I E 
 
 I m 
 
GERMANS IN AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 
 LUCIUS B. SWIFT 
 
 OF THE INDIANAPOLIS BAR 
 
 READ BEFORE THE INDIANAPOLIS 
 LITERARY CLUB. OCTOBER 4. 1915 
 
 FOURTH EDITION 
 
 First Edition. 5,000. November. 1915. 
 
 Second Edition. 10,000, January. 1916. 
 
 Third Edition. 15,000. July, 1916. 
 
 Fourth Edition, 10.000. September. 1916. 
 
 PRICE. TEN CENTS 
 
 THE KAUTZ STATIONERY CO. 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 1916 
 

 FOREWORD 
 
 The National German-American Alliance, devoted 
 to Germanizing America, now sixteen years old and 
 claiming two million members, challenges the Ameri- 
 can people with its slogan, "Germanism versus 
 Anglo-Saxonism." In all that makes for liberty 
 Germanism has no background, while the sky of 
 Anglo-Saxonism for fifteen hundred years has light- 
 ed the path of the mighty progress embraced in the 
 words of Kipling: 
 
 "All we have of freedom, all we use or know — 
 This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. 
 
 Ancient right unnoticed as the breath we draw — 
 Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the law. 
 
 Lance and torch and tumult, steel and gray goose wing 
 Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the king." 
 
 Americans may not hesitate to accept the chal- 
 lenge; and with them will stand every immigrant 
 and every descendant of an immigrant from Scandi- 
 navia to the Balkans and from the Balkans to Italy, 
 except these two million Germans of the Alliance. 
 All will maintain that, not Germanism, but Anglo- 
 Saxon principles shall abide here forever. 
 
 
GERMANS IN AMERICA 
 
 Since the beginning of the present war we have had 
 to bear a good deal from Germans in America in their 
 attempt to show us how little we have accomplished in 
 the world compared with Germany. The Kaiser said 
 that the Germans were the salt of the earth and Ger- 
 mans in America have taken him at his word and have 
 not been slow to let us know about it. So far as he^rd 
 from, there is not in their mind a question but that 
 our system of government and our merits and accom- 
 plishments as inhabitants of the earth are far inferior 
 to the same things in Germany. It seems to me that 
 something can be said on the other side and, further, 
 that a little plain speaking would befit the occasion, 
 and, as an old friend of the Germans, I mean to do 
 something in that line. 
 
 The Germans in Germany and Germans even to the 
 second and third generations in America are genuinely 
 surprised because Americans have no sympathy with 
 the German government in this war, and because after 
 witnessing its enormous military power, Americans 
 consider the present style of German government a 
 menace to civil liberty. 
 
 On the other hand Americans are not only surprised 
 that such sympathy should be expected but are as- 
 tonished that it should be expected by any German in 
 America who has been here long enough to understand 
 the foundations of our institutions, to say nothing of 
 those Germans of the second and third and even more 
 generations who were born and educated in this coun- 
 
 Thrae 
 
try. Judged by those who speak out, these technically 
 American citizens, and among them many graduates 
 of our leading universities, believe in the Kaiser and 
 long for his success; they approve of his rule in Ger- 
 many; they find no flaw in his treatment of Belgium; 
 they openly justify the drowning of the passengers 
 and crew of the Lusitania; they see in the Kaiser a 
 Moses leading the Germans into the Promised Land ; 
 and to crown all, they prefer Prussian efficiency to 
 American liberty. If they had lived among the landed 
 aristocracy of Prussia, they would not have held more 
 extreme notions. This chasm between us, no genuine 
 American will ever cross.* 
 
 * Mr. Oswald Garrison Yillard, in an address Sept. 4, 1915, before the 
 Laurel Hill Association at Stockbridge, says: "Thus, in a little volume of 
 addresses published early in 1914 — that is, a half-year before the outbreak 
 of the war in Elurope, Prof. Julius Goebel, of the University of Ulinois, a 
 resident of the United States and a university teacher here for "more than 
 thirty years, laj's down the doctrine that Germans who come here are not 
 to be made over into Americans by the melting-pot of which we have been 
 io proud. In his book, 'The Battle for German Culture in America,' he 
 emphatically rejects this proposal and as'^erts that German- Americans are 
 only Americans in the 'political sense'^and only in that sen.'je — when they 
 take the oath of citizenship. Most emphatically he protests against the 
 'incredible presumption' of those who would stamp out 'our German person- 
 ality in the mould of a factory-made type of people.' " ♦ » * 
 
 "He declares that every thoughtful person, as well as every cynic, was 
 asking as far back as 1912 whether the American people could much longer 
 govern itself. Almost every expedient to improve our condition had been 
 tried and found wanting, he averred, and there had not been lacking dema- 
 gogues to recommend a further extension of the democracy, a further trust- 
 ing in the people, as a cure-all for our political evils." ♦ » • 
 
 "He has a remedy. It is the German who is to step into the breach 
 with German Kultur, with German sense of duty and of honor to save 
 America from itself, and to bring about a new birth of the nation." 
 
