DUPL
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of the United States to
the English an
the Germans
by
William Vocke
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations
and ultivate peace and harmony with all.
George Washington

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§§

THE RELATIONS OF THE PEOPLE OF THE
UNITED STATES TO THE ENGLISH
AND THE GERMANS.
****
Our war with Spain has been the subject of much acrimonious
discussion in many of our newspapers against several of the 1ead-
ing nations and governments of Europe, chiefly against Germany.
Extraordinary times like these are always apt to arouse popular "
prejudices, and designing knaves never fail in such a crisis as
ours to endeavor to inflame the passions of the people, that they
may best promote their own selfish interests. The American
people, ranking among the most enlightened on earth,
have always been distinguished by a keen sense of justice
and fair play. Yet nations, as well as individuals, be
they ever so cautious, cannot help being misled, when
they are surronnded by circumstances which prevent a fair
and impartial investigation of the conduct of others, concerning
which they should be advised that injustice may be avoided. For
a long time the press of this country, with rare exceptions, was
Constantly filled with expressions of cordial sentiments towards
the German people and its government, for it was not forgotten
that from that source we obtained during our civil war substan-
tial aid and warm encouragement, while England and other
European powers waited with eagerness for the moment when
the slave power of the Southern States should be firmly estab-
lished upon this continent and the disruption of the Union
accomplished. During the 1ast few years the tone of our press.
in this respect has undergone a remarkable change, and the good
will of our people has been turned into other channels. . It is
well for us to stop and consider the causes: - .
We derive our news relating to European affairs mainly from
England; indeed, it may be safely claimed that nine-tenths of allº
I
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§ {sº}}< 4
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European matter which is not copied bodily from English news-
papers, but is cabled and written for publication in the press of
this country, comes from London, and since there is no direct
cable line between Berlin and our country the correspondents of
the American news agencies at that place send their matter to
London, where, to all appearances, it is, as a rule, handled to suit
the purposes of the English before it is forwarded to us. The
relations between the Germans and the English have for several
years past been strained, and this has been the reason why the
numerous English writers employed by the daily press of this
country have been so unfriendly and uncharitable towards the
Germans that at times it has appeared as if all the mendacious
scribblers in the whole kingdom, moved by one common impulse,
had been gathered together for the sole purpose of bringing
about a positive and 1asting estrangement between our country
and Germany. The policy of the German government, as well as
the conduct of the German people and their relations towards us
and other nations, have been the subject of persistent misrepre-
sentations and falsehoods. Actual facts have been constantly
perverted, and stories have been invented and spread among our
American readers of which only the wickedest scandal-bearers
could be guilty. Many of these falsehoods find their way from
time to time into the editorial columns of a number of our dailies,
where they are treated as positive truths, and these papers do
not hesitate at times to exhibit towards Germany the same vile
spirit which characterizes the source from which the scandals
flow. When the war broke out we were gravely assured that the
government, the press and the people of Germany were bitterly
hostile towards us and that the government was endeavoring to
get up a combination of powers to interfere in favor of Spain.
When this lie was properly nailed our people were constantly
assured that but for the friendly attitude of England the con-
tinental powers, with Germany in the 1ead, would have inter-
fered, and that hence we owed England a large debt of gratitude.
It need hardly be stated that these assumptions never had any
more substantial a basis than the unwarranted assertions of the
corrupt English newsmongers. The fact that at the very begin-
ning of our contest England issued a formal declaration of
neutrality, which some of the continental powers did not do,
because their past conduct required no particular assurance of
good faith, was treated by a large part of the press as evidence
2
that the former was sincerely friendly, while all the others would
bear watching. Our people should not forget that at the out-
break of our civil war, the government of England was the very
first that issued a similar proclamation, and how shamefully that
government as well as its people violated the pledge of neutrality
during that most trying period of our country's history. At that
time England, with Napoleon III. at its side, was all powerful,
while Germany was politically weak and distracted. England’s
attempts to impose her attitude upon Germany then were unsuc-
cessful; it is not very 1ikely, therefore, that, since Germany has
become united and strong, such efforts would be of any avail
now, when beyond the Anglomaniacs in this country, she is with-
out a friend in the world and almost without a voice in the
European councils.
