have a million lamp-posts waiting for them." And this herein tells the story of how the million traitors at America's too generous table were shown the lamp-posts looming.
The German anger at America grew to the fury point, and she began covertly to stir herself on this side the sea. The rustling of the leaves began to be audible, the hissing grew unmistakable. But America, resting on her old traditions, paid no attention. We heard with sympathy for a time the classic two-faced German-American's wail, "Germany is my mother, America my wife! How can I fight my mother?" The truth is that all too many German-Americans never cared for America at all in any tender or reverent way. Resting under their Kaiser's Delbrueck injunction never to forget the fatherland, they never were anything but German. They used America; they never loved her. They clung to their old language, their old customs, and cared nothing for ours. They prospered, because they would live as we would not live. It would be wrong to call them all bad, and folly to call them all good. As a class they were clannish beyond all other races coming here. Many who at first were openly pro-German became more discreet; but of countless numbers of these, it is well known that at their own firesides and in supposed secrecy they privately were German, although in public they were American. Of Liberty bond buyers, many of the loudest boasters were of this "loyal German-American citizenship." They really had not earned even the hyphen.
Open and covert action was taken by Germany on both sides of the Atlantic to bring America into line. Not fearing America, nor knowing the real America at all, Germany did much as she liked. Outrages on the high seas began. All international law was cast aside by Germany as fully as in her invasion of Belgium. She counted so surely on success and world-conquest that she was absolutely arrogant and indifferent alike to law and to humanity. The militaristic Germany began to show—brutal, crafty, bestial, lacking in all honor, ignorant of the word "fair play," callous to every appeal of humanity, wholly and unscrupulously selfish. We began now to see the
