The German Secret Service in America 1914-1918

by John Price Jones; Paul M. Hollister

This last event occasioned further activity on the part of the Alliance; during the period which followed the break in diplomatic relaxations, and while Congress was debating the question of war, members of Congress were deluged with an extraordinary flood of telegrams from German-Americans cautioning them against taking such a step. These telegrams were prepared by the Alliance and the "American Neutrality League" and circulated among their members and sympathizers, to be sent to Washington. The Alliance then issued to its branches throughout the states a resolution of loyalty to be adopted in case war was declared. This resolution, after making a hearty declaration of loyalty to the United States, went on to belie its promise with such pacifist utterances as this:

"Our duty before the war was to keep out of it. Our duty now is to get out of it."

So earnest were the efforts of the Alliance to keep out of war that some ten months after its declaration of loyalty was promulgated, Congress decided to investigate the organization, with a view to revoking its charter. The investigation wrote into the archives certain characteristics of the Alliance which had long been obvious to the truly American public; its deep-rooted Teutonism, its persistent zeal, and its dangerous scope of activity. The courageous legislators who initiated and pursued the investigation, in the face of constant opposition of the most tortuous variety, had their reward, for on April 11, 1918, the executive committee of the National Alliance met in Philadelphia and dissolved the organization, turned the $30,000 in its coffers over to the American Red Cross, and uttered a swan song of loyalty to the United States. The body of the octopus was dead. One by one, first in Brooklyn, then in San Francisco, then elsewhere, its tentacles sloughed away.

A word for the pacifists. One pacifist constitutes a quorum in any society. There were in America at the outbreak of war one hundred million people who disliked war. As the injustices of Germany multiplied, the patriotic war-haters became militarists, and there sprang up little groups of malcontents who resented, usually by German consent, any tendency on the part of the Government to avenge the insult to its independence. Social and industrial fanatics of all descriptions flocked to the standard of "Peace at Any Price," and for want of a dissenting audience soon convinced themselves that they had something to say.

Many of the peace movements which were set going during the first three years of the war were sincere, many were not. A mass meeting held at Madison Square Garden in 1915 at which Bryan was the chief speaker, was inspired by Germany. In the insincere class falls also the "Friends of Peace," organized in 1915. Its letterhead bore the invitation: "Attend the National Peace Convention, Chicago, Sept. 5 and 6," and incidentally betrayed the origin of the society. The letterhead stated that the society represented the American Truth Society (an offshoot of the National German-American Alliance), The American Women of German Descent, the American Fair Play Society, the German-American Alliance of Greater New York, the German Catholic Federation of New York, the United Irish-American Societies and the United Austrian and Hungarian-American Societies. Among the "honorable vice-chairmen" were listed Edmund von Mach, John Devoy, Justices Goff and Cohalan (a trinity of Britonophobes), Colquitt of Texas, Ex-Congressman Buchanan (of Labor's National Peace Council fame), Jeremiah O'Leary (a Sinn Feiner, mentioned in official cables from Zimmermann to Bernstorff as a good intermediary for sabotage), Judge John T. Hylan, Richard Bartholdt (a congressman active in the German political lobby), and divers officers of the Alliance.

The American Truth Society, Inc., the parent of the Friends of Peace, was founded in 1912 by Jeremiah O'Leary, a Tammany lawyer later indicted for violation of the Espionage Act, who disappeared when his case came up for trial in May, 1918; Alphonse Koelble, who conducted the German-American Alliance's New York political clearing house; Gustav Dopslaff, a German-American banker, and others interested in the German cause. In 1915 the Society, whose executives were well and favorably known to German embassy, began issuing and circulating noisy pamphlets, with such captions as "Fair Play for Germany," and "A German-American War." O'Leary and his friends also conducted a mail questionnaire of Congress in an effort to catalogue the convictions of each member on the blockade and embargo questions. Their most insidious campaign was an effort to frighten the smaller banks of the country from participating in Allied loans, by threats of a German "blacklist" after the war, to organize a "gold protest" to embarrass American banking operations, and in general to harass the Administration in its international relations.

Letter-paper of "The Friends of Peace"

So with their newspapers, rumor-mongers, lecturers, peace societies, alliances, bunds, vereins, lobbyists, war relief workers, motion picture operators and syndicates, the Germans wrought hard to avert war. For two years they nearly succeeded. America was under the narcotic influence of generally comfortable neutrality, and a comfortable nation likes to wag its head and say "there are two sides to every question." But whatever these German agents might have accomplished in the public mind—and certainly they were sowing their seed in fertile ground—was nullified by acts of violence, ruthlessness at sea, and impudence in diplomacy. The left hand found out what the right hand was about.