It was in reality a gigantic game of bluff. Germany wished to give to the world convincing proof that all peoples of German descent were solidly supporting her. It was for this reason that reports of impossible German activities were set afloat; that rumors of Germans massing in the Maine woods, of aëroplane flights over Canada, and of all sorts of enterprises which had no basis in fact, were disseminated. And since many anti-German papers had been indiscreet enough to attack the German-Americans as disloyal, the German agents used and fomented these attacks for their own purposes. Who could gain by such a campaign of slander and the feeling it would produce? Certainly not the Administration, which had great need of a united country behind it. Certainly not the American press, which was certain to lose circulation and advertising; nor American business, which would suffer from the loss of thousands of customers of German descent, who would turn to the German merchant for their needs. Only two classes could profit: the German press, which was liberally subsidized by the German Government, and the German Government itself. It was to the interests of the administration at Washington to keep the country united by keeping the Germans disunited. The reverse condition would tend to indicate that Americanism was a failure, since the country was divided at a critical time; it would seriously hamper the Government in its dealings with all the warring nations; and it would be of benefit only to the German societies and German press, and through them to the German Government. It _was_ of benefit. The German newspapers increased their circulations and advertising revenues, in many cases by more than one hundred per cent. German banks and insurance companies received money that had formerly gone to American institutions and which now went to swell the Imperial German War Loans. And the German clubs increased their memberships and became more and more instruments of power in the work of Germany. There is a typical German club in New York—the _Deutscher Verein_ on Central Park South. During the war it has been used as a sub-office of the German General Staff. It was here that von Papen used to store the dynamite that was needed in such enterprises as the Welland Canal plot. It was here that conspirators used to meet for conferences which no one, not even the other members of the club, could tell were not as innocent as they seemed.