At the beginning of the present war, the German emperor was
reported to have said he “would never permit the Yankees to
seize Cuba.” The emperor himself denied it. Our embassador
at Berlin was said to have been slighted at Court, and Mr. White
nimself showed this to have been a base fiction. Scarcely had
the victory of Commodore Dewey in Manila bay become fully
known to the public when it was seriously asserted that “grasp-
ing Germany” was casting covetous glances at the Philippines
and was threatening to interfere with our conquests, which “1ib-
eral and unselfish England” was generously offering to help us
prevent. This base fabrication turns up again every now and
then to scare the timid. A few apparently well-directed shots
from a battery at a Cuban port gave rise to the falsehood that the
loattery was manned with German gunners. They were 1ooked
for and were found not to be there. Then came the lie that gun-
ners from Germany were serving the forts at Cadiz, but upon
inspection not one could be traced at that place. Prince Bis-
marck was made to have said that the war was the result of
persistent provocations on the part of our people; the Cologne
Gazette, the Hamburg News, and other reputable journals nailed
this lie. On other occasions this same great statesman was said
to have indulged in most unfriendly remarks about our govern-
ment; this, too, proved to be false. Meaningless sentences from
the German papers have been introduced with definite assurances
that the whole press of Germany “continued to be most hostile,”
and while certain utterances from the 1ips of Lord Wolseley,
the commander of the English army, and from other English-
3
Imen, concerning the untried character of our raw volunteers, are
treated as most friendly criticism, similar expressions from Ger-
man military authorities, intended in no more unfriendly a spirit,
are set up to show deep hostility. The German consul at Manila
was falsely said to have tried to interfere with our blockade; he
has himself refuted it. The great gun manufacturer, Krupp, it
was alleged, had shipped a large number of cannon to Spain to
pe used in her fortified places and to have smuggled them through
the German and French custom-houses as kitchen furniture.
The story was as false as all the others.
The German government has from the beginning of our war
given most unequivocal assurances of its good faith, but this has
not deterred the scandalmongers from maintaining that “the
Kaiser is an arbitrary despot who may commit a rash act at any
time by attacking Admiral Dewey.” The Kaiser has been a
great bugaboo to them for some time, and they have held him up
loefore the American public as a most dangerous person. But
they may say what they please; so far he has done nothing to
Scare any reasonable man. There is not a cabinet in Europe that
has at any time been given the slightest cause to complain of
undue interference on his part with its affairs; he has disturbed
the peace of the world nowhere, and he will not interfere in our
war. Although the scandalmongers delight in calling him “the
war lord,” from all appearances he is rather pleased in cultiva-
ting the arts of peace among his people, and in his endeavors to
promote their welfare by the extension of their commerce and
industries, he has in his ten years' reign been eminently success-
ful. This is just exactly what worries the English and why they
want our people to help them hate the man, for which, however,
there is no good reason, because he has been rather friendly to us
than otherwise. Only five years ago he inspired his people to send
to the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago the best and rich-
est exhibits of which any foreign nation could boast, and when
the world was shocked by the appalling news of the sinking of the
Maine in Havana harbor he was the first of all the European
rulers who sent his heartfelt condolence to our government. For
these and other reasons we should let the English take care of
their own grudges against this monarch. ~.
While the English scandalmongers continue to assure us that
the press and the people of Germany and other countries are all
inveterately hostile to us, they insist that the press and the people
4.
of their own country, fully appreciating that they are flesh of our
flesh and bone of our bone, are our only, our warmest and sincer-
est well-wishers. The newsmongers hardly give us any account
of the strong undercurrent of English sentiment which manifests
itself in numberless communications published in the English
dailies and bitterly averse to our cause. The English, it is reli-
ably reported, have, ever since the war broke out, been gathering
1arge sums of money to aid the Spaniards; the aristocracy of
England contributing very liberally, the Duke of Wellington and
Lady Clanwilliam having each paid the sum of five hundred
dollars. To overcome this manifestation of English sympathy
with Spain it is cabled here falsely from Berlin that the German
people have already gotten up a purse of twenty-million, marks
for Spain. The New York Staats Zeitung, the best informed
paper on German affairs in this country, says that if there are
any such collections made in Germany at all they do not amount
to twenty-three hundred marks, and that all the contributions
made in the whole country come alone from Spaniards living in
Germany, while not a penny has been paid by a German. The
sum of twenty-three hundred marks is a little over five hundred
dollars, and is just one-half of the amount contributed for the
Spanish cause by two English persons alone. It may be added
there that the fabrication concerning German contributions to the
Spanish cause, like many others too numerous to mention, was
cabled by the Berlin agent of the Associated Press, which claims
to be a respectable news agency. This same individual, finding
it no longer congenial openly to misrepresent the attitude of the
German government, told us with grave mien only a few weeks
ago, that “98 per cent of the German press and the German
people still persist in ventilating their spleen against the govern-
ment and people of America.” A week later he cabled that “the
(German) government scrupulously avoids expressing its views
on the subject (of our war) and a few of the German newspapers
persist in their attitude of little short of open hostility towards
the United States;” but, while he omits to tell us in that connec-
tion what the attitude of the many now is—and our people are
certainly more interested to know this than what the few think—
the still claims that “there is no material change in the feeling in
Germany,” which he has always insisted was one of deep hos-
tility to our country; and to give further color to his many
falsehoods, he invents an interview with “a member of the
5
general staff,” who, he alleges, made most disparaging remarks
about our army. If this story is not also made out of the
whole cloth, the American people would thank the individual for
giving the name of this “member of the general staff,” and if the
officers in charge of the Associated Press are sincerely desirous of
securing for our people honest intelligence from Germany as well
as from all other countries, as they should be, instead of permit-
ting the people to be imposed upon by most preposterous misrep-
resentations, as has been done right along, then they should
promptly discharge this individual from their employ as unworthy
of his station. This same individual writes from time to time
over his own signature in one of the Chicago dailies, and repeats
his slanders about the sentiments of the Germans by relating
what he claims to have heard in the cafés and beer saloons of
Berlin; and from all we read of him this is doubtless the extent
of his acquaintance with the German people and its government.
