TWO AND A HALF YEARS OF HIGH TREASON
Go back over the events since 1914, and study them in the light of the moves made by Germany or by her secret agents here, and you will realize how, in America, Germany has had a hand in practically every domestic or foreign event of any importance. Her agents sought to control the Congress. They planned trouble between the United States and Mexico with the aim of stopping the shipment of war supplies to the Allies, and of getting this country so absorbed in other matters that we could not call Germany to account for her murderous submarine warfare. They fomented trouble among labouring men. They schemed to bring about seditious uprisings in Cuba, and in the dependencies of the Allies, using this country as a base of operations.
By means of this secret organization, Germany carried on the scheme of buying fraudulent passports for the use of her reservists, developed a scheme for the illegal provisioning of the German cruisers, set on foot various military enterprises from the United States against Canada, schemed to destroy munition factories in America, to blow up merchantmen of the Allies sailing from American ports—and planned crimes of bribery, arson and assault.
But the alertness of the American Secret Service and the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice prevented the consummation of these plans. There was need for a shifting of the Germanic spies. Immediately after the publication of Count von Bernstorff’s warning, an exodus of known spies to South America began, and the development of an effective system of espionage in every country in South America is now under way.