 Four 
 
The Mark of Brandenburg was no part of ancient 
 Germany but was conquered from the Slavs in 928. 
 Prussia was a no-man's land given to the Teutonic 
 Knights in 1300 to be converted to Christianity by fire 
 and sword. The first Hohenzollern came from a hill 
 named Zollern in Suabia. He married the daughter 
 and heir of the Burgrave of Nuremberg, and then be- 
 came Burgrave himself. The title descended until it 
 came to a Hohenzollern who wanted to go higher, and 
 he bought the Mark of Brandenburg from the Emperor 
 Sigismund for a half-million gulden. Sigismund, 
 when King of Hungary, had already mortgaged and 
 forfeited Brandenburg to another man, but he brushed 
 that aside and sold it to Hohenzollern. It was that 
 Hohenzollern who the Kaiser says was called by God 
 from Nuremberg to Brandenburg and from that call 
 the present Kaiser derives his rule by divine right. 
 The Teutonic Knights having conquered Prussia be- 
 came insubordinate and unruly, and a succeeding Ho- 
 henzollern of Brandenburg was given the job by a 
 German Emperor of bringing them to reason, which he 
 did in a thoroughly Hohenzollern manner, with fire and 
 sword. He was now elector of Brandenburg and 
 Duke of Prussia. These two provinces not orig- 
 inally German territory at all, but colonized by Ger- 
 mans, who mixed much Slavic blood, were com- 
 bined into the Kingdom of Prussia. The rule has 
 always been and is today autocratic. Today Prussia 
 rules Germany ; during the forty-four years under 
 the imperial constitution Prussia has never failed to 
 have her way. What is the Prussian way? 
 
 In a proclamation, "To My Army," in 1901, the 
 Kaiser said : "The world does not rest upon the shoul- 
 ders of Atlas any more securely than the Prussian 
 
 Five 
 
State upon the shoulders of the Army. It has sealed 
 with its blood its love and gratitude for its Kings." 
 In 1912 in a speech at Brandenburg the Kaiser said: 
 "The German Empire and the German crown rest 
 upon a Brandenburg basis and a Prussian founda- 
 tion." With all that this means, Germans in America 
 accept it and approve of it and display the same kind 
 of infatuation for the Kaiser that the French had for 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, and they think that Americans 
 ought to partake of their enthusiasm. Americans are 
 immeasurably disappointed to find that Germans in 
 America have never learned that the line drawn from 
 the America of today back to Hengest and Horsa in 
 449 never approaches the line drawn from the Ger- 
 many of today back to the Brandenburg conquered 
 from the Slavs in 928 and to the Prussia given to the 
 Teutonic Knights in 1300. The Anglo-Saxon line is 
 blazed by the marks of an undying struggle for gov- 
 ernment by the people, culminating in the democratic 
 liberty we enjoy today. From the highest to the lowest 
 our officers are our agents, bound and limited by our 
 laws ; we are the masters and we have supreme con- 
 tempt for any authority which we have had no hand 
 in establishing. Our spirit is free and finds an outlet 
 in free speech and a free press. We started free- 
 necked men and we are free-necked men now. All this 
 apparently has no weight today with Germans in 
 America. 
 
 The German line runs for centuries in an unbroken 
 monotony of submission by the people to authority 
 they had no hand in establishing and to laws thev had 
 no hand in making. The line ends today in the 
 Kaiser's "Brandenburg basis and Prussian founda- 
 tion." In conquered Brandenburg and Prussia the 
 
Germans started under the yoke, and under the yoke 
 all Germany is today. There is in the German line no 
 Magna Charta, no John Hampden, no Oliver Crom- 
 well, no axe in the hands of the people descending on 
 the neck of a traitor king, no king driven from his 
 throne for betraying his trust, no Bill of Rights, no 
 Declaration of Independence, no Minute Man, no 
 Liberty Bell, no George Washington, no Abraham 
 Lincoln. Of all these marks blazed during the cen- 
 turies Germans in America today are apparently 
 oblivious. 
 
 Yet, we started even. If we go back to the Germans 
 in the German forests, the lines do meet ; for German 
 tribes were self-governing. "No man dictates to the 
 assembly", says Tacitus ; "he may persuade, but can- 
 not command." The Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes and 
 the Frisians, uncontaminated by Rome, carried into 
 England the ancient German freedom, the town moot, 
 the hundred moot, the folk moot. They swept Roman 
 England free of inhabitants and of Christianity. 
 When the movement was completed, a nation of Ger- 
 mans occupied England, the only German nation re- 
 sulting from the migration of the barbarians. They 
 were pagans and Odin was their god. These were our 
 forefathers. Out of this pagan German nation has 
 come the English-speaking race of today. Although a 
 multitude of times crushed to earth, they never forgot 
 their republican institutions, their mass township- 
 meetings, .heir delegate-meetings, and never lost their 
 capacity to transact public business. War brought the 
 king, but the king could not shake off the Wittenage- 
 mote, nor its successor, the English Parliament. In 
 their meetings the kicker kicked out his kick ; there the 
 officers, even the king, were called to account ; there for 
 
 Seven 
 
centuries was carried on that stubborn fight of the peo- 
 ple against oppression. These facts, today, apparently 
 make no impression upon Germans in America. 
 
 It is not necessary to trace how or when the Germans 
 in Germany lost their liberties; they lost them. We 
 find them in the eighteenth century under all manner 
 of potentates, and in every case the will of the poten- 
 tate is the law of his territory. This had been so, 
 century after century, with no voice raised on behalf 
 of the people; while during all those centuries the 
 Anglo-Saxons were carrying on their mighty struggle 
 to maintain and extend civil rights. 
 
 The sending of German troops to fight against 
 American independence is a sufficient illustration of 
 the ownership of the lives and bodies of their subjects 
 by the German rulers of that time. Twenty-nine thou- 
 sand one hundred sixty-six Germans came. Six rulers 
 sold their men. Catherine of Russia refused and Hol- 
 land refused. Bavaria wanted a contract; but her men 
 were such a worthless lot that her application was re- 
 jected. The transaction was like a sale of cattle by a 
 ranchman. Each ruler got the best contract he could 
 and then filled it with men exactly as he would go into 
 a field and separate cattle sold. The ruler of iianau 
 wrote: "My regiment is all ready at the first twinkle 
 that shall be given me," and hurried off to England 
 to push the matter. The Prince of Waldeck collected 
 eighty-nine men and locked them up in the fortress of 
 Hameln ready for delivery. England paid the wages 
 of the troops. The Duke of Brunswick sold 5,723 men, 
 more than one-sixth of his able-bodied inhabitants. He 
 got for his own pocket $34.50 for each man, as a 
 starter, and for each man killed and each three 
 wounded he got the same sum. Finally he got an 
 
 Eight 
 
annual lump sum of 64,500 German crowns and 
 twice that sum for two years after the return of the 
 troops. 
 
 The landgrave of Hesse fairly skinned England and 
 got a contract whereby he sent 16,992 men and made 
 millions of dollars; and the other rulers sold their men 
 with great profit to themselves. For this service men 
 were impressed from the plow, the workshop and the 
 highway; no man was safe from the agents of the 
 princes who kidnapped without scruple. Men were 
 kept under guard and were marched to the ships under 
 guard to keep them from deserting. When a father 
 asked for his son taken by conscription, he was sent to 
 the mines. When a mother asked that her son be 
 returned to her, she was sent to the workhouse. George 
 Washington Greene characterizes the act of each of 
 these rulers by a line from Dante : 
 
 "He sells their flesh, it being yet alive." 
 
 Is it necessary to use more words to show that liber- 
 ty in Germany was dead? A people who submit to be 
 sent like cattle to the shambles have reached the lowest 
 stage of submission to autocratic rule. Against these 
 mercenaries the American farmer took down his rifle 
 and brought their activities to an end at Trenton, at 
 Bennington, at Saratoga and finally, with the help of 
 the French, at Yorktown. 
 
 Then c.me Napoleon Bonaparte. When he began 
 to totter, the King of Prussia and the other princes of 
 Germany promised their subjects that if they would 
 rise and rid the world of Bonaparte they should then 
 have some share in government. The people performed 
 their part, but the rulers, after renewing their promise 
 
 Nine 
 
in writing, went on as before ; and the people submit- 
 ted. These rulers had for centuries fought and con- 
 quered each other, but they had had no trouble with 
 their subjects demanding a share in government. 
 They said they held by divine right, and their subjects 
 submitted; whatever they allowed their subjects was 
 pure grace. When the landgrave of Hesse was driving 
 his subjects to the American shambles, he wrote to 
 Voltaire that he wanted to learn the art of making 
 men perceive that "all which their ruler does is for 
 their special good." The motto of King William III, 
 of Prussia, was "I hold my crown by the favor of 
 God, and I am responsible to him for every hour of 
 my government." And so he broke his word and lived 
 on hugging his autocratic power until he died in 1840. 
 
 The principles of the American Revolution and of 
 the patriots of the French Revolution at last began to 
 be known in Germany. Most of the people were not 
 interested ; but here and there professors and student 
 bodies talked of freedom, although no one was ready 
 to give his life for it. In 1817 the students at Wart- 
 burg burned some conservative books and the code 
 Napoleon. Autocracy was nervous and made severer 
 laws against such demonstrations for liberty. In 1832, 
 at a great student- festival, toasts were drunk to the 
 sovereignty of the people, to the United States of 
 Germany, and to Europe Republican. Autocracy was 
 furious and Prussia condemned thirty-nine students 
 to death. The penalty was not inflicted, but the stu- 
 dents were confined in a fortress. 
 
 Carl Schurz was in the gymnasium in Cologne in the 
 
 forties. His class was to write on the battle of 
 Leipsic. Schurz emphasized the ill-treatment of the 
 people by the rulers in refusing to keep the promise 
 
of a share in the government made to the people for 
 their heroic efforts on that battle field. He says: "I 
 wrote that memorial oration, so to speak, with my 
 heart's blood." His professor called him up and said : 
 "What you wrote has a fine sound, but how can such 
 things be allowed at a royal Prussian gymnasium? 
 Take care that it does not happen again." 
 
 Schurz was nineteen when the movement of 1848 
 came to a head — the only uprising of the people where 
 they took chances and risked lives for free government 
 in German history. Frederick William IV, the Hohen- 
 zollern King of Prussia at that time, declared that he 
 would never permit a piece of paper to be put between 
 the prince and his people; he said the people them- 
 selves did not desire participation of their representa- 
 tives in the government; the absolute power of the 
 King must not be broken ; "the crown must reign and 
 govern according to the laws of God and of the coun- 
 try and according to the King's own resolutions ;" he 
 could not and must not "govern according to the will 
 of majorities." 
 
 The uprising of 1848 was real. The demand, says 
 Schurz, was for a united Germany and a national par- 
 liament ; for civil rights and liberties, free speech, free 
 press, the right of free assembly, equality before the 
 law, a freely elected representation of the people with 
 legislative power, responsibility of ministers, self-gov- 
 ernment of the communes, the right of the people to 
 carry arrrs, in fact a "constitutional form of govern- 
 ment on a broad democratic basis." Autocracy at first 
 seemed to yield. A national German parliament was 
 elected and sat at Frankfort. It adopted a constitu- 
 tion and in March, 1849, it elected the king of Prussia 
 to be Kaiser. He refused on the ground that the offer 
 
of the national crown could only come from the Ger- 
 man princes. This broke the back of the movement; 
 there were uprisings in many places in support of the 
 constitution, but they were put down by soldiers. 
 Many were put on trial and condemned ; Schurz and 
 others fled the country, and Germany was back again 
 under autocratic government. 
 