As to the attitude of the German press, those papers that
actually do maintain an unfriendly tone and are not in the pay
of the English for so doing, might, in view of the very uncharit-
able treatment which the German people and their government
have for several years past received at the hands of many of our
own newspapers, truly say that they are now merely doing unto
us what we have been doing unto them in a much more violent
form for some time past. It behooves us, therefore, if we expect
friendly treatment from others, to temper our own conduct
towards them. But every observant reader of the German press
1<nows that the best and most widely read papers of the empire
are in sincere sympathy with our people and our cause, and that
this is being systematically suppressed by the English news-
mongers. Let us therefore examine the causes that prompt them
to persist in their attempts to poison the minds of our people
against Germany:
Since the establishment of the German empire the progress
which its people have made in enlarging their commerce and
industries and in increasing their general welfare have challenged
the admiration of the world. The goods “Made in Germany”
are everywhere in favor; the English have been driven out of
the market in many places, not only in foreign countries, but also
in their own colonies and in their own kingdom. Alarmed at
this phenomenal success, and carefully examining the causes, a
few of the best English publicists, Ernest Edwin Williams and
6
others, are forced to admit that it is alone due to the superior
intelligence and sturdier character of the German people. This
causes the English much anxiety, and in their sordid greed they
stoop to a systematic course of shameless vilification and slander.
One of our American authors says that “one of the evils of
cowardice is that it tends to falsehood—fear is the mother of
lies,” and it is a trite axiom that the practice of calumny is a
sure sign of a wicked heart. In their desperate efforts, therefore,
to stop the Germans from further encroaching upon the sphere
of the English industrials and capitalists, to whom they owe their
bread and butter, these scandalmongers seek to fill other nations,
particularly our American people, with dislike of the Germans,
in order that the advantage of our markets may not be 10st to the
English. This is precisely what crops out at times in their own
journals, and it is the same unspeakably vile conduct which only
a generation ago this same vermin exhibited towards our own
people when, at the outbreak of the civil war, the injury to the
English cotton trade and the further fact that at that very time
the Northern States of the Union were starting to make gigantic
strides in the development of vast industries, thereby threatening
to become powerful competitors of the English, they arrayed
themselves on the side of our enemies and became implacably
hostile, dangerous and vicious. And as a warning to our people
that they may determine whether the present 1oud protestations
of friendship from English lips, coupled as they constantly are
with foul denunciations of others, should be treated as sincere or
not, we deem it proper and just to make a few brief references
nere to that period of our history.
It is a notorious fact that during our civil war England did all
in her power to effect our ruin. In the English navy yards rebel
pirate ships, the Alabama, the Florida, the Georgia and others,
were not only built, but also fully armed, manned and equipped
for the destruction of our commerce on the high seas, while in
many of the English cities recruiting offices for the Confederates
were openly maintained without 1et or hindrance from the govern-
ment. The English rendered the rebel cause aid and comfort in
a thousand other ways; they took the Confederate bonds by the
millions and turned them over again to the Southern people for
their cotton; they furnished the enemies of our government arms,
ammunition and provisions and conducted an extensive and profit-
able Smuggling trade for that purpose; on their own soil as well
7
as in Canada they permitted the emissaries of the Confederate
States to gather and plot for the overthrow of our government,
and in some instances their own officially accredited consuls in
our country, in their blind zeal to help the rebel cause, became
so forgetful of their duties as to lay themselves open by their
vicious conduct to the well-grounded suspicion of acting as spies
for the Southern States, so that our State Department found
itself under the necessity of revoking their exeguaturs and send-
ing them beyond our lines. Thus the English government and
people, by their base treachery, seriously protracted the war and
rendered it infinitely bloodier and more costly to us than it other-
wise would have been. Hence it has been truly said that during
the four years of unparalleled bloodshed the gloomiest hours spent
loy the immortal men at the helm of our government were those
which they had to devote to the unceasing efforts to overcome
the acts of our cruel English foe, “the confederate of the Con-
federates.” As late as the 20th of June, 1864, our Secretary of
State, Mr. Seward, wrote to his minister, Mr. Adams, in London
as follows:
“I perceive that it is at last confessed by that press (the English),
“zwięż entire unanimeity, that the sympathies and good zwishes of the
“zzation are zwith the insurgents. They (the English) hope, without
“encouragement, for the failure of the American Union. That
“2//usive hope they will not surrender. Mevertheless, they cannot
“admit, even to themselves, that the hope zwhich is so precious to
“Żhem arises out of ungenerous motives.”
