I did not forget this incident because it showed a striking difference of opinion between the army, which was fighting for Germany, and the Foreign Office, which was explaining and excusing what the Army and Navy did. The Army always justified the events in Belgium, but the Foreign Office did not. And this was the first incident which made me feel that even in Germany, which was supposed to be united, there were differences of opinion.
In September, 1915, while the German army was moving against Russia like a surging sea, I was invited to go to the front near Vilna. During the intervening months I had observed and recorded as much as possible the growing indignation in Germany because the United States permitted the shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies. In June I had had an interview with Secretary of State von Jagow, in which he protested against the attitude of the United States Government and said that America was not acting as neutral as Germany did during the Spanish-American war. He cited page 168 of Andrew D. White's book in which Ambassador White said he persuaded Germany not to permit a German ship laden with ammunition and consigned for Spain to sail. I thought that if Germany had adopted such an attitude toward America, that in justice to Germany Washington should adopt the same position. After von Jagow gave me the facts in possession of the Foreign Office and after he had loaned me Mr. White's book, I looked up the data. I found to my astonishment that Mr. White reported to the State Department that a ship of ammunition sailed from Hamburg, and that he had not protested, although the Naval Attaché had requested him to do so. The statements of von Jagow and Mr. White's in his autobiography did not agree with the facts. Germany did send ammunition to Spain, but Wilhelmstrasse was using Mr. White's book as proof that the Krupp interests did not supply our enemy in 1898. The latter part of September I entered Kovno, the important Russian fortress, eight days after the army captured it. I was escorted, together with other foreign correspondents, from one fort to another and shown what the 42 cm. guns had destroyed. I saw 400 machine guns which were captured and 1,300 pieces of heavy artillery. The night before, at a dinner party, the officers had argued against the United States because of the shipment of supplies to Russia. They said that if the United States had not aided Russia, that country would not have been able to resist the invaders. I did not know the facts, but I accepted their statements. When I was shown the machine guns, I examined them and discovered that every one of the 400 was made at Essen or Magdeburg, Germany. Of the 1,300 pieces of artillery every cannon was made in Germany except a few English ship guns. Kovno was fortified by German artillery, not American.
A few days later I entered Vilna; this time I was moving with the advance column. At dinner that night with General von Weber, the commander of the city, the subject of American arms and ammunition was again brought up. The General said they had captured from the Russians an American machine gun. He added that they were bringing it in from Smorgon to show the Americans. When it reached us the stamp, written in English, showed that it was manufactured by Vickers Limited, England. Being unable to read English, the officer who reported the capture thought the gun was made in the United States.
In Roumania last December I followed General von Falkenhayn's armies to the forts of Bucharest. On Thanksgiving Day I crossed by automobile the Schurduck Pass. The Roumanians had defended, or attempted to defend, this road by mounting armoured guns on the crest of one of the mountain ranges in the Transylvanian Alps. I examined a whole position here and found all turrets were made in Germany.
I did not doubt that the shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies had been a great aid to them. (I was told in Paris, later, on my way to the United States that if it had not been for the American ammunition factories France would have been defeated long ago.) But when Germany argued that the United States was not neutral in permitting these shipments to leave American ports, Germany was forgetting what her own arms and munition factories had done for Germany's enemies. When the Krupp works sold Russia the defences for Kovno, the German Government knew these weapons would be used against Germany some day, because no nation except Germany could attack Russia by way of that city. When Krupps sold war supplies to Roumania, the German Government knew that if Roumania joined the Allies these supplies would be used against German soldiers. But the Government was careful not to report these facts in German newspapers. And, although Secretary of State von Jagow acknowledged to Ambassador Gerard that there was nothing in international law to justify a change in Washington's position, von Jagow's statements were not permitted to be published in Germany.
To understand Germany's resentment over Mr. Wilson's interference with the submarine warfare, three things must be taken into consideration.
1. The Allies' charge that all Germans are "Huns and Barbarians."
2. The battle of the Marne and the shipment of arms and ammunition from the United States.
3. The intrigue and widening breach between the Army and Navy and the Foreign Office.