 Until within recent years Germans in America uni- 
 versally spoke with reverence of the forty-eighters. It 
 was in the spirit of '48 that they joined in the war for 
 the Union ; they were genuine in that war and did the 
 best they could. And they lived in the same spirit 
 afterward, proud to be called Americans and looking 
 upon America as veritably the home of the free ; and 
 then they fell. They fell before the glamour of Bis- 
 marck's government by blood and iron, before the 
 spectacle of great material prosperity, before the hyp- 
 notism of the doctrines Will to Power, Will to Con- 
 quer, Might is Right, the Strong may take from the 
 Weak, German Arms and the German Language can 
 be made to dominate the world. Today the moderate 
 ideals of the Germans of 1848 are lost in the blaze of 
 the glory of the Kaiser. No one hates the ideals of 
 1848 more than he does. In 1901, referring to the 
 revolt in Berlin in 1848 when speaking to the Alex- 
 ander regiment which had helped to crush it, he said : 
 " * * * and if ever again a time like this should 
 reappear in this city, a time of uprising against the 
 King, then I am convinced the Alexander Regiment 
 will be able energetically to force back into boimds 
 any impertinence and rebellion against its royal mas- 
 ter." This is the Kaiser's inscription upon the tomb- 
 stone of the liberal movement of 1848. 
 
When an American stands at Concord and looks 
 upon the Minute Man where "once the embattled far- 
 mers stood and fired the shot heard round the world," 
 why does it make his eyes shine and his blood go at 
 a gallop? 
 
 When the Declaration of Independence was adopted 
 a bell rang out from the belfry of Independence Hall. 
 That bell bore the inscription, "Proclaim Liberty 
 throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants there- 
 of." That was 139 years ago. That bell, the Liberty 
 Bell, has just gone on its triumphant march across the 
 country. Women rode fifty miles on horseback to see 
 the bell ; children were lifted up to kiss the bell ; strong 
 men touched the bell and tears filled their eyes. 
 
 If Germans in America will examine with German 
 thoroughness the picture of the Kaiser, threatening 
 the people with the Alexander regiment, should they 
 emulate the Schurzes, the Kinkels and Jacobis of 1848 
 by insisting upon a reasonable share in their own 
 government, these Germans ought to understand the 
 meaning of the Minute Man and the Liberty Bell to 
 Americans, and why Americans would like to see the 
 Kaiser's system of government consigned to the finest 
 grinding of the mills of the gods. 
 
 What Germans in America have embraced in place 
 of their abandoned American political ideals only 
 widens the chasm between America and Germany. 
 The German Empire today consists of states bound 
 together jy an agreement called a constitution made, 
 not by the people, but by the rulers of the states in 
 1871, at the end of the Franco-Prussian war. The 
 states also have constitutions granted by the various 
 rulers beginning in 1830 ; the present Prussian consti- 
 tution was granted by William IV in 1850. Under 
 
 Thirteen 
 
that constitution William, the Kaiser's grandfather, 
 in 18G1 went into the church in Koenigsburg, picked 
 up the crown from the altar, placed it upon his own 
 head and declared in a loud voice: "1 receive this 
 crown from God's hand and from none other." 
 
 Bismarck says that the Prussian constitution was 
 drawn with such veto provisions as to protect the 
 status quo. In the Imperial constitution of 1871, the 
 veto has the same effect. The status quo was auto- 
 cratic and there has been no change. The character of 
 the imperial constitution is defined by German states- 
 men. The Crown Prince Frederick expecting the death 
 of his father, asked Bismarck if he would remain in 
 office in case of a change on the throne. Bismarck says 
 he answered that he would on two conditions, the first 
 of which was "no parliamentary government." 
 
 Ex-Chancellor von Buelow, in his Imperial Ger- 
 many, written in 1913, states the facts. He says: 
 
 "Bismarck, the Prussian, realized better than anyone 
 else that in Germany strong government could only be 
 based and maintained on the monarchical principle. The 
 work of union could only be permanent if the monarchy 
 was not a purely ornamental part of the fabric of the 
 Empire, but was made to be the actual support of tlie 
 union. And if the creative power of the Prussian mon- 
 archy, well tested in the course of centuries, was to be 
 enlisted in the interests of the new Empire, then the King 
 of Prussia must, as German Emperor, be more than the 
 bearer of shadowy dignities; he must rule and guide — and 
 for this purpose must actually possess monarc'iicn,' rio.hts 
 such as have been laid down and transcribed in the Con- 
 stitution of the Empire." 
 
 Von Buelow says further : 
 
 Fotirtfeit 
 
"The statement uttered from time to time, that my idea 
 was to change the distribution of power between the 
 Crown and the Parliament in favour of the latter, that is, 
 to introduce parliamentary government in the West Euro- 
 pean sense of the words, belongs to the thickly populated 
 realm of political fables." 
 
 He also says : 
 
 "What we Germans need can not be attained -by alter- 
 ations in the sphere of constitutional law. The parties 
 which would acauire greater rights to a large extent still 
 lack political judgment, political training, and conscious- 
 ness of the aims of the State." 
 
 This is a roundabout way of saying that autocracy 
 still has its way, and that the German people would 
 not know enough to rule if they had the power. Price 
 Collier, who, though not a German, knew the working 
 of German government as well as anyone, said in 1913 : 
 "There is no such thing in Germany as democratic or 
 representative government." "* * * Germany today 
 is no more democratic than Turkey was twenty years 
 ago." The German historian Gneist says it is "abso- 
 lutism under constitutional forms." 
 
 The imperial constitution is arranged on the prin- 
 ciple of the jughandle, and the ruler never lets go of 
 the handle. If the ruler decides to take away what he 
 has granted, who shall gainsay him with the army to 
 back him? The Kaiser's grandfather set him the ex- 
 ample. Under the Prussian constitution, which is 
 another status g-wo- jughandle constitution, in 1861, 
 Bismarck and the King wanted to enlarge the army, 
 but the legislature refused the money. They spent the 
 money just the same, saying, that the legislature by 
 refusing to vote necessary supplies had laid down its 
 
 Fifteen 
 
functions and the King must take over the responsi- 
 bilities which they dechned to exercise. Having defied 
 the constitution four years and spent the money, in 
 1866, after the seizure of Schleswig-Holstein and the 
 victory over Austria, the speech from the throne an- 
 nounced, says Bismarck, "that the representatives of 
 the country were to proceed to an ex post facto ap- 
 proval of the administration carried on without appro- 
 priation act." The legislature obeyed the order almost 
 with gratitude for the opportunity. An Anglo-Saxon 
 legislature would have shaken the King over hell-fire, 
 would have brought him to his knees in repentance, 
 would have made him reaffirm every declaration of 
 Anglo-Saxon freedom from Magna Charta to the Bill 
 of Rights before granting forgiveness. 
 
 WHiat does the present Kaiser say of that violation 
 of the constitution? In 1894, speaking to his troops 
 at Berlin, he said: "In the year 1861 when my grand- 
 father undertook the reorganization of his arms, he 
 was misunderstood by many and attacked by even 
 more; nevertheless, the future gave him his splendid 
 justification. Just as at that time, so now, too, distrust 
 and discord are rife among the people. The only 
 pillar upon which the empire rested was the army. So it 
 is today." 
 
 The Kaiser feels no regret for the violation. He does 
 not dodge behind any plea of necessity, but he gives 
 the world to understand that his divine right backed 
 by the army is all sufficient as against any constitution, 
 and there is neither in the German constitution nor in 
 any German law any provision calling the Kaisei 
 or his ministers to account. He says he is accountable 
 only to God. ^'i.n ^.»il>i'|" 
 
 Sitlteen 
 
In 1689 the House of Commons drew up the Bill of 
 Rights. The House of Lords agreed to it and then 
 William and Mary agreed to it and then they were de- 
 clared King and Queen. Then to clinch the matter 
 the Bill of Rights was enacted into law and is found 
 in the statutes of William and Mary. The Kaiser's 
 father died June 15, 1888, and on that day the present 
 Kaiser seated himself upon the throne and issued an 
 address, not to the people, but to the army. What 
 German thought of insisting that before he mounted 
 the throne he must agree to a Bill of Rights such as 
 William and Mary had agreed to 200 years before? 
 The habit of staying under the yoke inherited from 
 generation to generation is present in the German 
 people today. No wonder the Anglo-Saxon holds his 
 head high and looks upon Germans without any polit- 
 ical respect as having accomplished nothing for civil 
 liberty. The Germans will not sit on the stage in 
 W^alhalla ; that place will be occupied by Anglo-Saxons 
 — their reward for having preserved their liberties. 
 
 It will be interesting now to examine further the 
 Kaiser's notion of his government and what he means 
 by his Brandenburg basis and Prussian foundation. 
 He says, addressing the army the day his father died : 
 
 "It is in these serious days of mourning that God's will 
 places me at the head of the army and it is from a heart 
 stirred deeply, indeed, that I address my first words to my 
 troops." * * 
 
 "The absolutely inviolable dependence upon the war 
 lord is, in the army, the inheritance which descends from 
 father to son, from generation to generation," * * * 
 
"So we are bound together — I and the army — so we are 
 born for one another, and so we shall hold together in- 
 dissolubly whether, as God wills, we are to have peace or 
 storm." 
 
 To Recruits : 
 
 "You wear the uniform of the Emperor; you are thereby 
 preferred over other men." * * * 
 
 "Hold your colors high, the black, white and red which 
 here stand before you, and think of your oath, think of 
 your emperor." 
 
 To Recruits : 
 
 "Whoever offends against the uniform of the King lays 
 himself open to the most grievous punishments. Wear 
 your uniform in such wise that you will compel respect 
 from the world and from those who oppose you." * * * 
 
 "It is now your task to stand faithfully by me and to 
 defend our highest possessions, whether against enemies 
 from without or from within, and to obey when I command 
 and never to forsake me." 
 
 To Potsdam Regiments : 
 
 "Every one lacked confidence in me; everywhere I was 
 falsely judged. One alone believed in me, one alone had 
 faith — that was the army. And leaning upon her, trusting 
 upon our old guard, I took up my heavy charge, knowing 
 well that the army was the main support of my country, 
 the main support of the Prussian throne, to which the de- 
 cision of God had called me." 
 
 "May the main supports of our army remain forever 
 intact. They are courage, sense of honor, and uncondi- 
 tional, iron, blind obedience." 
 
