Part 7
In the Revolution Prussia had given refuge to American cruisers at Danzig, the port which, under the treaty we are helping to distrain from her German motherland, and had bribed Catherine the Great’s minister to prevent the sending of Russian troops to help England fight the American colonists; in the Civil War, besides giving their sons to the cause of the Union, the Germans had come to our rescue with their money when most needed. Was it astonishing that the so-called German element was stunned and staggered by the sudden reversion of sentiment from one of complete spiritual and national accord to one of vindictive malice by neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend?
It is perhaps true, as has been assumed, that certain influential members of the administration received an inordinate shock at the suggestion, from whatever source it came, that the German Americans would be likely to rise in revolution, and that a panic seized Washington at such a prospect, so that all measures were considered fair that would tend to put down the Germans and keep them in complete subjection by a system of terrorism. It is certain that no evidence has been disclosed by the endless investigations that have been going on which tended to establish the guilt of any member of the race as to plots against the government.
The Attorney General called for 200,000 volunteers to act as agents of the Department of Justice to report all disloyal talk or on the identity of persons suspected of being “pro-German.” To be known as having sympathized with the Central Powers, no matter what one’s action was after we entered the war, was to insure one’s footsteps and movements to be dogged by spies. No home was sacred, and the least indiscreet utterance was ground for a report, arrest and indictment under the so-called Espionage Act, which the New York “American” of February 24, 1917, described as “simply the infamous Alien and Sedition laws under another name,” passed in 1789, during the presidency of John Adams, which consigned the party that passed it to eternal oblivion.
Senator Cummings of Iowa said:
This measure is the most stringent and drastic law ever proposed to curb a free people in time of peace or war. The Government would have absolute power in war time to suppress newspapers and prevent debate in Congress. It might even be held a criminal offense for two citizens to discuss with each other questions of military policy.
The New York “Call” of July 2, 1919, described the effect of the law in no exaggerated language when it said:
Free discussion became a memory, and rubber stamp opinions became a badge of “patriotism.” Men and women were hunted out of their homes for having an idea higher than a rat. In some states a White Terror raged which deported whole families to adjoining states. Blood flowed. Men were mobbed and some lynched because they insisted on using their brains, instead of the brains of others. Public officials applauded, refused to interfere, and newspapers glorified the carousal of hate and terror.
Spying upon your friends became an honorable calling. The coward who hated his fellow man in packs became the popular “hero.” Papers and magazines had their mailing privileges withdrawn and some were suppressed. Libraries were repeatedly ransacked for “seditious” literature. The schools became a refuge of servile teachers, who taught what was told them, no matter how absurd it might be. Censorship barred the masses from the real news of the world. The “news” was manufactured in government bureaus and in the editorial offices of the daily newspapers. The theater and the “movie” became agencies for enforcing standardized opinions. The churches tied their creeds to the chariot of the imperialists and made their Christ speak for reaction. The lecture platform became defiled. The reversion back to the primitive permeated politics. The blackest enemies of human progress had the public ear; its friends were damned and assaulted. Historical works were “revised” or suppressed to make them square with the brutal mania of the hour.
All this was glorified in the name of “democracy,” in the name of “liberty,” in the name of “freedom.” A shadow fell upon the intellectual life of the nation. For the time being it was blotted out. All thinking had ceased, except for a courageous few, and they were mobbed or sent to the penitentiaries. Yet the editors, politicians, preachers, capitalists, bankers, exploiters, profiteers, patrioteers, “labor leaders,” all, looked upon their work and called it good. Missions went abroad to tell the European yokels of our “ideals.” The masses were intellectual prisoners, marching in the lockstep of capital’s chain gang.
There was a phase of this spy activity that went even beyond this: The invasion of the homes of German Americans whose sons were fighting in the ranks and dying in France--there were 17,000 of the latter. They were harried by ill-bred patriots of the sort we read of in the history of the French revolution, who, disregarding the fact that these parents were citizens, treated them as suspects and kept them under surveillance because they were not rushing out into the open and shouting “Huns.”
Many a case occurred in which a lad in the American army was fighting against his own brother in the ranks of the German army and his mother over here was harrassed by members of the National Security League, the American Defense Society or the American Protective League, while the father was cast out of employment for being of German blood.
Many a crippled boy returned from France to find that his family had been impoverished and persecuted by secret agents or self-constituted spies. In the breast of many a young German American were then and there planted the seeds of hate for his tormentors, and, sad to relate, doubts of the virtue of American liberty. He had given his blood to make the world safe for democracy and found his home in the grip of despotism.
