The Woman’s Committee endeavored always, while aiding in the work of the war agencies, to preserve and improve the peace time standards and values of life. And therefore not a little of its work was along the lines of maintaining the health and protecting the welfare of women and children. It had a department of Child Welfare and carried on a vigorous campaign to further these aims while it endeavored to promote public sentiment in favor of proper living and working conditions for women in industry.
The Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense, in short, mobilized in one great, enthusiastic, democratic army the women of all the land, rich and poor, ignorant and cultured, of many races, of foreign birth and of American ancestry, and by organization enabled them to use their time, ability and effort in the way and at the time when they would be of best service.
CHAPTER XXXIV
FIGHTING THE UNDERGROUND ENEMY
For years before it plunged the world into war the German Government, as in every country in which it could obtain the necessary foothold, had been applying in the United States its policy of “peaceful penetration.” Toward that end it had endeavored by many apparently innocent means to hold the loyalty of American citizens or residents of German birth or extraction, to create a dominant body of sentiment in favor of anything and everything German, and to secure the open or concealed control of vast quantities of business through which it could operate for the furtherance of German interests, political, industrial, financial or cultural. German methods and ideals accepted in schools and colleges; German departments in universities that were centers of influence for the spreading of admiration of everything German; in some regions Germanized public schools; a country-wide net-work of German societies and associations through which love and loyalty for the “fatherland” were kept alive; millions of dollars of German money invested in American business, frequently under disguised ownership; German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats using their offices and privileges for the promotion of all manner of intrigue against the interests of the country; plots for the control of industry, the destruction of property, the inciting of sedition, the hatching of conspiracies, the rousing of enmity against us in friendly nations—these were some of the things the American people found had been going on under their very noses, many of which they had thoughtlessly aided, when the shock of war opened their eyes to the character and the methods of the enemy who, for the sake of civilization, had to be rendered innocuous. It was an enemy who had not only to be fought on the open battlefield but foiled in all the underground tricks and activities in which he was exceptionally expert and incessantly busy.
Before our entrance into the war Germany had used her own and the Austro-Hungarian embassies and her well organized spy system to carry on operations against England and France, her diplomatic representatives and her agents secretly concocting and directing activities that would interfere with the efficiency of the Entente Allies and might also be depended upon to create friction and possibly even war between them and the United States. After the two ambassadors and their staffs had been sent home because of these machinations and the United States had declared war, there still remained the spy system, which had been greatly increased and strengthened during the first years of the war. Huge sums of money financed it and it was directed and carried on by some of the most experienced agents of the German Foreign Office. To aid them Germany had sent to this country many professional men, scientists and others with instructions to advance German interests and to assist in the carrying on of her underground activities in every possible way. The Intelligence Division of the United States War Department estimated that Germany maintained in this country, before and after our entrance into the war, an immense, secretly operating force of between 200,000 and 300,000 paid and volunteer workers. There was also the wide-spreading net-work of business firms, apparently innocent, but really a cover and medium for enemy machinations.
Emissaries to blow up bridges and railroads and do other damage were sent into Canada. Malcontents from Ireland and India were sought out and financed and aided in the laying of plots to create dissatisfaction, riots and, if possible, revolution in their home countries. A French traitor was brought to the United States and furnished with money for setting on foot a traitorous scheme in France. Much ingenuity was expanded in the endeavor to create friction between this country and Japan. In Mexico Germany diligently spread propaganda to influence the people and government of that country against the United States and aided and financed terroristic movements and activities whose purpose was to embroil the two nations in war.
Germany’s underground activities in the United States, some of them dating before our entrance into the war, some of them carried into the period of our war participation, and others not begun until after we became a belligerent, included many and varied schemes to prevent this country from exercising its rights under international law, to interfere with its effective prosecution of the war and to undermine its political and trade relations with other countries. An effort was made to gain control of airplane building. There was an attempt to secure a similar hold upon the munitions industry, by maneuvering it into the hands of German capital so camouflaged that its character would not be recognized. A particularly well organized and cunningly concealed scheme, directed and financed in the United States, was set on foot to buy up and hoard wool and woolen and other textiles, in both North and South America, needed for the clothing of our own and our associates’ armies.
Plots were laid and feverishly pushed forward for blowing up ships bearing troops or war cargoes across the Atlantic and for wrecking munition plants and other war industries. German agents sent throughout the Southern states did their best to incite race riots among the negroes and to instigate a race war, working among them in their homes and churches and following them into cotton fields and mills and even into the army camps. Much effort and ingenuity were expended in the attempt to cause dissatisfaction and strikes among the workers in war industries and strife among those of different nationalities.
Propaganda, both open and concealed, was carried on by innumerable methods in the hope of influencing sentiment against the war, in favor of Germany, or against our war associates. For this purpose there were used moving pictures, the pastors of German churches, the German language press, the newspapers of other languages, writers in German pay who contributed articles and correspondence to American newspapers and magazines, German owned or controlled periodicals whose directing influence was well concealed, and a great number of societies having for their ostensible purpose the aiding of the aims of labor, or of pacifist sentiment, or of socialism.
The United States Department of Justice discovered, in the course of its investigations, that the German Government had placed in this country for the use of these various underground activities over $27,000,000, of which $7,500,000 had been spent in propaganda.