The Blot on the Kaisers Scutcheon | Page 2

Tooth" Is an Ungrateful
Immigrant. 7. In Praise of Our Secret Service.

Publisher's Explanatory Note
These brief articles are sparks struck as it were from the anvil of events.
They were written on trains, in hotels, in the intervals between public
addresses. During the past year beginning October 1, 1917, Dr. Hillis,
in addition to his work in Plymouth Church, and as President of The
Plymouth Institute, has visited no less than one hundred and sixty-two
cities, and made some four hundred addresses on "The National Crisis,"
"How Germany Lost Her Soul," "The Philosophy of the German
Atrocities," and "The Pan-German Empire Plot," the substance of these
lectures and addresses being given in the book, "German Atrocities,"
heretofore published. These articles are illustrative of and
supplementary to the principles stated in that volume.
While consenting to publication, the author was not afforded
opportunity for full revision of this second volume, being again called
over-seas just as this book was being put into type. This will account
for the form in which the material appears.

THE ARCH-CRIMINAL

I
1. The Kaiser's Hatred of the United States
It is a proverb that things done in secret soon or late are published from
the housetops.
Certainly everything that was hidden as to the plots of the Potsdam
gang is, little by little, now being revealed.
Nothing illustrates this fact better than that volume published in Leipsic
in 1907, called "Reminiscences of Ten Years in the German Embassy
in Washington, D. C."
When that aged diplomat published the story of his diplomatic career
he doubtless thought that the volume prepared for his children and
grandchildren and friends was forever buried in the German language.
It never even occurred to the Councillor of the Ambassador, von
Holleben, that the book would ever fall into the hands of any American.
The very fact that an American author found the volume in a
second-hand bookstore of Vienna in 1914 and translated the three
chapters on the Kaiser's representatives in the United States and the
organization of the German-American League, must have roused the
Foreign Department in Berlin to the highest point of anger.
Children and diplomats oftentimes unconsciously betray the most
important secrets. No volume ever published could possibly have
revealed matters of greater moment to Germany than this volume of
reminiscences that sets forth the propaganda carried on in the United
States by Ambassador von Holleben and his legal councillor for the
furthering of the Pan-German Empire scheme.
No scholar can doubt the right of this old diplomat to speak. The Kaiser
personally vouched for him by giving him this important duty. The
honours bestowed at the end of his long diplomatic career tell their own
story. Every page breathes sincerity and truthfulness. No one who reads
this volume can doubt that this author gave the exact facts--facts well
known to his German friends--in the recollections of his diplomatic

career.
This diplomat tells us plainly that von Holleben and himself were sent
to the United States specially charged with the task of reuniting
Germans who were naturalized in America with the German Empire.
It was their duty to organize secret German-American societies in every
great city like New York and Brooklyn, Chicago and Milwaukee,
Cincinnati and St. Louis, and to present to these societies a German
flag sent from the hands of the Kaiser himself.
Their work, says the author, was based upon the fact that the Kaiser had
passed a law restoring full citizenship in Germany to those Germans
who had become naturalized citizens of the United States. When,
therefore, these members of the German-American League formally
accepted their restored citizenship their first duty was to the Fatherland
and the Kaiser and their second duty to the United States and its
Government. Indeed, this lawyer and author actually goes so far as to
give extracts from von Holleben's speech before the German-American
League in Chicago when he presented the society with a German flag
and swore the members to the old-time allegiance.
He says that in some way the editor of the Chicago Tribune found out
about this meeting and wrote a very severe editorial, after which, he
adds, that von Holleben and himself had to be more careful.
Concerning the Milwaukee meeting, he refers to a conversation which
revealed his judgment that if ever there was trouble between Germany
and the United States the war would partake of the nature of a civil war.
The author not only gives an account of the conference held at the
Waldorf-Astoria between Ambassador von Holleben, Professors
Munsterberg of Harvard and Schoenfield of Columbia and himself, on
the one side, and Herman Ridder on the other, but he gives the
instructions from Berlin that Herr Ridder could only keep his subsidy
from the German Government for the New