CHAPTER XVIIIAMERICA GOES TO WAR

Paul Bolo Pacha

Paul Bolo Pacha (on the right)

Herr von Jagow felt that even at that date peace with any belligerent was worth $1,700,000. He cabled back:

"No. 150, February twenty-ninth."Answer to telegram No. 679:"Agree to the loan, but only if peace action seems to you a really serious project, as the provision of money in New York is for us at present extraordinarily difficult. If the enemy country is Russia have nothing to do with the business, as the sum of money is too small to haveany serious effect in that country. So too in the case of Italy, for it would not be worth while, to spend so much."(Signed)Jagow."

"No. 150, February twenty-ninth.

"Answer to telegram No. 679:

"Agree to the loan, but only if peace action seems to you a really serious project, as the provision of money in New York is for us at present extraordinarily difficult. If the enemy country is Russia have nothing to do with the business, as the sum of money is too small to haveany serious effect in that country. So too in the case of Italy, for it would not be worth while, to spend so much.

"(Signed)Jagow."

The plan approved, the next step was to pay Bolo. Bernstorff's cablegram of March 5, Number 685, pleaded for the money.

"Please instruct Deutsches Bank to hold 9,000,000 marks at disposal of Hugo Schmidt. The affair is very promising. Further particulars follow."

The next day Hugo Schmidt, American representative of the Deutsches Bank, sent the following wireless through the station at Sayville to the Deutsches Bank Direktion, Berlin:

"Communicate with William Foxley (the Foreign Office) and telegraph whether he has placed money at my disposal for Charles Gladhill (Count von Bernstorff)."

The reply came three days later. It read:

"Replying your cable about Charles Gladhill (von Bernstorff) Fred Hooven (the Guaranty Trust Company of New York) will receive money for our account. You may dispose according to our letter of November 24, 1914, to Fred Hooven."

On March 11, Schmidt, who was working night and day to consummate the deal, wirelessed again to Berlin:

"Your wireless received. Paid Charles Gladhill (von Bernstorff) $500 (which signified $500,000) through Fred Hooven (the Guaranty Trust Company). Gladhill requires further $1,100 ($1,100,000) which shall pay gradually."

Bolo's affairs were promising well. He had brought with him from Paris a letter of introduction to the New York manager of the Royal Bank of Canada, stating that he was the publisher ofLe Journal, which required a large quantity of news print paper every day, and that he had been commissioned by all of the other large newspaper publishers in Paris to arrange a contract for 20,000 tons monthly. Bolo confirmed his intention to perform this mission when he deposited in the Royal Bank of Canada $500,000 which Hugo Schmidt had drawn from the German government deposits in the National Park Bank and had given to Pavenstedt, who in turn checked it over to the French traitor. It was not the purchase of print paper which interested him, however, but the perversion, through purchase, of as many French newspapers as he could lay his slimy hands on; once in his possession, they could be made to carry out a sinister propaganda for a separate peace between France and Germany. Germany had offered, through Abbas Hilmi, to yieldAlsace-Lorraine in return for certain French colonies, and to evacuate the occupied portions of French soil, and by painting such a settlement in bright colors to the people of France Bolo could have served Germany's ends effectively either by actually accomplishing some such settlement, or by weakening the morale which was so largely responsible for holding the German drive against Verdun, then in the first stages of its fury.

On March 17, the Deutsches Bank wirelessed to Schmidt:

"You may dispose on Fred Hooven (the Guaranty Trust Company) on behalf Charles Gladhill (von Bernstorff) $1,700 (which meant $1,700,000)."

Bolo had his million and three-quarters, which he had asked. He had made disposition of it through the Royal Bank, setting a portion aside to his wife's credit, depositing another portion to the credit of Senator Charles Humbert (part-owner with Bolo ofLe Journal) and holding a reserve of a million dollars in the Royal Bank subject to his call. Then he took ship for France.

