My Four Years in Germany

by James W. Gerard

It seemed, too, as if the Government was anxious to cultivate the hate against America. Long before American ammunition was delivered in any quantity to England and long before any at all was delivered to France, not only did the Government influence newspapers and official gazettes, but the official Communiqués alleged that quantities of American ammunition were being used on the West front.

The Government seemed to think that if it could stir up enough hate against America in Germany on this ammunition question the Americans would become terrorised and stop the shipment.

The Government allowed medals to be struck in honour of each little general who conquered a town--"von Emmich, conqueror of Liege," etc., a pernicious practice as each general and princeling wanted to continue the war until he could get his face on a medal--even if no one bought it. But the climax was reached when medals celebrating the sinking of the Lusitania were sold throughout Germany. Even if the sinking of the Lusitania had been justified only one who has lived in Germany since the war can understand the disgustingly bad taste which can gloat over the death of women and babies.

I can recall now but two writers in all Germany who dared to say a good word for America. One of these, Regierungsrat Paul Krause, son-in-law of Field Marshal Von der Goltz, wrote an article in January, 1917, in the Lokal Anzeiger pointing out the American side of the question of this munition shipment; and that bold and fearless speaker and writer, Maximilian Harden, dared to make a defence of the American standpoint. The principal article in one of the issues of his paper, Die Zukunft, was headed "If I were Wilson." After some copies had been sold the issue was confiscated by the police, whether at the instance of the military or at the instance of the Chancellor, I do not know. Everyone had the impression in Berlin that this confiscation was by order of General von Kessel, the War Governor of the Mark of Brandenburg.

I met Harden before the war and occasionally conversed with him thereafter. Once in a while he gave a lecture in the great hall of the Philharmonic, always filling the hall to overflowing. In his lectures, which, of course, were carefully passed on by the police, he said nothing startling. His newspaper is a weekly publication; a little book about seven inches by four and a half, but wielding an influence not at all commensurate with its size.

The liberal papers, like the largest paper of Berlin, the Tageblatt, edited by Theodor Wolff, while not violently against America, were not favourable. But the articles in the Conservative papers and even some of the organs of the Catholic Party invariably breathed hatred against everything American.

In the Reichstag, America and President Wilson were often attacked and never defended. On May thirtieth, 1916, in the course of a debate on the censorship, Strasemann, of the National Liberal Party and of the branch of that party with Conservative leanings, violently opposed President Wilson and said that he was not wanted as a peacemaker.

Government, newspapers and politicians all united in opposing America.

I believe that to-day all the bitterness of the hate formerly concentrated on Great Britain has now been concentrated on the United States. The German-Americans are hated worse than the native Americans. They have deeply disappointed the Germans: first, because although German-Americans contributed enormously towards German war charities the fact of this contribution was not known to the recipients in Germany. Money sent to the German Red Cross from America was acknowledged by the Red Cross; but no publicity was given in Germany to the fact that any of the money given was from German-Americans. Secondly, the German-Americans did not go, as they might have done, to Germany, through neutral countries, with American passports, and enter the German army; and, thirdly, the most bitter disappointment of all, the German-Americans have not yet risked their property and their necks, their children's future and their own tranquillity, by taking arms against the government of America in the interest of the Hohenzollerns.

For years, a clever propaganda had been carried on in America to make all Germans there feel that they were Germans of one united nation, to make those who had come from Hesse and Bavaria, or Saxony and Württemberg, forget that as late as 1866 these countries had been overrun and conquered by Prussian militarism. When Prince Henry, the Kaiser's brother, visited America, he spent most of his time with German-Americans and German-American societies in order to assist this propaganda.