Face to Face with Kaiserism Part 28

"May the Almighty grant that the visit of your Royal Highness bear a rich fruit, that rulers and their people may join together and thereby promote peace, harmony and good-will throughout the world!

May G.o.d grant this prayer!"

Everywhere the Prince went he was surrounded by German-American and German influences. In St. Louis, where the Prince spent about three and a half hours, the German-Americans gave him a great reception in the Grand Hall and lunch at the St. Louis Club which was attended by many Germans. In Chicago, a reception was given after the Mayor's banquet, in the First Regiment Armory, and attended by ten thousand Germans. The following day in Chicago he went to a large luncheon at the Germania Club. In Milwaukee the officers of the Deutscher Kriegebund gave a reception at the Exposition where ten thousand German-Americans cheered the Prince, and also a luncheon at the Hotel Pfister where many German-American officials were invited.

The speeches throughout had the same tone, those of the German-Americans expressing their respect for the Fatherland and those of the Prince spurring on loyalty in the hearts of the German-Americans. The Prince's speech in the Armory in Chicago is quite typical. In reply to a speech made by a German-American, the Prince said:

_"You have left your Fatherland, but if you still have some love for the Fatherland then I ask you to give three cheers for the one who has sent me here as the representative of Prussia to bring this greeting--the German Emperor and King of Prussia."_

In another speech which the Prince began with "Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Germans," he said: "I would like to say that the Germans in this country have done a great deal for the literature and science of this country and I hope they will continue in this good work." The whole att.i.tude of the Prince seemed to be one of benevolence to his "Fellow-Germans" and personal interest in them. Wherever the Prince discovered a German wearing the Iron Cross in the crowd, he would ask an aide to bring the man up to him so that he could shake hands and converse with him.

Talking with Prince Henry one day before the war he told me he regretted that on his trip to America he had seen so little of the Americans. He said: "You know the Amba.s.sador kept me always with the Germans and German Societies." I suppose the poor Prince did not himself know what was the real object of his visit. But undoubtedly his shrewd trip manager and the clever propagandists who accompanied him knew only too well.

It is hard to understand why any German-Americans should take sides with German autocracy. There are many merchants of Frankfort and Hamburg and Bremen and the great industrial towns of Germany who do not approve of the cruelties practised in this war and many of these will leave Germany as soon as peace is concluded.

Any one had a right to sympathise, to side with Germany, before our entrance into the war. But now what the lawyers call "the time of repentance" has gone by, there is no middle course and every citizen must declare himself American or be thought a traitor.

It is hard to understand what the pro-Germans in our country want. They left Germany because of a lack of opportunity there, because of their dislike for military service under Prussian conditions, because of the caste system which kept them under the heel of autocracy and because here every avenue of business, and social and political advancement is thrown wide open for them and their children. And I am quite sure that if one of these prosperous Germans were deprived of the money that he has won here, given back the rags and wooden shoes in which he landed and told that he was on his way to Germany, no wild animal in all the mountains and swamps of the United States would scratch and bite and kick and squawk more vigorously than he would. These German-Americans do not want to be sent back to their Kaiser and their fatherland!

Certainly we Americans will not stop the war nor surrender our rights nor invite the invasion of our sh.o.r.es because of their stubborn devotion to a country which they were so glad to abandon. We must appeal to their sons and their daughters--to those who have become part and parcel of our nation, to see that these obstinate old codgers do not persist in an att.i.tude which may end in creating a prejudice against those of German descent in America.

Those of us who are of Scotch or Irish or English descent can urge this with greater insistence because our ancestors were much nearer, in 1766, to the English fatherland, than German-Americans are to the German Empire and these ancestors did not hesitate in that year to turn against Great Britain on a mere question of commerce--did not hesitate again, in 1812, to face Great Britain in arms on a question of sea rights; and on account of this we expect all those of German-American descent to stand unreservedly by their adopted country,--forced into war by an autocracy that not only murdered our women and children in defiance of international law and common humanity but which threatens, if successful in this war, to invade our sh.o.r.es.

Do these stubborn German-Americans think that if a German force should occupy America their position would be any better than that of the other citizens of this country, that they would be put to rule over the rest of us and allowed to save their goods and houses from the indemnities that would be put upon this nation in case of our defeat?

Let me tell them one thing and that is, if by any remote possibility the Germans did gain a foothold in this country through the aid of those of German descent here, before we, of other descent in this country submitted to German rule we would attend to every traitor!

We did not lure any citizens of foreign nations to our sh.o.r.es.

They came here to escape serfdom and starvation and forced military service in an army where they could never be officers.