 Eighteen 
 
To the Berlin garrison : 
 
 "I hope to be in a position, firmly trusting in the lead- 
 ership of God, to carry into effect the saying of Frederick 
 William I: 'If one wishes to decide anything in the world, 
 it cannot be done with the pen unless the pen is supported 
 by the force of the sword.' " 
 
 In an address at Koenigsberg in August, 1910, the 
 Kaiser said : 
 
 "Here it was that the Great Elector, by his own right, 
 created himself the sovereign Duke in Prussia; here his 
 son set the King's crown upon his head; and the sovereign 
 house of Brandenburg thus became one of the European 
 powers." * * * 
 
 "And here my grandfather, again, by his own right, set 
 the Prussian crown upon his head, once more distinctly 
 emphasizing the fact that it was accorded him by the will 
 of God alone and not by parliament or by any assemblage 
 of the people or by popular vote, and that he thus looked 
 upon himself as the chosen instrument of Heaven and as 
 such performed his duties as regent and sovereign." 
 
 Again he said : 
 
 "Only one is master in the country. That am I. Who 
 opposes me I shall crush to pieces." 
 
 Again : 
 
 "That wnich was lacking to the old Hansa — a strong, 
 united Empire, obedient to one will — we now have, thanks 
 to the grace of Heaven and the deeds of my grandfather." 
 
 This is the Kaiser's picture of German government. 
 If Americans looked upon it with approval, their birth- 
 
 Nine.teen 
 
right of 1,500 years of Anglo-Saxon struggle for 
 liberty would indeed go for a mess of pottage. 
 
 It would be incorrect to say that the Kaiser never 
 speaks except to rally his soldiers. He speaks upon re- 
 ligion, philosophy, art, and other subjects. In a letter, 
 in 1903, he said that God reveals Himself through the 
 human race and mentions Charlemagne and his own 
 grandfather, but neither Washington nor Lincoln. In 
 a speech at Stettin, in 1898, he said : "But I, as lord of 
 the land, and King, express my thanks to you that you 
 have brought the city of Stettin to such a flourishing 
 position." 
 
 The Kaiser is not insane, although in a world filled 
 as this has been for a hundred years with democratic 
 progress he might seem so. He has an object in view 
 and he knows what he is about. He wants to retain 
 for himself and his descendants the job of ruling the 
 Germans, and he wants to continue to do it in a medi- 
 eval manner. He is carrying on his campaign to con- 
 vince Germans that he can rule them better than they 
 can rule themselves. He always dresses like a warrior 
 and in a loud voice sounds alarms and calls upon his 
 army to be ready. He and his six sons ride through 
 the streets of Berlin together in brilliant uniforms, and 
 everyone has seen the picture of the Kaiser and these 
 sons marching abreast, all boots, overcoat, sword and 
 spiked helmet; military swagger is accepted by the 
 people as wholesome government. For twenty-five 
 years the Kaiser has sown the seed and the German 
 nation has succumbed. It follows him now without 
 question; the spirit of feudalism reigns, with the full 
 approval of Germans in America. They encourage the 
 Germans in Germany to stay under the yoke. This is 
 
 Twenty 
 
what Germans in America have embraced in place of 
 American poUtical ideals ; but this is not all. 
 
 Rosa Luxemburg is a socialist orator in Germany. 
 Not long ago the Prussian minister of war laid an in- 
 formation against her for libeling the officers and non- 
 commissioned officers of the army in charging them 
 with acts of cruelty. The court held that Rosa must 
 prove that the acts occurred not in one but in many 
 German barracks daily. On the day set for trial Rosa 
 came into court and ofifered to prove 1,030 cases by 
 witnesses who had endured the cruel treatment or had 
 seen it inflicted. The case was adjourned and never 
 resumed. The cruelties consisted in slaps in the face, 
 punches and kicks, beating with sheathed sabres and 
 bayonets, with riding whips, harness straps, and so on. 
 There were cases of humiliating punishment such as 
 turning the men out of bed and making them climb to 
 the top of cupboards or sweep out the dormitory with 
 tooth-brushes. So do Germans submit to blows and 
 insults from masters. 
 
 At another investigation one sergeant was accused 
 of over 500 cases of maltreatment. A captain under 
 whom a non-commissioned officer had committed 1,500 
 cases of ill-treatment was punished for allowing these 
 acts to occur and later was advanced to the rank of 
 major over the heads of a line of seniors. 
 
 The Zabern case in 1913 is known to the whole 
 world. A raw lieutenant addressing his company ap- 
 plied an offensive term to the people of Alsace, and 
 offered a prize of ten marks to those who should suc- 
 ceed in running a civilian through with side arms. 
 These facts became public and when he appeared with 
 his men he was jeered at by boys who ran when chased ; 
 but he caught a lame shoemaker and cut him over the 
 
 Twenty-one 
 
head with his sword. Troops were called out, machine 
 guns placed in the streets, the colonel proclaimed 
 martial law and arrested a large number of municipal 
 officers and private citizens, imprisoning thirty of 
 them in a cellar. In the investigation which followed 
 the colonel said that civilians had been arrested "for 
 intending to laugh." The Crown Prince telegraphed 
 to the colonel "Go it strong!" The colonel and the 
 lieutenant were both acquitted and in a short time the 
 colonel received a Prussian Order. The lieutenant 
 was last month killed in battle. The Crown Prince 
 sent a wreath for his grave and a letter to his family 
 lauding him as a patriot. 
 
 How long would such things be in an Anglo-Saxon 
 community? It will be answered that all Germany 
 protested against these acts, and so it did ; but what 
 good did it do? The struggle was recognized as one 
 between the people and the military caste ; and the caste 
 won. The Reichstag censured the outrage by a vote of 
 293 to 54 : the colonel received a decoration and a re- 
 actionary Prussian bureaucrat was made governor of 
 Alsace-Lorraine ; and the people submitted and are 
 now fighting as one man with the approval of Germans 
 in America to spread German kultur over the world. 
 