Still 1ater Mr. Adams wrote that it was confidently hoped in
England that, as the English expressed it, “The great snake
“(zzzeaning our country) would be cut in halves and perhaps after-
“zwards into smaller pieces, so that it would never afterwards be
“dangerous.” Dangerous, how? By our increased prosperity and
the growth of our industries under a uzzited government, precisely
as Germany has become dangerous to the English at the present time.
Seeking now, in courting Our favors, to palliate these shocking
crimes committed against our people only a generation ago, when
we had no quarrel with them, the English tell us glibly that it
was all due to defects in their neutrality laws which they have
since made haste to remove. It is within the inherent powers of
every state to prevent any and all violations of neutrality on the
part of its citizens without any express enactments, but their
government never made any honest attempt to do this, except
8
that in a few isolated cases, as the result of the energetic protests
from our minister, Mr. Adams, in London, a few arrests were
made and prosecutions instituted, but after a farcical hearing the
accused, as a rule, were promptly acquitted by a judiciary that
1oved justice less and hated our people more, while in three or
four other instances in which, on account of the notorious charac-
ter of the offense, the defendants could not help but plead guilty,
the court, with the consent of the prosecution for the government,
as the records show, permitted them, notwithstanding the plea,
to go unwhipt of justice. At the same time a number of poor
Irishmen, belonging as they do to a race that has, in consequence
of English oppression, sent several millions of brave and loyal-
hearted people to our shores, having tried to enlist as seamen on
the Kearsarge, the vessel that destroyed the Alabama, a Confed-
erate pirate manned by English sailors and armed with English
guns, were arrested and long kept in confinement in English
prisons to prevent them from carrying out their friendly purpose.
As in the case of Germany now, so in our case during the civil
war, the English press was unscrupulous in the highest degree
in abusing and slandering our cause and our people. Our majes-
tic 1eaders were constantly maligned, our soldiers stigmatized as
hirelings, our victories made to appear to have been defeats, the
cause of the insurgents exalted and our downfall positively pre-
dicted, while the “rebel subsidized news companies located at
London,” as one of our diplomatic agents in Europe in one of his
messages to the State Department called the press bureaus of
that city, assiduously spread their false and malicious reports all
Over the continent to weaken as much as possible the sympathies
which were there extended to our cause. But this is not all.
These vile calumniators attacked our people in its tenderest
spots; they maligned and defamed its best traits; in order to
make it appear that we were a heartless and cruel, nation they
circulated the unspeakable falsehood that we denied the Confed-
erate prisoners in our Northern prison camps proper food and
clothing; that we afforded them no protection against the inclem-
encies of the Northern weather; that in other respects we treated
them cruelly, and that humanity should be appealed to in order
to relieve their suffering. Upon this infamous pretext they pro-
ceeded to make large collections from the moneys they had
filched from the Southern people by driving sharp bargains in
securing their cotton, until the sum they had thus obtained
9
reached the enormous total of 17, ooo pounds. This was entrust-
ed to a Lord Wharncliffe, who applied to our minister in London
for 1eave to distribute the moneys among “the poor suffering
Southern prisoners at the North.” The matter was referred to
Our Secretary of State, and here is the indignant answer of the
peerless Seward to his minister, Mr. Adams, concerning this
most infamous demand:
“Department of State, Washington, Dec. 5, 1864.
“Sir: I have received your dispatch of the 18th of November
“(No. 817), together with the papers therein mentioned, namely
“a copy of a letter which was addressed to you on the 12th of
“November 1ast by Lord Wharncliffe, and a copy of your answer
“to that letter. *
“Your proceeding in the matter is approved. You will now
“inform Lord Wharncliffe that permission for an agent of the com-
“mittee described by him to visit the insurgents detained in the
“military prisons of the United States and to distribute among
“them seventeen thousand pounds of British gold is disallowed.
:}; >}: : º >}: ::: #:
“That correspondence will necessarily become public. . On
‘reading it the American people will be well aware that while the
“United States have ample means for the support of prisoners, as
“well as for every other exigency of the war in which they are
“engaged, the insurgents who have blindly rushed into that con-
“dition are suffering no privations that appeal for relief to charity
‘‘either at home or abroad.
“The American people will be likely also to reflect that the
“sum thus insidiously tendered in the name of humanity constitutes
“no large portion of the profits which its contributors may be justly
“supposed to have derived from the insurgents by exchanging zwith
“them arms and munitions of war for the coveted productions of
“imemoral and enervating slave labor. Mor will any portion of the
“American people be disposed to regard the sum thus ostentatiously
“offered for the relief of captured insurgents as a too generous
“equivalent for the devastation and desolation which a civil war,
“promoted and protracted by British subjects, has spread through-
“out states which before were eminently prosperous and happy.
