GERMAN CONSPIRACIES IN AMERICA.*
THOUGH this book contains much that is encouraging to English readers, its message is primarily addressed to America, and it is a message of warning. Mr. Skaggs, who writes as " an American from an American point of view," is convinced that the stability of democracy is seriously menaced by the unassimilated and unassimilable German-American element, whose activities he reviews in these chapters. Though strongly pro-Allies in sentiment, he is very far from being a thick-and-thin Anglophil. On the contrary, he is an extremely candid critic of England and English rule. In particular, he lays stress on the resentment felt by Americans at the use of foreign, and especially German, mercenaries by England during the War of Independence. Indeed, he gives us to understand that the memory of the atrocities committed by the German troops, notably the Hessians, occasionally under the command of British officers, has done more than anything else to perpetuate the antagonism to England which is still to be met with amongst patriotic Americans. As regards the Germans generally, he has no cause of complaint with them, so long as they interpret their duties to the country of their adoption loyally. Of such loyalty he gives some notable instances. But he contends that not only has Germany never been a true friend of the United States from the War of Independence downwards, but that German immigrants, as compared with those of other countries, have always in the main practised a double allegiance, and in the last resort are ready to sacrifice the claims of citizenship to those of race. This temper, he is concerned to show, is long antecedent to, and preparatory for, the present conflict. Germanic dogmas arc essentially anti-democratic, and though undoubtedly a great many of the " forty-righters " emigrated to America to escape front the evils of autocracy and militarism, and their deseendanta have remained faithful to those views, Mr. Skaggs holds that
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• German Conaptrac:es Anwrica. Wham H. Skaggs. With an Intro- duction by Theodore Andrea Cook. London: T. Fisher Ps. net.)
this wave of immigration has contributed largely to the un- assimilated clement :-
"Many of the hyphenated Americans who have been so ungrateful and un-American since the beginning of this war are the descendants of the pauper immigrants who came from Germany to this country during that stormy period of European history, 1836 to 1850. Illey have forgotten the flag that protected and the hands that fed their homeless and hungry fathers and mothers. • Many of these Germans whose parents cams to this country as paupers are now prosperous men and not a few are wealthy. They have held great demonstra- tions, expressing their sympathy for and pledging their support to the country which their fathers and mothers deserted. When a • submerged piratical craft sunk an unarmed ship and sent to the bottom of the Irish Sea sons and daughters of the men and women who fed the pauper parents of these German-Americans, many of the hyphenated Americans publicly expressed their approval of - these murders."
Mr. Skaggs dwells on the consistent disregard for the Monroe Doctrine shown by German statesmen, but the first conspicuous instance of German hostility that he gives dates from the time of the war with Spain :-
" 11 is well known that Germany was not only in full sympathy with Spain during our war with that country. but also very aggressive in trying to form a coalition against America. Americans were sub- jected to annoyance and, in many cases, to actual insults in Germany ; Ameriean students at German universities were treated with great indignities. German-Americans, openly and frequently, and at times very offensively to Americans, expressed their sympathy with Spain, and German newspapers were very strongly with Spain. Since the beginning of the present war, German-Americans have been very voluble and insistent in their talk about the United States selling aroma and munitions of war to the Allies ; they do not refer to the fact that all, or nearly all, the rifles used by the Spaniards in their war with this country were Mausers ; also all the ammunition used was said at that time to have been supplied by Germany.' "
Much more serious are the charges brought against Germany and the Germans in connexion with the Mexican troubles. Not only was a German cruiser, the ' Dresden,' at Puerto Mexico at the time of President Huerta,'s resignation, but her captain offered him his ship on July 17th, 1914, for any use he might make of it, while President Cabrera of Guatemala suggested to him the employment of German officers as instructors. But Mr. Skaggs is even more severe on his own Government :—
" The crimes in Mexico have been horrible, simply unspeakable, but they have not been so shocking and revolting as the crimes committed by Germany against American citizens. The President made a personal war on Huerta, and criticized him severely ; there has been no war on the Kaiser by the President, and the Kaiser's criminal and seditious representatives have been treated with marked consideration. If it be claimed in defence of Germany, as it has been asserted by pro-German advocates in America, that American citizens were killed by Germany because, at their own risk, they went into a war zone prescribed by Germany, it may be shown by way of comparison that Americans killed by Mexicans were killed in Mexico while that country was in a state of war. Moreover, Americans killed by Germans were in merchant vessels oa the high seas where they had a right to be ; American citizens were warned by this country to leave Mexico and stay away pending the cessation of hostilities and establishment of a stable government. We have wheedled and cajoled Germany, while insulting and threatening Mexico. We apprehended General Huerta, and held him in custody for less offence than Count Bernstorff and members of the German Embassy have been