Dr. Bertling—The Staats-Zeitung—George Sylvester Viereck and The Fatherland—Efforts to buy a press association—Bernhardi's articles—Marcus Braun and Fair Play—Plans for a German news syndicate—Sander, Wunnenberg, Bacon and motion pictures—The German-American Alliance—Its purposes—Political activities—Colquitt of Texas—The "Wisconsin Plan"—Lobbying—Misappropriation of German Red Cross funds—Friends of Peace—The American Truth Society.
Some one has said that America will emerge from this war a gigantic national entity, a colossus wrought of the fused metal of her scores of mixed nationalities. That is naturally desirable, and historically probable. If such is the result, Germany will have lost for all time one of her most powerful allies—the German population in the United States. Nearly one-tenth of the population of the United States in 1914 was of either German birth or parentage. Ethnic lines are not erased in a generation except by some great emergency, such as war affords. Germany is doomed to a deserved disappointment in the loss of her American stock—deserved because she tried so hard to Germanize America.
She wasted no time in injecting her verbal propagandists into the struggle on the American front. On August 20, 1914, Dr. Karl Oskar Bertling, assistant director of the Amerika Institut in Berlin, landed in New York, and went at once to report to von Bernstorff. The Amerika Institut had of recent years made considerable progress in familiarizing Germany with American affairs; its chief director, Dr. Walther Drechsler, had been master of German in Middlesex, a prominent boys' school in Massachusetts; he returned to Berlin in 1913 and was attached, upon the outbreak of war, to the press office. All who were associated with it knew something of America. It is characteristic of the convertibility of German institutions to war that another executive of this organization, employed in peace times to cement the friendship between the two nations, should be sent on the day war was declared to America to establish a German press bureau.
Dr. Bertling went about delivering pro-German speeches, and prepared articles for the press on international questions. These he submitted to Bernstorff himself for approval—one such story was to be published in a Sunday magazine supplement to a long "string" of American newspapers. Although every editor was on the lookout for any "war stuff" which was written with any apparent background of European politics, he found small market for his wares among the New York newspapers, and some of his speaking dates were cancelled. He proposed to publish, with one of his stories, a set of German military maps of Belgium, but to this von Papen wrote him on November 21: "I entirely agree with you in your opinion in regard to the maps—it is a two-edged sword," and he added: "One observes how very ill-informed the average American is." Bertling's lack of accomplishment drew censure, however, from several sources: the head of the German-American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin chided him for not having carried out his "special mission to supply a cable service to South America and China," and the late Professor Hugo Muensterberg of Harvard waxed righteously indignant over the fact that Bertling opened and read a letter entrusted by the psychologist to him for safe delivery to Dr. Dernburg. Bertling applied to the Embassy for special employment, and on March 19, 1915, the ambassador's private secretary wrote him:
"His Excellency is entirely agreeable to giving you the desired employment, but he considers the present conditions too uncertain, as his departure for Germany in the near future is not impossible."
Excellent testimony to the subtle iniquity of his task lies in the names of the men whose pro-Ally utterances he was striving to counteract. In a letter written December 20, 1914, to Bertling by C. W. Ernst, a Bostonian of German birth and American naturalization, appears this passage:
"Is it prudent to defend the German cause against such men as C. W. Eliot and other Americans who consider themselves artistocratic and important?... Who, apparently, was of more importance than Roosevelt, to whom now even the dogs pay no attention?... The feeling of men like Eliot, C. F. Adams, etc., is well understood. German they know not. They understand neither Luther nor Kant, nor the history of Germany.... Tactically it is a mistake to be easy going with England, or in discussion with her American toadies. By curtness, defiance, irony one can get much further...."
His friend in the German-American Chamber of Commerce wrote again to Berlin in a vein which showed how closely Germany herself was watching publicity in America. "Viereck has sent me a letter," he said, "and Harper's printed some matter by way of Italy.... The Foreign Office and the War Department urgently want more reports sent here. If cables through neutral countries are not feasible, could not Americans travelling be called upon? More steam, please.... The exchange professors should get busy.... One is quite surprised here that with the exception of Burgess and possibly Sloan, nobody seems to be doing anything.... Nasmith's article, 'The Case for Germany,' in the Outlook is very good—inspired by me. The same of Mead's in Everybody's."
And again: "We will dog Uncle Sam's footsteps with painful accuracy—his sloppy, obstinate, pro-English neutrality we utterly repudiate. When God wishes to punish a country he gives it a W. J. B. as Secretary of State."
(When Bryan resigned, German rumors were circulated from time to time that Secretary Lansing, who succeeded him, had had a falling out with President Wilson, and was himself on the point of resigning. What Herr Walther thought of "W. J. B."'s successor is a matter of conjecture.)