 Social legislation has been carried to a great extent 
 in Germany. It was expected that Socialists as a body 
 would gratefully melt away and become part of the 
 great mass of people liking to be ruled. But under the 
 name Social Democrats they wanted a share in the 
 government and they occupy to-day about the position 
 of liberals in other countries. Speaking to striking 
 miners in May, 1889, the Kaiser said : "For me every 
 Social Democrat is synonymous with an enemy of the 
 realm and of the Fatherland." And in 1913 ex- 
 
 Twenty-tH:o 
 
Chancellor von Buelow said: "It is the duty of every 
 German Minister to combat this movement until it is 
 defeated or materially changed." 
 
 In November, 1891, in addressing recruits, the 
 Kaiser said : "You have sworn loyalty to me ; that 
 means, children of my guard, that you are now my 
 soldiers ; you have given yourselves up to me, body and 
 soul ; there is for you but one enemy, and that is my 
 enemy. In view of the present Socialistic agitation it 
 may come to pass that I shall command you to shoot 
 your own relatives, brothers, yes, parents — which God 
 forbid — but even then you must follow my command 
 without a murmur." 
 
 The Kaiser has the power to make good his threat. 
 Since the German navy produced an officer who would 
 execute the order to sink the Lusitania with its crew 
 and its 1,000 passengers, including 130 children, all 
 defenceless, the world may conclude that the Kaiser's 
 soldiers, at his command, will shoot down their own 
 fathers and mothers. 
 
 It is a relief to turn from this ruler to a classic 
 illustration of American political ideals. In 1783, 
 after the last British and German soldier had em- 
 barked, Washington bade farewell to his generals in 
 New York and went quietly through New Jersey, 
 Pennsylvania and Maryland, hailed everywhere by 
 the people with acclamations and addresses, to the Con- 
 tinental Congress at Annapolis. There, on December 
 23, he resigned his commission as commander-in-chief 
 into the hands of Congress. It was for this act that 
 the father of Carl Schurz told him that Washington 
 was "the noblest of men of all history because he had 
 commanded large armies in the war for the liberation 
 of his people," and then had returned to the plow as a 
 
 Twenty-three 
 
simple farmer. Why is Washington first in the hearts 
 of his countrymen, and why does his fame go sounding 
 down generation after generation? If Germans in 
 America will examine this question with German 
 thoroughness and get a correct answer, then they will 
 understand why Americans will never, never wish suc- 
 cess to German kultur with its divine right of kings 
 and military autocracy ; and no efficiency, inseparable 
 from such company, will ever appeal to Americans. 
 
 Germans in America today belittle Treitschke. They 
 tell us that this advocate of the doctrine that might 
 is right and that small nations have no rights which 
 strong nations are bound to respect is not followed in 
 Germany. Yet for thirty years he was the leading 
 professor of history in Germany; his classes were 
 crowded and he was the most quoted historian in Ger- 
 many ; and his doctrines and his manner of stating 
 them secured him a promotion to the University of 
 Berlin, where he held his place until he died in 1890. 
 It is too late for Germans to deny that he was a proph- 
 et, since his doctrines have now passed into the stage 
 of blood and iron, and the battle for them is supported 
 by Germans in America. After all, he but followed all 
 German historians who were ranked by Germans as 
 great. Niebuhr held up Rome as "the model of na- 
 tional development." "The true destiny of Prussia," 
 said Ranke, "is to be and remain a 'military monarchy. 
 It is impossible not to submit to what is historically 
 due." Mommsen spread Caesarism in Germany, and 
 Sybel. a Forty-Eighter, after the war successes under 
 Bismarck went completely over to autocracy. Treit- 
 schke with readier pen and more eloquent tongue only 
 elaborated and rounded out the skeleton doctrines 
 shaped by his predecessors ; and Bernhardi, now a gen- 
 
 Twenty-four 
 
eral in active service, only states those doctrines a 
 little more in the raw. These men cannot be repudi- 
 ated. The principles they advocate are held and at 
 least temporarily believed in by most Germans and 
 are part of the kultur of which they are boasting. 
 
 That Germans in America, legally American citizens, 
 bound, as most of them are, by the closest ties of 
 relationship with Germans in Germany, should love 
 the people of Germany is entirely commendable and to 
 be respected. That they should feel the deepest an- 
 guish on account of differences between this country 
 and Germany can be understood. But when they go 
 farther, as the majority of them do, and desire the 
 success of the military autocracy which brought on this 
 war, they are joining in a movement to block the 
 progress of civil liberty in the world. And Germans 
 who are furious and insolent and insulting toward 
 Americans who do not agree with them expect Ameri- 
 cans to bear in silence such Copperhead utterances as 
 the following which was received with loud acclaim by 
 the National German-American Alliance : 
 
 "We have no right to sit in judgment upon other na- 
 tions until our own actions are above reproach. Germany- 
 has been instrumental in sinking the Lusitania; she was 
 provoked to do so by England. But by far the greatest 
 blame for this horrible catastrophe attaches to the United 
 States. The underlying cause was our greed for gold." 
 
