My Four Years in Germany

by James W. Gerard

THIS PAGE FROM THE SCURRILOUS PUBLICATION OF MARTEN AND HIS COLLEAGUES SHOWS THE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE WREATH AND THE CRAPE-DRAPED AMERICAN FLAG.

The phrase "Gott strafe England" seemed to be all over Germany. It was printed on stamps to be affixed to the back of letters like our Red Cross stamps. I even found my German body servant in the Embassy affixing these stamps to the back of all letters, official and otherwise, that were sent out. He was stopped when discovered. Paper money was stamped with the words: "Gott strafe England," "und America" being often added as the war progressed and America refused to change the rules of the game and stop the shipment of supplies to the Allies.

Everyone is familiar with Lissauer's "Hymn of Hate." It is not extraordinary that one man in a country at war should produce a composition of this kind; but it is extraordinary as showing the state of mind of the whole country, that the Emperor should have given him the high order of the Red Eagle of the Second Class as a reward for having composed this extraordinary document.

Undoubtedly at first the British prisoners of war were treated very roughly and were starved and beaten by their guards on the way from the front to the concentration camps. Officers, objects usually considered more than sacred in Germany, even when wounded were subjected to brutal treatment and in the majority of their prisons were treated more like convicts than officers and gentlemen.

As the Germans gradually awoke to the fact that President Wilson was not afraid of the German vote and that the export of supplies from America would not be stopped, this stream of hate was turned on America. There was a belief in Germany that President Wilson was opposed by a majority of people of the United States, that he did not represent the real sentiment of America, and that the sentiment there was favourable to Germany.

Unfortunately many Americans in Germany encouraged the German people and the German Government in this belief. Americans used to travel about, giving lectures and making speeches attacking their own country and their own President, and the newspapers published many letters of similar import from Americans resident in Germany.

One of the most active of these was a man named Maurice Somborn, a German American, who represented in Germany an American business house. He made it a practice to go about in Berlin and other cities and stand up in cafes and beer halls in order to make addresses attacking the President and the United States. So bold did he become that he even, in the presence of a number of people in my room, one day said that he would like to hang Secretary Bryan as high as Haman and President Wilson one foot higher. The American newspapers stated that I called a servant and had him thrown out of the Embassy. This statement is not entirely true: I selfishly kept that pleasure for myself.

The case of Somborn gave me an idea and I cabled to the Department of State asking authority to take up the passports of all Americans who abused their own country on the ground that they had violated the right, by their abuse, to the protection of a passport. The Department of State sustained my view and, by my direction, the consul in Dresden took up the passports of a singer named Rains and a gentleman of leisure named Recknagel who had united in addressing a letter to the Dresden newspapers abusing the President. It was sometime before I got Somborn's passport and I later on received from him the apologies of a broken and contrite man and obtained permission from Washington to issue him a passport in order to enable him to return to America.

Of course, these vilifiers of their own country were loud in their denunciations of me, but the prospect of losing the protection of their passports kept many of these men from open and treasonable denunciation of their own country.

The Government actually encouraged the formation of societies which had for their very object the scattering of literature attacking the President and the United States. The most conspicuous of these organisations was the so-called League of Truth. Permanently connected with it was an American dentist who had been in jail in America and who had been expelled from Dresden by the police authorities there. The secretary was a German woman who posed as an American, and had been on the stage as a snake dancer. The principal organiser was a German named Marten who had won the favour of the German authorities by writing a book on Belgium denying that any atrocities had taken place there. Marten secured subscriptions from many Germans and Americans resident in Germany, opened headquarters in rooms on the Potsdamerstrasse and engaged in the business of sending out pamphlets and leaflets attacking America. One of his principal supporters was a man named Stoddard who had made a fortune by giving travel lectures in America and who had retired to his handsome villa, in Meran, in Austria. Stoddard issued a pamphlet entitled, "What shall we do with Wilson?" and some atrocious attempts at verse, all of which were sent broadcast by the League of Truth.