In a cable from London printed in the American press on the morning of January 15, 1919, a statement was given from a German newspaper quoting Dr. Dernburg, the German propagandist who was expelled from America some years ago. Now Dr. Dernburg comes out in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse and states that Germany is depending upon “a certain drawing together of Germany and the United States.” He believes that nothing should be done which will “give foundation for a lasting alienation of the two peoples.” He finds the Allies in victory somewhat difficult in their terms, so that Germans turn their eyes and expectations toward America, “and feel sure that their expectations will not come to grief.” He goes on to say that Germany needs raw materials for the revival of her industries, needs credit, and also a market. He looks to America for all these, and says: “A fear of German competition does not exist in America in the same degree as in France and England. The hatred against the German people does not exist since the dynasty has been overthrown, and it is quite possible that America will transfer English and French debts to Germany in order to give her money, for America seeks not destruction but justice. Our two countries will be brought together, and as rivalry is out of the question, this coöperation will take a more tolerable form than in the case of our neighbors.” He goes on to say: “A careful economic policy, I think, will secure Germans sympathy, thereby providing economic help for our German industries, now in collapse, and possibly awaken stirring echoes in two million Americans of German origin.... America will have other interests in Germany allied with her by interest and by service rendered to Germany; so taking all these points of view together, one may well consider that the earliest possible reconciliation between Germany and America will be good for the future of the world and will be welcomed by the German people.”
The human mind with difficulty can conceive of anything indicative of more brazen effrontery than the foregoing. That is the statement to-day of one of the arch-traitors planted in this country by Germany. No doubt, it may awaken a “stirring echo” at least in the hearts of the quarter million of German spies who worked with Dernburg here.
The great danger to America is her unsuspiciousness. Having lived half a century cheek by jowl with these men, although in ignorance of their real quality, we are expected to go on living with them on the same terms that existed before the war. Great Britain, sterner than we, definitely has announced her intention of deporting German aliens—she intends to take no chances. What the French will do is a foregone conclusion. German “kultur” is begging at the doorsteps of the world.
Mr. Palmer, custodian of alien enemy property, can complete the story. For instance, there was loose talk around New York in the early days of the war that under one tennis court in New Jersey there was a gun emplacement from which New York could be bombarded. It was said that a German-owned factory building had a gun emplacement built into its floor with the same amiable intention. Custodian Palmer points out that there really was a concrete pier in the port of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, with a concealed base suitable for heavy gun mounts. That pier now belongs to the United States Government. Before the war it was the property of a steamship company organized by wealthy Germans, of whom Emperor William was one. Its office was in the headquarters of the German spies in New York. After the United States went to war, the pier was sold to a Dane to cover the ownership. The Dane could not meet his note when it came due, and Mr. Palmer confiscated the pier immediately as German property.
Mr. Palmer stated, long before the Overman Committee began its testimony, that Germany, years before she started this war, had undertaken to plant on American soil a great industrial and commercial army. She believed she could keep America out of the conflict, for she had her organization in every state of the Union. It reached across the Pacific to Hawaii and the Philippines and up to Alaska; in the Atlantic it was found in Porto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Panama. Industry after industry was built up, totaling probably two billion dollars in money value, and billions more in potential political value.
“Germany had spies in the German-owned industries of Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York and the West,” says Mr. Palmer. “She fought the war when we were neutral on American soil by agents sent here for that purpose.”
St. Andrew’s Bay, not far from Pensacola, Florida, is a very fine harbor, the nearest American harbor, indeed, to the Panama canal. Mr. Palmer shows that this was wholly controlled by Germans, who were organized in the form of a lumber company and who had purchased thousands of acres of timber nearby. The wealthy owner of the German property never saw it. A concealed fort had been constructed there, and right of way on the shore had been purchased. Not even the Government of the United States could have obtained a terminal on St. Andrew’s Bay unless it did business with the owner in Berlin. Such being the case, Custodian Palmer did not buy it at all—he simply took it in and added it to his list of more than two billion dollars’ worth of German-owned property taken over since the war began.
There were German spies in our chemical works, metal industries, textile concerns, and in every line of our commerce. They had a fund, mentioned at different times in the Overman Committee testimony, which was somewhere between thirty millions and sixty millions of dollars—all of it to be used in propaganda, subsidizing, subornation and destruction.
There were three or four German firms in America which had much to do with the German declaration of war. They were instrumental in piling up the gigantic quantities of American metals, to prepare that country for its onslaught in 1914. There were great stocks of copper accumulated in America to be sold to Germany after the close of the war. The actual ownership of these things was so very carefully concealed by a masquerading interchangeable personnel that it required months of investigation to get at the real facts and to discover that the real owner was Germany itself. In taking over these metal businesses, Alien Property Custodian Palmer broke the German control of the metal industry of America. It has been intended to wipe out these industries so completely that they cannot get a start again.
The New York Times of November 3, 1918, printed a quarter-page story in regard to some of these revelations which should be made not only a part of the record of the Senate Committee but of the records of America itself: