2. This is obviously an editorial stance dear to Adams. His reporting of false advertising at the New York Tribune prompted lawsuits similar to those brought against Robson’s paper by the Turnbull Brothers. When the Greenhut department store in Manhattan obtained an injunction to block a story by Adams on its merchandizing practices, the Tribune ran ads supporting him. One said: “Do you think he writes like a man who could be urged, cajoled, threatened or wheedled into printing, or not printing anything against his desires?”
Chapter 18
1. The German-American press was large and widespread. In 1914, there were 564 such newspapers; French language newspapers, in contrast, numbered only 43. In 1918, only sixteen states did not have a German language paper. The largest concentrations were in Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin. At one time Milwaukee had eleven.
Chapter 21
1. The reference here is to the June 28 assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was making a short visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia, which his country had formally annexed six years before. The assassin, Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip, stepped out of the crowd and shot twice, hitting the Archduke in the jugular vein and his wife in the abdomen. Within minutes both were dead. With the archduke’s death, the Dual Monarchy lost one of its strongest proponents for settling international disputes by diplomacy instead of guns.
Chapter 22
1. In the first weeks of the war, the Germans enjoyed enormous success, sweeping through Belgium and putting the Anglo-French forces in retreat. “Yesterday was a day of bad news,” The Times of London reported on August 25, “and we fear that more must follow.” At the Battle of Tannenberg, five days later, more than thirty thousand Russian troops were killed.
2. Germany’s actions in Belgium were particularly damaging to its image. The German government claimed its invasion of neutral Belgium was an act of self-defense. In October 1915 they needlessly executed a British nurse by firing squad, named Edith Cavell, who had helped Allied prisoners of war escape Belgium. The greatest source of outrage came from the German treatment of civilians, which Allied propagandists magnified. A boost to this propaganda came from an inquiry led by the respected jurist and former ambassador to the United States, Viscount James Bryce. The Bryce report contained lurid, uncorroborated testimony of German sadism that, as historians note, “exceeded any possible reality.” John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 234.
3. At the outbreak of the war President Woodrow Wilson called for Americans to be “impartial in thought as well as in action.” By November 6, 1914, he had issued ten pronouncements that outlined measures to promote American neutrality. American sentiment was to stay out the war even if, on balance, it favored the Entente over the Central Powers. A Literary Digest survey of newspaper editors shortly after the fighting began found 105 editors sided with the Allies and 20 sided with the Germans, while 242 remained neutral.
Chapter 23
1. The reference here is to newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. In addition to giving attention to the German point of view during the war, Hearst had argued for United States intervention in Mexico.
2. Without warning, a German submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915, killing 1,198 passengers, 128 of whom were Americans. The majority of Americans wanted President Wilson to express indignation, but not go to war over the incident. But factions of the country, such as those aligned with former President Theodore Roosevelt, advocated ending neutrality. The incident highlighted how traditional rules of war did not work well in this unprecedented conflict.
The Germans offered several justifications for their actions. First, its embassy in Washington had placed an advertisement in fifty American newspapers warning that the ship could be sunk. Second, the Germans claimed the ship was not simply a passenger liner, but was carrying munitions. The British denied this, but the German charge was correct. Third, the Germans said it was no longer possible (as conventional cruiser rules called for) to give warning that it was launching torpedoes. To make such an announcement the submarine would have to surface and make itself vulnerable to guns, which were being installed on passenger ships.
Another factor that came in play was the British blockade of the North Sea. This was a legally dubious measure because the area was so large and not a site of actual fighting. The cordon stopped food as well as military supplies. After the sinking of the Lusitania, Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, argued both Britain and Germany should be admonished, because the British blockade prevented food from reaching German civilians. He resigned when Wilson addressed only the German action.
Chapter 24
1. This refers to the 1912 election. Wilson’s 1912 victory came about in an unusual four-way race among Wilson, the incumbent; William Howard Taft; Theodore Roosevelt, who created the splinter Progressive Party to oust Taft, his handpicked successor in the 1908 race; and Socialist Eugene Debs, whose showing was the largest ever recorded for his party. Wilson won with less than 42 percent of the popular vote, and received one hundred thousand fewer votes than Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan had in 1908.
2. This is a reference to a resolution introduced by Congressman Jeff McLemore, a Democrat from Texas. The measure would have prohibited Americans from traveling on armed merchant ships in waters German submarines occupied. The goal was to avoid events that could draw the United States into war. Not wanting his hands tied, Wilson pressured Democrats to vote against it. The measure had support from House Republicans who represented Midwestern states with large immigrant populations. It did not pass, but largely thanks to the Republicans, it won 142 votes in the House (276 voted no).
Chapter 26
1. In September 1915, the Germans altered their submarine policy to end attacks on passenger liners. This policy stayed in place until early 1917.
Chapter 27
1. German-Americans were not the only immigrant group to side with the Central Powers: this also included the Irish who opposed British rule; Swedes and Poles who disliked Russia; and Jews who were anti-Russian, pro-German, or both. In addition there were immigrants with Austrian and Hungarian pedigrees who supported the Central Powers.
Chapter 28
1. In such a franchise, a business entity is allowed to, say, build a municipal transport line or utility gas line over which it has exclusive rights to provide service.
2. Masters (1868–1950) was an American lawyer and poet. He was a member of Clarence Darrow’s law firm and published Spoon River Anthology in 1915, based on his experience in Western Illinois.
