresdner Bank; and Dr. Rathenau, head of the Allegemeine Electricitäts Gesellschaft and many corporations, who is now engaged with the General Staff in providing raw materials for Germany.

I think the Germans are getting short of copper and nickel, especially the latter. Copper lightning rods of churches have been taken and an effort was made to take the brass reading desk in the American Church and the fittings in the Japanese Embassy.

I think from underground rumours that the Germans and the propagandists will endeavour to embroil us with Japan.

Baroness von Schroeder, a von Tirpitz spy, stated the other day that Japan would send a note to the United States of America making demands on the U. S. in regard to the Japanese immigration question.

There was a well-defined report that Germany would issue a manifesto stating that enemy merchant ships would be fired on without notice and this because of orders alleged to have been found on British ships ordering merchant ships to fire on submarines at sight.

The Chancellor told me he was ready for peace but that all his emissaries had met with a cold reception in the Allied countries of France, England and Russia.

A fight against the Chancellor has been started in the home of the Junkers—the Prussian Chamber. The powerful liberal papers are jumping hard on the disturbers and the Chancellor hit back quite hard. These Junkers are demanding unlimited submarine war and are stirred up by von Tirpitz. It is one of their last kicks as soon a real suffrage will have to be introduced in Prussia. The Chancellor foreshadowed this in opening this Prussian Chamber; hence the tears!

The visit of Colonel House here was undoubtedly, from this end, a success; and I am glad that he can give the President a fresh and impartial view.

March first we go on a milk and butter card regime. I have put the Polish question (food) up to Zimmermann, and asked informally whether proper guarantees against the direct or indirect taking of food and money from Poland will be stopped, if relief is sent; no answer yet.

In spite of what I was told by certain exalted personages last autumn, I think that if the war continues much longer the President will be welcomed as a mediator. In fact, there are a number of cartoons and articles appearing in the newspapers which, in tone, are against the President because he does not insist on peace.

I think that we may soon look for a very strong German attack on the West Front, an endeavour to break through before the time when the French and English are contemplating their offensive, which is probably some time in March.

At or about the same time there will probably be great Zeppelin attacks on London and on other English centres. It is reported that in their next offensive the Germans will use a more deadly form of poison gas.

I had the grippe, went to Partenkirchen for a few days, but the first night in country air since July, 1914, was too much for me and filled me with such energy that I tried skiing, fell down and broke my collar-bone, came to Berlin and can sit at my desk, but am very uncomfortable.

I think Germany was about to offer to sink no merchant ships without notice and putting crews, etc., in safety, if England would disarm merchant ships, but now, since the President's letter to Stone, both the Chancellor and von Jagow say they are convinced that America has a secret understanding with England and that nothing can be arranged.

Captain Persius points out in to-day's Tageblatt that it is not submarines alone that are now, without notice, going to sink armed merchant ships, but cruisers, etc., will take a hand.

It is reported that the Kaiser went to Wilhelmshafen to warn submarine commanders to be careful and that submarines will hunt in pairs, one standing ready to torpedo while the other warns. The German losses at Verdun are small as artillery fire annihilated enemy first. I think an attack will be made now in another part of the front.

Germany has forbidden the import of many articles of luxury; this is to keep exchange more normal and keep gold in the country. This probably will continue after the war.

Some newspaper men just in from Verdun report the Germans saving men—losses small—going at it with artillery, probably over 1,000 guns, and making a slow and almost irresistible push. Some military attachés think there may be a strong attack somewhere else on the front.

This Verdun attack was undoubtedly made to keep Roumania out.

I think the food question here is getting very serious, but before they are starved out they will starve six million Belgians, eleven million Russians and Poles and two million prisoners; so that, after all, this starvation business is not practical.

There was a Grand Council of War last week at Charleville to determine whether von Tirpitz's proposition, to start an unlimited submarine blockade of England, should be started or not—i.e., sink all ships, enemy and neutral, at sight. Falkenhayn was for this, the Chancellor against, and von Tirpitz lost. The decision, of course, was made by the Emperor.

Great advertising efforts are being made on the question of the Fourth War Loan. It will, of course, be announced as successful.

There are undoubtedly two submarine parties in Germany and there may be an unlimited blockade of England.

I think Germany, as at present advised, is willing, if merchant ships are disarmed, to agree to sink no boats whatever without warning and without putting passengers and crew in safety. The Admiralty approves of this.

One of the American correspondents publishes an article in the Lokal Anzeiger on America, in which he makes some statements no loyal American should make just now.

The "illness" of von Tirpitz is announced. I think it means his resignation, and have just cabled, although it is possible that his resignation may never be publicly announced. For one thing, the Kaiser and army people began to think it was a bad innovation to have any officer or official appealing to cheap newspapers and the "man in the street" in a conflict with superior authority.

I heard that at Charleville conference both the Chancellor and von Jagow said they would resign if von Tirpitz's policy of unlimited submarine war on England was adopted.

The food question is becoming really acute—the village people are about starving in some sections and are not as well off as the people in the big towns; it is the policy to keep the people in the cities as content as possible in order to prevent riots, demonstrations, etc.

Some Germans have asked me if the sending of a German "Colonel House" to America would be agreeable to the President. Probably the Envoy would be Solf, and he could talk informally to the President and prominent people. If sent he would require a safe conduct from England and France.

I hear the submarines now are mostly engaged in mine laying, at the mouth of the Thames.

Events are beginning to march. At first von Tirpitz's "illness" was announced, then came his resignation. Yesterday was his birthday and a demonstration was expected; there were many police out, but I could see no demonstrators. The row may come in the Reichstag.

There are two sources of danger; first, a failure at Verdun and the new food regulations may make people ready to accept Tirpitz's guarantee that if he is allowed his way the war can be won and ended. He has a large following already who favour this plan; second, there are some Reichstag members and others who think the Tirpitz people can never be reconciled unless there is a new Chancellor.

The Chancellor sent for me Friday. I think the Chancellor wants to keep peace with America and also wishes to make a general peace. He talked, or rather I talked, a little about terms. He still wants to hang on to Belgium, but I think will give most of it up; but is fixed for an indemnity from France. The loss of life here is affecting every one, the Chancellor is a very good man, and I think honestly desires an honourable peace.

Potatoes are restricted from to-day, 10 pounds per head in 12 days, not much, bacon and lard practically not to be had, butter only in small quantities and meat out of reach of the poor.

I told the Chancellor I thought a great source of danger to the good relations of Germany and U. S. A. was in Mexico, that if we had trouble there, had to raise a large army and rouse the military spirit at home, the President might find it hard to hold the people. This struck him as a new view, as most Germans think that Mexican troubles are to their advantage, and I am sure Villa's attacks are "made in Germany."

I shall not come home; both the Chancellor and von Jagow have begged me not to go.

I sent a cable about the possible stirring up of our coloured people by propagandists. I notice that there are great fires in many cities of the South.

It is reported that Prussian State Railways were given the banks as additional security for the last loan, but I do not see how this could be, as the railways are Prussian and the Loan Imperial.

Several South American diplomats here think that in case of war between U. S. and Germany public opinion in their countries will demand the seizure of the German ships and possible war.

April, 1916. I am just off to the Reichstag where the Chancellor is to speak. I have no news here and none from America, but it seems to me five boats sunk almost at once will rather strain things at home. Here they do not want war with America. Perhaps von Tirpitz before leaving gave these submarine commanders these orders to sink at sight.

I think the Germans will eventually encircle and take Verdun, mostly now for moral effect.

Von Jagow will shortly give Conger (Associated Press) an interview disclaiming any intention on Germany's part of attacking America after the war. "A guilty conscience, etc.," and "Qui s'excuse, s'accuse."

Every night fifty million Germans cry themselves to sleep because all Mexico has not risen against us.

Part of Germany goes soon on meat ration. The food question is becoming acute, but they will last through here.

I think that the Germans would now, in spite of previous statements by a high authority, welcome the intervention of the President looking toward peace. Colonel House is so relied on here that he would be doubly welcome as the bird with the olive branch.

It looks more and more as if the issue of the campaign would be peace or war! On this issue the Germans at the last moment will have to side with the President.

The recent sessions of the Reichstag have been lively. Liebknecht caused a row on several occasions. Once by interrupting the Chancellor to imply that the Germans were not free, next to deny that the Germans had not wished the war, and another time by calling attention to the attempts of the Germans to induce Mohammedan and Irish prisoners of war to desert to the German arms, the Irish being attacked through Sir Roger Casement. Liebknecht finally enraged the Government by calling out that the loan subscription was a swindle.

The German-American spies and traitors are hard at work at 48 Potsdammer Strasse and also at the Oversea News Service, a concern paid for by Krupps. Mr. ——, in addition, gains money by getting permits for goods to go out of Germany, capitalising his "pull" as it were. Some of the money for their dirty work is given them by Roselius of Bremen, proprietor of the "Caffee Hag." ——, a traitor, who also writes against the President, also works with the gang.

This cry in America that German babies have not sufficient milk is all rot. One of our doctors has reported on the subject. The cry is only raised to get a hole in the British blockade.

The Germans are going at Verdun carefully, and an imitation of each French position or trench they wish to take—planned from airmen's and spies' reports—is constructed behind the German lines and the German soldiers practise taking it until they are judged letter perfect and are put to work to capture the original.

It is said the Germans have developed a submarine periscope so small as to be almost invisible, which works up and down so that only at intervals, for a second or so, does it appear above the water. Also, it is said the wireless vibrations by means of copper plates at each end are transmitted through the boat, and every member of the crew learns the wireless code, and no matter where working can catch the vibrations.

Note about the Sussex and other four ships just in. I think Germany is now determined to keep peace with America as the plain people are convinced that otherwise the war will be lengthened—a contingency abhorrent to all.

May, 1916. I delivered the last American note to von Jagow to-day. He said they probably would not answer, and then engaged me in gossipy conversation.

These people want peace and will gladly accept the President as mediator.

The Pope, they think, will want brokerage—a "Makler Lohn"—as they call it—concessions for the church, such as the return of the Jesuits, etc.

If they get good and sick of war here, perhaps they may not feel like revenge after all—but there is an ever-present danger we must prepare for.

The fact that I was given detailed instructions as to leaving, etc.—which they undoubtedly learned, with their wonderful spy system—helped the Sussex settlement.

The Chancellor and I became great friends as a result of my stay at the Hauptquartier. The League of Truth gang attacked me lately. The Government published a certificate in the Official Gazette to the effect that I was their fair-haired boy, etc.—very nice of them. I really think they recognise that the propaganda was an awful failure and want to inaugurate the era of good feeling.

I did not go to the front at the Hauptquartier as reported. I had enough to do in Charleville, but did witness the splendid relief work being done by the Americans who are feeding 2,200,000 of the population of Northern France. Twenty thousand of the inhabitants of Lille, Roubaix-Tourcoing, are being sent under circumstances of great barbarity to work in the fields in small villages. I spoke to the Chancellor and he promised to remedy this.

Germans say they will take Verdun. A military treaty with Sweden is reported; a large Swedish Military Commission is now here, receiving much attention.

While at Charleville, in connection with American work, I asked, at one village, to see the German Army stores so as to convince myself that the German Army was not using the stores from America. I saw that one-half the stores came from Holland.

I think the psychological moment is approaching when Colonel House should appear as the President's White Emissary of Peace.

While the food question here is pressing, the harvest will be good, if present indications continue. Rye is the principal crop and this is harvested about July 12th. I think, however, Germany can last, and in very desperation may try a great offensive which may break the French lines and change the whole position. The people here, although tired of war, are well disciplined and will see this thing through without revolution.

We are rather in calm after the last crisis. The Chancellor sent for me and said he hoped we would do something to England or propose a general peace, otherwise his position here will become, he thinks, rather hard. Delbrück, vice-chancellor, very hostile to America, is out—failure as Minister of Interior to organise food supply is the real reason.

Yesterday I had a talk with the Chancellor. The occasion was the Polish Relief question which I shall now take up direct with Helfferich, who, as I predicted, is the new Minister of the Interior and Vice-Chancellor. He is a very business-like man and did much for the favourable settlement of our last crisis.

The Chancellor seemed rather downcast yesterday, without apparent cause. He says that Germany from now on will have two months of hardship on the food question, but that after that things will be all right. The crops, as I have seen on my shooting place, are magnificent and the rye harvest will probably begin even before July 15th.

Mrs. Gerard has just returned from a week in Budapest with her sister. The Hungarians are once more gay and confident. The Italians, their hereditary foes, are being driven back, and on the Russian front there seems to be a sort of tacit truce—no fighting and visiting in trenches, etc.—terms of great friendliness.

(This was the beginning of the fraternisation which led, a year later, to the collapse of Russia.)

At the races here last Sunday there was an absolutely record crowd and more money bet than on any previous day in German racing history. The cheaper field and stands were so full of soldiers that the crowd seemed grey, which goes to show that the last man is not at the front.

State Socialism makes advances over here. A proposition is now discussed to compel the young men who are earning large wages to save a part thereof.

On the Sussex question, I got a colleague to ask about the punishment of the Commander and to say at the Foreign Office, after he had once been refused any information, that I had heard that the people at large in America believed the Commander has received "Pour le Mérite." Von Jagow said that he was sure that this was not so, but that he did not know the name of the Commander, and that it was not "usual" to tell what punishment had been given. So that I suppose the matter will rest, unless I get orders to ask formally about the punishment.

The German military people and ruling Junker class are furious at the settlement with America, and abuse America, the President and me indiscriminately.

Anything the President says about peace is prominently placed in the newspapers.

Yesterday in a debate in the Reichstag over the censorship, member Stresemann, National Liberal (the party which now holds the balance of power), violently abused President Wilson and said he was not wanted as a peace-maker. All applauded except the Socialists—so I think the President had better say nothing more about peace for the present. What he has said has done much good and has pleased the Government here, if not the Reichstag. Although von Jagow is a Junker of Junkers, the Junkers are against him and claim he is too weak. He may be bounced.

The crops are very fine.

Undoubtedly we shall have another crisis when the extremists here demand a "reckless" U-boat war because we are doing nothing to England.

Germany will last through on the food question.

I have heard reports that the Turks are tired of German rule and almost ready to flop.

I am to meet Prince Buelow, ex-Chancellor, to-morrow and may fish up something interesting.

The Kaiser has gone to the front, probably Russian. Next war loan will be 12 milliards.

Helfferich lunched here last Sunday. He speaks English fairly well. Zimmermann is laid up with the gout.

In the Reichstag debate yesterday, Stresemann, applauded by all except Socialists, said that Germany threw away Wilson as a peace-maker. However, the Government is pleased with President's peace talk, as it keeps the people from thinking of food and U-boat crises.

U-boat question will come up again, when Pan-Germanists and Conservatives demand a reckless U-boat war because we have done nothing against England.

Harden's paper has been confiscated again.

June, 1916. I am sorry to lose Ruddock, who is sent to Belgium, but it is a good appointment, as his knowledge of German and relations here will help matters.

The debates in the Reichstag have been quite interesting yesterday and the day before. The Chancellor, irritated by the anonymous attacks on him in pamphlets, etc., made a fine defence. In the course of the debate allusions were made to President Wilson and the U-boat question. The U-boat question may break loose again any day.

I do not think that either Austria or Germany wishes President Wilson to lay down any peace conditions. There may possibly be a Congress after the Peace Congress, but meanwhile all parties here feel that America has nothing to do with peace conditions. America can bring the parties together, but that is all. The speech about the rights of small peoples has, I hear, made the Austrians furious, as Austria is made up of many nationalities and the Germans say that if the rights of small peoples and peoples choosing their own sovereignty is to be discussed, the Irish question, the Indian question and the Boer question, the Egyptian question and many others involving the Entente Allies must be discussed. I think that generally there is a big change in public opinion and the Germans are beginning to realise that the President is for peace with Germany.

The Germans expect that by September preparations will be finished and that the Suez Canal will be cannonaded, bombed and mined so that it will dry up, and then the Indian-Afghan troubles will begin.

June, 1916. The President's peace talks carried over the dangerous moment after the submarine submission. Von Jagow told me that because of debates in Reichstag the President must not think he is not welcome as mediator.

Crops look well.

The break on Austro-Russian front is reported to have been caused by wholesale desertions of Ruthenian troops to Russians.

The editor of the National Zeitung, responsible for the fake interview with me, has been "fired" from that paper which has published a notice to that effect.

Grand Admiral von Koester made a speech implying that reckless submarine war should be taken up and England thus defeated. He is retired, but is head of the Navy League, a concern backed by the Government, possessing a million members and much political influence.

Apropos of hyphenated Americans, a friend tells me that when he was secretary here some years ago, a certain Congressman tried for six years to get presented at Court, insisting that he be presented as a "German-American." The Kaiser turned him down, saying he knew no such thing as a "German-American," and the Congressman finally consented to be presented as an American.

The U-boat question will come up again, say in three months, unless we get in serious trouble in Mexico, when it will come up sooner.

Edwin Emerson has been sent out of the country, I think to serve in the Turkish Army in some capacity, perhaps paymaster or some such job.

The Foreign Office continues to protect these American mud-slingers—such as the "League of Truth" which is run by a German named Marten, posing as an American and a dentist (American citizen) named Mueller—these circulate a pamphlet entitled, "What Shall We Do With Wilson," etc., and are the gang who insulted the American flag by putting it wrapped in mourning on a wreath on the statue of Frederick the Great with a placard, "Wilson and his Press do not represent America."

COVER OF THE PAMPHLET FEROCIOUSLY ABUSIVE OF PRESIDENT WILSON. ISSUED BY THE EX-TRAVEL LECTURER, JOHN L. STODDARD

Letters, codes, etc., for Bernstorff and individuals are sent to America as follows: the letters are photographed on a reduced scale so that a letter a foot square appears as an inch and a half square. These little prints are put in the layers of a shoe heel of a travelling American or elsewhere, book cover, hat band, etc., and then rephotographed and enlarged in America. Also messengers travel steerage and put things in the mattress of a fellow passenger and go back to the ship after landing in New York and collect the stuff.

A German friend, just returned from Austria, says the feeling there against America is very strong on account of the Dumba incident.

Yesterday I was told by a German that the German army had aeroplanes which develop 300 H. P., and would soon have some of 1000 H. P.

July, 1916. Every one in this Embassy is getting to the breaking point. Nerves do not last forever, and the strain of living in a hostile country is great. The Germans, too, are on edge. They are going to take away our privilege of speaking to prisoners alone; this because they think I learned of the shooting of the second Irishman at Limburg from prisoners. As a matter of fact I did not, but cannot, of course, say how I did learn.

The Russian prisoners are being slowly starved, the French and English get packages from home.

There are rumors that a Bavarian regiment which was ordered a second time to take a position, which the Prussians lost at Verdun, refused and was ordered to be decimated, and that then the Crown Prince of Bavaria threatened to march all the Bavarian troops home unless the order to decimate was rescinded. I do not believe the rumour, but its circulation and other events such as the refusal of the Bavarians lately to adopt a common postage stamp, shows there is a little irritation growing between Prussia and Bavaria. For years before the war the Bavarian Comic papers cartooned the Prussians, common and royal, but like every other movement nothing will result.

There is much underground work for the resumption of reckless submarine war going on, all part of a campaign to upset the Chancellor. Von Bülow, Ex-Chancellor, is working hard. He, however, since his row with the Emperor over the "Telegraph" interview, which he passed as correct, will never be accepted by His Majesty. Nevertheless, he is becoming a focal point for opposition.

The Chancellor and his party are very timid about attacks. For instance, they will do nothing against Emerson, Mueller and that crew, which insults indiscriminately our flag, our President, the Chancellor, Zimmermann and me, because, as Zimmermann frankly told me, they are afraid of attacks. Mueller on the 4th of July hung out the American flag in mourning and circulated copies of the Declaration of Independence charged with a bloody hand and a black cross. I have filed in vain affidavits with the Foreign Office, by people who say he has threatened to shoot me at sight.

The Germans seem to fear the Russian attacks more than the English and French. They claim to have the measure of the English, and not to fear their offensive.

Dr. John R. Mott has been here. He made a great impression. I had him at lunch with the Chancellor, Zimmermann, and officials of the prisoner department and War Ministry.

Mass feeding of the people has begun. They pay a few pfennigs per meal.

I have heard rumours lately of actual dissatisfaction among soldiers at front and of many being transferred, but this unrest also will have no definite result.