guilty of. And there arc thousands of Germans in this country who have been guilty of conspiracies against America more flagrant than any charged against Huerta. Accredited diplomatic representatives are immune from arrest, but we could have handed these obtrusive diplomats their passports, and we should have apprehended Germans in this country who have been engaged in conspiracies, and are not protected by diplomatic positions. A leading American newspaper asserts that it is in possession of wireless messages which prove the interest and activity of the German Embassy in Mexican affairs. When Huerta was living at the Hotel Ansonia in New York, he was in conference many times with Captain Boy-Ed and other representatives of the German Ambassador, not only in his apartment at the Hotel Ansonia, but at the Hotel Manhattan, where, with several of his adherents, he repeatedly met and conferred with German Secret Service Agents, and Captain Boy-Ed.' H General Huerta was guilty of a con- spiracy or any other infraction of law in this country, ho has co-conspirators in America who should have been apprehended. According to what appears to be very trustworthy reports, President Wilson was advised of the conspiracy with which Captain Boy-Ed was reported to have more or • less connection. During several years past _Germany. has been trying to give us - trouble in Mexico. The cargo of munitions shipped in a Hamburg American liner and unloaded at a Mexican port, the presence of a German cruiser to receive General Huerta, and other circumstances to which -reference has been made in this chapter, are evidence of Germany's pernicious interference in Mexican affairs. Germany's connection with the conspiracy to involve this country in trouble with Mexico, and at the same time delaying an adjustment of our demands on account of her destruction of the liVes and property of American citizens, has been exposed as apart of the general plan of German espionage and intrigue .against this country.. We have patiently submitted to these things, and the Mexican has been told that we are afraid of Germany. The Mexican knows that we have maintained a 'system of espionage in 'his country,- that we have
threatened him and killed his people under a pretext precisely in accord with German practices in this country. The:Mexican hates the American because tho American has imposed on him, and he has a contempt for the American because the American has sub- mitted to the insults and indignities of Germany. The only reason the Mexican submitted to our- indignities was because ho was too weak to defend himself. We submitted to Germany's indignities so long because we were afraid of the German-American vote, and- ' too proud to fight.' Wo have not been too proud to submit' to German insults. During the first year of this War of Nations we have made a place in the world's history which will not be very much to our credit."
The German propagandist campaign, Mr. Skaggs contends, was organized as far back as the Spanish-American War; but Professor Munsterberg, the pioneer German propagandist in America, has himself avowed that he has carried on his " political work " in the United States for twenty years, while his colleague, Professor Kuno Franke, the founder of. the Germanic Museum at Harvard, has worked nearly as long on the same lines. We gather that it has been denied that General Bernhardi visited the United States on a secret mission in 1913, but Mr. Skaggs relies on the testimony of Dr. Jordan, Chancellor of the Leland Stanford Junior University, who attended a meeting addressed by the General at San Francisco. Evidences of the wide ramifications of the pro-German campaign have been constantly published in the American Press since the outbreak of the war, but this is the first attempt we have seen to co-ordinate, these. multifarious activities and trace their concurrent streams under the heads of Press Bureau and publicity, work, espionage, commercial boycott, and industrial interference. The organiza- tion has been perfect, yet, according to Mr. Skaggs, if we except Chicago and the Middle West, the results, so far as the winning over of the American people to the support of the Central Powers is concerned, have been .negligible. " Practically every leading magazine, periodical, and newspaper east of Pittsburg, and, with few exceptions, all west of Pittsburg, are pro-Ally. . . . The substantial support which Germany has in this country, other than the hyphenated Americans, their co-conspirators and hirelings, is found with the whisky trust, the most lawless and corrupt industry in America." As regards the main issue, the writer speaks in no uncertain tones :- " The Allies are fighting our battles ; they are fighting for the great principles which lie at the foundation of American institutions. . . . England has many sins to answer for. Like every other nation, Great Britain has not always shown a scrupulous regard for- her obligations, and her greed has sometimes led her too far, but she stands before the world to-day with the oldest and most honourable record as the defender of human rights, the champion of national ethics, and the conservator of democracy and civilization. . . . The issue is clear and unmistakable ; it is the eternal struggle between might and right. America was involved from the moment the neutrality of Belgium was violated. It is not a conflict between armies, nor indeed between nations ; it is between autocracy and democracy, between barbarism and civilization. There is no middle course for America. If we entertain pirates and conspirators, if we connive at arson, murder, rape, and piracy, if we submit to indignities and insults under the plea that we are too proud to fight, we mall find that those who fought for their homes and country will be too proud to sit at the council-table with us. If we think of ourselves first. we shalt find that those who thought of humanity first will think of us last."
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