“Finally, in view of this last officious intervention in our domestic
“affairs, the American people can hardly fail to recall the warning
“of the Father of our Country, directed against two great and inti-
IO
&
“mately connected puplic dangers, namely, sectional faction and
“foreign intrigue. I do not think that the insurgents have become
“debased, although they have sadly wandered from the ways of
“loyalty and patriotism. I think that, in common with all our
“countrymen, they will rejoice in being saved by their considerate
“and loyal government from the grave insult which Lord! Wharm-
“cliffe and his associates, in their geal for the overthrow of the
“ United States, have prepared for the victims of this unnecessary,
“unmatural and hopeless rebellion,
“WILLIAM H. SAE WARD,
“Secretary of State.”
The foregoing brief review of the perfidy of the English
against Our people may serve as sufficient proof to bear out our
assertion that calumny and defamation, employed to serve the
greed of money and power, and so degrading to the human heart,
have been a distorting mark of the English character. Some of
their own best men say so. Thus the pure-minded Addison, more
than 180 years ago, said about the vile slanderers that infested
the English people in his day, that there was nothing so scan-
dalous and detestable in the eyes of all good men as defamation,
and he stigmatized the villains who indulged in this infamous
practice as “a race of vermin, a scandal to government and a
reproach to human nature,” writing further:
“Every one who has in him the sentiments either of a Chris-
“tian or a gentleman cannot but be highly offended at this
“zwicked and ungenerous practice, which is so much in use among us
“at present that it is become a kind of national crime, and dis-
“tinguishes us from all the governments that are about us.” And
further: “Should a foreigner * * * form to himself a notion
“of the greatest men of all sides in the British nation, who are
“now living, from the characters which are given them in some
“other of these abominable writings which are daily published
“among us, what a nation of monsters must we appear/’’
Verily, since the days of Addison the national crime of which
he speaks, and which has been dwelt upon by other English
writers, has increased to an alarming extent. In saying this we
set down naught in anger; we challenge no resentment and have
no desire to disturb the friendly feelings which are now cherished
here towards England; but it is a duty we owe to the American
people, as good citizens, to prevent with all our might the arous-
ing of race hatred which is sought to be brought about by foreign
II.
intrigue with the wicked purpose, not only to prejudice us against
Germany and to sow the seeds of dissension among our own
people, among whom millions from that country have found
peaceful and happy homes, but also to lead us into a dangerous
policy in our relations with foreign powers. We therefore have
no apology to offer for referring to facts which those seem to
have forgotten who in our country are lending assistance to the
constant circulation of English falsehoods against a people from
whom at the time when we most needed friends we received most
valuable assistance, as has always been generously recognized by
our federal authorities. As early as December, 1861, when the
German empire was not yet established and Prussia was the lead-
ing power in Germany, Mr. Judd, our Minister at Berlin, wrote:
“There is no doubt of the friendly feelings of the Prussian
“government towards the government of the United States and its
“desire that the rebel/ion should be subdued.”
These sentiments were dictated by the traditional policy of
Prussia towards our government inaugurated by Frederick the
Great, for Outside of Paris our struggling young Colonies had no
warmer friend in a11 Europe than he was.
Concerning our difference with England anent the Trent
affair, Mr. Seward wrote to Mr. Judd in January, 1862:
“Your suggestions to Count Bernstorff (Prussian Minister of
“Foreign Affairs) concerning the difficulties between the United
“States and Great Britain were by no means improper. * * *
“Moreover, we deem it fortunate that they were made, because
“they elicited the ea pressions of friendly interest on the part of
“the government of Prussia towards the United States. We reckon
“always constantly on this friendship. It is a moral element of
“great value.”
On December 1, 1862, Mr. Seward wrote to our Minister at
“Berlin: “It is a pleasure to renew the acknowledgments zwhich have
“been heretofore made of the friendly and loyal disposition towards
“our country which has been constantly manifested by the King of
‘‘ Prºssza. " -
On May 16, 1863, he wrote:
“You will not hesitate to express assurances of the constan
“good will of the United States towards the King and people (of
“Prussia), who have dealt with us with good faith and great
“friendship during the severe trials through which we have been
“passing.” - -
I2
In February, 1864, Mr. Judd wrote: “The belief in the fina/
“suppression of the rebellion and the re-establishment of the author-
“ity of our government over the entire territory of the Union is now
“almost universal throughout Germany.” **
On June 17, 1864, Mr. Seward wrote concerning Baron von
Gerolt, the Prussian Minister at Washington: “During all the
“vicissitudes of our affairs, while he (Baron von Gerolt) has faith-
“fully advocated and defended the interests of his country, he has
“at the same time been a firm, framé and hopeful friend of this
“government and country.” -
On the 27th of April, 1865, when the war was over, all the
members of the Prussian House of Deputies, over 26o in number,
united in an address to our minister, Mr. Judd, saying to him,
among other things, as follows:
“Sir: Living among us, you are a witness of the heart-felt
“sympathy which this people have ever preserved for the people of
“the United States during this long and severe conflict. You are
“aware that Germany has looked with pride and joy on the thou-
“sands of her sons who in this struggle have placed themselves on
“the side of lazy and right. You have seen with what joy the vic-
“tories of the Union have been hailed and how confident our faith
“in the final triumph of the great cause of the restoration of the
“ Union in all its greatness has ever been, even in the midst of
“adversity.”
