The facts in this as in the other instances which I have narrated, are in the possession of the State Department at Washington.

When the German Government began to fear that the United States might some day join the Allies if the submarine campaign was renewed, it campaigned by threatening the United States with a Russian-Japanese-German alliance after the war against England and the United States.  These threats were not disguised.  Ambassador Gerard was informed, indirectly and unofficially of course, by German financiers and members of the Reichstag that Germany “would be forced” to make such an alliance if the United States ever joined the Allies.  As was shown later by the instructions of Secretary of State Zimmermann to the German Minister in Mexico City, Germany has not only not given up that idea, but Germany now looks forward to Mexico as the fourth member of the league.

As Germany became more and more suspicious of Americans in Germany, who were not openly pro-German, she made them suffer when they crossed the German frontier to go to neutral countries.  The German military authorities, at border towns such as Warnemuende and Bentheim, took a dislike to American women who were going to Holland or Denmark, and especially to the wives of U. S. consular officials.  One time when I was going from Berlin to Copenhagen I learned from the husband of one of the women examined at the border what the authorities had done to her.  I saw her before and after the ordeal and when I heard of what an atrocious examination they had made I understood why she was in bed ten days afterward and under the constant care of physicians.  Knowing what German military officers and German women detectives had done in some of the invaded countries, one does not need to know the details of these insults.  It is sufficient to state that after the wives of several American officials and other prominent American residents of Berlin had been treated in this manner that the State Department wrote a vigorous and defiant note to Germany stating that unless the practice was immediately discontinued the United States would give up the oversight of all German interests in Allied countries.  The ultimatum had the desired effect.  The German Government replied that while the order of the General Staff could not be changed it would be waived in practice.

No matter who the American is, who admired Germany, or, who respected Germany, or, who sympathised with Germany as she was before, or, at the beginning of the war, no American can support this Germany which I have just described, against his own country.  The Germany of 1913, which was admired and respected by the scientific, educational and business world; the Germany of 1913 which had no poor, which took better care of its workmen than any nation in the world; the nation, which was considered in the advance of all countries in dealing with economic and industrial problems, no longer exists.  The Germany which