That plot will not come noisily, obviously. It will be no crude effort to suggest that "American troops are suffering at the hands of the French high command." It will not be phrased in terms which reek of the Wilhelmstrasse—earnest, plodding, grotesque German polysyllables. The German knows that an army must depend upon the hearts of its people, and he reasons: "I shall attack the hearts of the people, and I believe that if it is a good principle to attack my enemy from the rear through his people, it is also a good principle to attack his people from the rear. The heart is as near the back as it is the front, nicht wahr?" The plot will seem, in its early stages, part and parcel of our daily life and concern; we shall not see the German hand in it; the hand will be so concealed as not even to excite the enthusiasm of the German-American, often a good danger-signal. It will involve institutions and individuals whom we have trusted, and we shall take sides in the controversy, and we shall grow violently pro-this and anti-that. We shall grow sick of the wretchedness of affairs, perhaps, and we shall lose heart. That is precisely what Germany most desires. That is what Germany is striving for. That is why the nobility of our citizenship carries with it the obligation of vigilance. It is in the hope that each one of us Americans may learn how Germany works abroad, that we may be better prepared for her next step here, that this narrative has been written.
CHAPTER XVIII AMERICA GOES TO WAR
Bernstorff's request for bribe-money—The President on German spies—Interned ships seized—Enemy aliens—Interning German agents—The water-front and finger-print regulations—Pro-German acts since April, 1917—A warning and a prophecy.
On January 22, 1917, President Wilson set forth to the Senate of the United States his ideas of the steps necessary to secure world peace. On the same day Count von Bernstorff sent his Foreign Office this message:
"I request authority to pay out up to $50,000 (Fifty thousand dollars) in order, as on former occasions, to influence Congress through the organization you know of, which perhaps can prevent war. I am beginning in the meantime to act accordingly. In the above circumstance a public official German declaration in favor of Ireland is highly desirable in order to gain the support of Irish influence here."
The money did not have the desired soothing effect. Nine days later Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare as her immediate future policy and the head of the German spy system in America received his passports for return to Germany. He was succeeded by the head of the German spy system in America.
The real name of this successor is not known to the authorities at this date. If it were he would be arrested, and punished according to whatever specific crime he had committed against a set of American statutes created for conditions of peace. Then, with the head of the German spy system in America in prison, he would be succeeded, as Bernstorff was, by the head of the German spy system in America.
And so this absurd progression would go on, until finally there would be no more spies to head the system on the American front. How much the system would be able to accomplish during the painstaking pursuit and capture of its successive heads would depend upon America's swiftness in pursuit and capture. Who the individual in authority over the system is, and what is his structure of organization, cannot be answered here. But it is vitally necessary for every citizen who has the free existence of this republic at heart to decide, basing his judgment on certain events since the declaration of war, what measure of accomplishment the German spy system shall have, and what it has already effected against a nation with which it is now openly and frankly at war.