His final arrangements with Pavenstedt prompted von Bernstorff to send the following message on March 20 to the Foreign Office:

"No. 692, March 20."With reference to telegram No. 685 please advise ourMinister in Berne that some one will call on him who will give him the password Sanct Regis who wished to establish relations with the Foreign Office. Intermediary further requests that influence may be brought to bear in France so far as possible in silence so that things may not be spoiled by German approval."(Signed)Bernstorff."

"No. 692, March 20.

"With reference to telegram No. 685 please advise ourMinister in Berne that some one will call on him who will give him the password Sanct Regis who wished to establish relations with the Foreign Office. Intermediary further requests that influence may be brought to bear in France so far as possible in silence so that things may not be spoiled by German approval.

"(Signed)Bernstorff."

Von Bernstorff had been cautious enough during Bolo's sojourn in the United States to negotiate with him only through Pavenstedt, in order that the Embassy might not be compromised in an exceedingly hazardous undertaking if any suggestion of Bolo's real designs leaked out. He was fully prepared in such an event to repudiate Pavenstedt, and to state honestly that he had never seen or heard of Bolo, for until the day before he left, when Pavenstedt asked the Ambassador for the telegram of introduction quoted above, Bernstorff did not know Bolo's name. That he did know it then, and that he discussed Bolo with Berlin during April and May is evident from the following cable, sent from the Foreign Secretary to the Embassy at Washington on May 31:

"Number 206. May 31st. The person announced in telegram 692 of March 20th has not yet reported himself at the Legation at Berne. Is there any more news on your side of Bolo?"Jagow."

"Number 206. May 31st. The person announced in telegram 692 of March 20th has not yet reported himself at the Legation at Berne. Is there any more news on your side of Bolo?

"Jagow."

There was not, although Bolo was keeping the cables hot with messages directing the further transfer of the nest-egg of $1,700,000 which he had acquired in his month in New York. He wanted the money credited to the account of Senator Humbert in J. P. Morgan & Co., then through Morgan, Harjes & Co. of Paris he directed the remittance of his funds to Paris, then cancelled those instructions and directed that his million be credited to him in Perrier & Cie., in which he was interested. What twists and turns of fate occasioned the juggling of these funds after he returned to France is not known, but certainly no bag of plunder ever passed through more artful manipulation. The explanation of its hectic adventures may lie in the fact that the spectacle of Bolo, commissioned to go to the United States to spend money for news print, and returning with nearly two millions of dollars, would have interested the French police.

For more than a year he covered his tracks. Shortly after his return theBonnet Rouge, the declining publication which served ex-Premier Joseph Caillaux as mouthpiece, began to attract attention for its discussion of peace propaganda. A strain of pessimism over the conduct of the war began to make itself apparent in other journals. The arrest of Duval and Almereydaof theBonnet Rougedisclosed certain of Bolo's activities and a search of his house in February revealed papers covering certain of his financial transactions in America. The United States was requested to investigate, and refused, as the affair was considered political, and it was not until we joined France in the war that the request was repeated, this time with better success.

Attorney-General Merton Lewis of New York State conducted an investigation which revealed every step of Bolo's operations in New York. His search of the records of the banks involved indicated that a fund of some $50,000,000 in cash and negotiable securities lay on deposit in America which the Deutsches Bank could place at the disposal of von Bernstorff and his fellow conspirators at any time for any purpose, and which was adequate as a reserve for any enterprise which might present itself. The evidence against Bolo was forwarded to Paris, and he was arrested. On October 4, 1917, Secretary Lansing made public the correspondence which the State Department had intercepted.

The French public became hysterically interested in the case. Senator Humbert promptly refunded the 5,500,000 francs which he had received from Bolo for 1,600 shares inLe Journal. Almereyda of theBonnet Rougecommittedsuicide in prison; his death dragged Malvy, Minister of the Interior under Ribot, out of office under suspicion of trading with the enemy; the editor of a Paris financial paper was imprisoned on the same charge; "Boloism" became a generic term, and the French government, feeling a growing restlessness on the part of the public, encouraged the new diversion of spy-hunting which resulted in the exposure of negotiations between Caillaux and German representatives in Buenos Aires. Russia had been dissolved by similar German propaganda, Italy, after vigorous advances into Italia Irridenta, had had her military resistance sapped by another such campaign as Bolo proposed for France, and had retreated to the Po valley; the sum total of "Boloism" during the autumn and winter of 1917-1918 was an increased conviction on the part of the Allied peoples that the line must be held more firmly than ever, while the rear was combed for prominent traitors.