There are those who account for the persecution of the German element by the reminder that the war offered the first opportunity for Southern-thinking Americans to repay the German element for its share in the Civil War in aiding the Union to win the final victory in 1865. Be that as it may, in the end this element was gloriously vindicated by ample proof of its loyalty, no matter what the test. Despite the most unrelenting enforcement of every phase of the objectionable act, mass meetings were held in twelve cities during Lincoln’s birthday in 1919, to protest against the law and demand its repeal. The meetings were called in the name of Lincoln, the liberator, but not by German Americans.
Reviewing the prosecutions under the Espionage Act, the Civil Liberties Bureau, 41 Union Square, which itself was repeatedly raided, on February 13, 1919, issued the following summary:
The bureau has had, since the beginning of the war, a standing order with a newspaper clipping company covering all references in the press of the United States to disloyalty, sedition, espionage and the Espionage law. As a result, we have the most illuminating record of cases which it has been possible to complete without access to the records of the Attorney General. We have no record of a single instance when a spy has been imprisoned under this law.
Furthermore, in the cases cited in the Attorney General’s report as typical of those prosecuted under the Espionage law, there is not one case in which the prisoner was convicted of being a paid German spy, or of even trying to find out military secrets. All the convictions which are reported arose under section 13 of the Penal Code, under which the maximum sentence is two years. So far as we have any record, cases of this nature which have arisen under the Espionage act have been terminated by the internment of the accused, without imprisonment. On the other hand, American citizens exercising (perhaps without discretion) the right of free speech in war time have been sentenced to as high as twenty years in the penitentiary. According to the data in our possession, about two-thirds of the convictions have been for remarks in private conversation. The remainder have been for statements made in public speeches and in literature publicly circulated.
The daily press, with the very rarest exceptions, was in accord with the mob and the spirit of the Espionage Act. If ever it was evident how little the German Americans had been taken into consideration by their fellow citizens, it became undeniably patent in the refusal of the press, though largely dependent on the support of this element, to cry a halt to the persecutions. Every man arrested on some charge was glaringly pictured in the character of a dangerous spy, and fanatical women were given much space in their columns for organized assaults on German toys and German music. The German people were described as moral lepers. The New York “Herald” advocated the hanging of German Americans to lamp posts. The New York “Sun,” late in October, 1918, soberly printed this:
Yet by not a few are we ominously told that the German is a man of like nature with ourselves and that as such we must be prepared to live with him after the war. This is not the truth; it is rather the most menacing lie upon the horizon of the conflict and its conclusion.... Scrutinized historically and presented boldly, the German cannot be but recognized as a distinctly separate and pathological human species. =He is not human in the sense that other men are human.=
Societies were formed for the Suppression of Everything German, and there exists at present in all parts of the United States a secret society pledged not to buy of any German American or to give employment to any member of that race.
The German Americans manifested an utterly helpless spirit in the situation. No uniform demand was formulated to be presented to Congress demanding the repeal of the Espionage Act after the excuse that called it into existence had ceased to exist, or calling on the authorities for protection. Some formed a society known as “The Friends of German Democracy,” under Mr. Franz Sigel, which adopted resolutions pledging complete and unreserved loyalty. It was rewarded with a letter from a woman heading an anti-German movement who subsequently was shown to be an English subject, in which the Friends of German Democracy were roundly told that “the only good German-American is a dead one.”
Another woman, the daughter of German parents, Mrs. William Jay, gained great notoriety by her campaign against German music, and was instrumental in stopping German plays, operas and symphonies in New York before and after the armistice had been signed, and also in sending many well-established German musicians into exile, or to an internment camp. Many, courting favor and recognition from persons having some social standing, seeing their own race utterly helpless in counteracting the feeling of contempt, joined with their detractors in order to remove all doubt as to their own loyalty.
In many States the teaching of the German language was prohibited by the legislatures. In New York City, though the Germans have a total vote of 1,250,000, including the women, they were unable to prevent--and made no attempt to prevent--an order forbidding the teaching of German or the introduction of new books of history in the schools in which their race is described as Huns and made responsible for every atrocity ascribed to it in the heat of war.
