The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-WarCurtin, D. Thomas (Daniel Thomas)
History
The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-War
Curtin, D. Thomas (Daniel Thomas)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The ways of the League, however, being crooked, some of the charter
members began to fall away from one another and many of the doings
of the ringleaders are now coming to light.
The League must be doing well financially, as William Martin, the
chief of the Potsdamerstrasse office, jubilantly declared that no
matter how the war ended he would come out of it with a million.
Any real American, whether at home or abroad, deeply resents the
degradation of his flag. Yet the League of Truth in Berlin has
consistently dragged the Stars and Stripes in the mire, and that in
a country which boasts that the police are not only omniscient but
omnipotent.
A constant attempt, in accordance with the policy of most German
newspapers, I may add, is made to depict us as a spineless
jelly-fish nation. They have regarded principles of international
custom as little as the manipulators of submarines under the reign
of Tirpitz.
Last fourth of July, Charles Mueller, a pseudo-American, hung from
his home in the busy Kurfurstendamm a huge American flag with a
deep border of black that Berlin might see a "real American's"
symbol of humiliation. On the same day, dear to the hearts of
Americans, a four-page flyer was spread broadcast through the
German capital with a black border on the front page enclosing a
black cross. The Declaration of Independence was bordered with
black inside and an ode to American degradation by John L. Stoddard
completed the slap in the face.
The League selected January 27th, 1916, the Kaiser's birthday, as a
suitable occasion for Mueller and Marten, not even hyphenates,
solemnly and in the presence of a great crowd to place an immense
wreath at the base of the statue of Frederick the Great on the
Linden, with the inscription "Wilson and his Press are not America."
The stern Police Department of Berlin does not permit the
promiscuous scattering of floral decorations and advertising matter
on the statues of German gods, and the fact that the wreath
remained there month after month proved that somebody high up was
sanctioning the methods of the League.
The protests of the American Ambassador were of no avail, until he
determined to make an end of the humiliation, after three months,
by threatening to go down to this busy section of Berlin, near the
Royal Palace, and remove the wreath himself. Force is the only
argument which impresses the Prussians, and we are extremely
fortunate that our Ambassador to Germany is a man of force.
The League, however, had printed a picture of the wreath in its
issue of _Light and Truth_, which it endeavours to circulate
everywhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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