We sent them no excursion tickets when they came here as half-starved peasants. We opened to them the doors of hospitality and of opportunity, and we do not propose that they shall pay us like the frozen snake in aesop's fables.

Some of our finest citizens came from Germany in 1848 after the failure of the revolution against autocracy. Where do you think that General Siegel and Carl Schurz would stand if they were alive to-day?

The daughter of General Siegel has answered in giving her son, on whom she was dependent, to the army of the United States, saying, "His grandfather fought under Lincoln for liberty and he must take his place to-day in the great fight for freedom."

We are too good-natured, too soft, too easy in this country. Our great ex-President, that splendid American and patriot, Theodore Roosevelt, said not long ago of one of our United States Senators, if that Senator were a German and acted in Germany the way he acted in America as an American he would be put at digging a trench. I do not like to differ with Theodore Roosevelt, but from my knowledge of German conditions during this war, I know that if this Senator acted as a German in Germany as he has been acting as an American in America, he would not be put by the Germans at digging a trench but that with the ten bullets of a firing squad in his chest he would be filling one!

Are these Germans in America imbued with the belief that the German Kaiser has been sent by heaven to rule the German Empire and bend the world under German "Kultur"? President Wilson, in one of his notes in 1916, referred to the German government as "the mouthpiece of the people." A German conservative newspaper, I think the _Tages Zeitung_, commenting upon this said that "the German Emperor is not our 'mouthpiece' but our truly beloved Emperor sent to us by G.o.d."

Does the German-American ever stop to consider how the Hohenzollerns obtained possession of the Mark of Brandenburg, the basis of modern Prussia? Five hundred years ago the Hohenzollerns were Counts of Nuremberg, then as now a rich trading city.

Sigismund III wanted ready money and this was advanced by the Hohenzollerns, Counts of Nuremberg, on the security of the mark of Brandenburg pledged as collateral to the loan which totalled only $100,000. Later the Counts of Nuremberg foreclosed their mortgage and took possession of the Mark of Brandenburg and have held it ever since.

Does a German-American in this country who has placed a mortgage on his house think when he fails to pay the interest or princ.i.p.al of the mortgage that the man who has sold him out was sent by G.o.d?

This calls to mind one of the great failures of the war--the failure of religion in the German Empire. I attended a great service, in the Protestant cathedral of Berlin, held to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of the occasion when the first Hohenzollern, having foreclosed his mortgage, entered into possession of Brandenburg. The Emperor sat in an elevated gallery and across the great cathedral Dr. Dryander, the Court preacher, mounted the pulpit to deliver an eulogy on the Hohenzollern rule and the Hohenzollerns.

What an opportunity then if Dr. Dryander, lifting an accusing finger, had spoken of the rivers of innocent blood sacrificed to the Prussian Moloch of conquest, if he had demanded in the name of Christianity that the barbarities of Prussian rule should cease, that the Belgian workingmen, dragged from their homes to manufacture sh.e.l.ls to be used against their own brothers, sons and fathers in Prussian factories, should be sent back; if he had demanded that the twenty thousand women and girls driven into worse than slavery from Lille and Tourcoing and Roubaix in the North of France should be given their freedom once more; if he had spoken of the whole nation of the Armenians, of the Syrians, of the Jews, ma.s.sacred by the Turks while the German Generals in command of the Turkish armies stood by; if he had denounced the invasion of Belgium, the breaking of treaties, the starvation of Poland, the horrors of poisoned gas and the cruelties exercised upon those of the opposing armies unfortunate enough to become prisoners of the Germans.

But no, Dr. Dryander droned on. No pastor in Germany has dared to risk his state-paid salary to stand up for Christianity and the right.

The Prussians cannot get away from the belief that they have a sort of personal G.o.d who takes a direct and kindly interest in their destinies, especially in the ordering of their b.l.o.o.d.y battles. Countless sermons were preached through Germany during the war, but the most ridiculous was that of a Protestant pastor in Berlin early in the war. He announced the t.i.tle of his sermon as, "Is G.o.d neutral?", and in his fourteenthly proved to his own satisfaction, that the Deity, abandoning neutrality, had declared Himself unequivocally for the success of German arms!

CHAPTER XXII

THAT INTERVIEW WITH THE KAISER

After the appearance, in August, 1917, in the _Philadelphia Public Ledger_ and other newspapers in America and the _Telegraph_ in England of the message of the Kaiser to President Wilson, the official _North German Gazette_, evidently unaware of the fact that the original message of the Kaiser in his own hand was in my possession, published the following:

"The _London Daily Telegraph_ publishes from the memoirs of former Amba.s.sador Gerard a telegram that His Majesty the Kaiser is alleged to have sent to President Wilson on August 10, 1914, and in which the events before the partic.i.p.ation of England in the present war are set forth.

