Stochod River we were invited to dinner by Colonel von Luck. I sat
opposite the colonel, who was in charge of the reorganisation here.
Throughout the meal he made so many insulting remarks that the officer
who was our escort had to change the trend of the conversation. Before
he did so the colonel said:

"Tell me, do they insult you in Berlin like this?"

I replied that I seldom encountered such antagonism in Berlin; that it
was chiefly the army which was anti-American.

"Well, that's the difference between the diplomats and the army. If
the army was running the government we would probably have had war with
America a long time ago," he concluded, smiling sarcastically.

Shortly after the sinking of the _Lusitania_ the naval propaganda
bureau had bronze medals cast and placed on sale at souvenir shops
throughout Germany. Ambassador Gerard received one day, in exchanging
some money, a fifty mark bill, with the words stamped in purple ink
across the face:

"God punish England and America." For some weeks this rubber stamp was
used very effectively.

The Navy Department realised, too, that another way to attack America
and especially Americans in Berlin, was to arouse the suspicion that
every one who spoke English was an enemy. The result was that most
Americans had to be exceedingly careful not to talk aloud in public
places. The American correspondents were even warned at the General
Staff not to speak English at the front. Some of the correspondents
who did not speak German were not taken to the battle areas because the
Foreign Office desired to avoid insults.

The year and a half between the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and the
severance of diplomatic relations was a period of terror for most
Americans in Germany. Only those who were so sympathetic with Germany
that they were anti-American found it pleasant to live there. One day
one of the American girls employed in the confidential file room of the
American Embassy was slapped in the face until she cried, by a German
in civilian clothes, because she was speaking English in the subway.
At another time the wife of a prominent American business man was spit
upon and chased out of a public bus because she was speaking English.
Then a group of women chased her down the street. Another American
woman was stabbed by a soldier when she was walking on Friedrichstrasse
with a friend because she was speaking English. When the State
Department instructed Ambas