Constant rain lately will damage the harvest and rot the potatoes to some extent. Nevertheless, as I have often said, the Germans will last. Holland has allowed more food in lately.

The long confinement will make many prisoners insane. Many old men at Ruhleben, living six in a horse's stall or in dim hay lofts, simply turn their faces to the wall and refuse even to complain.

The statement in the American papers that our National Guard could not mobilise for Mexico because of lack of sleeping cars caused much ridicule here, where they go to the front in cattle cars.

July, 1916. A committee called the National Committee for an Honourable Peace has been formed. Prince Wedel is at the head. Most of the people are friends of the Chancellor. One is an editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung which is the Chancellor's organ. On August 1st, fifty speakers, of this Committee will begin to speak, probably the opposition will come into their meetings and try to speak or break up the meetings.

The Lokal Anzeiger, also a government organ, prints an editorial to the effect that Germany may take up ruthless submarine war again. Great numbers of U-boats are being built and in September operations will be on a big scale, though the Chancellor will try to keep them to cruiser warfare.

The prisoner question on all sides is growing acute. The Germans sent me a note to-day threatening stern reprisals if the alleged bad treatment of their prisoners in Russia does not stop.

We can no longer talk to prisoners alone. Von Jagow told me that after the visit of Madam Sasenoff, or Samsenoff, to a Russian prisoners' camp, there was a riot, but the real reason is that the Germans have much to conceal. The prison food now is a starvation ration.

The Alliance of the Six, really an organization fostered by big iron business in Westphalia, is very active for annexation. This wants to get the French iron mines and coal, and so control the iron business of the Continent and perhaps Europe.

A man from Syria passed through here recently and gave me most interesting accounts of the state of affairs there. The Turks are oppressing the Arabians and the revolt of the Grand Sheriff of Mecca may have great effects in this war. This man says that the English are building two railroads from Suez into the desert and the Germo-Turks are building toward the canal from the North. For the Canal attack there are, at present, principally Austrian troops assembled. The Turks are beginning to take Greeks from the Coast cities into the interior of Asia Minor and are oppressing the Syrian Arabian cities, such as Beirut, where thousands are dying of starvation. At the Islahje-Aleppo R. R., 30 Turkish soldiers a day die from cholera. The Germans, by their precautions, escape. He passed 147 German auto trucks in the Cilician mountains bound for Bagdad. Also saw the British prisoners from Kut el Amara, who are dying of dysentery, being compelled to walk in the hot sun from Kut. He thinks the English and the Grand Sheriff will transfer the title of head of the religion from the Sultan at Constantinople to either the Sultan of Egypt or some new Sultan to be established as an Arabian Sultan, perhaps at Bagdad if the Russians and English take it, or at Mecca, and he considers this movement of Arabians against Turks may assume great proportions.

There is still talk here of a resumption of reckless submarine war which question is complicated and involved in the eternal efforts of the Conservatives to get the Chancellor out.

The recognition of the "merchant submarine" has made a very good impression here.

The plain people are eager for peace but those interested in carrying on the war have the upper hand.

The harvest is good, and is now being gathered.

A number of navy and (which is significant) army officers visited von Tirpitz, lately in his Black Forest Retreat and gave him a testimonial.

There is prospect that what is called here a "Burg Frieden" (Peace of the City) will be declared between the Chancellor and the principal Conservative newspapers.

One of the American correspondents back from Verdun says that a corps commander said his corps took no prisoners.

I think many of the Hungarians are for peace. I get this from Andrassy's son-in-law who is also a member of the lower house. Tisza, however, is still in full control.

Prince Leopold's (he is a brother-in-law of the Kaiser) stags have destroyed vegetables of the plain people (as in the days of William Rufus) and people dare write letters, and Liberal papers dare publish them complaining of these depredations.

CHAPTER VIII

GERMANY'S EARLY PLOTS IN MEXICO

The Diary Concluded

August, 1916. Count Andrassy, leader of the opposition to Tisza in Hungary, has been here for some time. He lunched with us one day and I had a talk with him in German. Andrassy is rather old and tired. Andrassy's father, the Prime Minister, was originally a great friend of Germany.

It is possible that Andrassy through German influence may be made Minister of Foreign Affairs instead of Burian. This is to be the first step in a German coup d'état to take place on the death of Francis Joseph—the throne successor to be given Austria alone, and Prince Eitel Fritz, the Kaiser's favourite son, to be King of Hungary with possibly a Czech kingdom in Bohemia.

Andrassy had an audience with the Kaiser here. Andrassy is apparently friendly with America and is also for peace.

Von Tirpitz is out with a statement practically demanding war with America. I am surprised that the newspapers are allowed to publish it. Very likely it will not be permitted to go out but it ought to be known in America.

Germany probably will come out with a strong note about Poland, refusing help and saying harvest is sufficient. This is not true as to food for babies who cannot live on rye and wheat, but need condensed milk.

The treatment of prisoners is going from bad to worse. The Chancellor and Foreign Office can do nothing against the military party.

Hoover, Professor Kellog, and I are all very much discouraged about Polish and other relief questions. The Germans are getting more and more disagreeable about these matters, even though they are for the benefit of Germany. Warwick Greene, of the Rockefeller Foundation, being a new arrival is more hopeful, but that will soon wear off.

The Germans are getting a blacklist of their own. One Barthmann, an American, who sells American shoes in Germany, wanted to get his pass stamped to go to America, and permission to come back, and was told that would only be done if the Chamber of Commerce (Handels-Kammer) consents; you see the connection—no American goods for Germany.

The Jews here are almost on the edge of being "pogrommed." There is a great prejudice against them, especially in naval and military circles, because they have been industrious and have made money. Officers openly talk of repudiating the War Loan which they say would only mean a loss for the Jews.

The Germans say they have new and horrible inventions which will end the war soon.

I supposed that because I had some acquaintance with German watering places and German-Americans I knew a little about Germany. I was wrong. No casual traveller ever gets to know the military caste nor do the members of that caste travel except on "business."

The members of the military caste live like Spartans and are consoled by the fact that they rule the country and look down on the merchant class. They feel that they have created modern industrial Germany. The military caste (of which the naval and all government bureaus are branches) has organised the nation for war with the efficiency of the managers of a great American corporation. The government is an absolutism. No Jew can become an officer. Officers of crack regiments do not go to the homes of persons in any kind of business. A business man is called a "Kaufmann," as we speak of a house painter. Some tame professors are paid by the State to give an impression of "Kultur."

This war is now a war for conquest or money. All people tell me that we must have "pay for so much blood." "If we don't keep Belgium there will be a revolution. Who is to pay for the War?" A Socialist who referred yesterday in the Reichstag to the Kaiser's speech of the beginning of the war which stated this was not a war to get territory, was well sat upon. Even the Socialists are all for war against Italy.

None of the German colonies is fit for Europeans. Germany last year proposed joint intervention in Mexico to England. If successful Germany will try to get a foothold in the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is like a red rag to a bull to every German.

Relations with members of the Government here are quite agreeable but there is not an effective government at present. The Chancellor will take no decisive action and leaves matters to department heads who fight with other department heads. The Emperor saw fit to follow the traditions of 1870 and go to the field taking the Chancellor and heads of many departments with him, hence great governmental confusion, but this does not affect military organisation. He is bored by the Chancellor, a good man, but of no action or decision. Von Falkenhayn is the Emperor's favourite. He is the chief of the General Staff. Von Tirpitz and von Mueller (also naval) have great weight. The Kaiser is thus surrounded by military influences.

Saw summaries of the news published by the General Staff and given to the Emperor to read. He gets only German-American news from America and no bad news from anywhere. On the Lusitania case there is a disposition to think, because we were not warlike over Mexico, we will stand anything. The Kaiser will not see me because of the delivery of arms by Americans to the Allies and has so stated.

There is no shortage of food supply. I was told yesterday they did not need our Polish Relief Committee for German Poland as Germany can take care of this alone. The hate of Americans is intense. But this hate can be turned off and on by the Government. The people believe everything they see in the papers. The monetary situation is not bad. All the money for war supplies has been spent in Germany, except perhaps for a few horses, etc., from Scandinavia.

The Chancellor and von Jagow have been in Vienna. Von Jagow told me only on current business, but this was a diplomatic statement. I believe they went to settle the fate of Poland. I hear Prussia wants an independent Poland and Austria wants to make it part of the Austrian Empire. In any event I think Prussia will secure the organising of the army which will soon be raised. A prominent Pole told me two days ago that the peasants were coddled by Russia, whose motto in Poland was "divide et impera," and that they will violently resent being drafted into the Prussian army.

The bitter attacks on the Chancellor continue. At a recent meeting in Bavaria resolutions were passed that the first objective of the war was to get rid of the Chancellor and the second to "clean out the Anglophile Foreign Office," which prevented Germany from resorting to "reckless" methods for the swift winning of the war.

As a son-in-law of a high official told me to-day, the break between the military and navy on one side and the Civil Government on the other has widened almost into civil war. The same man told me that the Kaiser has lately become quite apathetic and lets events take their course.

One of my attachés has broken down completely, cries when spoken to; living in a fiercely hostile atmosphere is not agreeable and I wonder how long the rest of us can hold out.

The harvest is very good, but does not provide fat, and as yet, meat. But the starving out business I have always said was an "iridescent" dream.

New men, 80,000 in this vicinity alone, are being called to the colours.

Every one here is getting more on razor edge, prisoners are treated more roughly and get worse food. Bavaria is getting restless and dissatisfied, this will not amount to anything definite but is a sign of the times.

I went to Herringsdorff for a few days of swimming. At a concert in the evening a man recited a poem he said he had written about "having bled enough." He was vehemently applauded. Quite a contrast to the days when the best actors in Germany were not ashamed to spout the "HYMN OF HATE"!

The military people use the censorship even against papers friendly to the Chancellor and Germans certainly can hate each other as thoroughly and scientifically as they do most other nations. Dr. Alonzo Taylor thinks that in peace times some one fed this nation too much meat.

The newspapers are preparing the people for the entry of Roumania.

Professor ——, a school friend of Tisza's and Burian's who was recently in Austria, saw Burian and says Burian is ready and even anxious to make an arbitration treaty with America and also send an Ambassador in Dumba's place to Washington. This is out of my jurisdiction. He says that to-morrow or next day there will be an interpellation in the Hungarian Chamber about sending an Ambassador to America.

The National Liberals probably will unite with the Conservatives and demand a strong hold on Belgium, if not actual possession of that country, as one of the objects of the war.

This Union of National Liberals and Conservatives is dangerous and may mean a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.

The entry of Roumania took every one by surprise. Beldiman, the Roumanian Minister here, was visiting the reigning Prince of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, brother of the Roumanian King, and apparently knew nothing of the danger of a break.

To-day Hindenburg is named Chief of the General Staff, and his Chief of Staff, Ludendorff, is made Quartermaster General, Falkenhayn, former Chief of Staff is bounced without even the excuse of a diplomatic illness. This is all a great concession to popular opinion. I do not know where Hindenburg stands with reference to America, but have heard that he is a reasonable man. Of course, here the Army has as much to say in foreign affairs as the Foreign Office, if not more. When I was at the Great General Headquarters, Falkenhayn, although I knew him, did not call on me, and dodged me. He did not even appear at the Kaiser's table when I lunched there. From all this I judge he was against America on the submarine question. I also have heard that when Helfferich was talking before the Kaiser, in favour of peace with America, Falkenhayn interrupted him, but was told by the Kaiser to "stick to his last" or words to that effect.

These people here are now nervous and unstrung and actually believe that America will now enter the war against them. It is impossible to conceive of the general breakdown of nerves among this people.

I have heard lately of men as old as 47 being taken for the Army.

Zimmermann has now gone on a vacation, his place being temporarily filled by von Treutler, Prussian Minister to Bavaria, who since the commencement of the war has been with the Kaiser. I judge this means the Kaiser is looking personally into matters at the Foreign Office. Von Treutler is, I think, against the resumption of reckless submarine war. He is lunching with me to-day. He is rather the type of intelligent-man-of-the-world and sportsman, and has little of the Prussian desire to "imponieren" by putting his voice two octaves lower and glaring at one like an enraged bullfrog.

Dr. William Bayard Hale, of Mexican fame, who is in Berlin representing the Hearst papers, has become very thick with officials here. Von Jagow and Zimmermann are much impressed by him.

The Germans may hate the President, but there are in America hundreds of thousands of Czechs from Bohemia, Poles from Poland, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croatians and Slavs from Hungary, Roumanians, Italians, Greeks, Russians, Scotch, Belgians, and French who HATE the Germans.

I believe the Germans want an excuse to resume reckless submarine war and an American correspondent has taken the job of making bad feeling to justify such a course.

September, 1916. As these people get desperate the submarine question gets deeper and deeper under their skin. I really think that it is only a question of time.

Of course, from what I learn here Greece is sure to come in and this is expected here.

As the Consul General at Hamburg has reported, serious riots have occurred there, two by the poor classes, mostly women, and one by students. The crowd shouted "Down with the Kaiser," called for an end of the war, calling for unlimited submarine war against England.

The hate of Americans grows daily, if indeed it is possible to be greater.

Ira Nelson Morris, American Minister to Sweden, was here. He and his wife are charming people. He is very popular in Sweden. Elkus is also here on his way to Constantinople. If any one can "get away" with that difficult post he can. I took Elkus to see von Jagow and had him at lunch with von Treutler, the man in Zimmermann's place. I talked with Elkus to von Jagow about Syrian Relief. A Syrian, whose name I cannot give away, says the Turkish Government reported to our Embassy in Turkey that the harvest in Syria was the best in years, whereas, in truth this year's harvest, on account of drought and last year's on account of locusts, are the worst in 35 years. Missionaries have told me that Syrians are starving.

A fact for the Russian born—Germany does not recognise the American citizenship or naturalisation of a person born in Russia.

Yesterday there was a conference of all party leaders at the Chancellor's. I understand nothing was said about America or submarine question. I doubt this. The Press here and certain other agencies are trying to convince America that all is peaceful, but Baron Mumm two days ago told Elkus, in this house, that the ruthless submarine war undoubtedly would be resumed.

In general conversation with von Jagow, recently, he said that the offensive on the Somme could not continue without the great supply of shells from America. He also said that recently a German submarine submerged in the Channel had to allow 41 ships to pass, and that he was sure that each ship was full of ammunition and soldiers but probably had some protecting American angels on board, and, therefore, the submarine did not torpedo without warning. He seemed quite bitter.

The wife of an American newspaper correspondent was recently attacked in the street. Of course, the husband will not cable this to America. Two stenographers from this Embassy were recently slapped on coming out of a theatre because they were speaking English.

Reventlow's paper was recently suppressed and Reventlow forbidden to write without special permission. This is a good sign from the Chancellor.

Dr. Hale was recently given a special trip to the West front, and allowed to talk to the Crown Prince, etc.

December, 1916. The Germans are simply delighted with the President's peace note. Only a few cranks or conservative papers are against it.

I saw Zimmermann the day after my arrival. He was most friendly and said he hoped he and I would be able, as usual, to settle everything in a friendly manner.

Yesterday he lunched here and gave me the German reply after lunch. He told me at the first talk that he, the Chancellor, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were all working together. Most people here say that Hindenburg and Ludendorff are at present the real rulers of Germany. Zimmermann remarked that there was no danger from "reckless" submarine war.

Zimmermann said he regretted the sending of the Belgians to Germany but it was hard now to go back on what they had done. I have some hope that a retreat may be arranged—possibly by sending the Belgians back gradually and saying nothing about it.

The American Chamber of Commerce are to give a big dinner January sixth to welcome me back. Zimmermann and von Gwinner, head of Deutsche Bank, have agreed to speak and many prominent Germans have accepted.

The Press department of the Foreign Office has been reorganised by Zimmermann, and Hammann, the former head, fired. The new head is Major Deutelmoser, formerly of the General Staff, a personal friend of mine.

The Emperor is at Potsdam and consulted with Zimmermann, General von Kessel, etc., as to the reply to the President's peace note.

Berlin is much more melancholy than when I left. General von Kessel came to our American Colony Christmas tree for poor Berlin children. It was very pathetic. One little kid got up and prayed for peace and every one wept. I hope to get to see Ludendorff and Hindenburg soon and see how they feel toward America.

I went to Ruhleben, the British civilian camp, yesterday to tell the prisoners that all over 45 go home. It was quite a Christmas gift as 700 there are over that age. (Note: don't think this agreement of Germany and England ever went into effect!)

January, 1917. Germany wants a peace conference in order to make a separate peace on good terms to them with France and Russia, then hopes to finish England by submarines, then later take the scalp of Japan, Russia and France separately. The Allies ought to remember what Ben Franklin said about hanging together or separately. I get the above scheme from very good authority.

The weather is most depressing; dark, and rain every day. All hands seem cross. Zimmermann, I think, finds it much more difficult to be the responsible first than the criticising second. It is not as easy as it looked to him.

The Kaiser stated the other day that he did not expect peace now, that the English would try a great offensive in the spring and would fail.

Herbert Hoover writes me that the Germans are violating all their pledges in Belgium. He expects a year of great difficulties. I hear this confirmed on best authority and that even the German official who is supposed to see that food is not sent from Belgium to Germany in violation of Germany's pledges sends out butter to his family; that there is an absolute reign of terror in Belgium, sudden and arbitrary arrests, etc. I think the Germans want to see all foreign diplomats out of Bucharest and Brussels and the charges against Voypicka should be considered in that light.

The greatest danger from submarine war is that unthinking persons in the U. S. may start a crusade against the President's policy, encourage the Germans in the belief that we are divided and lead them to resume reckless acts in that belief. The continuance of a strong front is the very best way to keep the peace.

Both Zimmermann and the Chancellor asked me about Bernstorff, and returning good for evil, I said that he was O. K., on very good terms with the Government, well liked (sic) and that no one could do better!

A friend just returned from a week's visit in Hungary reports a great desire for peace. Persons who, a year ago, said that the President could have nothing to do with peace or negotiations, now say he is the only possible mediator. This comes from high government circles there.

The historic crown of St. Stephen was much too large for the King, but the little crown prince made a great hit with the populace.

An Armenian woman came through here the other day. Her husband had been captured or killed and her tale of the treatment of the Armenians by the Turks was heartrending.

Everything points to a coming crisis in the matter of food, how serious it will be even the officials themselves do not know, as there is much concealed food and much smuggling over the various frontiers.

In some parts of Germany, the country police or gendarmes are searching the farm houses thrice weekly.

I have secured permission to visit and inspect the enslaved Belgians, have named as inspectors all members of our staff speaking French, but as yet have not received passes.

Here is a copy of a letter I have just received from a German:

"The hypocrisy of the German Government is really disgusting! It is a well-known matter of fact, that by hints and approbation, nay even by express orders of the German military authorities the troops in France and Belgium have been stimulated to give no quarter at all in the case of British adversaries, and that in Russia even whole regiments and brigades have been annihilated by grapeshot, although the poor wretches delivered themselves on mercy and raised their hands, to prove their submission. Both the Prussian and the Bavarian crown-prince have expressly ordered to make no prisoners, to spare ammunition and to despatch the surviving by steel and bayonet. Has the order been forgotten, issued by the Kaiser in the beginning of the German China-Expedition, to deal with the Chinese like the Huns, to destroy and annihilate every human creature both men and women and even innocent children!

Quis Aulerit Gracchos de seditione quaerentes?
Unus pro multis.

P. S.

The war would be decided and peace restored as soon as the U. S. A. Government would intervene in favour of humanity, liberty and civilisation. Down with the Prussian Tyranny!"

The Germans will do nothing about Belgium. The deportations were a military measure, demanded by Ludendorff, who constantly fears a British landing on the Belgian coast.

A man who called on von Tirpitz recently was told by von Tirpitz that he, von Tirpitz, was watched like a spy and all his letters opened. Von Tirpitz said that Hindenburg was the real ruler of Germany, that anything Bethmann said was censored by Hindenburg and that Hindenburg was now against reckless submarine war but that any substantial defeats in the field would make him change his mind. Von Tirpitz said that the Kaiser was losing his mind and spent all his time praying, and learning Hebrew.

PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN COURTYARD OF EMBASSY, AUGUST, 1916
Left to right—Lanier Winslow; Albert B. Ruddock; Percival Dodge; Grafton Minot; von Gwinner, head of the great Deutsche Bank; Surgeon Ohnesorg, U. S. N.; Ernest Bicknell of Red Cross; Ambassador Gerard; Mr. Wilmeth of Treas. Dept.; Assistant Secretary of War Breckenridge; Roland Harvey; Charles Russell; Hugo Ballin, head of Hamburg-American Line; Major Ryan and First Secretary Grew.]

The food situation grows worse. Potato cards must now be presented in restaurants and hotels. I doubt if potatoes can last beyond April. There is food in Roumania but much will go to the troops; Austrians and Turks: the railways are so used by troops, etc., that it is doubtful if any food from there can reach Germany for months.

All apartment houses in Berlin are closed at nine, and lights in halls extinguished. Theatres close at ten and movies also. There is want of coal due to lack of transportation.

The President's address to the Senate yesterday (Jan. 22, 1917) is splendid. I don't know yet how it will be taken here. If it is published it will give the German people something to consider.

Postcards showing Zeppelins in the act of murdering the sleeping babies of an enemy city are distributed here with pride.

All Germans of my acquaintance have impressed on me lately the renewed danger of submarine warfare. The American correspondents are not allowed to send out the hate of America speeches and articles. Cyril Brown of the World says that last week fifty per cent of the matter he sent was cut out by censor here.

The new U-boat campaign will go along the armed merchantman lines and an endeavour will be made to force or get us in some way to recognise that an armed merchantman is the same as a warship and, therefore, may be fired on without notice. It is the old story, but more subtly presented.

Food situation more and more serious, riots lately in two markets in Berlin.

Have not yet received passes to see the Belgians.

Undoubtedly Ludendorff is the real dictator of Germany to-day. What he thinks about America may be judged from the circumstances before Colonel Kuhn's recall.

The nearer I get to the situation the more I consider the President's peace note an exceedingly wise move. It has made it very difficult for the terrorists here to start anything which will bring Germany into conflict with the U. S.

The Chancellor, Zimmermann, Stumm, have all ridiculed the idea that Germany will go back on her "Sussex" pledges; but if she does, then the peace note makes it easier for America to enter the war on the Allies' side with a clear conscience and the knowledge on the part of the people at home that the President did everything possible to keep us out of the mess.

CHAPTER IX

THE KULTUR OF KAISERDOM—THE GERMAN SOUL

The older I grow the more it seems to me that all men are alike and that they have been alike at all periods of history, capable of the same development and differing only because of environment.

I do not believe, for example, that any mystery is concealed behind the faces of the peoples of the East. Once I asked Soughimoura, my colleague in Berlin, Ambassador of Japan, whether the Japanese were as much subject to nerves as western peoples. He answered in the affirmative but said they were taught from infancy to control their nerves. I asked him how, and he said the principle of the system was deep abdominal breathing with a slow release of the breath as soon as nervousness came on. Japanese wrestlers practised this, he added, and when a man took deep breaths it was almost impossible to throw him.

Of course, social life and customs change with climate. But education is the most powerful factor of all. The Aztecs of Mexico offered human sacrifices, but the letter of the Aztec mother to her daughter, giving advice and counsel, mentioned by Prescott in his history, might have been written by a New England mother to-day. Somewhere in the world is a savage eating human flesh, persuaded that in so doing he is acting in accordance with the tenets of his religion.

These are the extremes.

But the German or rather the Prussian, has been moulded into the extraordinary person that he is to-day by a slow process of education extending through several generations. At Marienburg, on the Baltic shore of Germany, stands the ancient castle of the Teutonic Knights recently restored by the German Kaiser. The Knights at one time conquered and occupied much of the territory that is now modern Prussia. A military religious order, they attracted adventurers from all lands and their descendants constitute many of the noble families of Prussia. It is this tradition of conquest for gain that still animates the ruling class of Prussia and therefore all Germany.

Later through the middle ages and as the central power of the Emperor grew weaker and weaker, what is to-day Germany became a nest of dukedoms and principalities. Before the French Revolution these numbered hundreds. After the Thirty Years' War which ravaged Germany from 1615 to 1645 extreme poverty was often conspicuous at these petty courts. War was an industry and the poor German peasants were frequently bartered as slaves to the war-god, as the Hessians were sold by their ruler to the British in our War of the Revolution. The Germans were then the mercenaries of Europe, savages skilled in war, without mercy towards the towns unfortunate enough to be given to their pillage. There is no more horrible event in all history than that of the sack of Rome by the German mercenaries in the year 1527. Under General George von Frundsberg, who joined forces with the recreant constable Bourbon of France and the Spaniards, these lawless Germans invaded the fertile plains of Italy and took Rome by assault.

The most awful outrages were perpetrated. Prelates were tortured after being paraded through the streets of the Eternal City, dressed in their sacred pontificals and mounted on donkeys. Altars were defiled, sacred images broken, vestments and services and works of art taken from the plundered churches and sacred relics insulted, broken and scattered. For nine months the orgy continued, the inhabitants being tortured by these German soldiers in their effort to find hidden treasure. In fact conditions in Belgium to-day had their counterpart centuries ago in the treatment of Roman Catholic Priests and the people of Rome.

The great change in the feeling of the country towards Prussia since the latter's conquest of the rest of Germany in 1866, is still exemplified by one quotation from Goethe. He said, "The Prussian was born a brute and civilisation will make him ferocious." We all have seen how prophetic was this sentence. Skilled in chemistry, in science, well educated, made rich by manufacturing and foreign commerce, the Prussians of to-day have shown themselves far more bloody, far more cruel than the German lansquenet of the middle ages who sold himself, his two handed sword, his military experience and his long lance to the highest bidder.

Tacitus tells of how the ancient Germans when drawn up in battle array used to sing a sort of war song to terrify their enemies.

It was Goethe incidentally who remarked "Amerika, du hast es besser." (America, you are better off.) The poet who died in 1832 foresaw, indeed, the coming power of the free democracy across the seas.

It was interesting to note the psychological development of the Germans during the war. For the very short time while war hung in the balance there was a period almost of rejoicing, among the singing crowds in the streets—a universal release of tension after forty years' preparation for war.

Next came the busy period of mobilisation and then, as the German armies swept through Belgium and France, stronghold and fortress falling before them, there came a period of intense exaltation, a period when the most reasonable Germans, the light of success and conquest in their eyes, declared German Kultur would now be imposed on the whole world.

The battle of the Marne ended this period of rejoicing and, through the winter of 1914-1915, when it became apparent that Germany would not win by a sudden assault, the temper of the people began to change to an attitude of depression.

It has been at all times the policy of the German autocracy to keep the people of Germany from amusing themselves. I know of no class in Germany which really enjoys life. The Counts and Junkers have their country estates. Life on these estates, which are administered solely for profit, is not like country life in England or America. The houses are plain and, for the most part, without the conveniences of bath rooms and heating to which we are accustomed in America. Very few automobiles are owned in Germany. There are practically no small country houses or bungalows, although at a few of the sea places rich Jews have villas.

The wealthy merchant takes his vacation in summer at Carlsbad or Kissingen or in some other resort where his physical constitution, disorganised by over-eating and over-drinking, can be regulated somewhat. Many Germans take their families to Switzerland where the German of all ages with knapsack and Alpine stick is a familiar sight.

Earnestness is the watchword. For should the people once get a taste of pleasure they might decide that the earth offered fairer possibilities than life in the barracks or the admiring contemplation of fat and complacent grand dukes and princes.

Much of this sycophancy is due to the poverty of the educated classes. Salaries paid to officials are ridiculously small. The German workingmen both in wages and living are on a lower scale than those of other western nations with the possible exception of Russia, Italy and the Balkan States. The professional and business classes earn very little. The reason for the superiority of the German in the chemical industry is because a chemist, a graduate of the university, can be hired for less than the salary of an American chauffeur.

And this earnestness of life was insisted upon even to a greater degree by the autocracy with the opening of war. The playing of dance music brought a visit from the police. The theatres at first were closed but later opened. Only plays of a serious or patriotic nature were originally permitted. Dancing was tabooed, but in the winter of 1915-16 Reinhardt was allowed to produce a ballet of a severely classical nature and at the opera performances the ponderous ballet girls were permitted to cavort as usual.

I saw no signs of any great religious revival, no greater attendance at the churches. Perhaps this was because I was in the Protestant part of Germany where the church is under the direct control of the government and where the people feel that in attending church they are only attending an extra drill, a drill where they will be told of the glories of the autocracy and the necessity of obedience. In fact, religion may be said to have failed in Germany and many state-paid preachers launched sermons of hate from their state-owned pulpits.

Always fond of the drama and opera I was a constant attendant at theatres in Berlin. The best known manager in Berlin is Reinhardt, who has under his control the Deutsches Theatre with its annex, the Kammerspiel and also the People's Theatre on the Bülow Platz. I made the acquaintance of Mr. Reinhardt and his charming wife who takes part in many of his productions. I dined with them in their picturesque house on the Kupfer Graben. In the Deutsches Theatre the great revolving stage makes change of scene easy so that Reinhardt is enabled to present Shakespeare, a great favourite in Germany, in a most picturesque manner. He manages to lend even to the most solemn tragedy little touches that add greatly to the interest and keep the attention fixed.

For instance in his production of "Macbeth," when Lady Macbeth comes in, in the sleep-walking scene, rubbing her hands and saying, "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" the actress taking this part in Berlin gave a very distinct and loud snore between every three or four words: thus most effectively reminding the audience that she was asleep.

As the war continued the taste of the Germans turned to sombre, tragical and almost sinister plays. Only a death on the stage seemed to bring a ray of animation to the stolid bovine faces of the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, whose "Spring's Awakening," given in New York in the spring of 1917, horrified and disgusted the most hardened Broadway theatregoers. The principal female rôle was played by a Servian actress, Maria Orska—very much on the type of Nazimova. In this play, presented to crowded audiences, only one of the four acts was without a death.

Another favourite during war-time, played at Reinhardt's theatre, was "Maria Magdalena." The characters were the father, mother, son and daughter of a German family in a small town and two young men in love with the daughter. In the first act the police arrest the son for theft, giving the mother such a shock that she dies of apoplexy on the stage. In the second act, the two lovers have a duel and one is killed. In the third act, the surviving lover commits suicide, and, in the fourth act, the daughter jumps down the well. The curtain descends leaving only the old man and the cat alive and the impression is given that if the curtain were ten seconds later either the cat would get the old man or the old man would get the cat!

The mysterious play of Peer Gynt was given in two theatres during each winter of the war. All of Ibsen's dramas played to crowded houses. Reinhardt, during the last winter I was in Berlin, produced Strindberg's "Ghost Sonata," in quite a wonderful way. The play was horrible and grewsome enough, but as produced by him, it gave a strong man nightmare for days afterwards.

The German soul, indeed, seems to turn not towards light and gay and graceful things, but towards bloodshed and grewsomeness, ghosts and mystery—effect doubtless of the long, dark, bitter nights and gray days that overshadow these northern lands.

I think the only time I lost my temper in Germany was when a seemingly reasonable and polite gentleman from the Foreign Office sitting by my desk one day, in 1916, remarked how splendid it was that Germany had nearly two million prisoners of war and that these would go back to their homes imbued with an intense admiration of German Kultur.

I said that I believed that the two million prisoners of war who had been insulted and underfed and beaten and forced to work as slaves in factories and mines and on farms would go back to their homes with such a hatred of all things German that it would not be safe for Germans to travel in countries from which these prisoners came, that other nations had their own Kultur with which they were perfectly satisfied and which they did not wish to change for any made-in-Germany brand!

Certain Germans have prated much of German "Kultur," have boasted of imposing this "Kultur" on the world by force of arms. What is this German "Kultur"? A certain efficiency of government obtained by keeping the majority of the people out of all voice in governmental affairs, a certain low cost of manufactured products or of carrying charges in the shipping trades made possible by enslaving the workmen who toil long hours for small wages—a certain superiority in chemical production because trained chemists, willing to work at one semi-mechanical task, can be hired for less than a Fifth Avenue butler is paid in America, and a certain pre-eminence in military affairs reached by subjecting the mass of the people to the brutal, boorish, non-commissioned officers and the galling yoke of a militaristic system.

Subtract the German Jews and in the lines of real culture there would be little of the real thing left in Germany. Gutmann, Bleichroeder, von Swabach, Friedlander-Fuld, Rathenau, Simon, Warburg in finance; Borchardt and others in surgery, and almost the whole medical profession; the Meyers, the Ehrlichs, Bamberger, Hugo Schiff, Newburger, Bertheim, Paul Jacobson, in chemistry and research; Mendelssohn, and others, in music; Harden, Theodor Wolf, Georg Bernhard and Professor Stein in journalism.

But why continue—about the only men not Jews prominent in the intellectual, artistic, financial, or commercial life of Germany are the pastors of the Lutheran Churches. And the Jews have won their way to the front in almost a generation. Still refused commissions in the standing army (except for about 114 since the war), still compelled to renounce their religion before being eligible for nobility or a court function, still practically excluded from university professorships, considered socially inferior, the Jews of Germany until a few years ago lived under disabilities that had survived from the Middle Ages. They were not allowed to bear Christian names. The marriages of Jews and Christians were forbidden. Jews could not own houses and lands. They were not permitted to engage in agriculture and could not become members of the guilds or unions of handicraftsmen. When a Jew travelled he was compelled to pay a tax in each province through which he passed. Jews attending the fair at Frankfort on the Oder were compelled to pay a head tax, and were admitted to Leipzig and Dresden on condition that they might be expelled at any time. Berlin Jews were compelled to buy annually a certain quantity of porcelain, derisively called "Jew's porcelain" from the Royal manufactory and to sell it abroad. When a Jew married he had to get permission and an annual impost was paid on each member of the family, while only one son could remain at home, and the others were forced to seek their fortune abroad. The Jews could worship in their own way, in some states, provided they used only two small rooms and made no noise.

The reproach that the Jew is not a producer, but is a mere middleman, taking a profit as goods pass from hand to hand, is handed down from the time when Jews were forbidden by law to become producers and, therefore, were compelled to become traders and middlemen, barred from the guilds and from engaging in the cultivation of the soil.

The German newspaper in size is much smaller than ours. If you take an ordinary American newspaper and fold it in half, the fold appearing horizontally across the middle of the page and then turn it so that the longer sides are upright, you get an idea of the size. There are no editorials in German newspapers, but articles, usually only one a day, on some political or scientific subject, one contributed by a professor or some one else supposedly not connected with the newspaper.

The editor of the German newspaper in his desire to poison and colour the news to suit his own views does not rely upon an editorial, but inserts little paragraphs and sentences in the news columns. For instance, a note of President Wilson's might be printed and after a paragraph of that, a statement something like this will be inserted in parentheses. "This statement comes well from the old hyprocrite whose country has been supplying arms and ammunition to the enemies of Germany. The Editor." A few sentences more or a paragraph of the note and another interlineation of this kind. Small newspapers have a news service furnished free by the government, thus enabling the latter to colour the news to suit itself. It is characteristic of Germany and shows how void of amusement the life of an average citizen is and how the country is divided into castes, that there is no so-called society or personal news in the columns of the daily newspaper.

You never see in a German newspaper accounts common even to our small town newspapers, of how Mrs. Snooks gave a tea or how Mrs. Jones, of Toledo, is visiting Mrs. Judge Bascom for Thanksgiving. If a prince or duke comes to a German town a simple statement is printed that he is staying at such and such a hotel.

German newspapers, as a rule, are very pronounced in their views, either distinctly Conservative or Liberal or Socialist or Roman Catholic. The Berliner Tageblatt is nearest our idea of a great independent, metropolitan, daily newspaper. Other newspapers represent a class and many of them are owned by particular interests such as the Krupps and other manufacturers or munition makers.

There is little that is sensational in the German newspaper. I remember on one occasion that two women murderers were beheaded in accordance with German law. Imagine how such an occurrence would have been "played up" in the American newspapers, with pictures, perhaps, of the executioner and his sword, with articles from poets and women's organisations, with appeals for pardon and talk of brainstorms and the other hysterical concomitants of murder trials in the United States. But in the German newspapers a little paragraph, not exceeding ten lines, simply related the fact that these two women, condemned for murdering such and such a person, had been executed in the strangely medieval manner—their heads cut off on the scaffold by a public executioner.

The German newspapers in reporting police court and other judicial proceedings often omit names and it is possible in Berlin for a man to prosecute a blackmailer without having his own name in print.

When a German victory was announced flags were displayed, but as the war progressed so many victories announced turned out to be nothing wonderful or decisive that little attention was paid to the vain-glorious flaunting of German triumphs. Following an old custom ten or fifteen trumpeters climbed the tower of Rathhaus or City Hall and there quite characteristically blew to the four quarters of Heaven; but again as these official and brazen blowings were not always followed by the confirmation in fact, trumpetings were gradually discontinued.

The Germans cleverly kept back the announcement of certain successes in order to offset reverses. For instance, on a day when it was necessary to tell the people of a German retreat the newspapers would have great headlines across the front of the first page announcing the sinking of a British cruiser (sunk, perhaps, a month before) and then hidden in a corner would be a minimised announcement of a German defeat.

To us in Germany there was at the time no battle of the Marne. So gradually was the news of the retreat of the German forces broken to the people that to-day the masses do not realise that the fate of the world was settled at the Marne!

CHAPTER X

THE LITTLE KAISERS

As the king idea seems inseparably connected with war there is no country in the world where kings and princes have been held in such great account as in the Central Empires.

I believe there are only two Christian kings in the world—the kings of Italy and of Montenegro—who are not by blood related to some German or Austrian royalty.

For remember that while we think of Germany as ruled by the Kaiser and while it is his will that is certainly imposed upon the whole of that territory which does not exist politically or even geographically but which we call Germany, there are houses of royalty in it almost as numerous as our big corporations. There are the three kings of Bavaria, Würtemburg and Saxony, grand dukes and dukes, and princes, all of them taking themselves very seriously and all of them residing in their own domains; jealously keeping away from the Emperor's court and jealously guarding every remnant of rule which the constitution of the German Empire has bequeathed to them.

Once I asked one of these princelings what his older brother, the reigning prince, did with his time in the small provincial town which is the capital of the principality. The brother looked at me with real surprise in his eyes and answered, "Why he reigns!"

Before the constitution of the German Empire, many of these poverty-stricken little courts were centres of kindly amusement, even of intellectual life.

The court of the Grand Duke Charles-Augustus, of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach at Weimar where Goethe resided and where he was entrusted with responsible state duties, was renowned in Europe as a literary centre.

Many of these princelings, however ridiculous their courts may have seemed, exercised despotic power. To-day the inhabitants of the two Mecklenburg duchies are protected by neither constitution nor bill of rights. The grand duke's power is absolute and he can behead at will any one of his subjects in the market-place or torture him to death in the dungeons of the castle and is responsible to God alone.

Here is an example from history. George Louis, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle, married his mistress, a Huguenot girl called Eleanore d'Olbreuze. They had one daughter, Sophia Dorothea, who married the Elector of Hanover, who was also George I of England. Sophia Dorothea was supposed to have been involved in a love affair with a Swedish Count, Philip Konigsmarck. Konigsmarck was murdered by order of George I, and Sophia Dorothea incarcerated in Ahlden where she died in 1726. Konigsmarck's sister went to Saxony to beg the aid of the Saxon King, Augustus the Strong. She failed to get news of her brother, but became one of the mistresses of Augustus the Strong and the mother of the celebrated Marshal Saxe. I say one of the "mistresses" of Augustus the Strong because he boasted that he was the father of 365 illegitimate children!

The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was the mother of Frederick the Great and his brothers, and therefore, an ancestor of the present German Kaiser. Any one writing about her in a disparaging manner is subject to be imprisoned, under the decisions of the Imperial Supreme Court, for "lèse-majesté" or injuring the person of the present monarch in daring to slander his ancestors. And, I suppose, any one referring to Augustus the Strong may be shut up in Dresden for insulting a predecessor of the present King.

Every year the nobles of the Central Empires hold a convention at Frankfort, where the means are discussed by which their privileges may be preserved. No newspaper prints an account of this Convention of the highest Caste.

The German peasants, as far as I have seen, are not so much under the dominion of feudal tradition as are the peasants in Austria and Hungary.

