Part 9 (2/2)

It is a vast and definite scheme, with such able leaders as Herr Ba.s.sermann, the real leader of the National Liberal Party, Herr Stresemann, and Herr Hirsch, of Essen. ”We have powerful friends, not only in London, Milan, Rome, Madrid, New York, and Montreal, but throughout the whole of South America, and everywhere except in Australia where that _verdammter Hooges_ (Hughes) played into the hands of our feeble, so-called leader, von Bethmann-Hollweg, by warning the people that the British people would follow Hughes'

lead.”

So much for the commercial part of submarining.

U-boating close to England has long ceased to be a popular amus.e.m.e.nt with the German submarine flotilla, who have a thoroughly healthy appreciation of the various devices by which so many of them have been destroyed. The National Liberals believe that the British will not be able to tackle long-distance submarines operating in the Atlantic and elsewhere. Their radius of action is undoubtedly increasing almost month by month. From remarks made to me I do not believe that these submarines have many land bases at great distances--certainly none in the United States. They may have floating bases; but this I do know--that their petrol-carrying capacity altogether exceeds that of any earlier type of submarine, and that their surface speed, at any rate in official tests, runs up to nearly 20 knots.

The trip of the _Deutschland_ was not only for the purpose of bringing a few tons of nickel and rubber, but for thoroughly testing the new engines (designed by Maybach), for bringing back a hundred reports of the effects of submersion in such cold waters as are to be found off the banks of Newfoundland, for ascertaining how many days' submerged or surface travelling is likely to be experienced, and, indeed, for making such a trial trip across the Atlantic and back as was usual in the early days of steams.h.i.+ps.

CHAPTER XI

THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE

AS enthusiastic, war-mad crowd had gathered about an impromptu speaker in the Ringstra.s.se, not far from the Hotel Bristol, in Vienna, one pleasant August evening in 1914. His theme was the military prowess of Austria-Hungary and Germany.

”And now,” he concluded, ”j.a.pan has treacherously joined our enemies. Yet we should not be disturbed, for her entrance will but serve to bring us another ally too. You all know of the ill-feeling between the United States and j.a.pan. At any moment we may hear that the great Republic has declared war.” He called for cheers, and the Ringstra.s.se echoed with _Hoch! Hoch! Hoch_! for the United States of America.

That was my introduction to European opinion of my country during the war. During my four weeks in the Austro-Serbian zone of hostilities, I had heard no mention of anything but the purely military business at hand.

The following evening from the window of an ”American-Tourist-Special Train” I looked down on the happy Austrians who jammed the platform, determined to give the Americans a grand send-off, which they did with flag-waving and cheers. A stranger on the platform thrust a lengthy typewritten doc.u.ment into my hands, with the urgent request that I should give it to the Press in New York. It was a stirring appeal to Americans to ”witness the righteousness of the cause of the Central Powers in this war which had been forced upon them.” Three prominent citizens of Vienna had signed it, one of whom was the famous Doctor Lorenz.

Berlin, in an ecstasy of joyful antic.i.p.ation of the rapid and triumphal entrance into Paris, was a repet.i.tion of Vienna. True, in the beginning, Americans, mistaken for Englishmen by some of the undiscerning, had been roughly treated, but a hint from those in high authority changed that. In like manner, well-meaning patriots who persisted in indiscriminately mobbing all members of the yellow race were urged to differentiate between Chinese and j.a.panese.

So I found festive Berlin patting Americans on the back, cheering Americans in German-American meetings, and prettily intertwining the Stars and Stripes and the German flag.

”Now is your opportunity to take Canada,” said the man in the street. In fact, it was utterly incomprehensible to the average German that we should not indulge in some neighbouring land-grabbing while Britain was so busy with affairs in Europe.

The German Foreign Office was, of course, under no such delusion, although it had cherished the equally absurd belief that England's colonies would rebel at the first opportunity. The Wilhelmstra.s.se was, however, hard at work taking the propaganda which it had so successfully crammed down the throats of the German citizen and translating it into English to be crammed down the throats of the people in America. This was simply one of the Wilhelmstra.s.se's numerous mistakes in the psychological a.n.a.lysis of other people.

But the Wilhelmstra.s.se possesses the two estimable qualities of perseverance and willingness to learn, with the result that its recent propaganda in the United States has been much more subtle and very much more effective.

The American newspapers which reached Germany after the outbreak of war gave that country its first intimation that her rush through Belgium was decidedly unpopular on the other side of the Atlantic.

Furthermore, many American newspapers depicted the Kaiser and the Crown Prince in a light quite new to German readers, who with their heads full of Divine Right ideas considered the slightest caricature of their imperial family as brutally sacrilegious.

But the vast majority of Germans never saw an American newspaper.

How is it, then, that they began to hate the United States so intensely? The answer is simple. In the early winter of 1914-15, the German Government with its centralised control of public opinion turned on the current of hatred against everything American as it had already done against everything British, for the war had come to a temporary stalemate on both fronts, and the Wilhelmstra.s.se had to excuse their failure to win the short, sharp pleasant war into which the people had jumped with antic.i.p.ation of easy victory. ”If it were not for American ammunition the war would have been finished long ago!” became the key-note of the new gospel of hate, a gospel which has been preached down to the present.

Just before I left Germany the ”Reklam Book Company” of Leipzig issued an anti-American circular which flooded the country. The request that people should enclose it in all their private letters was slavishly followed with the same zest with which the Germans had previously attached _Gott strafe England_ stickers to their correspondence.

The circular represented a 7000-ton steamer ready to take on board the cargo of ammunition which was arranged neatly on the pier in the foreground. The background was occupied by German troops, black lines dividing them into three parts, tagged respectively--30,000 _killed_, 40,000 _slightly wounded_, 40,000 _seriously wounded_. This, then, is the graphic ill.u.s.tration of the casualties inflicted upon the German Army by a single cargo of one moderate-sized liner.

Since at such a rate, it would take less than two hundred cargoes of this astoundingly effective ammunition to put the entire German Army out of action, one wonders why Britain troubles herself to convert her industries.

Ere the first winter of war drew to a close the official manipulators of the public opinion battery had successfully electrified the nation into a hate against the United States second only to that bestowed on Great Britain. And so it came about that the Government had the solid support of the people when the original submarine manifesto of February 4th, 1915, warning neutral vessels to keep out of the war zone, threatened a rupture with the United States. When two weeks later Was.h.i.+ngton sent a sharp note of protest to Berlin, the Germans became choleric every time they spoke of America or met an American.

”Why should we let America interfere with our plan to starve England?” was the question I heard repeatedly. Their belief that they could starve England was absolute. What could be simpler than putting a ring of U-boats round the British Isles and cutting off all trade until the pangs of hunger should compel Britain to yield?

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