WHY I WAS NOT ACCEPTED AS CONSUL TO GERMANY
I have had some personal experience with the late German Imperial Government. As a war correspondent it was my duty to give to the world an account of the forcible deportation of King Mataafa from Samoa to the Marshall Islands, where he was kept in exile six years. The Germans had shoved him aside to make room for Malieto, an imbecile and a German figurehead. I was there again when Mataafa, at the end of those six years, returned to Samoa, to the great joy of his people.
A few years later I discovered that Germany's policy was to "mark" any individual who wrote or spoke in criticism of anything German.
I was appointed United States Consul to Aix la Chapelle, Germany, four years after those articles appeared. My appointment came from President Roosevelt, and was confirmed by the United States Senate. When I arrived in Germany I found I was United States Consul so far as the United States Government was concerned, but I was put off in the matter of my exequatur (certificate of authority) from the government to which I was accredited; and without an exequatur, I could not act. I was kept cooling my heels in the consulate several months before I found out what was the matter. My newspaper articles describing what the Germans had done in Samoa, published four years earlier, were being held against me. My presence in Germany was not desired.
I had crossed the Atlantic with Prince Henry, the Kaiser's brother and Admiral of the German Navy, in February, 1901, when the Prince brought his party of a dozen or so militarists to this country to "further cement the amity and good will" existing between the great republic and the great empire. It later developed that this was a well planned operation in German propaganda. As a representative of the Associated Press, I had written of it. That was just after I had written the Samoan articles.
Speck von Sternberg was the German Ambassador to Washington. He was in Paris. I went there to see him and ascertain, if I could, why my exequatur was withheld. The Government at Washington could get no information on the subject. The whole affair was clothed in mystery.
After some conversation I suggested to Ambassador von Sternberg that perhaps the foreign office at Berlin was withholding the document because of my writings on German colonial matters. Then it came out—my guess was true. Some underlings in the foreign office had the case in charge. The Ambassador suggested that as I knew Prince Henry, I would better write him at Kiel. I did this, with the result that the obstacle was removed and the exequatur issued.
WHY WE WENT TO WAR
German Propaganda in the United States and Mexico—Sinking of the Lusitania—Unrestricted Submarine Warfare.