I was shooting once with a Hungarian Count who stationed me in one corner of a field to await the partridges, which driven by the beaters were expected to fly over my head and as I stood waiting for the beaters to take up their positions two peasant girls walked past me. One of them, to my surprise, caught hold of my hand, which she kissed with true feudal devotion. As a guest of the Count I was presumably of the noble class and therefore entitled by custom and right to this mark of subjugation. And it became quite a task in walking through the halls of the castle to dodge the servants, all of whom seemed anxious to imprint on me the kiss of homage.

Thackeray in the "Fitzboodle Confessions" gives a most amusing account of life in one of these small, sleepy, German courts and relates how he left Pumpernickel hurriedly, by night, after the court ball where he had discovered not only that his German fiancée had eaten too much, but that she had a taste for bad oysters.

All of these small kings and princes are jealous of the King of Prussia and of his position of German Emperor and show their jealousy by avoiding Berlin.

In October, 1913, when in London on my way to Germany, I met the young Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz in the Ritz Hotel where he was dining with an English earl and his beautiful wife. As I happened to have a box for the Gaiety Theatre, we all went there together and paid a visit to George Grossmith behind the scenes and talked with Emmy Wehlen, the Austrian actress, who was appearing in the comic opera then running. But in all the time that I was in Germany I never once saw or heard of the young Grand Duke who rules the subjects of his duchy with autocratic rule without even the semblance of a constitution.

Formerly our minister used to be accredited to some of these courts and, on inquiring informally through a friend, I learned that the American Minister is still accredited to Bavaria on the records of the Bavarian Foreign Office, no letters of recall ever having been presented. The fact that the American Ambassador is accredited to none of these courts is a distinct disadvantage because without letters of credence he does not come into contact with any of the twenty-four rulers of Germany who control the Bundesrat in which their representatives sit, voting as they are told by the kings, grand dukes and princes. A number of these kings and princelings, combining in the Bundesrat, can outvote the powerful king of Prussia. But they don't dare!

CHAPTER XI

ROYALTY'S RECREATION

I had a shooting estate about twenty miles from Berlin, one that I could reach by automobile in forty-five minutes from the door of the Embassy. Because of the strict German game laws I had better shooting there than within two hundred miles of large cities in America.

There seemed to be something to shoot there almost every day of the year. On the sixteenth of May the season opened for male roe—a very small deer. About the first of August the ducks, which breed in northern Germany, can be shot. These were mallards and there were about two thousand or more on a lake on my preserve. We usually shot them by digging blinds in the oat fields, shooting them after sunset as they flew from the lake to feed in the newly harvested grain. The season for Hungarian partridge opened on August 20th. These were shot over dogs in the stubble and in the potato fields. After a few weeks partridges became very wild and we then shot them with a kite. When we had put up a covey out of range and marked where they went down in a potato patch or field, perhaps of lucern or clover, a small boy would fly a kite made in the form of a hawk over the field. This kept the partridges from flying and they would lie while the dogs pointed until we put them up.

By October 1st pheasants could be shot; English pheasants become wild. These roosted in the trees at night and so escaped the plentiful foxes. Later on came shooting at long ranges, after they had collected in bands, of the female roedeer and also the hare shooting. Rabbits were shot at all times, and in November and December and January on foggy days it was not difficult to get a wild goose.

The hares were shot in cold weather, after the snow was on the ground, by walking in line of ten or fifteen beaters with two or three guns at intervals along the line and later, when the hares were very wild and the weather very cold, by what is called by the Germans "kessel-jagd" or kettle-hunt. For this hunt the head keeper would collect a number of beaters, as many as a hundred, from the neighboring towns and villages, mostly small boys and old men. On the great, flat plain the keeper would send out his beaters to the right and the left, walking in a straight line at about twenty-yard intervals. After each side had gone perhaps half a mile they would then turn at right angles, walk a mile, and then turn at right angles until the two lines met, so that perhaps a square mile of territory would be enclosed by the beaters with the ten to fifteen men with guns at intervals in the line. When the square had been formed the head keeper blew a blast on his bugle and all turned and walked slowly towards the centre and the hares were shot as they attempted to break through the line.

On one day just before I left Germany, I and members of the Embassy shot more than two hundred hares on one of these hunts. The German hare is an enormous animal with dark meat, almost impossible to distinguish from venison.

After these hare drives, besides, of course, paying the beaters their regular wages, I used to hold a lottery, giving a number of these hares as prizes or distributing hares to the magnates of the village, such as the pastor, the school teacher, the policeman and the postmaster.

When we were shooting in the summer and autumn the peasants were working in the fields and one had to be very careful in shooting roebuck with a high-powered rifle. It is customary to hunt roebuck on these flat plains from a carriage. In this way a bullet, travelling at a downward angle, if the buck is missed, strikes the ground within a short distance. If one were to shoot lying down, kneeling or standing, the danger to peasants in the fields would be very great. The pheasants were sometimes shot over dogs, but usually as the beaters drove small woods. A pheasant driven and flying high makes a difficult mark. One getting up before the dogs is almost too easy a shot.

We shot the rabbits by using ferrets, little animals like weasels wearing little muzzles and bells upon their necks. In the woods where the rabbits had their holes four or five ferrets would be put in the rabbits' holes and it was quite difficult to shoot rabbits as they came out like lightning, dodging among the trees. In the early spring the "birkhahns" were shot, a variety of black and white grouse. There were some blinds or little huts of twigs erected near places where the ground was beaten hard and on these open, beaten spots early in the morning the "birkhahns" waltz, doing a peculiar backward and forward dance in some way connected with their marriage ceremonies. There were also on this estate numbers, at times, of a curious bird found only in Spain, Roumania, Asia Minor, and these plains of the Mark of Brandenburg, a large bustard called by the Germans "trappe." These birds were very shy and hard to approach. Although I had several shots at them with a rifle at four or five hundred yards I did not succeed in getting one.

In talking with the Chancellor he almost always opened the conversation by asking if I had yet killed a "trappe." As a rule the German uses for shooting deer and roebuck a German Mauser military rifle, but with the barrel cut down and a sporting stock with pistol grip added. On this there is a powerful telescope. Many Germans carry a "ziel-stock," a long walking stick from the bottom of which a tripod can be protruded and near the top a sort of handle piece of metal about as big as a little finger. When the German sportsman has sighted a roebuck he plants his aiming stick in the ground, rests the rifle on the side projection, carefully adjusts his telescope, sets the hair trigger on his rifle and finally touches the trigger.

At the commencement of the war the Duke of Ratibor collected all these sporting rifles with telescopes and sent them to the front. These were of the same calibre as the military rifles and took the military cartridge, so they proved enormously useful for sniping purposes.

Going one day to a proof establishment to try a gun I opened by mistake a door which led to a great room where thousands of German military rifles were being fitted with telescopes. These telescopes have crossed wires, like those in a surveyor's instrument, and it is only necessary in aiming to fix the centre of the crossed wires on the game and pull the trigger. A clever arrangement enables the wires to be elevated for distant shooting.

So great is the discipline of the German people that game on these estates is seldom, if ever, touched by the peasants. There is no free shooting in Germany. The shooting rights of every inch of land are in possession of some one and the tens of thousands of game keepers constantly killing the crows, hawks, foxes and other birds and animals that destroy eggs and game make the game plentiful. The keeper has the right by law to shoot any stray dog or cat found a hundred yards from a village. I paid the head keeper a certain sum per month and in addition he received a premium called "shot money" for each bird or roebuck shot. He also received a premium for each fox or crow or hawk he destroyed, bringing, on the first of the month, the beaks and claws of the hawks, etc., to prove his claim. Foxes are very plentiful in Germany and in one winter on this estate, only twenty miles from Berlin, the keeper trapped or killed twelve foxes.

EXAMPLE OF THE COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OFFERED FOR SALE. ON THE OBVERSE IS THE PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE. ON THE REVERSE IS "YOUNG SIEGFRIED" ATTACKING A CHIMERA-LIKE MONSTER WITH FOUR HEADS: A BEAR FOR RUSSIA, A UNICORN FOR ENGLAND, A LION FOR BELGIUM, AND A COCK FOR FRANCE

The Emperor is very fond of fox shooting. Foxes are driven out of the forest past his shooting stand by beaters and one of the reasons why Prince Fürstenberg was such a favourite of the Emperor was that he provided him with splendid fox shooting, although it is whispered that he bought foxes in boxes in all parts of Germany and had them turned loose for the Emperor's benefit.

In the more thickly forested portions of Germany deer as well as roedeer are shot and in many districts wild boar. In Poland and in a few estates in Germany on the eastern border, moose, called elk (elch in German), are to be had. These, however, have very poor horns.

Talking to the keepers and beaters on this shooting estate gave me a very good idea of the hardships suffered in rural Germany, of the way in which the people in the farming districts are kept down by the lords of the manor and by the government, and it was from this village and the neighbouring town that I got some idea of the number of men called to arms in Germany.

By a custom dating from the devastating wars of the Middle Ages there are practically no farms in Germany, but inhabitants of the agricultural districts are collected in villages and the few farms have, characteristically, a military name. They are called "vorwerk" or outposts. In the village on my estate there are almost exactly six hundred inhabitants, men, women and children, and of these at the time I left Germany one hundred and ten had been called to the Colours. In the neighbouring town of Mittenwalde, of almost three thousand inhabitants, over five hundred had joined the army. At the commencement of the war the population of the German Empire was about 72,000,000, or something over, and applying these same proportions it will be seen what a vast army was created.

In the industrial districts where men are required for munition work perhaps not as great a proportion has been called. The name of the village on my estate was Gross Machnow, the road from Berlin to Dresden ran through it and only a few miles east was the shooting place of Wusterhausen where the favourite shooting box of the father of Frederick the Great was and where he was accustomed to hold his so-called tobacco parliament, when, with his cronies, over beer and long pipes, the affairs of the nation were discussed with great freedom.

The horse races in Germany are excellent. There are several tracks about Berlin. The Hoppegarten, devoted almost exclusively to flat racing; the Grunewald, the large popular track nearest to Berlin where both steeplechases and other races are held; and Karlshorst, devoted exclusively to steeplechasing and hurdle racing.

The jockey club of Berlin is the Union Club, which owns the Hoppegarten track. Its officers are men of the highest honour and in no country in the world are the races run more honestly, more "on the level," than in Germany.

Nothing makes for mutual international understanding more than sport. Even during the most bitter crises between Germany and America I felt that I could go absolutely alone to the crowded race tracks and, while I know the Germans differed emphatically with the American views of the war, the gentlemen in charge of the races and the members of the Union Club treated me with the kindest consideration and the most graceful courtesy.

I am sorry that I never attended any of the Court hunts which took place in the vicinity of Potsdam. A pack of hounds is kept there and boars hunted. The etiquette is very strict and no one, not presented at court, can appear at these hunts. As I did not have an opportunity to present my letters of credence until a month or more after my arrival in Berlin in the autumn of 1913, the winter rains had set in before I was eligible for the hunts and in addition I had not taken the precaution to order the necessary costumes.

The first time that a man appears at one of these hunts he must wear a tall silk hat, a double-breasted red coat, with tails like a dress coat, white breeches and top boots. After he has once made his appearance in this costume he may, thereafter, substitute for it a red frock hunting coat, white breeches and top boots and a velvet hunting cap, the same shape as the caps worn by the jockies. There are no jumps on these hunts. When the boar has been brought to bay by the dogs, the right to despatch him with a long hunting knife is reserved for the most distinguished man present. If a royalty is present at one of these hunts he distributes small sprigs of oak leaves to every one at the hunt, cherished ever after as valued souvenirs.

When I first arrived at Berlin, having brought horses with me from America, I used to ride every morning in the Tiergarten. Because so many Germans are in the army, riding is a very favourite sport and in peace times the Tiergarten is crowded with Berliners. Most of the riding was done between seven and ten in the morning. The early rising is compensated for, however, by the siesta after lunch, a universal custom.

Shooting is almost more of a ceremony than a sport. The letters exchanged between Emperor William and Czar Nicholas, lately discovered in the Winter Palace, show what a large part shooting played in their correspondence. One or the other is continually wishing the other "Weidmanns-Heil," which is the German expression for "good luck" as applied to shooting. All royalties must ride and keep in practice, especially because of military service. Indeed, all the sports of the Kaiser and his people converge toward a common object—military efficiency and war.

CHAPTER XII

THE ETERNAL FEMININE

Even the women, many of whom are honorary colonels to regiments, must keep in trim for the great parade days of autumn and spring. Many of these female colonels appear in uniform, riding at the head of their regiments. They sit on side saddles, however, and wear skirts corresponding somewhat in colour with the uniform coat and helmet of the regiment of which they are the honorary proprietors.

German female royalties are rather inclined to set an example of quietness in dress. They seldom wear the latest fashion and never follow the exaggerated modes of Paris. Even their figures are of the old-fashioned variety—pinched at the waist. While in the Tiergarten in the morning I saw many good horses, but only one fashionably cut riding habit. Many of the others must have been at least twenty years old, as the sleeves were of the Leg of Mutton style, fashionable, I believe, about that number of years ago.

Many German noblewomen shoot and are quite as good shots as their husbands. I was quite surprised once on a shooting party to meet an elderly princess whose grey hair was in short curls and who wore a coat and waistcoat like a man's. She shot with great skill and smoked long Havana cigars!

When German women get out of the country they very quickly imitate foreign fashions and extravagances of dress. The Czarina of Russia, for example, a German Princess, is very fond of fashions, and a friend of mine who had three audiences with her during the war tells me that on the occasion of his first audience she was dressed in black and received him in a room where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white.

There is one good thing about the king and aristocratic system. The position of women in the social scale is fixed by the husband's rank. There is, therefore, none of that striving, that vying with each other, which so often exhausts the nerves of the American woman and the purse of the husband. The German women give their time and attention to the "Four K's" that, in a German's eyes, should bound a woman's world, "Kaiser, Kinder, Kirche, Kuche" (Emperor, children, church and kitchen).

The successful business man of New York or Chicago or San Francisco is surprised to find how docile and domestic the German woman is—no foolish extravagance, but a real devotion to husband and home, a real mother to her many children. She matches that short epitaph of the Roman matron—"She spun wool; she kept the house."

When I came to Germany I found, on studying the language, that there was no word in German corresponding to "efficient." I soon learned that this is because everything done in Germany is done efficiently, and there is no need to differentiate one act from another in terms of efficiency. But the German man could not be as efficient as he undoubtedly is, without the whole-hearted devotion of the German woman.

German girls are given a good, strong, sound education. They learn languages, not smatterings of them. They are accomplished musicians. Domestic science they learn from their mothers. They are splendid swimmers, hockey players, riders and skaters.

During our first winter in Berlin we spent many afternoons at the Ice Palace in the Lutherstrasse, an indoor ice rink much larger than the one in the Freidrichstrasse, the Admirals Palast, where the ice ballets are given and the graceful Charlotte used to appear. The skating club of the Lutherstrasse was under the patronage of the Crown Prince and was one of the very few meeting places of Berlin society. The women were taught to waltz by male instructors and the men by several young women—blonde skaters from East Prussia. I tried to improve my skating and spent many hours making painful "Bogens" or circles under the efficient eyes of a little East Prussia instructress. Afternoon tea was served during the interval of skating and one afternoon a week was specially reserved for the Club members.

One of my young secretaries used to go occasionally to Wannsee, near Berlin, to play hockey with a German friend; as the young men were nearly all in the war, girls made up the majority of each team. My secretary reported that those German girls were as strong, as enduring and as skilful as the average young man.

Girls of the working classes, instead of flirting or turkey trotting at night, make a practice of going to the Turnvereins, to exercise in the gymnasiums there. If the members of the German lower classes only had the opportunity to rise in life what would they not accomplish! So many of them are very ambitious, persistent, earnest and thrifty.

Of course, female suffrage in Germany or anything approaching it is very distant. First of all, the men must win a real ballot for themselves in Prussia, a real representation in the Reichstag. In the Germany of to-day, a woman with feminist aspirations is looked on as the men of the official class look on a Social Democrat, something hardly to be endured. And this is in spite of the fact that the nations to the North, in Scandinavia, freed women even before America did.

The most beautiful woman in Berlin society is Countess Oppersdorff—the mother of thirteen children. She is not German, but was born a Polish Princess Radziwill.

The chief lady of the Imperial Court is Countess Brockdorff. She is rather stern in appearance and manner, and rumour has it that she was appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away from the traditional rigidity of the Prussian royal house.

Countess Brockdorff is a most able woman. I grew to have not only a great respect, but almost an affection for her. At court functions she usually wears a mantilla as a distinguished mark and several orders and decorations. We had three women friends from America with us in Berlin whom we presented at Court. All were married, but only the husband of one of them could leave his work and visit Germany. The two other husbands, in accordance with the good American custom, were at work in America. Countess Brockdorff spoke to the lady whose husband was with her, saying to her, "I am glad to see that your husband is with you," an implied rebuke to the other ladies and an exhibition of that failure to understand other nations so characteristic of highly placed Germans. With us, of course, a good-natured American husband, wedded as much to his business as to his wife, permits his wife to travel abroad without him and neither he nor she is reproved in America because of this.

Among the other ladies attendant on the Empress are Fräulein von Gersdorff, whose cousin is a lawyer practising in New York, and Countess Keller. There are other ladies and a number of maids of honour and all of them are overworked, acting as secretaries, answering letters and attending various charitable and other functions, either with the Empress or representing her. One of the charming maids of honour, Countess Bassewitz, was married during the war to Prince Oscar, the Kaiser's fifth son. This marriage was morganatic, that is, the lady does not take the name, rank and title of her husband. In this case another title was given her, that of Countess Ruppin, and her sons will be known as Counts Ruppin, but will not be Princes of Prussia.

There is much misunderstanding in America as to these morganatic marriages. By the rules of many royal and princely houses, a member of the house cannot marry a woman not of equal rank and give her his name, titles and rank. But the marriage is in all other respects perfectly legal. The ceremony is performed in accordance with Prussian law, before a civil magistrate and also in a church, and should the husband attempt to marry again he would be guilty of bigamy.

I gave away the bride at one of these morganatic marriages, when Prince Christian of Hesse married Miss Elizabeth Reid-Rogers, a daughter of Richard Reid Rogers, a lawyer of New York. Prince Christian has an extremely remote chance of ever coming to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, but nevertheless and because of the rules of the House of Hesse-Barchfeld, he cannot give his rank and title to a wife, not of equal birth. The head of the House, therefore, the Grand Duke of Hesse, conferred the title of Baroness Barchfeld in her own right on the bride, and her children will be known as Barons and Baronesses Barchfeld.

When Prince Christian and his wife go out to dinner in Berlin, he is given his rank at the table as a member of a royal house, but his wife is treated on a parity with the wives of all officers holding commissions of equal grade with her husband in the army. As her husband is a Lieutenant, she ranks merely as a Lieutenant's wife. On the same day that Miss Rogers and Prince Christian were wedded, Miss Cecilia May of Baltimore married Lieutenant Vom Rath. I acted as one of Miss May's witnesses at the Standesamt, where the civil marriage was performed, while the religious marriage took place in our Embassy. Lieutenant Vom Rath is the son of one of the proprietors of the great dye works manufactories known as Lucius-Meister-Farbewerke at Hoehst, near Frankfurt a. M., where salvarsan and many other medicines used in America are manufactured, as well as dyestuffs and chemicals.

In my earlier book I described presentations at the Royal Prussian Court in Berlin, especially the great court called the "Schleppencour," because of the long trains or Schleppe worn by the women. All the little kingdoms and principalities of the German Empire have somewhat the same ceremonies. In Dresden, the capital of Saxony, a peculiar custom is followed. The King and Queen sit at a table at one end of the room playing cards and the members of the court and distinguished strangers file into the room, pass by the card table in single file and drop deep courtesies and make bows to the seated royalties, who, as a rule, do not even take the trouble to glance at those engaged in this servile tribute to small royalty. I suppose that the excuse for this is that it is an old custom. But so is serfdom!

There are in Germany many so-called mediatised families, so-called because at one time they possessed royal rank and rights over small bits of territory before Napoleon changed the map of Europe and wiped out so many small principalities.

At the Congress of Vienna these families who lost their right of rule, in part compensation, were given the right to marry either royalties or commoners; so that the marriage of a Prince of Prussia with a daughter of one of these mediatised houses would not be morganatic. The girl would take the full rank of her husband and the children would inherit any rights, including the rights to the throne possessed by him.