The only outstanding resistance to the spirit of Anglicising the country was recorded in New Jersey, where the German language was put under the ban in the Masonic lodges, and where John J. Plemenik, Master of Schiller Lodge, in Newark, refused to comply with the order of the Grand Lodge on the ground that for fifty years the lodge had worked in German, under the sanction of the Grand Lodge. Rather than submit to the edict of the Grand Lodge of the State the master walked out of the lodge room, followed by 200 Masons, some of them from English-speaking lodges. The example found a near parallel in one of the twenty-seven German lodges in New York City, one of them above 125 years old, after which an order extending the time for discontinuing the German language of the lodges was promptly issued. All the lodges were, however, unanimous in support of steps against obedience to the edict.
The New York Liederkranz Society, one of the largest German social organizations in the United States, cheered the late Col. Roosevelt to the echo in his attacks on their race. The New York “Times” of October 16, 1918, says that although all members of the club are of German descent, every statement made by Col. Roosevelt, and the other speakers, William Forster, president of the club, and Ludwig Nissen, chairman of the Liberty Loan Committee, were cheered again and again. Col. Roosevelt said there was room here for but one language, meaning, of course, the King’s English.
A few months later we read a dispatch from Philadelphia (New York “Tribune,” April 26, 1919): “President Wilson’s attitude on the Fiume situation has so aroused Italians in this city that they will not hold their Victory Liberty Loan parade.... Leaders here fear that the attitude of the Italians toward President Wilson will result in cutting down their subscriptions to the loan.”
Before one Justice Cropsey, of the Queens County Supreme Court, ten Germans out of eleven who applied for citizenship one day in May, 1919, six months after the signing of the armistice, had their petitions denied. A girl who was earning her living as a stenographer was included in the list because she had not invested in the first two Liberty loans, though she was unemployed at the time. The learned Justice dismissed her petition with the statement: “You get the benefit of this country and increase your pay through its entrance into the war, and yet you will not support it.”
Out of 215 staff officers named among the personnel of the new general staff of the army, announced October 3, 1918, only nine bore German names. Of the service men aboard an American ship destroyed in action during the war, 36 per cent. bore German names. The highest distinction conferred on any American aviator during the active fighting was given to Capt. Edward V. Rickenbacker, popularly called “the American Ace of Aces,” of Columbus, Ohio.
Any one resisting the current of hatred and abuse, as Henry Ford, whose contribution to the success of the American army is certainly incontestible, was exposed to the same attacks as those directly of German descent who were everywhere summoned before boards of inquisition; a headline in the “Evening Sun” of July 2, 1919, runs like this: “Ford Kept 500 Pro-Germans--Staff Men Say They Worked at Plant During the War--Motor Defects Were Passed--Didn’t Try to Correct Errors.”
That citizens of German origin were assigned a status independent of other citizens is apparent from a statement filed with the United States Senate by Mr. George A. Schreiner, the war correspondent of the Associated Press, who, upon his return here for a visit, was refused a passport for two years to go back to his post of duty. He writes:
I will terminate my report with a few remarks that seem greatly in order. These remarks concern the status of the naturalized citizen. On the very report issued to me on August 30, 1919, there appears personal data denouncing me which was formerly not placed on passports, =and which during the last two years has done much injury to naturalized citizens=. I refer to the fact that in the lower left-hand corner of the passport is noted the citizen’s place of birth and former nationality. As things are constituted and as they have been for some time, the notice referred to constitutes a discrimination against citizens of the United States of immigrant origin. The passport is given to the citizen as a means to identify himself as a citizen of the United States, =not as signal to those hostile to his racials elsewhere, that the Government of the United States sees a distinction between native and those of foreign birth=.... The elimination of all personal data from the passport would be the first step on the part of the Government in serving notice upon foreign governments that there is but one class of citizens in the United States, and that all of them are equally entitled to protection, as was the stand taken by the Senate when some years ago it abrogated the commercial treaty with the Imperial Russian Government, because that government had refused to recognize fully the American passports given to citizens of the United States of Jewish origin.
Men in the Department of State have thought it presumptuous on my part that I should claim the rights of a native-born citizen, and do that in the manner in which I was forced to do it. To that I will reply that no other avenue was open. In the first place, =I am either a citizen of the United States in every sense of the word, and in every duty and right, or I am not=. So long as there is not set up, let me say, immigrant citizens, or whatever designation may be deemed proper, which class a person can join, fully cognizant of what he or she is doing, the citizen admitted on the basis of full citizenship, the reservation of the presidency duly considered, would show his utter unfitness for his national status did he relinquish, in the least degree, his rights and guarantees, as constitutionally fixed and legally defined.