Thus, a year before she entered war, the United States supplied the scene of one of the outstanding intrigues of the war. How voluble was Adolph Pavenstedt in confessing his services as intermediary for the Kaiser; Pavenstedt was interned in an American prison camp ... a rather comfortable camp. Hugo Schmidt, who on his owntestimony was the accredited manipulator of enormous sums for the German government, was ingenuous to a degree in his denial of any knowledge of what the money paid Bolo was to be used for; Schmidt was interned. Bolo was shot.

Revolution in India, a battle royal on the Central American isthmus, a revolution in Mexico, uprisings in the West Indies, a separate peace in France—these were ambitious undertakings. For three years they were cleared through Washington, D. C. We must accept that fact not alone with the natural feeling of chagrin which it evokes, but with an eye to the future. We should congratulate our smug selves that our country was concerned only with the processes of these intrigues, and was not subject directly to their results. And then we Americans should ask ourselves whether it is not logical that, our country having served as the most fertile ground for German demoralization of other nations, we should be on our guard for a similar plot against ourselves.

That plot will not come noisily, obviously. It will be no crude effort to suggest that "American troops are suffering at the hands of the French high command." It will not be phrased in terms which reek of the Wilhelmstrasse—earnest, plodding, grotesque German polysyllables. TheGerman knows that an army must depend upon the hearts of its people, and he reasons: "I shall attack the hearts of the people, and I believe that if it is a good principle to attack my enemy from the rear through his people, it is also a good principle to attack his people from the rear. The heart is as near the back as it is the front,nicht wahr?" The plot will seem, in its early stages, part and parcel of our daily life and concern; we shall not see the German hand in it; the hand will be so concealed as not even to excite the enthusiasm of the German-American, often a good danger-signal. It will involve institutions and individuals whom we have trusted, and we shall take sides in the controversy, and we shall grow violently pro-this and anti-that. We shall grow sick of the wretchedness of affairs, perhaps, and we shall lose heart. That is precisely what Germany most desires. That is what Germany is striving for. That is why the nobility of our citizenship carries with it the obligation of vigilance. It is in the hope that each one of us Americans may learn how Germany works abroad, that we may be better prepared for her next step here, that this narrative has been written.

Bernstorff's request for bribe-money—The President on German spies—Interned ships seized—Enemy aliens—Interning German agents—The water-front and finger-print regulations—Pro-German acts since April, 1917—A warning and a prophecy.

On January 22, 1917, President Wilson set forth to the Senate of the United States his ideas of the steps necessary to secure world peace. On the same day Count von Bernstorff sent his Foreign Office this message:

"I request authority to pay out up to $50,000 (Fifty thousand dollars) in order, as on former occasions, to influence Congress through the organization you know of, which perhaps can prevent war. I am beginning in the meantime to act accordingly. In the above circumstance a public official German declaration in favor of Ireland is highly desirable in order to gain the support of Irish influence here."

The money did not have the desired soothing effect. Nine days later Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare as her immediatefuture policy and the head of the German spy system in America received his passports for return to Germany. He was succeeded by the head of the German spy system in America.

The real name of this successor is not known to the authorities at this date. If it were he would be arrested, and punished according to whatever specific crime he had committed against a set of American statutes created for conditions of peace. Then, with the head of the German spy system in America in prison, he would be succeeded, as Bernstorff was, by the head of the German spy system in America.

And so this absurd progression would go on, until finally there would be no more spies to head the system on the American front. How much the system would be able to accomplish during the painstaking pursuit and capture of its successive heads would depend upon America's swiftness in pursuit and capture. Who the individual in authority over the system is, and what is his structure of organization, cannot be answered here. But it is vitally necessary for every citizen who has the free existence of this republic at heart to decide, basing his judgment on certain events since the declaration of war, what measure of accomplishment the German spy system shall have, and what it has already effectedagainst a nation with which it is now openly and frankly at war.

