THE GERMAN SECRET
SERVICE IN AMERICA
1914-1918
Count Johann von Bernstorff, the
responsible director of Ger-
many's secret policies
in America
THE GERMAN SECRET
SERVICE IN AMERICA
1914-1918
BY
JOHN PRICE JONES
AUTHOR OF "AMERICA ENTANGLED"
AND
PAUL MERRICK HOLLISTER
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1918,
By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
"It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign government. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance—and some of these agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her—and that, not by indirection but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their neighbors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arms? Much as we have desired peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under which we serve would have been dishonored had we withheld our hand."
—Woodrow Wilson, Flag Day Address
June 14, 1917