Thus the beautiful young Countess Platen, shortly before we left Berlin, was married to von Stumm, the very able Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. While she became on her marriage Baroness von Stumm, nevertheless, if she had married the son of the Kaiser, she would have taken his rank and her children would have inherited all rights and titles possessed by their father. This is because the Platens, although bearing only the title of Counts, are a mediatised family.

It is noteworthy that in Berlin women of that blonde type with regular features, which we believe is the German type, are very rare. This type is to be found perfected in Scandinavia, although a few specimens exist in Germany. Looking over a Berlin theatre I have often noticed the predominance of brown and black hair.

There is always some one higher up to whom German women must curtsy. All women, whatever their husband's rank, must curtsy to a Royal Prince. Unmarried girls curtsy to married women and kiss their hands. Men, on meeting women, always kiss their hands.

Berlin is certainly the gossip headquarters of the world. Some years ago the whole town was invaded by a mania for anonymous letter writing, and when the smoke had cleared away few were left with unriddled reputations.

It is the fashion of the present court, however, to be very puritanical. No such little affairs are going on publicly, as have occurred in the annals of the Hohenzollern family. For even the old Emperor William, grandfather of the present Kaiser, had numerous love affairs. The tree is still pointed out near the Tiergarten where he met Princess Radziwill every day.

And the Chancellor's palace was once the home of another royal "friend."

The Foreign Office was at one time the home of the Italian dancer, La Barberini, the only woman who ever for a time enslaved Frederick the Great. I discussed affairs of state with von Jagow and Zimmermann in the very room where she gave her supper parties.

CHAPTER XIII

HOME LIFE AND "BRUTALITY" OF THE PEOPLE

The apartments of Berlin are designed for outward show for which the Berliners have a weakness. They have great reception and dining-rooms called "representation rooms," but very little comfort or space in the sleeping quarters.

It is impossible to think of dropping in suddenly on a Berliner for a meal. The dinners are always for as many people as the rooms will hold and are served by a caterer.

Only two very distinguished guests may be invited. The host and hostess sit opposite each other at the sides of the table, with the guests tapering off in rank to right and left of them, the ends of the tables being filled up with aides and secretaries. When a great man is invited his aide or secretary must be asked also. These come usually without their wives.

After dinner men and women leave the table together and smoke in the other rooms of the house, going from group to group. And, although perhaps ten kinds of wine are served during dinner, as soon as the guests leave the dining-room, servants make their appearance with trays of glasses of light and dark beer and continue to offer beer during the remainder of the evening.

The Germans talk much of food and spend a greater part of their income on food than any other nation. They take much interest in table furnishings, china, etc., and invariably turn over the plates to see the marks on the under side.

Whipped cream is an essential to many German dishes, and in the season a Berliner will commit any crime to obtain some plover's eggs.

The weiss bier of Berlin, served in wide goblets, is rather going out of fashion. It often is drunk mixed with raspberry juice.

The restaurants of Berlin are not gay, like those of Paris. There is, however, a rather rough night life created for foreign consumption. I did not take in any of these night restaurants and dancing cabarets, warned by the case of an Ambassador from —— who was reproved by von Jagow for visiting the "Palais de Danse."

In peace time few automobiles are to be seen on the Berlin streets. There are many millionaires in the city, but the old habits of German thrift persist.

The modern architecture of Germany is repulsive. The man who builds a new house seems to want to get something resembling as nearly as possible a family vault. Ihne, court architect and Imperial favourite, has produced, however, some beautiful buildings, notably the new library in Berlin.

Munich pretends to be more of a centre of art and music than Berlin. Artists have their headquarters there, but the disciples of the awful "art nouveau" and kindred "arts" have produced many horrors in striving for new effects.

The opera in Munich is better than in Berlin. One of the Bavarian Princes plays a fiddle in the orchestra in the Royal Opera House.

The Berlin hospitals are better than ours, except for the caste system which prevails even there, and there are first, second and third class wards.

The underground road is built at about the same depth as the New York subway. There are two classes, second and third; there are no guards on the trains, only the motorman in the first car. The passengers open the side doors themselves and these are shut either by passengers or station guards. Accidents are rare, all showing the innate discipline of the people. The charge is by distance. You buy a ticket for five or eight stations and give up the ticket as you go out of the station. If you have travelled farther than the distance called for by your ticket you must make the additional payment. This requires that each ticket be inspected separately when taken up.

The tramways have different routes. These routes are shown by signs and by numbers displayed on the car. Women motormen in the war period caused many accidents.

For those Germans who cannot afford to ride or shoot, walking is the principal recreation. There are a few golf courses in the German Empire, mostly patronised by foreigners and American dentists.

Military training is always in view and the use of the knapsack on walking tours is universal, even school children carry their books to school in knapsacks and so become accustomed, at an early age, to carry this part of the soldier's burden.

Occasionally, in summer, bands of girls or boys are to be seen on walking tours. In addition to the usual knapsack, they carry guitars or mandolins. These young people are known as "Wander vogel" (wandering birds), and sing as they walk. But they don't sing very loud. They might break some regulation.

Outside of the large cities and even in the cities vacant lots are occupied by "arbour colonies" (lauben colonie)—tiny little houses of wood erected by city workingmen and surrounded by little gardens of vegetables and flowers. Here the city workman spends Sunday and often the twilight hours and the night in summer time. Of course, these are possible only in a country where the workingman is in a distinct social class and where he is compelled to be content with the amusements and occupations of that class alone.

There is no baseball or substitute for it—the clerks get their diversion in a country excursion or at the free bath on the Wann or Muggel Lake.

These "free baths," so-called, are stretches of sandy lake shore where the populace resort in hot weather, undressing with the indifference of animals on the beach, men and women all mixed together, the men wearing only little bathing trunks and the women scanty one-piece bathing suits. There is a bathing tent where two cents is charged for the privilege of undressing, but most prefer the open beach. Few swim or go in the water, but the majority lie about the beach, often sleeping in affectionate embrace, all without exciting any comment or ridicule.

The boy scout movement was taken up enthusiastically in Germany with the cheerful support of the military caste, who look on the activity as a welcome adjunct to military training. The boys certainly are given a dose of real drill. On one occasion I saw a boy company at drill march straight into the Havel river, no command to halt having been given at the river bank!

The workingmen of Germany are more brutal than those of England, France and America, but this is because of the low wages they receive, and because they feel the weight of the caste system.

In a speech in December, 1917, I said that a revolution in Germany would come after the war and that a fellow Ambassador in Berlin had said to me that because of the great brutality of the workingmen in Germany this uprising would make the French Revolution look like a Methodist Sunday School picnic. A newspaper reported me as saying this on my own authority and added that I had said the Germans were the most "bestial" people on earth.

I only want to be responsible for what I actually say. I did not call the Germans "bestial," although unfortunately it is a fact that many officers of the army and others have been guilty of a brutality which has helped turn the face of the world from the whole German people.

Not all the Germans are brutal. I received many letters revealing evidence to the contrary.

Here is the protest of a German soldier, an eye-witness of the slaughter of Russian soldiers in the Masurian lakes and swamps:

"It was frightful, heart-rending, as these masses of human beings were driven to destruction. Above the terrible thunder of the cannon could be heard the heart-rending cries of the Russians: 'Oh, Prussians! Oh, Prussians!' But there was no mercy. Our Captain had ordered: 'The whole lot must die; so rapid fire.'

"As I have heard, five men and one officer on our side went mad from those heart-rending cries. But most of my comrades and the officers joked as the unarmed and helpless Russians shrieked for mercy when they were being suffocated in the swamps and shot down. The order was: 'Close up and at it harder!'

"For days afterward those heart-rending yells followed me, and I dare not think of them or I shall go mad. There is no God, there is no morality and no ethics any more. There are no human beings any more, but only beasts. Down with militarism!"

This was the experience of a Prussian soldier. At present wounded; Berlin, October 22, 1914.

"If you are a truth-loving man, please receive these lines, from a common Prussian soldier."

Here is the testimony of another German soldier on the East front:

"Russian Poland, Dec. 18, 1914.

"In the name of Christianity I send you these words. My conscience forces me as a Christian German soldier to inform you of these lines.

"Wounded Russians are killed with the bayonet according to orders, and Russians who have surrendered are often shot down in masses according to orders in spite of their heart-rending prayers.

"In the hope that you, as the representative of a Christian State, will protest against this, I sign myself, 'A German Soldier and Christian.'

"I would give my name and regiment, but these words could get me court-martialed for divulging military secrets."

The following letter is from a soldier on the Western Front:

"To the American Government, Washington, U. S. A.:

"Englishmen who have surrendered are shot down in small groups. With the French one is more considerate. I ask whether men let themselves be taken prisoner in order to be disarmed and shot down afterward? Is that chivalry in battle?

"It is no longer a secret among the people; one hears everywhere that few prisoners are taken; they are shot down in small groups. They say naïvely, 'We don't want any unnecessary mouths to feed. Where there is no one to enter complaint, there is no judge.' Is there, then, no power in the world which can put an end to these murders and rescue the victims? Where is Christianity? Where is right? Might is right.

"A Soldier and Man Who Is No Barbarian."

The first two letters refer to the battle of the Masurian Lakes, when the troops of Hindenburg, in checking the invading Russians, indulged in a needless slaughter of prisoners.

I heard in Berlin of many cases of insanity of both German officers and men who were driven insane by the scenes of slaughter at this battle and especially by the great cry of horror and despair uttered by the poor Russians as they were shot down in cold blood or driven to a living death in the lakes and marshes.

An American newspaper said this could not be true, asking why did I not publish the letters in my first book. But my first book did not contain all I have to relate, and the letters in question were sent by me to the State Department early in the war, and were not at hand on the publication of my other series.

But speaking of anonymous letters, shortly before I left Germany I received a package containing a necklace of diamonds and pearls with a letter, which, translated, reads as follows:

"The enclosed jewelry was found in the fully destroyed house of Monsieur Guesnet of 36 Rue de Bassano, Paris. It is requested that this jewelry, which is his property, be returned to him."

The package was addressed to the Embassy of the United States. I took it with me on leaving Germany and restored it to the family of the owner in Paris. The Guesnet country house lay within the German lines and the sending of the jewelry to me shows conscience somewhere in the German army.

CHAPTER XIV

AIMS OF THE AUTOCRACY

I have shown how the Kaiser is imbued with a desire of conquest, how, as he himself states, he dreamed a dream of world empire in which his mailed fist should be imposed upon all the countries of the earth.

But the Kaiser alone could not have driven Germany into war. His system could.

The head of one of the great banks of Germany told me in the first few weeks of the war that the Kaiser, when called upon at the last moment to sign the order for mobilisation by the General Staff, hesitated and did so only after the officers of the General Staff had threatened to break their swords over their knees.

If this story is true, what a pity that the Kaiser did not allow the officers to break their swords! What would have happened? Would the military have seized the power and deposed the Kaiser, putting the Crown Prince in his place? I believe it might have happened had he refused to sign the order. The Kaiser, after leaving Kiel, attended a council at Potsdam where war was decided upon, and I really doubt whether at the last moment he did not shrink before the awful responsibility or hesitate to sign the mobilisation order.

The immediate cause of Germany's going to war was the feeling on the part of the autocracy that the people would not much longer bear the yoke of militarism. That this fear had justification was shown by the enormous vote of lack of confidence in the Reichstag after the Zabern affair. At all costs the autocracy must be preserved, and if in addition the world could be conquered, so much the better.

With modern improvements on the outside the heart of the government of Germany is that of the Middle Ages. The nobles as a rule are poor, the returns from their landed estates small, and, in peace times, the army general, the Prussian noble, and the Prussian official is overshadowed in display and expenditure by the rich merchant.

Army officers, nobles and governing class felt this and believed that war would restore what they regarded as the natural equilibrium of the country, the officers, the officials and the nobles at the top and the merchant class back in its place below.

With war, retired generals living on small pensions in dingy towns once more became personages, rushing about the country in automobiles attended by brilliant staffs and holding almost the power of life and death. His lands worked by prisoners at six cents a day, and their products sold at five times the original price with no new taxes on either land or incomes, the Prussian Junker is enjoying the war.

And this autocracy can make no peace which is not a "German peace," which does not mean that the Emperor and the generals can ride through the Brandenburger Thor to celebrate the conclusion of what may be thought a victorious war.

For the plain people of Germany, while they can make no revolution now, on returning to their homes maimed and broken after four years in the trenches, will revolt at last, if a peace has been concluded which does not spell success for Germany. They will say to their government,—to the autocracy,—"We had no political power. We left everything in your hands. We had nothing to say either about the declaration of this war or its conduct. In return for our submission you promised efficiency and you promised us more, the conquest of the world. You have failed and we are going to overthrow you."

It is the knowledge of this that makes the Emperor and the autocracy ready to take any chance, anxious to continue the war in the hope that some lucky stroke, either of arms or of propaganda, will turn the scale in their favour, because they know that any peace that is not a German peace will mean the end of autocracy and probably of the Hohenzollerns.

And all the while the people are told that the war is a defensive war, although the German armies fight far in enemy territory in France, in Russia, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Roumania. They always are told, too, that it is Germany who is desirous of making peace and that the Allies refuse.

Last summer (1917) when an interview I had with the Chancellor in which he named the peace terms of the autocracy was published, the interview was repudiated by the Chancellor, who stated that these terms were not his. I am sure that they are not his and were not his, but I am equally sure that they are the terms and were the terms of the autocracy of Prussia as stated by him. Shortly after this the newspapers confirmed part of these terms, telling of the talk in Germany of the guarantees to be exacted in case Belgium was surrendered by the Germans, which guarantees amounted to the absolute control of that unfortunate country and "rectification of the frontiers" demanded by Germany on the Eastern Front.

Outside of Germany the propagandist and the pacifist and other agents of the Central Empires have proclaimed that this war is not a war of conquest or aggression.

But the evidence is to the contrary.

Kaiser and pastors, Reichstag members and generals, orators and journalists, have all at different times during the war declared themselves in favour of conquest.

And it is extraordinary as showing the masterful manner in which the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented from making peace only by the wicked Allies.

The King of Bavaria, speaking early in 1915 at a banquet, said, "I rejoice because we can at last have a reckoning with our enemies and because at last we can obtain a direct outlet from the Rhine to the sea. Ten months have gone by. Much blood has been poured out. But it shall not be poured in vain, for the fruit of the war shall be a strengthening of the German Empire and the extension of its boundaries, so far as this is necessary in order that we may be assured against future attacks."

Duke John Albert of Mecklenburg, who is the gentleman who slapped his chest and cried out to me on one occasion that Germany would never forget the export of arms and ammunition to her enemies by America and that some day Germany would have her revenge, declared also in 1915 that the war would give Germany not only a mighty African Colonial Empire but a sufficiency of strongholds on earth for their navy, commerce, coaling and wireless stations.

The Kaiser, himself, speaking in July, 1915, in his call to the German people issued from the Great General Headquarters, said "that Germany would fight until peace came, a peace which offered the necessary military, political and commercial guarantees for the future."

Vice-President Paasche of the Reichstag, in April at Kreuznach, said, "We are not allowed to speak about conditions of peace. But the wish must be given expression that lives in the heart of every German that we will not give up enemy land conquered with so much German blood."

A sentiment also expressed in April, 1915, by the National Liberal Reichstag member, Wachhorst de Wente, was to this effect: "Our fatherland must be larger. We must not allow it to be taken from us. Otherwise we will have obtained nothing except victory. We desire also to have the reward of victory. We will not give back all."

Von Heydebrand, the Conservative Leader, the uncrowned King of Prussia, as he is called, demanded as a condition of peace "a stronger and larger Germany."

Naturally, the Conservative leaders are for conquest and annexation. Numerous articles in the Centrist Cologne Volkzeitung were published protesting against giving Belgium her independence again. In April, 1916, this newspaper approved the statement of Leader Spahn of the Centrum party that the war must not end without "tangible results," and also the statement of Stresemann, another member of the Reichstag: "We demand and expect a larger Germany." In February, 1916, Germania, the Berlin organ of the Catholic party, demanded also a tangible prize of war as one of the conditions of peace.

Countless examples can be given from speeches in the Reichstag and from leaders and newspapers of virtually all parties in Germany, showing this desire for conquest, showing that Germany will not be content to go back to the situation before the war. Even Maximilian Harden, who is respected all over the world because of his fearlessness and reason, has written since the war in favour of a greater Germany, thus:

"We wage the war from the rock of conviction that Germany after its deeds has a right to demand broader room on the earth and greater possibilities of action and these things we must attain."

Dr. Spahn, to-day the leader of the Centrum party, answering in December, 1915, Scheidemann, who had argued against annexation, and speaking in the name of 254 members of the Reichstag representing the citizens' parties said:

"We wait in complete union, with calm determination, and let me add, with trust in God, the hour which makes possible peace negotiations, in which forever the military, commercial, financial and political interests of Germany must, in all circumstances and by all means, be protected, including the widening of territories necessary to this end."

Ludendorff is now perhaps the man of most weight and influence, barring no one, in all Germany. When only Chief of Staff of the East Army he wrote: "The Power of Middle Europe will be strengthened, that of the Great Russians pushed back towards the East, from whence it came, at a time not very distant."

These quotations simply show that the great majority of Germans—those outside the social democratic party—of the Germans, indeed, who rule the country, conduct its commerce, and officer its army and navy—all have been infected with a dangerous microbe of Pan-Germanism and of world-conquest.

Every one who professes a knowledge of German life and character, every one who writes of the origin of the war, talks of Treitschke, Nietzsche and Bernhardi.

Nothing made the Germans angrier than to find in foreign newspapers that on this triumvirate was placed the burden of the responsibility for the war. And I agree with the complaining Germans. Bernhardi, who, during the war, was given a command behind the fighting front at Posen, was not considered a skilful general by the military or a great or even popular writer by the people.

How many people in our country or in France or in England are influenced by the lectures or writings of one college professor? And yet, according to many out of Germany, Treitschke, the deaf professor of Heidelberg, is the one man who transmuted the soul of Germany and incited the Empire to a cruel war.

In America you can find any brand of professor, from a professor in a Virginia College who recently boasted that he would not subscribe to American Liberty war bonds, but would send the money to the Socialist, pacifist candidate for Mayor of New York, to the Professor in the University of Chicago who based his claim to fame on the fact that he had never been kissed. What professor of history has had any great political influence beyond his own college?

And it is equally absurd to think of a Prussian Junker, sitting by the fire in the evening, deeply absorbed in the philosophy of Nietzsche. All Germans, as a matter of fact, through pride of conquest in 1864, 1866 and 1870 and great industrial success, had come to believe themselves to be supermen delegated by Heaven to win the world. Treitschke and Nietzsche were simply affected in their writings by this universal poison of overweening vanity. They but reflected the fashion of the day in thinking; they did not lead the nation's thought. Nietzsche himself wrote in one of his letters shortly before his death which occurred in 1900, "Although I am in my forty-fifth year and have written fifteen books, I am alone in Germany. There has not been a single moderately respectful review of one of my books."

I never found a German of the ruling class who had read anything written by Treitschke, Nietzsche or Bernhardi.

Tannenberg had more readers and a greater following, although he, of course, expresses only the aspirations of the Pan-Germans. But he presents concrete positions which any one can understand.

For instance, the German merchant looking at Tannenberg's book and seeing the map of South America coloured with almost universal German domination, smiles and approves, for he thinks German trade will swallow that rich continent and clever laws and regulations will exclude the imports of all other nations.

In some aspects Tannenberg foresaw what is happening to-day when he says, "The Finns have been waiting a long time to detach themselves from the Great Russians, their hereditary enemies."

But in the main, in his sketch of the war to which he looked forward, he failed to predict accurately the attitude of the world. His predictions represent many of the dead hopes of the Pan-Germans, those Germans who believe it is the right and duty of Germany to conquer all.

Prophesying war between Germany on one side and France and Russia on the other, Tannenberg believed that more confusion and resistance to war than actually occurred would come in Bohemia and Poland following the order for mobilisation in the Slav parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He mistakenly wrote also that Japan would declare war on Russia, a belief shared by the torchlight paraders of Berlin in August, 1914.