Let him first recall that in his Flag Day speech of June 14, 1916, President Wilson said in part:

"There is disloyalty in the United States, and it must be absolutely crushed. It proceeds from a minority, a very small minority, but a very active and subtle minority.... If you could have gone with me through the space of the last two years and could have felt the subtle impact of intrigue and sedition, and have realized with me that those to whom you have intrusted authority are trustees not only of the power but also of the very spirit and purpose of the United States, you would realize with me the solemnity with which I look upon the sublime symbol of our unity and power."

Let him then refer to the President's Flag Day address of one year later (quoted at the beginning of the book). With those admirable expressions in mind, let him recapitulate the activities of German sympathizers or agents since February, 1917.

Ninety-one vessels flying the German flag were in American harbors. Their displacement totalled nearly six hundred thousand tons—the equivalent of a fleet of seventy-five of the cargo carriers on which the United States later beganconstruction to offset the submarine. Months in advance of the severance of diplomatic relations, orders had been issued from the Embassy to the masters of all these vessels in case of war between Germany and the United States to cripple the ships. With the break in relations imminent, German agents slipped aboard the vessels and gave the word: the great majority of the ninety-one ships were then put out of commission by the 368 officers and 826 men aboard. The damage was performed with crowbars and axes. Vital parts had been chalk-marked weeks in advance, so that the destruction might be effected swiftly: delicate mechanisms were mashed beyond recognition, important parts removed and smuggled ashore or dropped overboard, cylinders cracked, emery dust introduced in the bearings of the engines, pistons battered out of shape, and the machinery of the ships generally destroyed as only skilled engineers could have destroyed them. Out of thirty ships in New York harbor, thirty ships were damaged—among them the liners,Vaterland, of 54,000 tons, theGeorge Washington, of 25,000 tons, theKaiser Wilhelm, thePresident Lincoln, and thePresident Grant, of about 20,000 tons each. In the harbor of Charleston, S. C., lay theLiebenfels, of 4,525 tons; her crew, led by Captain Johann Klattenhoff, scuttled heron February 1, in the navigating channel of Charleston Harbor; Klattenhoff, with Paul Wierse, a Charleston newspaper man, and eight of theLiebenfels'crew were tried and convicted of the crime, fined and sentenced to periods averaging a year in Atlanta. The discovery of the damage forced the Government to take over the vessels at once. The Department of Justice hastened on February 2 to notify all of its deputies "to take prompt measures against the attempt at destruction or sinking or escape of such ships by their crews" which those crews had already done; and the customs authorities who boarded the ships in San Francisco, Honolulu, New York, Boston, Manila, and every other American port came ashore with rueful countenances. The combined damage served to tie the vessels up for at least six months more, and to require expensive repair. To return to the comparison: a fleet of seventy-five 8,000 ton cargo vessels, such as have since been built, would have been able to make, during those six months, at least four round trips to France each, or 300 voyages.

When the German fleet put into neutral American ports of refuge in 1914 the personnel of its ships totalled 476 officers and 4,980 men. When the ships were seized in 1917, there were 368 officers and 826 men aboard. Of those who hadbeen discharged or allowed indefinite shore leave a considerable number were active German agents, by far the great majority were German citizens, and the United States was on the horns of a dilemma: either each of the sailors ashore must be watched on suspicion, or else each was free to go about the country as he pleased. Thus more than 4,000 potential secret agents from an active auxiliary arm of the German navy were dumped on the hospitality which our neutrality entailed. When war was declared those men came within the troublesome problem of the status of the enemy alien.

