agents provocateurs throughout the length and breadth of our land, and
even in high positions of trust in departments of our Government.

[Sidenote: German agents in Latin America, in Japan and the West
Indies.]

While expressing a cordial friendship for the people of the United
States, the Government of Germany had its agents at work both in Latin
America and Japan. They bought or subsidized papers and supported
speakers there to rouse feelings of bitterness and distrust against us
in those friendly nations, in order to embroil us in war. They were
inciting to insurrection in Cuba, in Haiti, and in Santo Domingo; their
hostile hand was stretched out to take the Danish Islands; and
everywhere in South America they were abroad sowing the seeds of
dissension, trying to stir up one nation against another and all against
the United States.

[Sidenote: Assaults on the Monroe Doctrine.]

In their sum these various operations amounted to direct assault upon
the Monroe Doctrine. And even if we had given up our right to travel on
the sea, even if we had surrendered to German threats and abandoned our
legitimate trade in munitions, the German offensive in the New World, in
our own land and among our neighbors, was becoming too serious to be
ignored.

[Sidenote: Recall of the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador.]

So long as it was possible, the Government of the United States tried to
believe that such activities, the evidence of which was already in a
large measure at hand, were the work of irresponsible and misguided
individuals. It was only reluctantly, in the face of overwhelming proof,
that the recall of the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador and of the German
Military and Naval Attaches was demanded.

Proof of their criminal violations of our hospitality was presented to
their Governments. But these Governments in reply offered no apologies
nor did they issue reprimands. It became clear that such intrigue was
their settled policy.

In the meantime the attacks of the German submarines upon the lives and
property of American citizens had gone on; the protests of our
Government were now sharp and ominous, and this nation was rapidly
being drawn into a state of war.

The break would have come sooner if our Government had not been
restrained by the vain hope that saner counsels might still prevail in
Germany. For it was well known to us that the German people had to a
very large extent been kept in ignorance of many of the secret c