Tannenberg thought Italy would declare war on France. He was wrong in his confidence that France was decadent, wrong in believing that England and the United States would only talk but would not fight, yet right in his belief that revolution would break out in Russia. In fact, I think that for years after the Franco-Russian Alliance, Germany was preparing a Russian revolution to break out on whatever day the Russian troops were ordered to their colours. He says that France will be so thoroughly defeated that the "war ought not to leave her more than eyes to cry with."

I am afraid that while many eyes will cry in France, through the breadth of Germany there will be but few homes where eyes will not weep over the casualties of war, for which cruel, crazy dreamers of world empire, like Tannenberg, are largely responsible.

For Tannenberg's dream, the dream of the autocracy and of the Pan-Germanists, is to give to Germany most of South America, a great part of Africa, of Asia, the great islands north of Australia, including those of the Dutch; with Holland and Belgium part of the German Empire as well as the Baltic provinces, and a share of the French colonies to be divided with England.

The share of the United States for standing by and agreeing to the robbery was to be, according to Tannenberg, a protectorate over Mexico and Central America.

Mexicans who were offered Texas and New Mexico by Zimmermann should read this Pan-Germanistic book in which all of Mexico is generously bestowed on us.

And I wish that Tannenberg's book could be read by every public man in South America—that South America in which the Argentine, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, the southern parts of Brazil and Bolivia are, according to Tannenberg, to come under the protectorate of Germany. Latin-American publicists should inquire from the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina how long it is before a "protectorate" is transmuted into a conquered country. Tannenberg does speak for a great party in Germany. The children's school books show German "colonies" in Southern Brazil.

As Sainte Beuve said, there is a fashion in intellect. The German to-day is essentially practical, cold, cynical, and calculating. The poetry and the Christmas trees, the sentiment and sentimentality, remain like the architectural monuments of a vanished race, mere reminders of the kindlier Germany that once was, the Germany of our first impressions, the Germany that many once loved. But that Germany has long since disappeared, buried beneath the spiked helmets of Prussianism, and another intellect is in vogue.

That older, kindlier Germany was the nation tempered and softened by the suffering of the Napoleonic wars. After the battle of Jena, where Napoleon rubbed the face of Prussia in the mud of defeat, there came on Germany that period of privation which left its impress so deeply on the German as to make thrift his first characteristic. A spirit of lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism imbued the whole people. Young girls cut off their long golden hair to be sold for the Fatherland. Jewels were given by all who possessed them. "Gold gab ich für Eisen" (I gave gold for iron) became a saying based on the readiness with which the rich made sacrifices to the cause of country. And with this patriotism, and with this penury, came into every home a more intimate family life, a greater earnestness, a deeper religious sentiment, a turning towards the idealistic side of life; but all was changed by the successful wars of Prussia that gave Prussia the leadership, the right to rule Germany. Then, with the end of the Franco-Prussian war, came a period of material prosperity, the rush of the population to the cities, and the building of great manufactories, of enormous shipping interests, of powerful banking institutions, of trusts and combinations which marked the Germany of 1914.

The fashion in intellect had changed, and the grasping, successful Prussian of 1914 was far removed from the ruined, chastened Prussian of 1810.

Nations, like individuals, change in character with the stress of life. From 1810, the period of a sorrowing Germany, to 1914 is one hundred and four years. The same number of years subtracted from the year 1796, when our new Republic was firmly established, and when George Washington made his noble farewell address, brings us to 1692, when nineteen persons were legally hanged, charged with witchcraft in Massachusetts, and when in that State Giles Cory perished under the awful torture, judicially applied, known as the "peine forte et dure."

It is quite true that weak voices against annexations have been heard.

Dernburg and Professor Hans Delbrück (the latter not to be confused with the disgraced, pig-slaughtering, ex-Vice-Chancellor), in their petition against the annexation of Belgium, showed a most reasonable spirit, and signing this petition with them were many of the great men and great minds of Germany. But their movement was a failure in Germany itself. Their campaign of reason could make no headway against the "League of Six"—the six great iron and steel companies of the West, who, with their paid lansquenets of the press and hired accelerators of public opinion, clamour for annexation so that they may rivet the chains of their industrial monopoly on the whole continent of Europe.

The Conservatives and Junkers, on the other hand, favour annexations to the East; especially do they eye greedily the Baltic provinces where great estates are in the hands of landowners of German blood. What a reinforcement to the conservative cause would these Junkers of the Baltic be and, in the Conservative view, if there are to be annexations in the West which would increase the number of industrial subjects and, undoubtedly social democrats, there must be a balancing accession of agricultural interest on the Eastern frontier.

The only cloud in the serene blue sky of Junker hopes is the fact that annexations in Poland would add to the number of Roman Catholics and, therefore, to the power of the Centrum or Roman Catholic party. Hence the desire to make of Poland an independent kingdom, but one controlled by the Central Empires.

The Poles are more at ease, having been given more liberty, under Austrian than under Prussian rule, and hence the tendency is to put Poland under Austrian rule. The Prussians do not object to this because it does not matter whether Prussia controls Poland directly or through Prussia's control of Austria, now, alas, only too apparent.

But the principal aim of the nobles and the landed aristocracy of Germany, followed by their host of office-holders and dependents, is to keep the "graft," to hold the offices, civil and military, filled so long by these old Prussian families.

The von Lachnows, to imagine a typical Junker family, hold one thousand acres of land in Brandenburg. The head of the house, Baron von Lachnow, was Minister to Sweden. After having held as a young man a position of Secretary of Legation, he left the diplomatic service to fight with his old regiment, the Gleiwitz Hussars, through the Franco-Prussian War. He then returned to the diplomatic service in which he finally attained the rank of Minister to Sweden. He now lives on his estate of Lachnow, with a pension as ex-minister. On great occasions he appears at the Royal Palace, resplendent in uniform, wearing the Orders of the Red Eagle and Prussian Crown with the Cross of the Johannis Order. His total income from pensions and estate is about ten thousand dollars a year. The oldest son, Baron Karl Friederich, after serving in his father's regiment, resigned and entered the diplomatic service and is now second secretary of the legation in Buenos Aires. He married there the daughter of a rich cattle owner. The second son, Baron Johann, is now Police President of the city of Schelsau, after having been district attorney in an industrial district where he distinguishes himself by his prosecution of the social democrats. He married the daughter of the rich manufacturing proprietor Schulz, who sells, wholesale, little statuettes on the Ritterstrasse in Berlin. Baron August is in the army, detailed to the General Staff and with a great future before him. Baron Max is now out of a job. While on his vacation the colony, in which he was secretary to the Governor, was captured by the British, and so at the outbreak of the war he assumed his old uniform of First Lieutenant in the Gleiwitz Hussars and was given command of the prison camp at Schluttenberg, where he has won distinction for his severity with British prisoners. Baron Ernst is in the navy. This is considered rather a come-down by the family, as the navy, unlike the army, is not aristocratic. He has great hopes of marrying the only daughter of Von Blitz, who owns a splendid estate in Silesia. One of the daughters, Hilda, is married to Count Wenharp, owner of a beautiful estate in Pomerania, and the other to Hochlst, who is judge of the law court in Holstein and who owns the Rittergut (or manor) of Klein Spassberg, near Kiel.

VIEWS OF A TYPICAL HOLSTEIN COUNTRY HOME OWNED BY A JUNKER COUNTRY NOBLEMAN

The estate of Lachnow is perfectly flat ground. The road to Brandenburg runs through the estate and village, the houses of which front directly on the road. This road in the village is paved with rough cobblestones. The house of the von Lachnows almost touches the road, from which it is separated by an old stone wall. One side is on a square, cobblestoned courtyard, formed by the great barns, stables and sheds which surround the other three sides of the square. The house and all the barns are built of rough stone. The house is built on the plan of a piece of Castile soap, walls and roof and nothing more. Inside there are a dining-room, two parlours and an office-den for the master, upstairs bedrooms, opening on a long hall; no bathrooms, no conveniences, even the water is brought in by the maids from the well in the centre of the court. The furniture is old and plain. The family does not keep an automobile, but two horses draw a dog cart to the station and take the family on visits to the neighbouring aristocracy. The driver is the sexton of the village church on these occasions. On the two sides of the house away from the main road and the square of barns there is a park of about ten acres. Here are a few evergreens and gravel paths and a pond where some enormous carp excite the wonder of the village children.

Baroness Lachnow is renowned for her devotion to the four K's. No one has a better stock of household linen, all made by her, her daughters and her maids, in the whole Mark. She superintends every household detail and holds the keys to closets and wine cellar.

Of course, the family does not associate with the schoolmaster and the Lutheran minister of the village, but they speak very kindly to them and the Baron once interested himself in obtaining a long service decoration for the schoolmaster.

The von Lachnows live on their estate the year round, except for two weeks in February when they go to Berlin to a cheap hotel and attend one of the court balls. The Baroness never spends more than three hundred and fifty dollars a year on her clothes, although when in Sweden, as a Minister's wife she spent more. The Baron and Baroness sometimes condescend to dine with the father-in-law of their son, a manufactory proprietor, at his handsome apartment on the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, but Schultz, in spite of his four million marks and growing business, is made to feel the wide gulf that separates him from the nobility.

Baron Lachnow farms his own estate. His farm superintendent is von Treslow, once an officer in the Gleiwitz Hussars, who was compelled to resign because of a crippled arm, badly broken in a steeplechase. This taciturn, soured individual, on the outbreak of war, was given a place as commander of a village way station near the West Front, where his cruelties to the French inhabitants will long be remembered.

Food is very simple. The family drink beer except on great occasions, but the Baron drinks Moselle at the midday meal and a red wine in the evening. The recreation is shooting and visits to the neighbours.

Such a visit is a great event, arranged by letter beforehand. The von Lachnows drive to visit the von Seltows eighteen miles away. They arrive in time for lunch, when much wine is drunk. After this the women gossip over their fancy work and the men visit the stable, discuss crop prices and inspect the host's collection of horse flesh. The family photographs are inspected and Count Reventlow's latest article abusing the Americans is discussed and the belief suggested that a democratic people without King or Kaiser or nobility cannot be organised for war. The Social Democrats are condemned and the story gleefully told of how the son of von Seltow cut down a Social Democrat who was slow in getting out of his way.

I can understand the feelings of the von Lachnows, the imaginary, typical Prussian family of the ruling class which I have pictured for you. If Germany should be democratised, what place would be left for them? The offices of the government thrown open to all classes in fair elections, places in the army and navy and diplomacy open to competition in great academies like West Point and Annapolis. Deprived of the aroma of power given now by diplomatic or military place and noble birth in the caste system, the sons and daughters could no longer make rich marriages with the sons and daughters of the rich business men and manufacturers. No more would the civil offices of Prussia be open only to appointments among the noble or Junker class.

I do not blame the von Lachnows because they fight tooth and nail for the retention of their old privileges—because they endeavour to hold the common people in a serfdom almost as complete as that of the Dark Ages. The dawn of constitutional government will be their twilight, the twilight of the Gods of militarism, of privilege, and of caste. Prussian autocracy made the war in a last desperate endeavour to bribe the people into continued submission.

The only excuse for the existence of the Prussian ruling class to-day, as much out of place as chain armour or robber barons, is its supposed honesty and efficiency; but no class which has brought this war on the German people can be described as competent; no sane governing class would have plunged into disastrous war a country that by peaceful penetration, by thrift and manufacture, and financial and commercial ability was in process of acquiring much of the wealth of the world.

The first aim of German autocracy is to keep its own political position at home.

Second—To obtain as much of the territory of other nations, as great an influence in unconquered lands, as possible.

Third—To make peace now, but only if that peace is a German peace, a peace which can be called and advertised and proclaimed as a German victory.

More particularly, Germany now looks to the East. In the so-called Baltic provinces of Russia the lands to a great extent are owned by Russian subjects of German blood. The peasants are poor, servile, without education or property, an ideal field for the advance of autocracy. It is hoped to either annex these provinces boldly or to establish protectorates, which, sooner or later, at an opportune moment, will fall into German hands—just as Austria gained the consent of Europe to a protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina and then suddenly added them to the domains of the Hapsburgs.

The German propagandists have long been working on the people of that part of Russia known as the Ukraine. If the Ukraine can be made a separate protectorate or a semi-independent state, some day it will be easily absorbed. The autocracy has the same hope about Lithuania, at one time semi-independent. There, too, the propagandists have worked on Lithuania—all these provinces, of course, differing slightly from the races surrounding and all with a semi-independent history, as, for instance, Courland.

But all these races should think twice before they accept a momentary independence, if that autonomy is to lead them under the Prussian yoke. Whether that yoke is easy to bear or not is best answered by the Danes, Alsatians, Poles and Lorrainers who have been forcibly incorporated in the Kingdom of Prussia.

But greatest prize of all is the commercial control of Russia which the autocracy hopes to win for its merchant class. Time and again I was told in Germany that a separate peace with Russia was near and that the exploitation of Russia by the enterprising German merchants, in a short time, would repay Germany for all the losses of the war.

Would it not seem extraordinary if the language of business and commerce of the United States were French? But to-day in Russia and for years back the language of commercial business intercourse has been German. A great beginning, a great foundation it is for the eventual control, not only of the business, but the political structure of Russia. If the Germans at war with Russia have been able to split, revolutionise and divide it and put their representatives in control, what will they not be able to accomplish when peace shall bring them full liberty to circulate freely in that rich but ignorant country.

In the end, all classes in Russia will demand a strong government, and if no military dictator, no Russian Napoleon has taken in his hands the reins of government, then the German Kaiser will stand by ready to whisper to the torn people of Russia, as Napoleon III did to the French, "My Empire is Peace!"

But even if Germany evacuates France and restores the complete independence of Belgium, even if no territories are gained to the East, or protectorates or independent states carved from the body of Russia to be a later prey of Germany, Germany will have won—if from Bremen to Bagdad German influence or actual German rule is predominant in Middle Europe, the Great Central State, where the cotton of Mesopotamia, and the coal and iron of Westphalia, the copper of Servia, the oil and grain of Roumania all will contribute to the manufacturer of Germany, who, in turn, will sell his goods in that vast territory. And best of all in autocratic view, the man power of the Central Empires will be so increased that at a propitious moment, in a characteristic sudden assault, the armies of the Central Empires will invade and conquer Palestine, Egypt and India, and take what they will in Africa and Asia, while British, Japanese, and American and French navies impotently rage in useless control of the high seas.

CHAPTER XV

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY—THE KAISER'S VASSAL STATE

Few people in America perhaps realise how completely Austria-Hungary is under the domination of Germany and Kaiserism. There are those who think that the hand of the Vienna Government was forced by Berlin when the ultimatum to Serbia was answered so reasonably by the little country to the south, but there can be no doubt that Austria has been ever since under the yoke of the German General Staff.

And because the first break, the first glimpse of reasonable peace will in turn be forced on Germany by sorely tried Austria-Hungary, bent by war and bowed by debt, it is well to study a little the races and assess the influences of that unfortunate land.

My wife's sister married a Hungarian Count, a member of the Hungarian House of Lords, and I have met many of the political leaders and magnates of that country on my trips there.

The Germans of Austria are handsomer, more attractive but far less efficient than their bloody brethren from the cold, wind-swept plains of Prussia. They have acquired a slight touch of the Oriental and something of the mañana (to-morrow) of the Spaniards, a heritage, perhaps, of the days when Spain and Austria were so closely connected by Hapsburg rule.

In the presence of an Austrian one feels his charm instead of the aggressive personality which is Prussian. Undoubtedly the Prussians counted on the good nature of the southern Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Slavs in their insidious campaign to make these peoples, practically, if not in name, subject and tributary to Prussian rule. The Prussian propagandist has brought them face to face with a new Kaiserism.

Shortly after the war a great number of Austrian professors of German blood issued a manifesto demanding closer union with Germany—a prelude to the plots being hatched in Berlin against Hapsburg rule.

The Court of Austria is quite different from that of Berlin; no modern ideas during the reign of Francis Joseph disturbed his medieval outlook.

The beautiful Empress of Austria, who was assassinated by an anarchist in Switzerland, was probably insane. At any rate, for many years she lived apart from the Emperor, devoted to hunting and horses, going often as far as Ireland for her favourite sport and seldom appearing in Vienna. Francis Joseph, however, was consoled by an ex-actress, Frau Kathie Schratt, whom he visited daily and who occupied a position in Vienna almost as powerful as that of the mistresses of Louis XIV. Even in this very war when Frau Schratt established a hospital, she was photographed in the centre of a group of women all occupied at this hospital and all holding the highest rank at the Austrian Court. The instant the old Emperor died, however, her power, influence and prestige disappeared and I imagine that her titled and high born helpers were not long in deserting the hospital wards over which she had presided.

That extraordinary Empire known as the Austrian Hungarian Dual Monarchy is less an Empire or a Kingdom or a State than the personal property of the Hapsburgs, whose hereditary talent for the acquisition of land is recorded on the map of Europe to-day.

For centuries this royal family by treaty, by intrigue, by war, purchase and marriage has been adding to its dominions, bringing under its personal rule races who do not understand each other's language and who differ widely in customs, intellectual attainments and religion.

The last acquisition of territory by the house of Hapsburg was in the year 1908, when the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office boldly declared that Bosnia and Herzegovina, placed under the protectorate of Austria-Hungary by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, had been annexed to the Empire. The German Kaiser, standing by like a watching accomplice while the burglary was in progress, threatened a general European war if any nations protested.

At a time when Prussia was a struggling state, Austria was the dominant power in Central Europe, but the one battle of Sadowa in 1866 settled for ever the question of supremacy and the German States like Bavaria, Saxony, Würtemburg, etc., which stood with Austria in that war, after receiving a sound beating, ranged themselves on the side of the victor and, in 1870, joined in acclaiming the King of Prussia as the First German Emperor.

That event settled the question of leadership in Central Europe and the dream of the Emperor Frederick who died about the time of the discovery of America. It was he who wrote the famous anagram on the vowels A, E, I, O, U.

In upper and lower Austria, so-called, there are about twelve million German Austrians. This territory is comparatively small and in it lies the city of Vienna. To the north and northeast lie Bohemia and Moravia, the country of the Tchechs or Szechs of Slavic blood. These people together number about six million. Prague is the capital of Bohemia, while in Moravia there is no great city. For centuries these peoples have been oppressed by the Austrians and in the Hussite rebellion the lands of Bohemia and Moravia were parcelled out to the Austrian nobles as well as to the warlike adventurers who had joined the Austrian armies.

With extraordinary obstinacy and patriotism these peoples cling to their old language and customs. They have suffered much during this war and many tales are told of the shooting of all of the officers of Tchech regiments and the execution of every tenth man among the privates.

It is a bit of poetic justice that the town of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, where my friend Schwab is making so much war material to be used against the Central Powers, was founded by fugitives, who, rebelling against oppression, left Moravia in search of liberty.

North of the Carpathians lies Galicia, a Polish country, with Lemberg and Krakow as its capitals, and in the eastern part the Ruthenians, a race identical with the Russians. These Ruthenians number upwards of four million.

It is a peculiar fact that in the curious Dual Monarchy each race oppresses some other. The Ruthenians complain that they are oppressed by the Poles. The kingdom of Hungary lies to the east of Austria containing in its twenty million inhabitants about ten million Magyars, who are the dominant race and who in turn rule over a population of one and one-half million Ruthenians, two and one-half million Slovacks or Tchecks, three million Roumanians in the southeastern portion and about three million of the race now known as Jugo-Slavs. Of these Jugo-Slavs about two million are in that part of the Dual Monarchy under Austrian rule. These are the principal divisions of peoples. A Slavish race differing somewhat from the others is in the mountains to the east of Hungary where much fighting has taken place in the last war known as Boukovina. In the southeastern part of Hungary there is a German speaking country, known as Siebenburgen, where live the descendants of a German colony planted about two centuries ago.

In Styria, in the mountainous districts of Austria to the west of Hungary, lives a race differing again from all the others, a mountain race supposed to be eaters of arsenic, a drug which they believe gives them a good complexion and stamina for mountain climbing. It is said that the bodies of these arsenic eaters remain undecomposed for a long time. And from this part of the world comes the curious superstition of the existence of human vampires.

Slovenes, and Jews, Carinthians and inhabitants of Carniola, Serbs living like Moslems in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italians in Trieste and the Trient—all make up the strange Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

The union between Austria and Hungary is a personal union. The Emperor of Austria is King of Hungary. Only in four particulars are the Empire and the Kingdom united, namely, a joint administration of the army and navy, of diplomatic affairs and of such finances as are connected with joint expenditures for these purposes.