What was an enemy alien? The United States, on April 6, declared war against Germany. "Meanwhile," reads the report of the Attorney-General for 1917, "prior to the passage of the joint resolution of Congress of April 6, 1917, elaborate preparation was made for the arrest of upward of 63 alien enemies whom past investigation had shown to constitute a danger to the peace and safety of the United States if allowed to remain at large." These "alien enemies" were male Germans. Not Austrians, for the United States did not go to war with Austria until December 7. Not Bulgars, nor Turks, for the United States has not declared war upon Bulgaria or Turkey. Not female Germans, in theface of the full knowledge of the predilections of Bernstorff, Boy-Ed, and von Papen for employing women in espionage. Of the thousands of Germans in the United States whose sympathies were presently to be demonstrated in numerous ways against the successful prosecution of America's war, sixty-three had been deemed worthy of arrest. By June 30 this number had risen to 295, and by October 30 to 895. "Some of those, interned," continues the report, "have been paroled with the necessary bonds and restrictions." Although the United States went to war on April 6, Karl Heynen, who managed the Bridgeport Projectile Company for Bernstorff and Albert, and who had previously earned the good will of the United States by gun-running in Mexico, was not arrested until July 6, in his offices in the Hamburg-American Line at 45 Broadway. At the same time F. A. Borgemeister, former adviser to Dr. Albert, and latterly Heynen's lieutenant, was arrested. Both were interned at Fort Oglethorpe and during December, Borgemeister was allowed three weeks' liberty on parole. Rudolph Hecht, confidant of Dr. Albert, who had sold German war loan bonds for the Kaiser, and who had also been interned, was released for a like period of liberty in December. G. B. Kulenkampf, whohad secured false manifest papers for the supply-shipBerwindin August, 1914, was arrested on May 28, 1918, more than one year after America had entered the war; on the same day Robert J. Oberfohren, a statistician employed by the Hamburg-American, was arrested and in his room were captured compiled statistics covering the exports of munitions from the United States during the two years past: Oberfohren said he expected to turn the figures in to the University of Munich after the war.

Bernstorff himself left an able alien enemy in the Swiss Legation in Washington. He was Heinrich Schaffhausen, and had been one of the brightest attachés of the German Embassy. As a member for three months of the Swiss Legation he might readily have sent (and no doubt did send) information of military value to his own people in code, under protection of the Swiss seal. The State Department on July 6 ordered his deportation. Adolph Pavenstedt was arrested on January 22, 1918, in the Adirondacks, after having enjoyed nine months' immunity; Otto Julius Merkle was not interned until December 7; Gupta, the Hindu, was finally caught in New York in 1917, gave bail, and escaped; Dr. John Ferrari, alias F. W. Hiller, a German officer who had escaped from a British detention campin India and had joined the German intrigue colony, was interned in January, 1918; Baron Gustave von Hasperg was arrested only after he had displayed undue interest in the National Army cantonment at Upton in the same month; Franz Rosenberg, a wealthy German importer, convicted in 1915 of having attempted to smuggle rubber in cotton bales into Germany, and fined $500 for that offense, was allowed at liberty until February 9, 1918; in a round-up which took place in January, 1918, the Federal authorities collected such celebrities as Hugo Schmidt, Frederick Stallforth, and Baron George von Seebeck (the son of General von Seebeck, commander of the Tenth Corps of the German army).

The cases cited are picked at random out of a mass. They illustrate the breathing periods given to Germans who had been active under Bernstorff in disturbing America's peace and defying her laws. They serve also to illustrate the contrast between the methods employed by the United States, and those adopted by her Allies, from whom she has taken other lessons in the business of warfare. France gave alien enemies forty-eight hours in which to leave the soil of the country, and any such person found at large after that date was to be interned in a detention camp. To have interned all ofthe Germans in the United States would have been impossible and the Government took some time to find a second best method. By May 2 the Department of Justice was in a position to announce that it had plans for internment camps for three classes of aliens: prisoners of war, enemy aliens, and detained aliens, and it announced on that date there were some 6,000 in those classes already detained. By February 17, 1918, however, there were actually no more than 1,870 aliens interned under the war department and under military guard at Forts McPherson, Oglethorpe and Douglas, and some 2,000 at Hot Springs, North Carolina, in the Department of Labor's detention camp.