That these noble words, coming as they did from a very con-
servative and monarchial body, were not mere empty phrases is
abundantly shown by the many substantial benefits conferred
upon our people by the Germans during the civil war. The
governments in Germany never recognized the belligerency of
the insurgents, as England and others did, and hence there was
nothing in the way of their permitting thousands of their best
sons to come over here and take service in the armies of the
Union, and wherever these men stood they proved themselves to
loe loyal and brave fighters against disunion and slavery.
In 1864 three formidable pirate vessels had been built at
Bordeaux by the shipbuilders Arman & Co. for the rebel States
to continue the war on our commerce, which the pirates built and
equipped in England had begun and prosecuted with such terrible
effect. Before the vessels could be 1aunched, however, Prussia
bought them all up, and our diplomatic agent at Berlin writes to
the State Department concerning this fact: “Now that the truth
I3
of their destination has become known, French and English
sympathizers with rebel pirates are greatly chagrined.”
While the English, with their immense wealth, had hardly a
do11ar for our government bonds, at all money centers in Germany
there were ready markets for them at prices ranging at times
figher than those at which they were quoted in New York.
Thus Mr. Judd writes on one occasion:
“ United States bonds here and elsewhere in Germany are guite
“buoyant. They are now quoted at 73 per cent. Permanent invest-
“ments in them continue to be made guite largely, although the
“speculative mania which had seized upon them and had crowded
“out all other funds has perceptibly abated.”
Later he writes: -
“The demand for United States bonds is still very active, so
“much so that at this time they are from 2 to 3 per cent higher
“than in New York. They are quoted at 773 (27.7%.”
When the war was over the German people, according to
reliable estimates, held over 500 million dollars of our bonds,
while those of the Confederate States are not known to have
found a lodgment on German soil anywhere. These investments
are a splendid manifestation not only of the friendly disposition
of the German people towards us, but also of their great good
sense as prudent merchants and traders. Money, it is rightly
said, constitutes the sinews of war. It should therefore not be
forgotten that outside of our own country the essential element of
warfare was furnished us most liberally by Germany, and the
fact that the English, who denied us that aid when we were in
turgent need of it, have since then, in time of peace, obtained large
interests here by making profitable investments, should not render
us so ungrateful as to permit them to come here and malign our
former benefactors. But the sympathy the Germans extended to
us was by no means prompted by business considerations alone.
Their whole heart went out towards us, and while innumerable
packages containing underwear, delicacies, hospital supplies, and
many other useful articles came to our soldiers in the field from
Germany through private channels, some of them were shipped
in 1arge quantities directly to the authorities in Washington.
Thus the American Consul-General at Frankfurt-on-the-Main
addressed to Mr. Seward on the 8th of April, 1863, the following
communication:
“Sir: I have the honor to enclose to you shipper's receipt for
I4.
“seventy-nine packages of limen and lint, shipped in the Hamburg
“steamer Hammonia, Captain Schwensen, consigned to the Hon. E.
“M. Stanton, Secretary of War, Washington, and care of Austin,
“Baldwin & Co., New York. This last shipment is for 12,033 Ger-
“man pounds, and what is equivalent to 13,036 English pounds, and
“is a part of those articles contributed by the Germans, mostly in my
“consular jurisdiction, for the wounded soldiers in the Union army.
“The next shipment will be for over fifteen thousand pounds,
“and zwill &e made directly to the Secretary of State, unless differ-
“ent instructions shall in the meantime be received.”
“From a 1etter published in one of the Washington papers I
“observe that a 1arge quantity of 1int and linen will not be needed
“for the soldiers, but the contributors will be satisfied to have it
“sold and put to any other uses which the surgeon general of the
“army shall deem fit and proper.”
“The linen must now be of great value in America, and can be
“sold for high prices.”
To this communication our noble Secretary of State made
grateful recognition, as follows:
“I am directed by the President to acknowledge, in behalf of
“the American people, a gift which could not be overvalued, even if
“it zwere to be regarded as proceeding from the simple motives of
“Christian charity. The contribution comes opportunely to us,
“however, as a token of the sympathy of our German brethren with
“the cause of the American Union, one of whose aspirations it has
“öeen, and yet is, to offer an asylum to the exile and the oppressed of
“a/Z nations.
