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This boy could have more influence in making me see the German view-point than the propagandist men in the Government offices and the belligerent German-Americans in hotel lobbies those German-Americans who were so frequently in trouble in other days for disobeying the verbotens and then asking our State Department to get them out of it, now pluming themselves over victories won by another type of German.
I asked him why it was that Germany, which was at peace with the United States, was doing everything within her power to make war. "Why, Germany is not doing anything to make you go to war," he replied. "Your President seems to want war. Germany is not responsible for what the German-Americans are doing. They are your citizens, not ours.
When Germany attacks America, she attacks German-Americans, she attacks us in our material interests, in our fondest associations; and we will resist her just as in 1776 the American colonists, who were really English, resisted England, the mother country, when she attacked them in the same way."
"I must speak in justice to myself and to half a million German-Americans of this city, who are placed in a terrible position by news that I have just received. I wish to say that we are Americans first, not Germans! We are loyal to the city, loyal to this country, and whatever happens here tonight "
After I had been in France a short time, nothing seemed falser to me than the pessimistic assertions of certain German-Americans and faint-hearted other Americans, that whatever the outcome of the world war France was "done for," "exhausted," "ruined," must sink to the level of a third-rate power, and so forth.
The league made an especial appeal to the "German-Americans." Germany, as was pointed out in a previous article, counts upon some German-Americans as her allies. One day Ambassador Gerard received a circular entitled "An Appeal to All Friends of Truth." The same was sent in German and English to a mailing list of many hundred thousands.
They have deeply disappointed the Germans: first, because although German-Americans contributed enormously towards German war charities the fact of this contribution was not known to the recipients in Germany. Money sent to the German Red Cross from America was acknowledged by the Red Cross; but no publicity was given in Germany to the fact that any of the money given was from German-Americans.
Wilson to the German-Americans, and with my official recommendation to the Germans in the United States to abstain from all forms of illegal action. The after-effects of this period, however, may be traced in the subsequent lengthy trials of the various offenders.
Wilson's diplomacy against Germany was decreased by some German-Americans, and the fact that the United States is to-day at war with Germany is due to this blundering on the behalf of some of those over-zealous citizens who, being so anxious to aid Germany, became anti-Wilson and in the long run defeated what they set out to accomplish.
It was necessary to uncover and oppose the open and secret propaganda of paid agents of Germany, and woefully deluded German-Americans who toiled freely to help Kaiser Bill, as though to disprove the wisdom of the statement that no man can serve two masters.
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