Krieg"—"this war forced on us!" We did not have any idea that she had counted upon two million German-Americans to help her win this war; that she knew every nook and cranny of the United States and had them mapped; that for years she had maintained a tremendous organization of spies who had learned every vulnerable point of the American defenses, who were better acquainted with our Army than we ourselves were, and who had extended their covert activities to a degree which left them arrogantly confident of their success at war, and contemptuous of the best that America ever could do against her. Germany never doubted that she would win this war. It was charted and plotted out many years in advance, move by move, step by step, clear through to the bloody and brutal end which should leave Germany commander of the world.
Now, in the German general plan of conquest, America had had her place assigned to her. So long as she would remain passive and complaisant—so long as she would furnish munitions to Germany and not to England or France or Russia, all well, all very good. But when, by any shift of the play, America might furnish supplies to Germany's enemies and not to Germany—no matter through whose fault—then so much the worse for America! It never was intended that America should be anything but expansion ground for Germany, whether or not she remained complaisant. But if she did not—if she began in her own idea of neutrality to transgress Germany's two-headed idea of "neutrality"—that meant immediate and positive action against America, now, to-day, and not after a while and at Germany's greater leisure.
"I shall have no foolishness from America!" said William Hohenzollern to the accredited representative of this country in his court—William Hohenzollern, that same pitiable figure who at the final test of defeat had not the courage of Saul to fall on his sword, not the courage of a real King to die at the head of his army, but who fled from his army like a coward when he saw all was lost—even honor. His threat of a million Germans in America who would rise against us was not ill-based. They were here. They are here now, to-day. The reply to that threat, made by Gerard, is historic. "Majesty, let them rise. We