“We think ourse/ves authorized also to regard the gift as a con-
“tribution of the German people to the cause of impartial freedom,
“which by means of this painful civil war has become identified
“zwith the cause of the American Union.
“You will make this acknowledgment known to the donors
“in some manner which will be respectful to the government of
“the free city of Frankfurt.” - w
We insist that a foreign people that exhibited so much feeling
for our sick and wounded soldiers as to provide them with 1arge
quantities of hospital stores, and that gave us so many other
striking proofs of profound sympathy and good will in the hour
of our country's greatest danger, should not be permitted now or
at any time to be defamed in our press at the bidding of its
enemies, the English.
I5
\
But our people are daily told that Germany is so intensely mon-
archical as to hate our free institutions, and this, it is claimed by
the individual who cables the Associated Press dispatches from
Berlin, and by others, is one of the first reasons of its alleged
hostility to our people now. If this assertion were worth a farth-
ing, then the period of our civil war would have been the
proper time to assert the alleged hatred, first, because the
integrity of our government, as well as all our free institutions,
were then trembling in the balance, which is not the case now in
our war with Spain; and second, because Germany was then more
intensely monarchical than she is now. Such an inherent antag-
onism between republican and monarchical institutions as some
of our modern editors profess to find did not exist in the eyes of
King William and Prince Bismarck when, at the time they held
France in their grasp, they permitted her, without the slightest
concern, to establish a republic at their very doors, nor did our
great historian Motley see it in that light when, in 1863, as our
minister to Austria, he wrote to our government concerning the
efforts of the German princes to form a more perfect union for
the German States, among other things, as follows:
“It is impossible not to warmly sympathize with the aspirations
“of those who contemplate so splendid a vision as that of a political
“union of 46 millions of people of one race and language, and occu-
“pying so proud a position as Germans have ever occupied in all
“that we understand by civilization, for Germany is assuredly the
“mother of modern civilization.”
“The strength and union of Germany is an advantage for
“Furope and a bond of peace and progress for the world.”
“The world at large has much to gain and little to dread in the
“increased strength and prosperity of Germany.”
To this our noble Seward, who neither cherished such an
tunnmanly dread of a centralized monarchical government in Ger-
many as certain scribblers now do, replied as follows:
“Every effort to consolidate all the German states under a feder-
“ation which zwould promote the common development and progress
“of the entire fatherland would be hailed in this country with pro-
“found satisfaction.”
We have said above that since the foundation of the German
empire the German people have incurred the deadly enmity of
the English, and, taking advantage of the fact that our people
speak their 1anguage and that our American editors are with but
I6
few exceptions confined to the reading of English news for infor-
mation concerning Europe, they have been the means of manu-
facturing a sentiment here which is most detrimental to the fair
fame of our country abroad. We should be no party to the petty
jealousies which inspire the “nation of shop-keepers” against
Germany and other countries. When last fall the Germans, for
the protection of their commerce in the East, managed by peace-
ful negotiations with the Chinese empire to obtain possession of
a harbor on the Asiatic coast, an advantage which the English
had only been able to secure as the result of two bloody wars,
the 1atter raised the hue and cry that the Germans intended to
establish barbarous trade restrictions and to shut out all other
nations from their sphere of power in the Asiatic waters. This
was assiduously circulated in the newspapers of this country, a
number of which, professing to believe it, called vehemently upon
the Federal government to join “liberal England” in prevent-
ing the alleged scheme. There was nothing in the former con-
duct of the German government nor in the genius of the German
people, who have always been known as prudent traders, that
justified the silly charge against them, and the fact is that it was
alone prompted by the sordid selfishness of the English, anxious
as they were to prevent their successful rivals from gaining a
political foothold where they had already, as peaceful merchants,
secured large trade interests. The intention to establish trade
restrictions by keeping out others in the Chinese ocean were
therefore alone harbored by the English. Nor was this the first
time they exhibited this contemptible spirit toward Germany.
In 1861 they did all in their power to prevent the government of
China from granting certain trade privileges to Prussia by means
of a treaty of amity and commerce with that country. Their
present outcry against Germany, therefore, on the score of trade
restrictions is nothing but the cry of “stop thief,” raised by the
fleeing robber against his pursuers. The cruelty and rapacity
with which they threw their wolf-like fangs into the sides of the
poor Chinese should not be lost sight of. They acquired some
of their most valuable possessions in China as the result of the
most infamous war on record, carried on by them, as it was, for
the base purpose of preventing the madarins from inhibiting the
debauching and death-dealing traffic in opium, because it was so
profitable to the English traders. We are told wherever Eng-
1and colonizes she civilizes and brings happiness and contentment.