At both camps the prisoners were fed and housed at the expense of the Government, and it was not until the early spring of 1918 that they were put to work.

From April 6 to July 10, 1917, an enemy alien could be employed by any shipbuilder, tug-boat captain, lighterage firm or steamship line; he could go about any waterfront at will, provided he did not enter the so-called "barred zones" in the vicinity of Government military or naval property, and he could make unmolested such observations as his eyesight afforded of the shipping upon which the United States depends forits share in this war. After that date he was forbidden such employment, and denied approach to all wharves and ships. On July 9 the Government discharged from its employ 200 German subjects who for weeks past had been loading transports at the docks in an "Atlantic port." A raid on the Hoboken waterfront in the following winter rounded up 200 more enemy aliens who had calmly ignored the "barred zone" regulations.

The Government was confronted with a stupendous problem. How to handle with its normal peace-time police force the great unwieldy flow of the alien population presented a constantly baffling question, yet it was absolutely essential to the control of internal affairs that the Government know the comings and goings of the enemies within its gates. The date of February 13, 1918, was eventually set as the last on which citizens of enemy countries living in the United States might set down their finger prints and names and file their affidavits of residence and condition.

What facilities had the United States provided for transacting this great volume of additional protective duty? There existed, first of all, the Department of Justice, whose chief function in peace-time had been the enforcement through itsinvestigators and prosecutors of acts of Congress, such as the so-called Mann "White Slave" Act, and the Sherman "Anti-Trust" Act. There was the United States Secret Service, a bureau of the Treasury Department, whose chief function had been the detection of smuggling and counterfeiting and the protection of the person of the President. There was the Intelligence Bureau of the War Department, and a similar Bureau of the Navy Department, both undermanned, as was every other branch of our military forces at that time. The advent of war brought a complicated necessity for coordination of these four branches and of several other Federal investigating bureaus.

The German did not wait for coordination. He inspired food riots among the poorer classes of the lower East Side in New York. He opposed the draft law, rallying to his support the Socialist, the Anarchist, and the Industrial Worker of the World, under whose cloak he hid, not too well concealed. He celebrated the declaration of war by blowing up a munitions plant at Eddystone, Pa., on April 10, 1917, and killing 112 persons, most of whom were women and girls. He sneaked information into Germany through the Swedish legation. He tried to promote strikes in Pittsburg, but his agent,Walter Zacharias, was arrested. He tried to dynamite the Elephant-Butte dam on the Rio Grande, but his agent, Dr. Louis Kopf, was caught. He caused a serious revolution in Cuba until his agents were expelled. He tried to block the Liberty Loans, in vain. He tried to obstruct the collection of Red Cross funds. He caused strikes in the airplane-spruce forests of the Northwest. He assisted Lieutenant Hans Berg of the captured German prizeAppamto escape from Fort McPherson with nine of his crew in October, 1917. He erected secret wireless stations at various points, to communicate to Berlin via Mexico, whither thousands of his army reservists had fled on false passports at the outbreak of war. He smuggled information of military importance in and out of the country in secret inks, on neutral vessels, and even wrote them (on one occasion) in cipher upon the shoulder of a prima donna. He burned warehouses and shell plants. He sawed the keel of a transport nearly through. He placed a culture of ptomaine germs in the milk supply of the cadets' school at Fort Leavenworth. He invented a chemical preparation which would cause painful injury to the kidneys of every man who drank water in a certain army cantonment. He received Irish rebellionists and negotiated withthem for further revolution. He made his way into our munitions plants and secured data which he forwarded to Berlin; he worked in our aeroplane plants and deliberately weakened certain vital parts of the tenuous construction so that our aviators died in training; he kept track of our transports, and of the movements of our forces, and passed them on to the Wilhelmstrasse. He sold heroin to our soldiers and sailors. He supplied men for the motor boatAlexander Agassizwhich put to sea from a Pacific port to raid commerce. In short, he continued to carry out, with multiplied opportunity, the same tactics he had employed since August, 1914.

