The only serious rebuff Otto had in the early months of his propaganda was when he attempted to contract with Cowder and with other manufacturers for their output. He was amazed and incensed at their attitude. They treated the suggestion that they sell to “Sweden” as an insult. It was this attitude, so hostile to Germany, that had made him completely lose his control with Cowder. It had been unbearable; this contempt, this resentment at the suggestion. He had felt that he was defending Germany when he raised his hand. His controlled and adroit companion had criticized him severely, “You’ll give the game away, Littman, if you lose your temper like that.”
But Otto had replied hotly, “Give it away! It’s a fair game. I believe in what I’m doing. It’s war and fair enough. What I can’t tolerate is the hypocrisy of the American attitude. To pretend to be neutral and act as if you were insulted when it is suggested to you that you sell something so it will get to Germany as well as to England. To pretend to be neutral and to be concerned only with their rights, and yet tolerate with indifference England’s violations and rage against Germany’s.”
“Well, they mustn’t complain if we use stronger arguments. If they can’t make good the neutrality they preach, we’ll have to see what a little force will do.”
“What do you mean?” asked Otto, sharply. “You can’t force the United States.”
“The hell we can’t,” was all his chief answered.
The reply had made no deep impression on Otto then. He remembered it now. He remembered how this hint had recurred as he talked with the German agents in the different places where he had met them. After the Washington fiasco, bursting completely the party for which he had labored so faithfully, this threat came back to him more often. It made him anxious. It was in the back of his mind when he flared at Max and brought upon his head the taunt that humiliated and alarmed him. What if they carried it out—these explosions that they threatened—how could he escape complicity? He could refuse to help, but what good would that do if he was accused. It was a very unhappy young diplomat that laid his head on the pillow that night—one thoroughly disillusioned with great affairs.
The succeeding months made him more unhappy. Sabinsport mistrusted him, and he was made to feel it. In the business life of the town where he had been treated with deference there was a withdrawal, hard to define but very real to Otto. Again and again when he entered an office or room men stopped talking. There was a restraint at the War Board—the one group in the town which had always listened with eagerness, whether to outlandish theories and gossip or to sensible argument and unquestioned fact. Why should the War Board harbor suspicions of him? Did the War Board care?
Ralph, who had been his willing listener, was changed, it seemed to him. After the downfall of Labor’s National Peace Council, he put the question bluntly to Otto: “Did you know that it was German money that was backing up the munition and pacifist campaign?” Otto hesitated. “Never mind,” said Ralph, convinced, “but you must see that is a kind of thing not done, Otto. Embroiling us with England when we’re trying to keep out of the scrap is the work of a sneak. You know why I threw the Argus to the party. It was because I believed it an honest American effort to combat militarism in the United States, to stop the making and selling of munitions. Do you suppose I would have taken any stock in a German effort to stop munition making here? It’s a scream—Germany spending money in such a cause while she’s using Belgium’s guns and running her factories night and day making munitions! I’m with you in any frank effort to make people understand Germany better. I begin to think, Otto, that this business makes me understand Germany better than anything that has happened. You may be sure I’ll look twice hereafter at things made-in-Germany, particularly ideas. I don’t like this business, Otto, and I have to say so.”
And Otto could find few words to defend the campaign—though he had been able to do it so volubly and confidently to himself.
But it was with his father that the great strain came—his father who was watching him with eyes in which love, agony and anger disputed place, and neither of them could speak. He might try, as he did, to cut off gradually all relations with the plotters, for now he called them so to himself. He might, as he did, see more and more clearly that Germany was trying to embroil the United States with Mexico. He might feel that he could put his finger on the human cause of half the explosions in the country, but he dared not speak, for to speak would, he felt, throw him into the hands of the secret service with documentary evidence enough at least to cause his imprisonment—these letters of his, so full of admiration for the country which he realized every day now was steadily marching into war with his own country.