an occasional plant, also talking to the
farmers, I concluded that it was a dismal failure, which conclusion
I announced in one of the first newspaper articles I wrote after I
had left Germany. Recent reports from that country show that I was
right, which increases my conviction that the _confidential tips_
given by Germany's professional experts, who instruct neutral
visitors, do very well to make Germany's position seem better than
it actually is, but they seldom stand the acid test of history.

Seeking to invent excuses is not peculiar to the Germans, but it is
more prevalent among them than among any other people that I know.
In this one respect the German Government is a Government of the
people. Some of the diplomatic explanations which have emanated
from Berlin during the war have been weird in their absurdity and
an insult to the intelligence of those to whom they were addressed.

President Wilson did not accept the official lie concerning the
sinking of the _Arabic_, in view of the positive proof against
Germany, and Germany backed down. President Wilson did not accept
the official lie concerning the sinking of the _Sussex_.
Incomprehensible as it is to the Teutonic mind, he attached greater
weight to the first-hand evidence of reliable eye-witnesses, plus
fragments of the torpedo which struck the vessel, than to the
sacred words of the German Foreign Office, which had the
impertinence to base its case on a sketch, or alleged sketch,
hastily made by a U-boat manipulator whose artistic temperament
should have led him to Munich rather than to Kiel. The crime and
the lie were so glaring that Germany once more backed down.

Germany lied about the Dutch liner _Tubantia_. As in the case of
the _Sussex_, the evidence of the fragments of torpedo was so
incontrovertible that Berlin had to admit that a German torpedo
sank the _Tubantia_. Indeed, one fragment contained the number of
the torpedo. During my travels in the Fatherland at that time I
found no doubt in the minds of those with whom I discussed the
matter that a German submarine sank the vessel, though many were of
the opinion that it was a mistake.

The Wilhelmstrasse is tenacious, however, and we awoke one morning
to read, what was probably its most remarkable excuse. To be sure,
a German torpedo sank the _Tubantia_, but it was not fired by the
Germans. The expert accountant who was in charge of the U-boat
learned upon consulting his books that h