3. Charles Evans Hughes ran for president against Woodrow Wilson in 1916. The Wall Street lawyer was catapulted to fame when he headed an investigation of the inflated rates set by the gas and electricity trust in New York in 1905. He subsequently investigated insurance companies whose executives enriched themselves at the expense of policyholders and used policyholders’ money to support politicians. Hughes was elected governor of New York in 1906, where he championed progressive legislation that benefited the labor movement, and created public service commissions that became national models. In 1910, President Taft nominated him to the Supreme Court. Following his defeat in 1916, he became Secretary of State under President Warren G. Harding and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
As a presidential candidate in 1916, Hughes failed to adequately manage the war issue. In trying to satisfy disparate factions of the electorate—Republicans who favored war and immigrants who did not—he came across as wishy-washy. In contrast, Wilson benefited for firmly stating he would not be browbeaten by immigrant groups but at the same time wanted to avoid war at all costs.
Chapter 29
1. R. Constantin Theodor Dumba, Austrian Ambassador to the United States, was expelled from the country in 1915. British agents discovered papers that showed he secretly funded propaganda in the United States and sought to incite labor u
nrest. These papers were passed to the United States government.
Count Bernstorff, the son of a one-time Royal Prussian Foreign Minister, was the German ambassador to the United States. He returned to Germany when Wilson severed diplomatic relations with his government on February 3, 1917. Several of his staff had already been expelled when their ill-conceived plots came to light, as Dumba’s had.
Among other things, German spies secretly provoked strikes, crafted financial deals to corner the market on strategic materials, and planted bombs. They also viewed the United States as a launching pad for disrupting the British as far afield as India, Egypt, and Ireland. One of the more fantastic plots was to invade Canada at three or four spots with a force recruited from German-American associations.
2. Such an advertising agency was run by Wolf von Igel, who had ties to German espionage. His office at 60 Wall Street was raided by two Secret Service officers in April 1916. The papers taken from von Igel’s safe were given to Adams when he joined the CPI staff in late 1917. As noted in the introduction, Adams used them to write an article that was widely published.
3. Congress created the Council of National Defense in late 1916. It was founded to coordinate industries and resources for national security. The council saw itself performing “a well-nigh priceless function in acting as a sort of official incubator for new ideas necessary to win a war under modern conditions.” After the war began, the Council organized individual state councils that promoted patriotism and patriotic activity.
Chapter 30
1. German propaganda became an obsession. Any anti-war sentiment was attributed to German influence. Every day newspapers and magazines carried headlines like these: “America Infested with German Spies”; “Spies are Everywhere.” The United States government urged citizens to “report the man who spreads pessimistic stories, divulges—or seeks—confidential military information, cries for peace, or belittles our efforts to win the war.” By fueling this obsession, the Committee on Public Information was able to dismiss inconvenient facts and opinions as lies planted by Germans, thus making dissent appear traitorous.
Chapter 31
1. President Wilson called for war against Germany on April 2, 1917 before a joint session of Congress. On April 6, Congress passed the war declaration by votes of 82–6 in the Senate and 373–50 in the House. Wilson signed it that day upon receipt at the White House usher’s desk.
Chapter 37
1. “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” literally, “I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts”—or, colloquially, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” The Latin phrase is from Virgil’s Aeneid.
Chapter 42
1. Perhaps this “globe-trotter and war correspondent” sprung from Adams’s friendship with Will Irwin. Irwin covered the Great War early on. He later worked for the Committee on Public Information. Among other things, he helped organize programs, some through front organizations, to bring immigrant opinion in line with the Administration’s.
2. As noted in the introduction, Adams worked with the Four Minute Men unit at the CPI. The advice given to Mrs. Wanser is similar to a statement made by Wilson’s Attorney General, Thomas Gregory. A German alien had nothing to fear, he said, “so long as he observes the following warning: ‘Obey the law. Keep your mouth shut.’”
3. Many German organizations, as well as newspapers, went out of their way to demonstrate patriotism. The Deutscher Club in Milwaukee renamed itself the Wisconsin Club.
This was necessary for self-preservation. The government clamped down on anti-war speech it considered subversive. Community leaders across the country were supportive of such measures and eager to help enforce them. In an editorial accompanying a Four Minute Man publication, the Evansville Journal News said it was the “duty of every American to hold himself ready to fire ammunition at any person who tells any story or repeats any rumor which smacks of German origin.”
Samuel Hopkins Adams argued it was acceptable to ignore laws in order to stop unpatriotic speech. In one of his Everybody’s articles, he cheered Council of National Defense representatives for secretly monitoring German-American saloons and threatening to revoke liquor licenses if patrons derided government policy. “It is by no means certain that this would stand in law,” he conceded, “but the Council is more concerned with getting things done.”
Of course, not all displays of German-American patriotism were self-serving. Many German-Americans were genuinely patriotic, and sent their sons to fight and die in the war. The foreign-born constituted about eighteen percent of the U.S. Army during World War I.
4. The number of German-language newspapers in the United States decreased during the war by about fifty percent. German language instruction in universities diminished, as few students wanted or dared to take it. In 1919, fifteen states barred all instruction in German through the eighth grade. This policy was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1923, but by that time, historian Frederick C. Luebke noted, “Mostly the German-Americans wanted to forget what had happened.” Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 329.
About Samuel Hopkins Adams
Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871–1958) was an American muckraker and World War I propagandist. He wrote for the New York Sun, McClure’s Magazine, and Collier’s Weekly and authored dozens of books, including Revelry and Common Cause.
About John Maxwell Hamilton
John Maxwell Hamilton is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication and a Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the author and editor of many books, including the award-winning Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Newsgathering Abroad.
About Amy Solomon Whitehead
Amy Solomon Whitehead is a Baton Rouge–based writer and communications consultant.
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