ny for business or professional reasons,
but, as the anti-American campaign and the cry that America was not
neutral by permitting supplies to be shipped to the Allies became more
extensive, the public became less charitable. Previously a neutral in
Germany could be either pro-German, pro-Ally or neutral. Now, however,
it was impossible to be neutral, especially if one were an American,
because the very statement that one was an American carried with it the
implication that one was anti-German. The American colony itself became
divided. There was the pro-American group and the pro-German government
group. The former was centred at the American Embassy. The latter was
inspired by the German-Americans who had lived in Germany most of their
lives and by other sympathetic Americans who came from the United States.
Meanwhile there were printed in German newspapers many leading articles
and interviews from the American press attacking President Wilson, and
any one sympathising with the President, even Ambassador Gerard, became
automatically "Deutschfeidlich."

As the submarine warfare became more and more a critical issue German
feeling towards the United States changed. I found that men who were
openly professing their friendship for the United States were secretly
doing everything within their power to intimidate America. The
Government began to feel as if the American factories which were
supplying the Allies were as much subject to attack as similar factories
in Allied countries. I recall one time learning at the American Embassy
that a man named Wulf von Igel had asked Ambassador Gerard for a safe
conduct, on the ground that he was going to the United States to try and
have condensed milk shipped to Germany for the children. Mr. Gerard
refused to ask Washington to grant this man a safe conduct. I did not
learn until several months afterwards that Herr von Igel had been asked
to go to the United States by Under Secretary of State Zimmermann for one
of two purposes, either he was to purchase a controlling interest in the
Du Pont Powder Mills no matter what that cost, or he was to stir up
dissatisfaction in Mexico. Zimmermann gave him a card of introduction to
Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador in Washington, and told him
that the German Embassy would supply him with all necessary funds.

Carrying out the German idea that it was right to harm or destroy
American property which was directly or indirectly