One German American army officer was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor at Leavenworth for having written a letter to the War Department, declaring that as his sympathies for Germany did not fit him to act a soldier in the fighting line, he desired to resign. He was nevertheless sent to France in the hope that it “would cause his sense of propriety to reassert itself.” Later, when Pershing reported that there had been no change, he was sent back to the United States for trial, with the above result. The “Times” said the papers and documents seized in his home would not be published. “These papers are said to show that the convicted man was an active friend of Germany in this country (his wife was born there), and that in the early part of the war he subscribed to one of the German war loans, paying his subscription in installments.” This was the extent of the proof, so far as known. Another officer of German descent could not be confirmed when his name was sent in for promotion to brigadier general.
One of the most sensational trials was that against Albert Paul Fricke, in New York, charged with high treason. Delancey Nicol, a famous attorney, was specially engaged to prosecute the case. Fricke was acquitted by a jury. This result was noticed in an obscure part of the papers, whereas Fricke’s arrest, indictment and the details of the case at many stages was spread under screaming headlines invariably. Paul C. H. Hennig, holding a responsible position as superintendent in the E. W. Bliss Co. plant in Brooklyn, was announced to have been caught red-handed tampering with the gyroscopes for torpedoes manufactured by the company for the Government. It was described as a plot so to manipulate the gyroscope as to reverse the course of the torpedo and discharge it against the vessel from which it was released, thus blowing the ship out of the water. At the trial it was testified that Hennig could not have accomplished any such purpose had he desired, as the torpedoes passed through numerous other hands after leaving his and were carefully inspected at every stage of their manufacture. He was acquitted by a jury, but the trial had ruined him financially.
Two years before the war, a Lutheran minister, Rev. Jaeger, was assassinated in his home in Indiana for being pro-German. On April 5, 1918, Robert B. Prager was lynched by a mob of boys and drunken men at Collinsville, Illinois, for being a German. The acquittal of the men was received with public jubilation, bon fires and concert by a Naval Reserve band. At West Frankfort, Ill., according to a press dispatch of March 25, 1918, “500 men seized Mrs. Frances Bergen, a woman of Bohemian birth, from municipal officers, rode her on a rail through the main street of the town, and compelled her to wave the American flag throughout the demonstration. At frequent intervals the procession paused while Mrs. Bergen was compelled to shout praise for President Wilson.”
A law evidently designed to hurt citizens of German descent was passed in Chicago, and a dispatch of March 26, 1918, gleefully announced that “six thousand aliens will lose their rights to conduct business in Chicago, May 1, when the ordinance passed by the City Council refusing licenses to all persons not United States citizens takes effect. Brewers, saloon keepers, restaurant keepers, tailors, bakers, junk dealers and others for whom a license from the city is required will be affected by the new law.” In this manner judges were forced from the bench and even compelled to fly for their lives, teachers were ousted out of their places, and professors frozen out of their professorships in universities. Citizens to the number of thousands were made outcasts in the country of their birth or adoption, and they were asking themselves “why?” without getting an answer. The German plotters spoken of by leading officials of the government as menacing the safety of the government, had not materialized; the danger of the “hyphen” had been exaggerated.
Under the extraordinary power given to irresponsible organizations and individuals by the repressive legislation enacted by Congress, the abuses which ensued were harrowing to any one with the least conscious regard for the institutions of his country. In New York a boy was sentenced to three months in jail for circulating a leaflet containing extracts from the Declaration of Independence, emphasis being laid on the fact by the court that certain passages, construed to be an incitement to sedition, were printed in black type. An appeal to a higher court fortunately nullified the verdict. A woman was knocked down in the streets of New York by a man for speaking German, and the court discharged the brute without a reprimand. From all parts of the country reports of outrages against citizens with German names were of daily occurrence. Men were carried off by groups of hooligans, stripped and whipped, or tarred and feathered. The same individuals who had themselves expressed sympathy for the cause of the Central Powers in conversations with their neighbors, suddenly turned informers, and professed to be proud of their betrayal of confidence. Everywhere men were indicted for treason who on trial were acquitted by the juries who heard their cases.
Not until the mob spirit everywhere assumed such a menacing aspect that no citizen dared trust his own friend, and bloodshed and violence began to run rampant, came any utterance from administration sources designed to check the reign of terror, and then the warnings were couched in such conservative language that they could be applied as a rebuke only to extreme cases of fanatical madness.
Not only was the press doing yeoman’s duty in the suppression of human rights, but the pulpit, the bar and the theaters and film companies combined to lash the ignorant into a state of maniacal fury and incited them to further outrages. A few judges, here and there, stood out in bold relief for their attitude in defense of constitutional government and the right of the individual under the same.