Germany has not yet abandoned that attack. There are still spies in the United States, you may be sure—still intrigues are being fostered. And there are still men who, consciously or unconsciously, are striving to discredit the German-Americans by presenting them as unwilling to bear their share in the burden of the nation’s war. Only a week before these lines were written one man—George Sylvester Viereck—circulated a petition begging that Germans should not be sent to fight their countrymen, and an organization of German Protestant churches in America is repeating this plea. As a German whom fortune has placed outside the battle, and as one whose patriotism is extended toward blood rather than dynasty, I ask Mr. Viereck and these other gentlemen if they have not forgotten that many German-Americans have already shown their feelings by volunteering for service in this war—and if they have not also forgotten that the two great wars of American history were fought between men of the same blood. Ties of blood have never prevented men from fighting for a cause which they believed to be just. They will not in this war! And when Mr. Viereck and his kind protest against the participation in the war of men of any descent whatever, they imply that the American cause is _not_ just and that it is not worthy of the support of the men they claim to represent. Is this their intention? CHAPTER XI. _More about the German intrigue against the United States. German aims in Latin America. Japan and Germany in Mexico. What happened in Cuba?_ “American intervention in Mexico would mean another Ireland, another Poland—another sore spot in the world. Well, why not?” Those were almost the last words spoken to me when I left Germany in 1914, upon my ill-fated mission to England. I had in my pocket at the moment detailed memoranda of instructions which, if they could be carried out, would insure such disturbances in Mexico that the United States would be compelled to intervene. I had been given authority to spend almost unlimited sums of money for the purchase of arms, for the bribery of officials—for anything in fact that would cause trouble in Mexico. And the words I have quoted were not spoken by an uninformed person with a taste for cynical comment; they were uttered by Major Köhnemann, of Abteilung III B of the German General Staff. They form a lucid and concrete explanation of German activities in Mexico during the past eight years.