I was appointed United States Consul to Aix la Chapelle, Germany, four years after those articles appeared.  My appointment came from President Roosevelt, and was confirmed by the United States Senate.  When I arrived in Germany I found I was United States Consul so far as the United States Government was concerned, but I was put off in the matter of my exequatur (certificate of authority) from the government to which I was accredited; and without an exequatur, I could not act.  I was kept cooling my heels in the consulate several months before I found out what was the matter.  My newspaper articles describing what the Germans had done in Samoa, published four years earlier, were being held against me.  My presence in Germany was not desired.

I had crossed the Atlantic with Prince Henry, the Kaiser’s brother and Admiral of the German Navy, in February, 1901, when the Prince brought his party of a dozen or so militarists to this country to “further cement the amity and good will” existing between the great republic and the great empire.  It later developed that this was a well planned operation in German propaganda.  As a representative of the Associated Press, I had written of it.  That was just after I had written the Samoan articles.

Speck von Sternberg was the German Ambassador to Washington.  He was in Paris.  I went there to see him and ascertain, if I could, why my exequatur was withheld.  The Government at Washington could get no information on the subject.  The whole affair was clothed in mystery.

After some conversation I suggested to Ambassador von Sternberg that perhaps the foreign office at Berlin was withholding the document because of my writings on German colonial matters.  Then it came out—­my guess was true.  Some underlings in the foreign office had the case in charge.  The Ambassador suggested that as I knew Prince Henry, I would better write him at Kiel.  I did this, with the result that the obstacle was removed and the exequatur issued.

WHY WE WENT TO WAR

German Propaganda in the United States and Mexico—­Sinking of the Lusitania—­Unrestricted Submarine Warfare.

WHY WE WENT TO WAR

During two years preceding our entrance upon war, Germany had been carrying on open warfare against us, within our own borders.  For more than thirty years Germany’s policy of preparatory penetration had been in course.  As we know now, every country, all round the globe, but especially the United States in North America and Brazil and Venezuela in South America, had been filled with Germans, ostensibly settlers, business men and followers of the higher professions, but for the greater part agents of Germany, in continuous contact with Potsdam and under Potsdam direction.  It was the business of these imported Germans to foster the German idea, exalt Germany’s leadership in military power and in science and the arts, impress their language, their literature, music and customs upon our people, and to do all those things which might work for the day when Germany, having faked a partnership with Almighty God, should reach out for world dominion.