Face to Face with Kaiserism

by James W. Gerard

Certainly we Americans will not stop the war nor surrender our rights nor invite the invasion of our shores because of their stubborn devotion to a country which they were so glad to abandon. We must appeal to their sons and their daughters—to those who have become part and parcel of our nation, to see that these obstinate old codgers do not persist in an attitude which may end in creating a prejudice against those of German descent in America.

Those of us who are of Scotch or Irish or English descent can urge this with greater insistence because our ancestors were much nearer, in 1766, to the English fatherland, than German-Americans are to the German Empire and these ancestors did not hesitate in that year to turn against Great Britain on a mere question of commerce—did not hesitate again, in 1812, to face Great Britain in arms on a question of sea rights; and on account of this we expect all those of German-American descent to stand unreservedly by their adopted country,—forced into war by an autocracy that not only murdered our women and children in defiance of international law and common humanity but which threatens, if successful in this war, to invade our shores.

Do these stubborn German-Americans think that if a German force should occupy America their position would be any better than that of the other citizens of this country, that they would be put to rule over the rest of us and allowed to save their goods and houses from the indemnities that would be put upon this nation in case of our defeat?

Let me tell them one thing and that is, if by any remote possibility the Germans did gain a foothold in this country through the aid of those of German descent here, before we, of other descent in this country submitted to German rule we would attend to every traitor!

We did not lure any citizens of foreign nations to our shores. They came here to escape serfdom and starvation and forced military service in an army where they could never be officers. We sent them no excursion tickets when they came here as half-starved peasants. We opened to them the doors of hospitality and of opportunity, and we do not propose that they shall pay us like the frozen snake in Æsop's fables.

Some of our finest citizens came from Germany in 1848 after the failure of the revolution against autocracy. Where do you think that General Siegel and Carl Schurz would stand if they were alive to-day?

The daughter of General Siegel has answered in giving her son, on whom she was dependent, to the army of the United States, saying, "His grandfather fought under Lincoln for liberty and he must take his place to-day in the great fight for freedom."

We are too good-natured, too soft, too easy in this country. Our great ex-President, that splendid American and patriot, Theodore Roosevelt, said not long ago of one of our United States Senators, if that Senator were a German and acted in Germany the way he acted in America as an American he would be put at digging a trench. I do not like to differ with Theodore Roosevelt, but from my knowledge of German conditions during this war, I know that if this Senator acted as a German in Germany as he has been acting as an American in America, he would not be put by the Germans at digging a trench but that with the ten bullets of a firing squad in his chest he would be filling one!

Are these Germans in America imbued with the belief that the German Kaiser has been sent by heaven to rule the German Empire and bend the world under German "Kultur"? President Wilson, in one of his notes in 1916, referred to the German government as "the mouthpiece of the people." A German conservative newspaper, I think the Tages Zeitung, commenting upon this said that "the German Emperor is not our 'mouthpiece' but our truly beloved Emperor sent to us by God."

Does the German-American ever stop to consider how the Hohenzollerns obtained possession of the Mark of Brandenburg, the basis of modern Prussia? Five hundred years ago the Hohenzollerns were Counts of Nuremberg, then as now a rich trading city. Sigismund III wanted ready money and this was advanced by the Hohenzollerns, Counts of Nuremberg, on the security of the mark of Brandenburg pledged as collateral to the loan which totalled only $100,000. Later the Counts of Nuremberg foreclosed their mortgage and took possession of the Mark of Brandenburg and have held it ever since.