Maurice Francis Egan.

CONTENTS

Page

  1. CHAPTER I
  2. [A Scrap of Paper and the Danes] 1
  3. CHAPTER II
  4. [The Menace of 'Our Neighbour to the South'] 35
  5. CHAPTER III
  6. [The Kaiser and the King of England] 46
  7. CHAPTER IV
  8. [Some Details the Germans Knew] 61
  9. CHAPTER V
  10. [Glimpses of the German Point of View in Relation to the United States] 79
  11. CHAPTER VI
  12. [German Designs in Sweden and Norway] 98
  13. CHAPTER VII
  14. [The Religious Propaganda] 124
  15. CHAPTER VIII
  16. [The Prussian Holy Ghost] 154
  17. CHAPTER IX
  18. [1910, 1911, 1912] 169
  19. CHAPTER X
  20. [A Portent in the Air] 189
  21. CHAPTER XI
  22. [The Preliminaries to the Purchase of the Danish Antilles] 203
  23. CHAPTER XII
  24. [The Beginning of 1917 and the End] 259

CHAPTER I
A SCRAP OF PAPER AND THE DANES

Let us trace deliberately, with as much calmness as possible, the beginning of that policy, of 'blood and iron' which made the German Empire, as we knew it yesterday, possible. It began with the tearing up of 'a scrap of paper' in 1864. It began in perfidy, treachery, and the forcible suppression of the rights of a free people. It began in Denmark; and nothing could make a normal American more in love with freedom, as we know it, than to live under the shadow of a tyrannical power, cynically opposed to the legitimate desire of a little nation to develop its own capabilities in its own way.

The Hanoverian on the throne of England in '76,—that 'snuffy old drone from a German hive'—never dared to suggest that the colonies should be crushed out of all semblance of freedom; but, suppose our language had been different from that which his environment compelled him to speak, and that he had resolved to force his tongue on our own English-speaking people; suppose that he and his counsellors had resolved that German should be the language spoken in sermons and prayers from Washington's old church in Alexandria to Faneuil Hall; suppose that all the colleges and schools of the country, as well as the law courts, were forced to use this alien tongue; that a German-speaking Empire existed to the south of us, and the minority in this German domain, arrogant, closely connected with the Hanoverian régime, ruled us with the mailed fist, would we submit without constant efforts to obtain justice?