The German spy in America continues to attack our armies in the rear. He is here in force. A word to him may mean that within twenty-four hours Kiel will know of another transport embarking with certain forces for France. He is here to take the lives of Americans just as certainly as his kinsman is firing across a parapet in Lorraine for the same purpose. Whatever provision will save those lives must be made swiftly. The Departments, already overtaxed with the magnitude of their task, ask simply that they be given the weapons to make their splendid battle on the American front successful.

Whatever aid and comfort the enemy may find in this recitation of his disgraceful achievements and graceless failures, he may have and welcome. He has imposed upon the hospitality of the United States, has dragged his clumsy boots over the length and breadth of their estate, has run amuck with torch and explosive, and has earned a great deal of loathing contempt, hardly amounting to hatred. But no fear—and that is what he sought. The spectacle of what the disloyalists of America have done, and the easily conjurable picture of what they would do if Germany should win, are graphic enough for loyal America. The United States must proceed with incisive vigor to cut out this poisonous German sore. And the United States will remember the scar. It is so written.

In 1915 Fritz von Pilis came to America. He had been a member of the colonization bureau of the German Government maintained to Prussianize Poland, and later an emigration agent of the North German Lloyd.

He posed here as an anti-German Austrian who desired to give the American public the "true facts" of Germany's intentions in the war. He approached theSun, offering it the following brief of a volume written in late 1914 by a Prussian Pan-German, provided he (von Pilis) be allowed to write a commentary to accompany the outline. His offer was not accepted, for theSunsaw him in his true light of Prussian propagandist sent here to spread the gospel of might which is preached in the book.

The brief is offered here as an authoritative platform of Germany's aims by conquest as the Pan-German party saw them after a few months of war. Many of these aims have already been achieved.

(The phraseology and spelling is von Pilis'.)

Denkschrift, etc.

General War Goal.Weakening of foes: discard all "world citizen" sentiment and dangerous objectivity in favor of strangers. We want peace terms based solely on our interests.

Severity: Let's hear no more of "considerations of humanity," "cultural demands." Must impose indemnities on foes and take land in Europe and overseas to lessen political power:

(a) In Europe for healthy colonization.

(b) Colonial: to supply raw materials and take finished products.

Internal.Rehabilitation of farmer class by providing ample land. Combat city evils.

(1) Opportunity provided by fate in this attack by our foes.

(2) France and Russia must cede land near our gates as punishment; estates to German farmers.

(3) City evils to be remedied by better housing conditions; by war indemnities, not single tax. (Cheap rents, tenants become owners.) (Gift of fate through foes.) Old age pensions larger and at lower period of age (65 years instead of 70).

Overseas.Take over colonies and settle by Germans to give economic independence for imports and exports. This will give opportunities to eliminate "intelligent proletariat" by use elsewhere.

Belgium.Conspiracy and conduct of people and Government show Belgium not entitled to independence.

(1) All well-informed people in Germany say: "Belgium must cease to exist."

(2) Impossible to take into German people with equal rights.

Rather leave with indemnity which must pay anyway. But we need the coast against England.

Belgium to be property of Empire, Kaiser its Lord:

Belgium to lose its name.

Belgium to be divided into 2 parts: Walloons and Flemish.

Kaiser's officials to govern as dictators of province.

Belgians taken into Empire to have no political rights. All who object may emigrate. Walloons unworthy of being "Germanized."

France.Must "bleed it white" so as never to be attacked again:

(1) i.e., indemnity and land. Land from Switzerland via Belfort, Moselle, Epinal, Toul, Meuse, Verdun, Sedan, Charleville, St. Quentin to Somme and Channel at Cayeux.

(2) France to take over and indemnify the present inhabitants. We get the land sans dangerous people. Such expulsion immoral? Retribution. Not bricht eisen! France'll be thankful for the population. Needs it.

(3) Ceded area to become military frontier, administered by dictator. To be settled by Germans: discharged soldiers or war veterans' families.

(4) Toulon and environs to be made impregnable fortress on land and seaside for base on the Mediterranean.

Rather forego all French territory than take with it the hostile French population. Walloons to be kept in land only to furnish mass of laborers, lest new German settlers become industrial laborers again.

