My Four Years in Germany

by James W. Gerard

I showed him the message, and when he had read it he said: "I think it would be inadvisable for us to have this message published, and in the interest of good feeling between Germany and America. If you cable it ask that publication be withheld."

I complied with his request and it is characteristic of the President's desire to preserve good relations that publication was withheld. Now, when the two countries are at war; when the whole world, and especially our own country, has an interest in knowing how this great calamity of universal war came to the earth, the time has come when this message should be given out and I have published it by permission.

This most interesting document in the first place clears up one issue never really obscure in the eyes of the world--the deliberate violation of the neutrality of Belgium, whose territory "had to be violated by Germany on strategical grounds." The very weak excuse is added that "news had been received that France was already preparing to enter Belgium,"--not even a pretense that there had ever been any actual violation of Belgium's frontier by the French prior to the German invasion of that unfortunate country. Of course the second excuse that the King of the Belgians had refused entrance to the Emperor's troops under guarantee of his country's freedom is even weaker than the first. It would indeed inaugurate a new era in the intercourse of nations if a small nation could only preserve its freedom by at all times, on request, granting free passage to the troops of a powerful neighbour on the march to attack an adjoining country.

And aside from the violation of Belgian neutrality, what would have become of England and of the world if the Prussian autocracy had been left free to defeat--one by one--the nations of the earth? First, the defeat of Russia and Serbia by Austria and Germany, the incorporation of a large part of Russia in the German Empire, German influence predominant in Russia and all the vast resources of that great Empire at the command of Germany. All the fleets in the world could uselessly blockade the German coasts if Germany possessed the limitless riches of the Empire of the Romanoffs.

ALLEGED DUM-DUM BULLETS, WHICH THE GERMANS DECLARED HAD BEEN FOUND IN LONGWY.

The German army drawing for reserves on the teeming populations of Russia and Siberia would never know defeat. And this is not idle conjecture, mere dreaming in the realm of possibilities, because the Russian revolution has shown us how weak and tottering in reality was the dreaded power of the Czar.

Russia, beaten and half digested, France would have been an easy prey, and England, even if then joining France in war, would have a far different problem to face if the V-boats were now sailing from Cherbourg and Calais and Brest and Bordeaux on the mission of piracy and murder, and then would come our turn and that of Latin America. The first attack would come not on us, but on South or Central America--at some point to which it would be as difficult for us to send troops to help our neighbor as it would be for Germany to attack.

Remember that in Southern Brazil nearly four hundred thousand Germans are sustained, as I found out, in their devotion to the Fatherland by annual grants of money for educational purposes from the Imperial treasury in Berlin.

It was not without reason that at this interview, when the Kaiser wrote this message to the President, he said that the coming in of England had changed the whole situation and would make the war a long one. The Kaiser talked rather despondently about the war. I tried to cheer him up by saying the German troops would soon enter Paris, but he answered, "The English change the whole situation--an obstinate nation--they will keep up the war. It cannot end soon."

It was the entry of England into the war, in defence of the rights of small nations, in defence of the guaranteed neutrality of Belgium, which saved the world from the harsh dominion of the conquest-hungry Prussians and therefore saved as well the two Americas and their protecting doctrine of President Monroe.