In 1848 Hungary sought to break away from Austria. Kossuth heroically led the Hungarians against their Austrian masters, only to be beaten in the end because of the advent of the Russians, because one autocrat came to the aid of another.

Since then, by superior political talents and taste for intrigue, the Magyars have not only held the Slovaks, Roumanians, etc., of their own country in political subjection, but have held much of the power in the Dual Monarchy. Their danger lies, however, in the predominance of German influence; and some day the gay, easy-going, pleasant Hungarians may awake to find the Prussian Eitel Fritz seated on their throne and to learn what Prussian efficiency means when applied to those whom Germans consider an inferior people.

The twelve million Austrian Germans differ much in character from the Prussians. They are far more polite, far more agreeable, far more fond of amusement of all kinds. Indeed it is because of their pleasant personal characteristics that so many other nations have been content to remain under their rule. In no city of the world is the mass of the population as fond of pleasure as in Vienna. The best light operas come from that city. Vienna is the original home of the waltz. The "Blue Danube" was composed on the shores of the river which flows through the Austrian capital.

The dominant religion of the German Empire is Protestant, but in the Dual Monarchy it is Roman Catholic among the ruling Germans in Austria and Magyars in Hungary.

In Austria and in Hungary most of the land is held in great estates. The peasants, as in Germany, sometimes own a few strips of land near their miserable villages. Possession of land is necessary to the standing of any noble. In Hungary, for example, no noble sits in the house of Magnates or House of Lords unless he is the owner of a certain amount of land.

Once across the Hungarian border, one sees the people taking a certain delight in refusing to understand German. The names of the railway stations are in Hungarian, and the uniforms of station officials, conductors, etc., differ from those in Austria. Every effort is made by the population to emphasise the fact that Hungary is an independent kingdom, joined to Austria by personal rule alone.

There is no melting pot in this part of the world. In the Lower House of the Hungarian parliament sit forty-three Croatian delegates, Croatia being that part of southwestern Hungary near the Adriatic where the inhabitants are of Slav blood. By the Hungarian constitution those delegates have the right to speak in the Hungarian parliament in their own language and so from time to time a Croatian delegate arises in his place and delivers an ambitious harangue in Croatian, understood by no one except his fellow delegates who already know what he intends to talk about. This is only one example of how these peoples cling tenaciously to their language and national rights.

It is possible to find in Hungary an Hungarian village, a German village, a Slav village and a Roumanian village, all within a short distance of each other. Men from each of these villages after one month in the United States throw aside their national costume and buy their clothes in the same Bowery shop, eat the same food and send their children to the same public school not only without protest, but with eagerness, whereas, in Hungary, not one of the inhabitants of these different villages would think of abandoning his national traits to learn the language of his German neighbours.

Because commands are given in German in the armies of the Dual Monarchy all the male population, at least during the term of their military service, have been compelled to learn some German. But this they forget as soon as possible when they return from their period of military service.

Many members of these races go to America and after working there a short time amass enough money to return to Austria-Hungary and purchase a small piece of land,—the ambition of every one born of the soil.

One of the sons of Prince Lichtenstein told me that a friend who was running for the Hungarian Lower House in a district of Hungary largely inhabited by Slavs, spoke in Hungarian and, finding that his audience did not understand him, tried German. Finally, when matters had come to a standstill, some one in the back of the room called out to him, asking if he spoke English. The candidate answered that he did. Whereupon the crowd told him to speak English which nearly all understood, and so the Hungarian, a candidate for parliament in Hungary, was forced, in order to be understood, to address his Hungarian electors in the language which they had learned in America.

Franz Ferdinand, whose murder at Sarajevo was used by the Central Powers as a pretext for a war determined on long before that time, was the heir to the throne of the late Francis Joseph. He was a romantic character. He visited frequently at the house of Archduchess Isabella, where Countess Chotek, of a Bohemian noble family, was a lady in waiting. Franz Ferdinand fell violently in love with the fair Bohemian, and in his desire to marry, enlisted the aid of Koloman Szell, Premier of Hungary. Szell told friends how Franz Ferdinand loved mystery and how, when he wanted to talk to him about marriage plans, instead of meeting somewhere openly in Vienna, would arrange that Szell's train should stop in the open fields. Szell, on alighting and following directions, would find Franz Ferdinand hiding behind a designated haystack.

In a country where one royal family not only rules but owns the land, this attempt of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then heir to the throne, and mad with love, to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, lady in waiting to Archduchess Isabella, caused a palace revolution. By the aid of Szell he at last succeeded in carrying out the marriage. But this was only after he and his wife had been required to submit to the most humiliating conditions and subscribe to a marriage contract or promise which was not only enacted thereafter as a statute in Hungary, but was formally put on record by the Austrian parliament.

In this declaration, Franz Ferdinand declared it to be "his firm and resolute resolve to marry Countess Sophie Chotek, that he had sought, in accordance with the laws of the house, to obtain consent of the Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, the Emperor and King, Francis Joseph I, gloriously reigning, that the most serene, supreme head of the Arch house had deigned graciously to grant this permission and that Franz Ferdinand, however (describing himself as 'We'), recognise the house laws and declare them binding on Us particularly with regard to this marriage declaration, that our Marriage with Countess Chotek is not a marriage of equal birth, but a morganatic one and is to be considered as such for all time, and that in consequence neither our wife nor our issue or descendants is entitled to possess or claim those rights, titles, armorial bearings and privileges that belong to wives of equal birth and to children of archdukes or marriages of equal birth." Franz Ferdinand, further, recognised that his children from this marriage would have no right to succeed to the throne in the kingdoms and lands of Austria nor, consequently, to the lands of the Hungarian Crown and that they were excluded from the order of succession.

He further agreed and promised not only for himself but for his wife and children, that none of them would ever attempt to revoke this declaration.

The old Emperor gave the wife of Franz Ferdinand the title of Princess Hohenberg and later raised her to the rank of duchess which, in the Central Empires, is a higher rank than that of princess. She was also created a Serene Highness after the birth of her third child, Prince Ernest, in 1904. The first child, Princess Sophie, was born in 1901, and the second, Prince Maximilian Charles, in 1902.

In spite of the rank thus granted to her, the Duchess of Hohenberg was frequently slighted by Archdukes and Archduchesses of the House of Hapsburg, and when the present Emperor, the Archduke Charles Francis Joseph, married Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma, in 1911, and this marriage was followed by the birth of a son, on November 20, 1912, it was plain to Franz Ferdinand and his wife that the hostility of the old Emperor and the other members of the House of Hapsburg, aided by events, had succeeded in definitely excluding his children by Countess Sophie from the throne.

These slights to his wife, so marked as to cause the publication of articles inspired by himself in a newspaper devoted to his interests, and the birth of the heir to Carl, must have had a profound influence on melancholy Franz Ferdinand.

In all Europe there was one monarch clever enough to take advantage of the situation, to win Franz Ferdinand to him by the honours he paid to the Duchess of Hohenberg,—the German Emperor. Kaiser Wilhelm invited the pair to Potsdam and there both were made to feel that in one court, at least, the honours due to a wife of equal birth were paid to the ex-Countess Sophie. This Potsdam visit was in 1909, and I believe that, thereafter, the German Emperor and Franz Ferdinand met on other occasions.

In the chapter on Emperor Wilhelm, I have stated the belief prevalent, even in Germany, that he intended as his first step towards his openly expressed ambition for world dominion, to make himself, on the death of Francis Joseph, Emperor of a Great Continental Empire in which the German Princes, his sons, should occupy the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia, the heir of the House of Austria to rule as king or grand duke of Austria with possibly another German ruled kingdom touching the sea on the south.

There are some who believe that when the Kaiser, accompanied by von Tirpitz, visited Franz Ferdinand at Konopisht in June, 1914, before the Kiel week, that a great conspiracy was entered into, in which it was arranged that a great Central Empire should be created with one of the sons of the Duchess of Hohenberg on the throne of Bohemia and the other provided for by some newly carved out kingdom made from Bosnia, or a portion of Serbia. And it may have been part of this plot that Eitel Fritz and other sons of the Kaiser should be provided with thrones derived from Balkan territory.

It will be remembered that as Franz Ferdinand and his wife fell under the assassin's bullet at Sarajevo he called out: "Sophie, live for our children!" His devotion to his wife and to their children was extraordinary. He was continually sparing from his income so that on his death his sons would have a large sum of money, saved from the income of estates which they could not inherit.

It is hard to believe that such a crime against the House of Hapsburg and against his own country was contemplated from the inside of royalty. But one event seems a confirmation of this theory. The dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were buried with such lack of honour, almost with such contempt, as to lead to the belief that the head of the House of Hapsburg, Emperor Francis Joseph himself, without whose directions the Chamberlain, Count Montenuovo, would not have dared to act, discovered his heir in some act against the laws or fortunes of the Imperial House.

For the funeral arrangements were such, that the Austrian and Hungarian aristocracy were moved to protest and as a result a belated order was issued directing that the troops of the Vienna Garrison should take part in the funeral ceremonies. About one hundred and fifty members of the leading families of Hungary and Austria, without invitation, entered the funeral procession and followed the bodies to the railway station. The London Times correspondent called attention to this in cables to his newspaper at the time.

Personally, I do not incline to this view, but I do believe that at Konopisht the war of 1914 was finally agreed on. Too many bits of evidence point to this and from something said to me at Kiel by a very high personage, before the assassinations at Sarajevo, I would have guessed that war was coming, had it not been impossible for me to believe that the world was to be plunged into war simply because the German people were restless under the rule of the autocracy.

When the murders occurred at Sarajevo, all plans had been laid for war and the death of Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg merely gave another excuse to begin hostilities, after Austria, in the Council of Potsdam, had ratified all the arrangements made by the Emperor Wilhelm and Franz Ferdinand for the European war. Undoubtedly the German Emperor used his influence with Franz Ferdinand and his wife in order to secure the former's aid in dragging Austria into the war,—a war begun to win the dominion of the world.

How many in America have heard the name of Sophie Chotek? Yet the ambitions of this woman have done much to send to war the splendid youths who from all the ends of the earth gather in France to fight the fight of freedom.

The clever German Emperor, playing upon her ambitions, induced the gloomy, hated Franz Ferdinand to consent to the world war, and matters had gone so far that even the death of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand could not change the situation nor turn the war party of Hungary and Austria from their programme of blood. Eighty-four years of age, the old Francis Joseph could only offer a weak defence to the martial insistence of Tisza, Premier of Hungary, and his able understrapper, Forgotsch, who represented him in the Foreign Office at Vienna and who undoubtedly is the man who drafted the forty-eight hour ultimatum to Servia.

MAIN STAIRWAY IN THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, BERLIN

Berliners say that although the German Emperor gave the Duchess of Hohenberg all the honours due to the wife of an Austrian Archduke, heir to the throne of the Austrian Empire, he was careful not to bring her claims in direct conflict with any Prussian female Royalty and that on the first visit of Franz Ferdinand and his wife to Potsdam, when the doors of the banquet room were thrown open, it was seen that the Kaiser had skilfully placed all the guests at small tables, sitting at one with the Empress and his two guests. In this way he prevented a conflict of precedence and a possible scene with some Prussian royal princess.

After one of these Potsdam visits, the Austrian government appropriated three hundred millions for new Skoda cannon and a great and unexpected increase of the navy was voted. In Austria itself it was seen that the German influence was dragging Austria-Hungary nearer and nearer to war.

Ferdinand disliked the Hungarians and in turn was hated by them. If he had attained the throne of the Empire, as his children could not inherit, he would have endeavoured first to remove that obstacle, but if he had not succeeded he intended, as I have said, either to restore the kingdom of Bohemia and place his son, child of a Bohemian mother, on the newly created throne, or create, possibly from conquered lands, another kingdom over which his heir could reign.

The Magyars, the real Hungarian ruling race, are most skilful politicians. Their elections often are corrupt and all the tricks of the politician are in use in Hungary.

In many families political talent seems hereditary. Tisza, the Premier of Hungary for the period for some time before the war, was the son of Tisza, who was Premier of Hungary about the year 1875. Kossuth, son of the great Kossuth, has been active in politics. The father of Count Julius Andrassy was Premier about 1866 and favoured Germany, a policy which has been inherited by his son. One of the sons-in-law of Count Andrassy's wife, Marquis Pallavicini, came to America to act as best man when my wife's sister married Count Sigray.

Andrassy came to Berlin during the war where I had several long talks with him. The one desire of Hungarians and Austrians alike is for peace, but surrounded by the armies of their German masters, they have lost their independence of action, a bitter blow to the Magyars, who are not fond of the Germans.

Count Stephen Tisza is an obstinate and able man, so many sided that it is related of him that he fought a duel, rode a steeplechase and made a great speech in Parliament, all in one day.

Duelling is still a custom in Hungary, Austria and Germany. Once when I was in Hungary I took supper with a Count who had been second in a duel that day. One young Magnate was at a restaurant with an actress who wore a wide brimmed hat. Another young Magnate of his acquaintance looked under the hat brim to see who the girl was. Result: a duel with sabres in a riding school. On this occasion, as the insult was not deadly, the use of sharp points was forbidden. The duel was stopped after one young Magnate received a cut on the forehead.

Stephen Tisza, on first taking office, was permitted by the old Emperor to obtain some apparent concessions for Hungary in order to make his premiership popular. It was arranged that Hungarian flags should be carried by Hungarian regiments, and that the officers of those regiments all should be Hungarians, but German was to be used as the military language and language of command even in the Hungarian regiments.

As soon as Tisza became premier for the first time, Count Apponyi left the Liberal party and lately Count Julius Andrassy and his wife's sons-in-law, Count Karoli and Marquis Pallavicini, have been in violent opposition to Tisza, Pallavicini even fighting a duel with the Prime Minister.

In a country where the majority of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics it is rather strange that Tisza and his father, both strong Protestants, should have attained the Premiership. The father of Count Stephen Tisza was even more obstinate than his son and greatly oppressed the Slovaks and Roumanians within the borders of Hungary.

A great responsibility lies at the door of Stephen Tisza. He allowed the Germans to use him in bringing on the world war. Doubtless he believed that Russia and the Powers would not move, that Austria-Hungary could seize or invade Serbia, while Germany terrorised the world as in 1908 when Bosnia and Herzegovina were added to the Imperial dominions. But his failure to read the intentions of Russia and the other Powers is no excuse for the calamity he brought on Hungary and the world, no excuse for the fact that his country is now overwhelmed by Kaiserism, its armies surrounded by the armies of Germany and its very independence threatened by the subtle influence and intrigues of the master intriguer of the world,—the German Kaiser.

The franchise in Austria and in Hungary is like that given grudgingly to the Prussian, a mere ghost of suffrage. Autocracy rules. In Hungary, particularly the Magyars, seeking to keep the political power in their hands, oppose a broadening of the franchise. Tisza has always been against any letting down of the bars, but when the young and brilliant Count Esterhazy was made Premier, many looked for a change—a change which has, however, not yet come.

The new Emperor Carl at first seemed to exhibit Liberal tendencies, but only for a moment.

The events in Russia will have a grave effect in Austria-Hungary. More than a million Russians are prisoners in the Dual Monarchy, nearly a million of whose subjects are in Russia—and of these at least fifty thousand Czechs are fighting the Austrians and Germans in the ranks of the Roumanian army. Many more will refuse to leave Russia, but the coming back of one-half, after having witnessed the winning of liberty by the Russians, will influence their countrymen in no small degree. Just as the French soldiers under Lafayette and Rochambeau, after helping us gain our independence, returned from the free fields of America to a France where the burdens of the plain people were almost unendurable and brought on the great French Revolution, the soldiers and prisoners who return to Prussia and to Austria-Hungary from the strange scenes of the Russian Revolution may, perhaps, leaven the inert slave masses of the Central Empires with a spirit of revolt for liberty.

We should institute a great propaganda from the Italian front. For instance, I have been told by a man who has been on that front, a man who should know, that if a few American troops were sent there and signs erected stating "Come over and surrender to the Americans, you will be taken to America well fed and paid a dollar per day when you volunteer to work," there would be a great rush of Austro-Hungarian troops eager to be taken prisoner.

The losses of Austria and Hungary have been enormous—men up to fifty-five have been drafted for the army, and the troops have often suffered defeat and the horrors of retreat at the hands of Russians, Serbians, and Italians.

And all the time the iron hand of the German Kaiser grasps more and more of the power. Cheerless prospect it is for the once gay Hungarians, the once happy Austrians, if to financial ruin and the killing of the flower of their youth is to be added the iron horror of Prussian domination.

Our citizens of Austrian and especially of Hungarian descent have been loyal to their new flag. And our great President with enlightened wisdom has eased the enemy alien regulations so as to favour those born in the Dual Monarchy. America will never forget the loyalty, ungrudgingly given by those of her people born under the double eagle of the Hapsburgs.

In my many visits to Hungary I grew to like and admire the Hungarians. Natural in manners, hospitable, polite, there is something in them that wins Americans. How different the open hospitality and friendliness in Budapest from the stern, cold formality of the Prussian capital!

And with all friends of Hungary I hope that that country will soon throw off the trance of Prussianism, which has led the Dual Monarchy into a Dance of Death.

CHAPTER XVI

GERMAN INFLUENCE ON THE NORTHERN NEUTRALS

Just as I had the opportunity to study conditions in Austria, so also I came in contact with the politics and diplomacy of the nations contiguous to Germany on the north.

My grandfather, Benjamin F. Angel, was American Minister to Sweden and Norway and on leaving received from the King the Order of St. Olaf. I have always taken a deep interest in Scandinavian affairs and it behooves the American people to regard closely what is happening nowadays in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

The outbreak of the European War in 1914 served to bring the three northern nations close together. Their Kings met in conference and a peace monument was erected on the boundary of Norway and Sweden as if to proclaim to the world that in spite of their recent separation, Norway and Sweden were sister countries.

The people of these three countries are of the same blood and their languages are somewhat similar. Norwegian and Danish written are practically the same. But there is quite a difference in pronunciation. Swedish is more like German and the pronunciation is not as difficult to learn as that of Norwegian and Danish. In Norway, there are older dialects, differing from Danish, and there has lately been a great movement in favour of a more national language. Many Norwegians regard the official Danish-Norwegian as a reminder of old subjection to Denmark and not at all fitted for the new independent Norwegian kingdom. The new national language is called "Landsmaal."

Sweden and Norway were both under one king from 1814 to 1905. In that year after a peaceful secession, Prince Charles of Denmark, the son of the King of Denmark, was made the King of Norway, with the title of Haakon VII. Although both have kings, Denmark and Norway may be termed democratic countries.

Copenhagen is lively since the war. The population of Denmark is only 2,500,000 and the whole country is only 14,829 square miles, which means an area about the size of Maryland. The country was once larger but in 1864 Prussia went to war with Denmark and, finally, after the war with Austria in 1866, added to the Crown of Prussia the two Danish duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. As the city and port of Kiel were included in this territory annexed, it is easy to see why the Germans engaged in this enterprise against Denmark.

Denmark possesses the Faro Islands which lie far to north of Scotland, the great island of Iceland and Greenland, relics of the times when the Viking ships brought such terror to the other countries of Europe, that the Litany used to read: "From plague, pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, from sudden death and from the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us."

In Christiania we saw on our trip out two graceful Viking ships dug out of the clay shores of the coast in a state of fair preservation—one of them a Princess's ship on which it was easy to imagine some blonde princess of the North, her long braids of golden hair flying in the wind, urging on her Scandinavian oarsmen.

The Danes are a sturdy race, the women more independent than those of other countries. On the Frederick VIII, when we sailed from Denmark, September 28, 1916, for the United States, were two handsome girls, nineteen and twenty-one years of age, the daughters of the proprietor of the largest department store in Copenhagen. They were going to America to find employment in department stores in the different cities of the country, travelling entirely alone, and expected to return to Denmark after a year's experience in America with many new ideas of management and advertising for their father in Copenhagen. These girls were wonderfully educated, speaking in addition to Danish, French, German and English with hardly a trace of accent. They lived a short distance out of Copenhagen and told me that every morning of the year they jumped into the sea at six-thirty in the morning, something that I should not care to do even in August in that cold northern land.

