e land, and were staffed with
absolutely untrained personnel--"German agents" were regularly
held responsible, and the anti-German Press, particularly the
_Providence Journal_, announced these accidents as "a clear
manifestation of the notorious German system of frightfulness."
Worse still, these papers instilled into their readers the firm
conviction that these crimes were an essential part of German
propaganda, and in their cartoons represented the German, more
particularly the German-American, as a bearded anarchist with a
bomb ready in his hand.
I myself was frequently libelled in this manner by the "Yellow
Press," and represented both by pen and pencil as the ringleader
and instigator of the so-called "conspiracies"; this accusation,
at first tentative, later grew increasingly clear and unmistakable.
The campaign of calumny in which even the more respectable Press
took its share, was, however, directed more particularly against
the Military Attache, Captain von Papen, and the Naval Attache,
Captain Boy-Ed, whose names were openly coupled with some of the
crimes which came before the American Courts of Justice. Both these
officers finally fell victims to this agitation, and had to be
recalled from America in December, 1915, in accordance with a request
from the United States Government. At the same time, in the annual
Presidential message to Congress, statutory measures were laid
down against Americans implicated in these conspiracies, or, as
the phrase ran, against all those "contriving schemes for the
destruction of the independence, and implicated in plots against
the neutrality, of the Government." Not until the declaration of war
against Germany, on April 2nd, 1917, did President Wilson venture
openly to accuse the official German representatives in America
of complicity in these designs, in the following words: "It is
unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts
of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously
near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the
country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support,
and even under the personal direction of official agents of the
Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United
States." Since then my own name has been mentioned as the supreme
head of the German "Conspiracy" in America, in the innumerable
propaganda pamphlets with which the official "Committee of Public
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