Germany not only paid for the murder of passengers on ships where its
infernal machines were placed, not only conspired for the destruction of
munition plants and factories of many kinds, not only sought to embroil
the United States, then neutral, in a war with Mexico and Japan, but it
committed also the crime of murderous hypocrisy by conspiring to do
these wrongs under the cloak of friendship for this country.
It was in December of 1915 that the German Government sent to the United
States for general publication in American newspapers this statement:
The German Government has naturally never knowingly accepted the support
of any person, group of persons, society or organization seeking to
promote the cause of Germany in the United States by illegal acts, by
counsel of violence, by contravention of law, or by any means whatever
that could offend the American people in the pride of their own
authority.
The answer to this imperial lie came from the President of the United
States, when, in his address to Congress, April 2, 1917, urging a
declaration of war on Germany, he characterized the German spy system
and its frightful fruits in the following language:
"One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian
autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very
outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities,
and even our offices of government, with spies, and set criminal
intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our
peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.
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