England.Its world-rule must be ended! Can't formulate demands until naval warfare decided.Build ships with all your might!

Japan.Must be punished for white race. Revenge.

Russia.Must be puthors de combatby permanentweakening. We must forcibly once more turn Russia's face towards East by curtailing its frontiers as before Peter I's time. Then its pressure vs. Asia.

(1) A new Poland (off G. territory) including Grodno, Minsk and part of Mohilen to Dnieper. Probably a kingdom with personal connection to Hapsburg House.

(2) G. to seize hegemony of Baltic; take Kniland, Livona, Esthonia and Lithuania safeguarded by territories to rivers that were frontiers of R. before Peter.

(3) To take Suwalki and military strip of Poland to strengthen Thorn and Silesia, Soldau, Wloclanek Kolo.

(4) Finland to be independent or go to Sweden?

(5) R. to lose most of Black Sea coast.

(6) Ukraine Empire under Hapsburg for "Small Russia." Bessarabia to Rumania. Austria to get good part of Serbia and Montenegro.

How avoid clash of nationalities in newly formed territories? Ans.: By forced migration. No home feelings in Russian farmer; R's precedents Siberia. Exchange of G. settlers in New Russia for R's in new G. (several years). Possibly so exchange Poles in Posen too? Lithuanians may readily be incorporated into Poland and Letts and Esthonians to be left or transferred to Russia according to treatment of G's in this war. R. Jews unthinkable in G. Empire: Bar their migration westward. Remedy (1) Bind R. to remove restrictions vs. Jews and then Jews back there.

(7) Zionism: Palestine to be ceded through G. and A-Hung. influence. This—safe wall vs. Jews and stimulate migration of Jews to Russia.

Prussia to get New Territory in East or else form "Marks" for Germanization.

Tenants to be settled by public grant in return for enhanced realty values.

We must never be without enemies strong enough to compel defensive militia. Fr. and Eng. made powerless, let R. always threaten us and be our foe; that'll be our luck.

The Colonies.French Morocco, Senegambia & Congo.

Egypt freed from England; England's colonies in Africa depend on developments.

Tunis to Italy.

Bizert and Damietta (with Italy's and A-H's consent), Djibuti, Goa, Ceylon, Sabang, Saigon, Azores, Caperdon (?), Isls, Madagascar.

Austria-Hungary.Heavy indemnity from Russia.

New Poland and Ukraine Empire personally united to A-H. North half of Serbia. South 1/2 to Bulgaria. Guarantees to be given to Germanic minority by Slavs. West Galicia to Poland. East Galicia to Ukraine Empire. German to be Reichsprache?

The Neutrals.Luxemburg to win G. Statehood (too weak to control B. Luxemburg).

Holland. Avoid pressure politically. Not to receive Flemish Belgium. These need strict masters.

Italy, if neutral, Corsica, Lower Savoy, Nizzia, Tunis.

Rumania: Bessarabia (Odessa, if she joins G. in war).

Bulgaria: South 1/2 of Serbia (more if she joins G. in war).

Turkey, if enters war, heavy indemnity and land in Caucasus. Integrity guarantees by G. and A-H: spheres of influence economically.

Sweden may get Finland if both willing.

Economic unity of territories and G. and A-H., Switzerland, Holland, Italy, Scandinavia, Rumania and Bulgaria probably join.

Offensive and Defensive Germanic Alliance: Scandinavia. Maybe and voluntarily restore settlements of N. Schleswig to Denmark, if necessary. New Germanic blood needed to make good war losses.

Special Demands.Exclusion of all East people from G. soil; rights to expel Letts, Esthonians and Lithuanians for 25 years.

No colored person on G. soil.

G. high schools for G's and foreigners of G. descent; special exceptions.

Only allied officers to be in G. army.

Only mature and fortified G. youth to study abroad.

Only G. language, G. fashions, G. Geographical names.

Steady supply of grain.

Subsidies to married officers out of war indemnity.

G. nobles to marry only Germans.

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