I7
The truth is that she grants as much liberty as she is obliged to
do and no more. Her colonists in Canada and Australia enjoy a
fair measure of autonomy, because they would not remain
dependencies of England short of it, but in India and elsewhere
she rules with unprecedented brutality, taking from that one
country alone over a million and a quarter of dollars each day to
fatten her big lords and rich industrials, while thousands upon
thousands of the wretched people of India, with all their pinching
frugality, die annually of starvation. For centuries England has
oppressed and outraged the generous and noble-hearted Irish
people, and while she permits to prevail among the proletariat
in her 1arge cities the most squalid poverty and misery, at which
numanity stands aghast, her aristocracy all around those cities
revel in unheard of wealth and luxury. Let us pause before we
permit a former enemy, with a most unsavory record, to ingra-
tiate itself into our favors, not only by heaping upon us now ful-
some flatteries, but by maligning others who were our constant
and sincere friends. Let the newspaper men of our country
emancipate their minds from the corrupting influences which the
English have wielded here already too long for the good of our
people. It is neither prudent nor just that we should allow the
English, as we have done right along, to tell us what other
nations are doing and what they think of us; 1et those nations
speak for themselves. An adversary never makes an honest
spokesman. Our people are fair-minded and generous; they are
at all times anxious that truth and justice shall prevail, and not-
withstanding the imposition tried to be practiced upon them, it
will be found in the end that they are neither a doting King
Lear, who turned his kingdom over to an undutiful daughter
because she was loudest in her professions of filial love, nor his
prototype, the king of Paphlagonia, who, having cast away a
noble son at the bidding of a bastard, took the miscreant to his
lbosom, and received from him prompt reward for his misplaced
kindness by having his eyes put out. The immortal Father of our
Country solemnly zwarned his people to be on their guard against
foreign intrigue, and this is what he told us our conduct should be
towards others:
“Observe good faith and justice towards all nations and cultivate
“peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this
“conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin
“it? :: 3% sk? »
I8
“The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred
“or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to
“its animosity or to its affection. Either of which is sufficient to
“lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”
We ask no special consideration for the Germans. They are
strong and manly enough to fight their own battles; but since
they do not carry their grudges against others over to this soil,
we should neither permit the English to make our fair 1and the
dumping ground for their jealous disposition and ugly quarrels.
But this is what they have done ever since they began to
recognize that their perfidious policy has brought upon them the
wrath of all Europe. They have thus inflicted upon our people
a grievous injury, because its calm judgment is being clouded,
the voice of reason has in many places been hushed and harsh
and unjust prejudices have been aroused. We are aware of the
corrupting power of English capital in Europe as well as in the
United States. Let the men who aid and abet in the spreading
of a dangerous contagion beware that the 1ove of justice which
lmas distinguished our people ever since we threw off the cruel
yoke of England cannot be rooted out, and that their nefarious
scheme to 111te us into an alliance with our hereditary foe, and
thereby to disgrace the sacred memory of the heroes of the Revo-
1ution and of the immortal Lincoln and Seward, by insisting that
all other nations on earth are our enemies and the English Our Only
friends, will suffer a most ignominious defeat. We are told
that the English “are our Anglo-Saxon cousins,” whose language
we speak and whose customs we cherish, wherefore we should
form a closer union with them. Do we not all know that until
recently they hardly ever recognized us as their “Anglo-Saxon
cousins,” that in former times they had nothing but contempt for
us and that their cruel taunts to which we were then constantly
exposed were only a degree more offensive than the obsequious-
mess with which they now cringe before us? Only on One
conspicuous occasion during the civil war did they speak to us as
their “Anglo-Saxon cousins,” and that was when towards the
close of the struggle they sent us a public appeal, flamboyantly
addressed by “The People of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland to the People of the United States of
America,” and beginning with the touching phrase: “We are
of the same race, and many of you are our brothers. Can we not,
therefore, come to you as peacemakers and address you as
I9
friends?” And then these vile hypocrites had the unspeakable
insolence to falsify history, and to say to us that there was no
difference between the attempted secession of the Southern people
and the breaking away of the American colonies from the mother
country, and therefore we should let the South go and recognize
its independence. - *
An alliance with England would not only be an unspeakable
folly, but an unheard of infamy. Where is the nation that has
ever had an alliance with that pander and has come out of it
either with profit or with honor? When we were weak and in
the throes of bloody internal strife, England treated us with
refined cruelty and treachery; now that we are strong and invin-
cible, she humbly sues for “most cordial relations and an
alliance,” that henceforth she may share in our glory and we in
her infamy. The proud emblem of our American liberties shall
not be trailed in the dust by the side of the disgraced Union
Jack. To the end of time the inspiring words of the poet—
No refuge could save the hireling and slave—
From the terror of flight and the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave—
shall be and remain a living truth, and the best manhood of
America shall not cease to shield our glorious flag from the con-
taminating contact with the sullied banner of “perfidious”
Albion.
Copies of this paper can be had upon
application to the Secretary of the Germania
Club, corner North Clark Street and Ger-
mania Place, Chicago. w
IVERSITY OF MICH|GAN
7339 9316
UNIVER
3 9015 O
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