ed a letter from von
Papen to his wife in which he wrote: "I always say to these idiotic
Yankees that they had better hold their tongues." Its publication did not
serve to allay the warmth of American feeling.

It was with great satisfaction, therefore, that the public learned in
September that President Wilson had requested the recall of Ambassador
Dumba in the following words: "By reason of the admitted purpose and
intent of Ambassador Dumba to conspire to cripple legitimate industries
of the people of the United States and to interrupt their legitimate
trade, and by reason of the flagrant diplomatic impropriety in employing
an American citizen protected by an American passport, as a secret bearer
of official despatches through the lines of the enemy of
Austria-Hungary.... Mr. Dumba is no longer acceptable to the Government
of the United States." The two German attaches were given a longer
shrift, but on the 30th of November von Bernstorff was told that they
were no longer acceptable; von Papen sailed on the 22d of December and
was followed a week later by Boy-Ed.

During the two preceding months there had been a constant series of
strikes and explosions in munitions plants and industrial works, and
public opinion was now thoroughly aroused. The feeling that Germany and
Austria were thus through their agents virtually carrying on warfare in
the United States was intensified by the revelations of Dr. Joseph
Gori[)c]ar, formerly an Austrian consul, but a Jugoslav who sympathized
with the Entente; according to his statement every Austrian consul in
the country was "a center of intrigue of the most criminal character."
His charges came at the moment when Americans were reading that the
number of strikes in munitions plants was unparalleled, no less than one
hundred and two in a few months, of which fifty were in Bridgeport,
which was known to be a center of German activities. Explosions and
fires at the plants of the Bethlehem Steel Company and the Baldwin
Locomotive Works, and at the Roebling wire-rope shop in Trenton were of
mysterious origin.

To what extent explosions in munitions plants were the result of German
incendiarism and not of an accidental nature, it is difficult to
determine. But the Department of Justice was so thoroughly convinced of
the far-reaching character of German plots that President Wilson, in his
annual message of December, 1915, frankly denounced the "hyphenates" who
lent their aid to such i