CHAPTER I THE ORGANIZATION
The economic, diplomatic and military aspects of secret warfare in America—Germany's peace-time organization—von Bernstorff, the diplomat—Albert, the economist—von Papen and Boy-Ed, the men of war.
When, in the summer of 1914, the loaded dice fell for war, Germany began a campaign overseas as thoughtfully forecasted as that first headlong flood which rolled to the Marne. World-domination was the Prussian objective. It is quite natural that the United States, whose influence affected a large part of the world, should have received swift attention from Berlin. America and Americans could serve Germany's purpose in numerous ways, and the possible assets of the United States had been searchingly assayed in Berlin long before the arrival of "Der Tag."
The day dawned—and Germany found herself hemmed in by enemies. Her navy did not control the oceans upon which she had depended for a large percentage of her required food and raw materials, and upon which she must continue to depend if her output were to keep pace with her war needs. If surprise-attack should fail to bring the contest to a sudden and favorable conclusion, Germany was prepared to accept the more probable alternative of a contest of economic endurance. Therefore, she reasoned, supplies must continue to come from America.
Of importance scarcely secondary to the economic phase of her warfare in the United States was the diplomatic problem. Here was a nation of infinite resources, a people of infinite resource. This nation must be enlisted on the side of the Central Powers; failing that, must be kept friendly; under no circumstances was she to be allowed to enlist with the Allies. One fundamental trait of Americans Germany held too lightly—their blood-kinship to Britons—and it is a grimly amusing commentary upon the confidence of the German in bonds Teutonic that he believed that the antidote to this racial "weakness" of ours lay in the large numbers of Germans who had settled here and become Americans of sorts. But the German was alarmingly if not absolutely correct in his estimate, for upon the conduct and zeal of Germans in America actually depended much of the success of Germany's diplomatic tactics in America.
The German Embassy in Washington, headquarters and clearing-
house of German intrigue in the world outside Mittel-
Europa, 1914-1917
The war, then, so far as the United States figured in Germany's plan, was economic and diplomatic. But it was also military. German representatives in the United States were bound by oath to coöperate to their utmost in all military enterprises within their reach. With a certain few notable exceptions, no such enterprises came within their reach, and if the reader anticipates from that fact a disappointing lack of violence in the narrative to follow, let him remember that "all's fair in war," and that every German activity in the United States, whether it was economic, diplomatic or military, was carried on with a certain Prussian thoroughness which was chiefly characterized by brutal violence.
We have come to believe that thoroughness is the first and last word in German organization. Any really thorough organization must be promptly convertible to new activities without loss of motion. If these new activities are unexpected, the change is more or less of an experiment, and its possibilities are not ominous. But truly dangerous is the organization which transfers suddenly to coping with the expected. Germany had expected war for forty years.