 This Alliance, an organization devoted to the spread 
 of German kultur in the United States, declares: "As 
 citizens of this country we therefore deem it our duty 
 to maintain American independence and principles." 
 The principles which were established when the last of 
 
 Tu'etity-five 
 
the 29,166 German mercenaries were captured at York- 
 town, cannot be maintained side by side with the prin- 
 ciples of the mihtary autocracy which this organiza- 
 tion represents in America. Not all Germans in 
 America undertake this double allegiance; but those 
 who do are not Americans, they are not German- 
 Americans, although born here ; they are only Germans 
 in America.* How little Germans understand Ameri- 
 cans ! When they ask us to believe that the present 
 day Germany ought to succeed in this war, they are 
 asking us to pray for a country which may be used by 
 the Kaiser whenever he wills for just such purposes as 
 Frederick the Great used Prussia when he seized 
 Silesia ; and they as little understand the American 
 spirit as the Kaiser did when he thought we would 
 appreciate a statue of Frederick the Great set up in 
 Washington. Nor did they understand Americans 
 
 *A report in the proceedings of the Alliance says: "Our own prestige 
 depends upon the prestige of the Fatherland and for that reason we cannot 
 allow any disparagement of Germany to go unpunished." 
 
 An Alliance inspector of German schools reports that wherever these 
 schools prosper the children remain German in spirit and sentiment even to 
 the third generation. 
 
 Professor Kuehnemann of Breslau, who lectured in this country under 
 the auspices of the Alliance says : "The Germans in America can offer their 
 Fatherland no greater evidence of faithfulness than by working to the end 
 of keeping America aloof from England." 
 
 At its last national meeting, the Alliance said that "only with a knowl- 
 edge of the history of German politics and culture could an understanding 
 of American history be acquired." (Ohlinger, pp. 42, 4.3, 49 and 50.) It 
 is not quite plain how the history of the spirit of the Teutonic Knights 
 which now rules Germany could help the children of America to understand 
 her foundations of liberty, all of which rest upon Anglo-Saxon soil. 
 
 Twenty-six 
 
when they thought that their excuses for their treat- 
 ment of Belgium would be acceptable. Belgium had 
 wronged no one. There liberty was preserved ; Belgium 
 was living her life of happiness and prosperity in a 
 high degree. Her country was her own. When her 
 people saw their country invaded, their soldiers killed, 
 their cities seized, their homes occupied, the least the 
 Germans could do was to treat with gentleness the 
 crazed few who exercised the right of self-defence. In- 
 stead, they did things which made it seem that Attila 
 was back again in Gaul. 
 
 In the face of Bismarck and von Buelow and prac- 
 tically the entire German opinion, now comes Profes- 
 sor Muensterberg, in September, 1915, and says that 
 Germany is as much self-governing as America, that the 
 ministry is responsible to the Reichstag and that the 
 American President can decide upon war all by 
 himself. Muensterberg is the ninety-fourth professor. 
 The German university apparently teaches nothing 
 which contributes to an understanding of evidence. 
 It has filled the world with declarations which it is 
 charitable to class as German axioms, to the German 
 professorial mind requiring no proof.* 
 
 But Professor Muensterberg says something more. 
 He says that the Germans in America felt it their 
 sacred duty to foster German ideals and virtue in their 
 American homes and their American cities, and make 
 this country a better and nobler country. This, he says, 
 was having its effect against the spirit of recklessness 
 
 * In the Yale Review, July, 1916, is an article, "Autocratic Government 
 in Germany," by Professor Kuno Franck'e, remarkable for its amazing omis- 
 sion of the facts which show that Gennan government is, as Gneist says, 
 "absolutism under constitutional forms." 
 
 Twenty-ieven 
 
masters and the State is simply their representative 
 acting for them. There is no room in this country for 
 government by the people and a government by the 
 over-individual soul — alias autocracy. 
 
 And so, Americans cannot agree with Germans in 
 America without a surrender of their own political 
 ideals; for there can be no blending of American and 
 German political ideals. What will Americans do? 
 
 When an American looks upon his political history 
 extending from the German tribes in England, in 
 whose assembly no man dictated, to Abraham Lincoln 
 standing upon the field of Gettysburg pledging the 
 nation to the defense of government by the people, that 
 American is looking upon a mighty heritage. This 
 heritage is not for the Anglo-Saxon alone ; it is for all 
 who come and accept it. It is for the Catholic, the 
 Protestant, and the Jew, the Russian, the Pole and the 
 Hungarian, as well as the German. But there must 
 be no divided allegiance ; no attempt to blend Ameri- 
 can political ideals with old-world political ideals 
 which have been the mortal enemies of civil liberty 
 since the world was. Americans will make it their 
 work to preserve their heritage. The struggle which 
 shakes the world today is the old struggle of democracy 
 against autocracy. That is how England and France 
 are fighting our battle. Americans can sympathize 
 with only one side in that struggle and that is the 
 side which is in unison with their whole history. If 
 
 Thirty 
 
that side wins, the German people will come out of the 
 darkness in which they now live and with all their 
 virtues, abilities, and means of happiness, success and 
 prosperity, will stand side by side with us in the broad 
 sunlight of liberty. If that side loses, Americans must 
 brace themselves to meet an antagonist such as the 
 world never saw before. But we have this — the Amer- 
 ican is unterrified and not afraid and he is a long- 
 winded fighter. 
 
 In preparing this paper, in addition to standard his- 
 tories, the writer is indebted to such works as Daw- 
 son's "What is Wrong with Germany" ; Barker's 
 "Modern Germany" ; Collier's "Germany and the 
 Germans"; Von Buelow's "Imperial Germany"; 
 Schurz's "Reminiscences" ; Ohlinger's "Their True 
 Faith and Allegiance" ; and especially to "The Ger- 
 man Emperor as Shown in His Public Utterances," by 
 Christian Gauss, Professor of Modern Languages, 
 Princeton University. 
 
 Indianapolis, July 1, 1916. 
 
 Thirty-one 
 
Photomount 
 
 Pamphlet 
 
 Binder 
 
 Gaylord Bros. 
 
 Makers 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 PAT. JAN 21, 1908 
 
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