"We are, in these circ.u.mstances, in the position TO GIVE THE a.s.sURANCE THAT A TELEGRAM OF THE KAISER OF THIS NATURE DOES NOT EXIST.

"It is correct that an audience was granted to Amba.s.sador Gerard on August 10, 1914, in order to give the opportunity to spread before His Majesty the peace mediation offer of President Wilson.

"The personal message of President Wilson to the Kaiser runs as follows: 'As official head of one of the Powers which signed the Hague Convention, I feel according to Article III of this Convention it is my right and my duty to declare to you in the spirit of the truest friends.h.i.+p that I would welcome every opportunity to act in the interest of the peace of Europe whether now or at another more fitting time....'

"This proposition came at a time when the opposing armies had already crossed the frontiers and when it seemed out of the question to halt the march of events.

"His Majesty could, therefore, only transmit to the President his thanks for the mediation offered and to add thereto that it was too early for the mediation of a neutral Power, but that later the friendly proposition of President Wilson could be taken up again.

"His Majesty, the Emperor, then talked for some time with the American Amba.s.sador and set forth to him separately the events which led to the outbreak of the war. Particularly did the Kaiser call attention to the equivocal and unloyal position of England which had destroyed the hope of a peaceful issue.

"The setting forth by Amba.s.sador Gerard in his memoirs seems to be a contradiction of this conversation.

"If the press of enemy countries sees revelations in this that only shows that they are not acquainted with the German White Book which sets forth these events.

"Possibly, during the interviews, the Emperor wrote down notes for the Amba.s.sador, in order that the latter should not send anything incorrect to Was.h.i.+ngton. In this case we have to do only with certain notes to aid the memory of the Amba.s.sador, not with a communication of the Emperor to President Wilson."

The _Tageblatt_ reprinted this lame and silly explanation in its issue of August 13, 1917, and complained that, although its correspondent at the Hague sent, on August 7, 1917, this part of my first book in a telegram, only on August 11, did the Government permit the delivery to the _Tageblatt_ of this story from the correspondent. Then the newspaper despatch had to be submitted to the Censors.h.i.+p officials who only released it for publication at midnight. The _Tageblatt_ says, "The form of the explanation which has now appeared in the _North German Gazette_ can hardly be called very happy. What does this mean--'possibly during the interview the Kaiser wrote down notes for the Amba.s.sador in order that the latter should not send anything incorrect to Was.h.i.+ngton'? Now, after a week the occurrence must have been fathomed and it was not necessary to make use of a 'possibly.' Could Mr. Gerard consider these 'notes' in the handwriting of the Emperor as a draft for a telegram? And do these notes read, as a telegram of the Emperor to Wilson--as Mr.

Gerard repeats them?"

Does not the _Tageblatt_ article give a glimpse not only of how the newspapers of Germany are hampered and censored, but of the positively glorious incompetency of the Government officials who denied the existence of an original doc.u.ment in the Kaiser's own hand which the most elementary inquiries in their own circle would have disclosed not only was in existence but in my possession?

The redoubtable Reventlow writing in the Conservative _Tages Zeitung_ commented as follows:

"Kaiser William had possibly for his answer written down notes and given them to Gerard, but these were only helps for Gerard's memory and it was not a question of a direct communication of the German Kaiser to the President. In accordance with the Gerard reports it now seems that nevertheless the Amba.s.sador telegraphed the Imperial notes immediately and literally to Was.h.i.+ngton. Mr. Gerard has, therefore, again in this respect lied, which is not surprising."

Reventlow, of course, had not then seen the facsimile of the Kaiser's telegram which is headed in his own hand "To the President, personally."

Later the other German newspapers took the Foreign Office to task for making such a weak denial of an incontrovertible fact. And note the charming parliamentary language of dear old Reventlow!

The article, which appeared in the _Tages Zeitung_ of August 14th last, is interesting because Reventlow is without doubt the oracle and mouthpiece of the Prussian Conservatives. He continues to attack me in this article but much of the attack is in reality praise, and, as we say in expressive slang, "every knock is a boost." The article continues:

"It is very desirable to know if the former Chancellor was present at the audience; it is regrettably not inconceivable, but is a new proof of the incompetence of the Chancellor, that he did not, according to his duty, inform his Imperial Lord of the political personality and character of a man like Gerard.

"In the U-boat crisis Mr. Gerard had been able to play a quite decisive part. He was like Mr. von Bethmann-Hollweg entirely of the view that the German Empire must give in to the demands of the United States and constantly showed himself wonderfully informed about what step each inner circle would for the moment take.