A Continuing Evil
The exposures of German intrigue and the departure from this country of the official representatives of Germany who had so grossly abused their diplomatic privileges did not by any means put an end to pro-German activities and expenditures. They were uninterrupted though necessarily transferred to channels of less commanding importance. What was true late in 1917, was practically true of the major part of 1918, before the armistice. Societies as well as individuals continued to distribute German money and carry on pro-German or anti-English propaganda. The New York Times said in October, 1917:
“The thing needs no proof. She is paying every man who will accept pay for the same purpose for which, before the war began, she was paying every man who would accept pay to handicap and weaken the arm of the American government.
“How are we to recognize the trail of her money? Before the war she was organizing strikes, blowing up factories, and purchasing the creation of a false public opinion against trading with the Allies. The outbreak of war somewhat altered her aims; there have been no purchased strikes lately and no dynamiting of factories. Her aim, which is always the same—the weakening of the government’s arm—can now be best attained by creating a false public opinion in favor of laying down our arms and consenting to peace before the objects of the war are attained. All her own moves from Berlin are now directed to that end, and when we find a movement in the United States which duplicates the moves from Berlin it is safe to assume that Germany is backing it in the same way in which she backed other movements, to quote von Bernstorff, ‘on former occasions.’
“It makes no difference that some of the men who are engaged in this movement may be merely foolish or deluded and not in receipt of money from Wilhelmstrasse. There are others who are, and these dupes are merely their tools. One and all they are doing the work for which Germany pays those who get the pay and those who do not. The ignorant zealot goes where the paid traitor sends him. That the ignorant zealot does not know the paid traitor is paid does not alter in the slightest the deadly effect of his action, the deadly effect calculated on and purposed by the German paymaster.”
The New York Tribune, commenting on the facility of espionage and propaganda by Germans, said:
“Conditions are incredible. These enemy aliens, acting as spies and carriers of information, are everywhere.
“They are going freely to and fro.
“They are in the Army and Navy.
“They occupy hundreds of observation posts.
“They are in possession of hundreds of sources of information of military value.
“They are in factories producing war-materials.
“They are in all the drug and chemical laboratories.
“‘If you discharge the Germans,’ says Herman A. Metz, a manufacturer of drugs and chemicals, ‘you will close every chemical plant in the country.’”