ed diplomat published the story of his diplomatic career he
doubtless thought that the volume prepared for his children and
grandchildren and friends was forever buried in the German language. It
never even occurred to the Councillor of the Ambassador, von Holleben,
that the book would ever fall into the hands of any American. The very
fact that an American author found the volume in a second-hand
bookstore of Vienna in 1914 and translated the three chapters on the
Kaiser's representatives in the United States and the organization of
the German-American League, must have roused the Foreign Department in
Berlin to the highest point of anger.

Children and diplomats oftentimes unconsciously betray the most
important secrets. No volume ever published could possibly have revealed
matters of greater moment to Germany than this volume of reminiscences
that sets forth the propaganda carried on in the United States by
Ambassador von Holleben and his legal councillor for the furthering of
the Pan-German Empire scheme.

No scholar can doubt the right of this old diplomat to speak. The Kaiser
personally vouched for him by giving him this important duty. The
honours bestowed at the end of his long diplomatic career tell their own
story. Every page breathes sincerity and truthfulness. No one who reads
this volume can doubt that this author gave the exact facts--facts well
known to his German friends--in the recollections of his diplomatic
career.

This diplomat tells us plainly that von Holleben and himself were sent
to the United States specially charged with the task of reuniting
Germans who were naturalized in America with the German Empire.

It was their duty to organize secret German-American societies in every
great city like New York and Brooklyn, Chicago and Milwaukee, Cincinnati
and St. Louis, and to present to these societies a German flag sent from
the hands of the Kaiser himself.

Their work, says the author, was based upon the fact that the Kaiser had
passed a law restoring full citizenship in Germany to those Germans who
had become naturalized citizens of the United States. When, therefore,
these members of the German-American League formally accepted their
restored citizenship their first duty was to the Fatherland and the
Kaiser and their second duty to the United States and its Government.
Indeed, this lawyer and author actually goes so far as to give extracts
from von Holleben's speech before the German-Americ