What is more, at all of the meetings of the diplomats of different nations at the Hague, called for the purpose of trying to prevent future wars, if possible, or at least to make them more humane and less brutal to the women and children and others who were not actually fighting, Germany had always upheld the right of neutral nations to sell arms. Moreover, her representatives had fought strongly against any proposals to settle disputes by arbitration and peaceful agreements. At a time when many European nations signed treaties with the United States agreeing to allow one year to elapse between a dispute which might lead to war and the actual declaring of war itself, Germany positively refused to consider such an agreement.
As for the English blockade, England was doing no more to Germany than Germany or any other country would have done to England if the English navy had not been so strong. In our own Civil War the North kept up a like blockade of the South and no nation protested against it, for it was recognized as an entirely legal act. In the Franco-Prussian war of 1871, the Germans were blockading the city of Paris and the country around it. The Frenchmen tried to send their women and children outside the lines to be fed. The Germans drove them back at the point of the bayonet, and told them that they might “fry in their own fat.” According to the laws of war they were perfectly justified in what they did. Then, too, the English blockade, which stopped ships which were found to be loaded with supplies for Germany and took them peaceably to an English port, where it was decided how much the owners should be paid for the cargoes, was a very different matter from the brutal drowning of helpless men, women, and children by the German submarines. In one case, owners of the goods were caused a great deal of annoyance and in some instances did not get their money promptly. On the other side, there was murder of the most fiendish kind, an act of war against neutral states.
Plots and Threats Against the United States
American Grain Set on Fire by German Agents
Let us turn now to the second cause for grievance that the United States had against Germany. At a time when American citizens who sympathized with Germany were subscribing millions of dollars for the relief of the German wounded, it is strongly suspected that this was the very money, which, collected by the German government’s own agents, was being spent in plots involving the destroying of the property of some American citizens and the death of others. The German ambassador and his helpers were hiring men to blow up American factories, to destroy railroad bridges, and to kill Americans who were making war supplies for the armies of Europe. Factory after factory was blown up with considerable loss of life. Bombs, with clock work attachment to explode them at a certain time, were found on ships sailing for Europe. Money was poured out in great quantities to influence members of the United States Congress to vote against the shipment of war supplies to France and England. Revolts paid for by German money were organized in Mexico and the Islands of the West Indies. For a long time there had been a series of stories and newspaper and magazine articles trying to prove to the American people that Japan was planning to make war on us. The same sort of stories appeared in Japan, persuading the Japanese that they were in danger of being attacked by the United States. It now appears that the great part of these stories were started by the Germans, who hoped to get us into a war with Japan and profit by the ill will which must follow between the two countries.
At first, Americans were inclined to think that all of these things could be traced to German-Americans, whose zeal for their Fatherland caused them to go too far. But it has been proved beyond a doubt that all of these acts, which were really acts of war against the United States, were ordered by the government at Berlin and paid for by German money, or by American money which had been contributed for the benefit of the German Red Cross service.
In addition to these facts there were threats against the United States which could not be ignored. The Kaiser had told our ambassador at Berlin, Mr. Gerard, that “America had better beware after this war” for he “would stand no nonsense from her.” Admiral Von Tirpitz, the German Secretary of the Navy, also told Mr. Gerard that Germany needed the coast of Belgium as a place from which to start her “future war on England and America.”
American statesmen were seriously concerned at threats of this kind, for they knew that the government in power at Berlin could absolutely command its people, and by forbidding certain kinds of news and substituting other things in the German newspapers could make the German people think anything which the war lords wished them to think. Thus there was great danger that, having won the war from the Entente or having stood them off successfully until the fight was declared a draw, Germany would next attack the United States with the idea of collecting from this comparatively defenseless and very rich country the huge indemnity which she had planned to assess upon France and Russia. With this money and with the breaking down of the Monroe Doctrine, Germany could set up a great empire in South America which would make her almost as powerful as she would have been had her first plans for crushing France and Russia been successful.