Danish farmers learned early that in order to be prosperous they must practise intensive farming. I believe that Denmark, which even before the war enjoyed a high degree of prosperity, is the only country in the world where there are pig sties steam-heated and electric lighted while the farmer himself does not have these luxuries.

Our farmers have much to learn from the farmers of Denmark both in agricultural methods and in co-operation for the marketing of products. The reclamation of the Danish moors in Jutland has made surprising progress: it is in Jutland that a park has been preserved in its primeval state—the Danish-American Park, bought with money subscribed by Danish emigrants to America who prospered in their adopted land.

Ever since the conquest of Denmark by Germany, there has been a deep hatred of all things German in Denmark on account of the treatment of those Danes, numbering between one hundred and two hundred thousand, who were living in Schleswig and Holstein and were unfortunate enough to be turned over as property to the King of Prussia.

I found the Danes agreeable people. Of the same race as the Germans, living like them in the dark North, this difference in behaviour is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the Danes are free, while the Germans are oppressed by the weight of an ever present autocracy.

While the Danish people hate the Germans, officially Denmark is careful to conceal this hate and even, apparently, to lean towards the German side, through fear of the German troops, which could easily overrun Denmark in thirty hours.

Denmark, during the war, received oil cake from America, which was fed to cattle later sold to Germany. A great tonnage of fish has also been sent from Denmark to Germany while salt and potash have been imported. There is no question but that supplies of all kinds and in great quantities have found their way across the Danish border.

And the Danes have prospered enormously since the war. Many people have become millionaires through the sale of food and other supplies to the Germans. A great deal of this food supply was sent in the form of canned meat, popularly known as goulash, and so to-day whenever an automobile passes on a Danish road, the small boys call out "goulash Baron," in the belief that the occupant is a new-made millionaire, enriched by trade with Germany.

It is hard for us to realise how far north the Scandinavian countries lie. Christiania, the capital of Norway and in its southern part, is in the same latitude as the south point of Greenland; and is it not difficult to imagine a modern city situated in Greenland?

In Christiania it is not fairly daylight in December until ten in the morning and dark early in the afternoon. The ample water power of Norway and Sweden furnishes electric light, a godsend in the short dreary winter days.

Norway, in many respects, is one of the most advanced countries in the world. Having been ruled by Denmark for four hundred years, it was united to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel, in 1814, with the approval of all the Powers, but against the inclinations of the Norwegians, who knew that they were given to Sweden to compensate that country for the loss of Finland, annexed to Russia.

The ambitious Bernadotte arranged to govern Norway as king of that country, which was theoretically to retain its independence and be united to Sweden only through the personal rule of the one monarch.

At this time, the Norwegian Constitution provided that no more personal privileges should be granted and since then the progress of Norway towards a real democracy has been rapid. It was the conflict over the right demanded by the Norwegians to establish a separate consular service that led to the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905, Norway voting for separation 368,211 to 184.

There are now no nobles in Norway. Shortly after the union it was decided that those who had titles of nobility could hold them for life, but that their descendants could not inherit.

Legislation for the protection of child workers, women, for insurance, etc., is of an advanced character. For instance, no child under fourteen is permitted to work and no woman for six weeks after her confinement—women receiving full sick benefit pay during this period. Many of the railways are state owned.

Norway is a land of little farms, the shipping and fishing industries occupy many men, but with the exception of the water power driven nitrate plants, on the coast, and the wood-pulp factories, there is little manufacturing.

The mass of the people are with the Allies. Last winter, when it was proposed that a German concert troupe should play and sing in Christiania, the people threatened to burn the theatre if the performance was permitted.

But, as in Sweden, the German propagandists are at work in Norway. Here again, unless we present our case, the people may be turned from the Allies.

King Gustavus V, who occupies to-day the throne of Sweden, has a German wife. All the sympathies of the court, which copies the little courts of Germany, of the aristocracy and of the army are strongly with Germany.

In Sweden, although the king has not much more power than the kings of Denmark and Norway, there is an aristocracy which inclines to imitate the manners of the German aristocracy and to seize, if possible, the privileges enjoyed by that body. The officers in the army in Sweden are devoted to German ideals and, since the war, great bodies of them have been invited to Germany, where there has been much ado over them.

The people, however, do not sympathise with Germany, knowing what the triumph of Germany means for them and how the court and the army and the aristocracy would be thereby encouraged to put the Swedish people in what the Germans would call "their place."

The Swedes fear the domination of Germany and the domination of an aristocracy and army imbued with German ideas. They know that if Germany wins, the king business will take on a new lease of life. The ground was ripe for the Allies but the German propaganda, cleverly managed, spending money without stint, is gradually bringing the people to a point where, if the blockade is tightened, they may consent to Sweden's entering the war as an ally of the Central empires.

In spite of the dislike of the people for the German cause, I think that the aristocracy and the court and the army would have forced Sweden into the war but for one thing. After some months of war, an arrangement was made whereby the so-called "heavily wounded" were exchanged with prisoners between Russia and Germany. The German who was a prisoner of the Russians and had lost an arm or a leg, was sent home. These wounded prisoners on their way to their home countries, were compelled to travel the whole length of Sweden and it was the sight of these poor stumps of humanity, as the trains stopped at the various stations in Sweden, that kept the Swedish people out of war. Many pictures of them printed in the Swedish papers caused profound dismay in Sweden and developed an inexpressible abhorrence of war.

Since hostilities commenced, on the other hand, the Government, army and aristocracy of Sweden not only have been consistently opposed to the Allies, but of the utmost service to Germany.

Swedish iron ore goes into German cannon and makes the best steel for aeroplane engines, and the imports into Sweden from America of foods and fats from America increased one thousand per cent almost immediately. These imports, with great quantities of copper and other supplies, found their way to Germany to the great profit incidentally of Swedish business men. For the plain people of Sweden the cost of living increased without a corresponding increase in salaries and wages, so that the new prosperity was confined to the "goulash barons."

There is no question but that, just as in Argentina, the Swedish diplomatic pouch was in all countries at the service of Germany, and that the orders to the German spies in Russia were sent by this means. In fact, it is believed German prisoners in Russia found their way to Petrograd, there to participate in revolution and counter-revolution under orders sent through the Swedish officials.

Smuggling is winked at and at Lullia on the Swedish coast near the head of the Gulf of Bothnia great quantities of rubber, block tin and oil arrive from Russian Uleaborg across the gulf.

The French wanted to send a consul to Lullia, but their request was refused, doubtless because the Swedish authorities did not care to have any official foreigners see this traffic.

Cleverest of all has been the work of the German financial agents. Warburg, the Hamburg banker, is attached to the German legation in Stockholm. So skilfully has he managed his task, that Swedish firms and Swedish banks have been induced to take German paper money, commercial paper and securities instead of gold, in return for copper, rubber, tin, food, fats, wool and supplies and in this way the Swedish business men, by the touch of self-interest, have been made to favour Germany.

I confess that it is hard to bring about, but as each nation has the right to choose with whom its citizens shall do business, we must mercilessly blacklist those firms which assist Germany by accepting, in lieu of the gold which would thus be drained from Germany, what amounts to the promise of Germany to pay if successful in war.

The Queen of Sweden, herself a German and an admirer of the German Emperor, has great influence over her husband and the Court.

At a time when she was visiting her family in Karlsruhe (for she is a Princess of Baden) a reprisal attack made by Allied aeroplanes narrowly missed the royal palace and, consequently, the Queen. This has added to her prejudice against the Allies. The Crown Princess of Sweden was a Princess of Connaught, the sister of "Princess Pat," but she does not dare take any stand against the anti-ally propaganda.

I am sure that President Wilson appreciates the gravity of the situation and that means are being taken to place our position not only before the Swedish people but those of Swedish birth and descent in the United States whose influence should be brought to bear on their friends and relatives in the old country.

The crew of every Swedish ship that lands here should be given our viewpoint; every Swede who returns to Sweden should go as a missionary—we must not permit Sweden, whose people are bound to us by ties of blood and friendship, by the hospitality which we offered to every Swedish immigrant, to be ranged among our enemies by the German-admiring aristocrats of Sweden who by birth, training and education are opposed to democracy, who hope, if Germany wins, to gain as great an ascendancy in the government as the Prussian Junkers possess in Germany.

The Finns who occupy that part of Russia nearest to Sweden have quite a sympathy for the Swedes, Finland having been at one time a part of Sweden. The races, however, are not the same. The Finns are a Mongolian race and certain similarities of language make it plain that the Finns and the Hungarians came from the same mysterious place of origin somewhere in the great mountains and highlands of Central Asia.

Three languages, three influences, fight for mastery in Finland. The official Russian, the language of the government; Finnish, now receiving a new lease of life; and Swedish, the language of those who once conquered and held Finland, and who so imposed their civilisation on the more ignorant Finns, that to-day Swedish is the language of the more prosperous classes and of most of the business men.

The women of Finland received the suffrage in 1906, all voting who are over twenty-four and who have been for five years citizens of Finland. Many women thereafter were elected to the Finnish parliament.

In two Scandinavian countries the women vote. Norway was the first sovereign state of Europe to give full citizenship rights to women. In 1913, all Norwegian women of twenty-five and citizens for five years were put on a voting equality with men, and the only positions under the national government for which women are not eligible are in the army and navy, the diplomatic and consular service and the Supreme Court.

The Danish women received the full franchise in 1915, but in aristocratic Sweden only the women paying income taxes have rights in the communal councils.

In 1908, in Norway, a law was passed providing that women doing the work of men shall receive equal pay.

Military service in all three northern nations is universal and compulsory.

Possibly on a "tip" from Berlin to a fellow autocrat, there occurred in February, 1914, an extraordinary political event, arranged and "accelerated" by the Government, when thirty thousand farmers, meeting in Stockholm for the purpose, marched in procession to the Royal Castle to address the King and tell him that they were ready to bear any extra taxes imposed for the purpose of providing for national defence.

Russia was the power particularly feared by Sweden who thought she desired to annex a part of Northern Sweden and Norway in order to get an outlet to the sea on the Norwegian coast.

But recent events in Russia have ended this fear and the only question for the Swedes is the same, one with which the whole world is faced—Kaiserism or Democracy.

Sven Hedin, the explorer, who was the leader in this movement for national defence, has appeared as a German propagandist so violent as to have become popular with the Germans. It is hard to understand why so intelligent a man should range himself on the side of autocracy. Now that the Russian danger, if danger there was, is past it is to be hoped that this celebrated man will be found in the ranks of those opposed to the autocracy which ordered the murders of many Swedish seamen.

Norway, although it has often met the submarine of the Kaiser, which, defying all law, has sent to death so many Norwegian sailors and fishermen, suffers also from German propaganda and a certain self interest because of the forty-five million kronen sale of fish this last year to German buyers.

Germany works, too, in Denmark with the Socialists and deliveries of coal are used to obtain food from that country.

The jolly, free, brave Scandinavians are naturally opposed to all that Pan-Germanism and German rule means. It is necessary for us, especially our citizens of Scandinavian descent, not to lose this initial advantage.

CHAPTER XVII

SWITZERLAND—ANOTHER KIND OF NEUTRAL

Free Switzerland! You cannot imagine the feeling of relief I experienced as I passed from the lands of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs to a free republic.

It was February 11, 1917. To go into the railroad station restaurant and order an omelette and fried potatoes without a food card and with chocolate on the side seemed in itself a return to liberty.

Our Minister, Mr. Stovall, gave us a dinner and evening reception so that we could meet all the notables and we lunched with the French Ambassador (for France maintains an Embassy in Switzerland) and dined with the British Minister, Sir Horace Rumbold, a very able gentleman who had been Chancellor of the British Embassy in Berlin before the war.

As war had not yet been declared between Germany and the United States the correspondents of German newspapers waylaid me. Some seemed to think that in spite of the insulting blow given us by Germany, we nevertheless, scared to whiteness by the U-boat ultimatum, would lend all our energies to bring about a German peace.

I received a letter from one of the editors of a Swiss newspaper published in Berne, probably inspired by the German Legation there, asking me if President Wilson, in spite of the break in relations, would not continue his work for peace.

We all know that Switzerland is a republic but even those of us who have travelled there, probably because we were on a holiday, gave little thought to the Swiss political system. Indeed before this war we cared little about the government of any country except our own.

The present constitution of Switzerland was adopted in 1848 and in many particulars is modelled after that of the United States.

There are the same three great Federal powers, the Federal Assembly, representing the legislative branch, the Federal Council, representing the executive branch, and the Federal Court, representing the judicial branch.

The lower Chamber is made up of representatives elected directly by the people, and the other Chamber of members elected, as in our Senate, two by each canton or state. The Bundesrat or Federal Council which has all the executive powers, is elected by the Federal Assembly and it is the Chairman of this body who is known as the President of Switzerland. In reality he does not possess the powers of our President, but it is the Bundesrat as a whole which exercises the powers. Each member of this Council is minister or head of some separate department, such as Military, Justice and Police, Foreign Affairs, Posts and Railways, etc. The Swiss Cantons have much power, and there is a distinct jealousy by each canton of states' rights.

It is in Switzerland that we encounter two little friends, sponsored by William Jennings Bryan—the Initiative and Referendum—means by which the Swiss people are given a direct voice in their government. By the Initiative a certain number of voters may propose new legislation and when the requisite number sign a petition the proposed law must then be submitted to popular vote. This rule applies both in the separate cantons and in the Republic as a whole.

The Referendum, more often used, provides that if the requisite number of signers be obtained any law passed by a cantonal legislative body or by the Federal Assembly shall be submitted to the voters. In certain cantons the Referendum is obligatory and every law is thus submitted to the people. In practice the Referendum has acted as a check to advanced legislation.

The Swiss have reason to fear the designs of Prussia. As late as 1856, Prussia and Switzerland were on the edge of war. Prior to 1815 Neuchâtel acknowledged the King of Prussia as its overlord; the Congress of Vienna, however, included this territory in the Swiss Confederation as one of the Swiss Cantons. But Prussia, in spite of this formal arrangement, with its usual disregard of treaties, continued to claim Neuchâtel.

In 1848 the revolutionary influence resulted in more democratic rule in Neuchâtel but the Prussian propagandist of that day was at work and, in 1856, Count Pourtales' plot was discovered and several hundred prisoners seized by the Swiss government. All but a score were released. Frederick William IV of Prussia demanded their instant pardon and release and ordered the mobilisation of his army but, finally, through the intervention of Napoleon III, the affair was settled, the prisoners released by way of France, and the Prussian King renounced all rights over Neuchâtel.

The Kulturkampf of Bismarck, his contest against the Roman Catholics, had its echoes in Switzerland and it probably was due also to German influence that until 1866 full freedom was withheld from the Jews.

The Red Cross had its origin in Switzerland and the Geneva Conventions have done much to bring about the adoption of better rules of war. The Geneva Cross is the badge of international charity and help.

Switzerland always has opened her doors to the politically oppressed. Over ten thousand revolutionists from Baden took refuge in Switzerland in 1848. Austria, in 1853, as a reprisal for the alleged actions of Italians in Switzerland in conspiring against Austria, drove thousands of Swiss citizens from that part of Italy occupied by Austria. Also in the Franco-Prussian war the French General Bourbaki and his army of nearly one hundred thousand men sought an asylum in Switzerland.

The army of Switzerland is a true citizen army—an army of universal service—and it is due to the existence of this force that Switzerland remains an independent state in the midst of Europe.

To stand apart in Europe is the very essence of life for Switzerland. It is regrettable therefore that German money and German propaganda and some sympathy for Germany among the officers of the army should have touched the fine flower of Swiss neutrality. A triumphant Prussia and a free Switzerland cannot exist in the same Europe.

In Switzerland, it is in the military that we find the greatest sympathy for Germany. In 1915, Swiss officers were discovered working out the ciphers of other nations for the benefit of the German armies and the punishment given, at the ensuing Court Martial, was not only incommensurate with the offence, but was a plain indication of the early sympathies of the Chiefs of the Swiss Staff.

The food question between the United States and Switzerland requires delicate handling. We like the Swiss and do not wish them to suffer, but the Swiss must understand that our food is our own and that we do not propose it shall go to nourish Germans or that it shall take the place, in Switzerland, of Swiss food sold by the Swiss to our enemies.

The President of Switzerland related to me the difficult position in which Switzerland found herself. Iron and coal, necessary to the industries of Switzerland, to keep the population warm and to cook the food, came, he said, from Germany, while food was shipped to the French Mediterranean port of Cette from America and the Argentine, and transported across part of France to Switzerland, so that since the war Switzerland, as the President explained, has been dancing about; first on one side, then on the other, in the attempt to get food through France and coal and iron through Germany.

Everything in the office of the President was the extreme of republican simplicity. He questioned me about the situation in Germany, especially from the food standpoint. And I learned of the difficulties of the Swiss. It must not be forgotten that in Switzerland about seventy per cent of the people speak German, twenty-three per cent, French, and seven per cent, Italian. Many of the German-speaking Swiss, of course, sympathise with Germany. They are the farmers, dairymen, etc., but in French-Switzerland, in the neighbourhood of Geneva and Lausanne, the industrial population sides with the Allies. Millions of the delicate fuses used on shells have been manufactured in that part of Switzerland for the Entente. In retaliation for this the Germans boycotted Swiss watches.

The usual German-paid propaganda newspapers operate in the principal towns. The army officers are the first to be influenced. It is the same in Switzerland as with the officers of many armies, solely because of the past reputation of the German military machine.

We and the civil authorities of South America must not forget that Japan copied German military methods, that the armies of Argentina and Chili have been trained, for years, by German officers sent there on temporary leave of absence from the German army.

Von Below, a German officer in Berlin who had been in the Argentine, used to make merry over the Argentine soldiers and said that they objected to drilling when it rained. I do not believe this officer, but I should like to have the brave Argentine officers hear his jokes and gibes.

We left, after three or four days in Berne, on the evening train, for the French frontier. In the train corridors, outside the compartments, spies stood staring at us, spies pretending to read newspapers came into each compartment; police spies, betrayed by heavy boots; general staff spies, betrayed by a military stiffness; women spies; spies assorted and special. And these gentry had followed me all over Berne—for in the neutral countries of Europe as well as the belligerents are we constantly reminded of the insidious methods of Kaiserism.

CHAPTER XVIII

A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE

At Pontarlier, on the French frontier, a special train was waiting for my party and into this train a German-American inserted himself after first mixing his baggage with mine. I went through the train and this enterprising gentleman and another German-American were detained for some days at Pontarlier. One of them, later, on reaching Spain, reported immediately to the head of the German secret service there, thus justifying my suspicions. Fortunately when he subsequently arrived in Spain we had already sailed, so that if he bore any sinister message from Berlin to the German agents in Spain to hinder our voyage, he was too late.

The night trip to Paris was uneventful. At the Gare St. Lazare we were met by our Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, with several of his staff and a representative of the French Foreign Office.

Paris was indeed a changed Paris since I had last seen it in October of 1913. The pavement in the Place Vendôme, in front of the Hotel Ritz, where we stopped, was full of holes, but taxicabs, almost as extinct as the dodo in Berlin, rushed merrily through the crowded streets. The boulevards were lively, full of soldiers looking far more cheery, far more snappy, than the heavy footed German soldiers who so painfully tramped down Unter den Linden. Many soldiers were to be seen without an arm or leg, something impossible in Germany where, especially in Berlin, it has been the policy of the Government to conceal those maimed by war from the people at home. Although constantly walking the streets of Berlin I never saw a German soldier without an arm or leg. Once motoring near Berlin I came upon a lonely country house where, through the iron rails of the surrounding park, numbers of maimed soldiers peered out, prisoners of the autocratic government which dared not show its victims to the people.

At night in Paris the taxicabs and autos rushed dangerously through streets darkened to baffle the Zeppelins. In the hotel there was little heat, only wood fires in one's room. In the homes a single electric light bulb was permitted for each room; violation of this rule meant loss of electric light from that apartment for three weeks.

In the Ritz Restaurant there were lights on the table only. And the gloomy dining room, where a few Americans and British officers and their families conversed in whispers, resembled but little the gay resort so often filled, before the war, with American millionaires. Olivier, the head waiter, appeared only at night, absent during the day on war duties. No lights, no music, it is hard to think of Paris without these, Paris which calls itself the "Ville Lumière"—the City of Light.