It is essential to the record to chronicle that American sentiment did not accept German official disclaimers very seriously. They were too prolific, and were viewed as apologetic expedients to keep the relations between the two governments as smooth as possible in the face of conditions which were daily imperiling those relations. Germany appeared in the position of a Frankenstein who had created a hydra-headed monster of conspiracy and intrigue that had stampeded beyond control, and washed her hands of its depredations. The situation, however, was only susceptible to this view by an inner interpretation of the official disclaimers. In letter, but not in spirit, Germany disowned her own offspring by repudiating the deeds of plotters in terms which deftly avoided revealing any ground for the suspicion--belied by events--that those deeds had an official inception. Germany, in denying that the plotters were Government "agents," suggested that these men pursued their operations with the recognition that they alone undertook all the risks, and that if unmasked it was their patriotic duty not to betray "the cause," which might mean their country, the German Government, or the German officials who directed them. Not all the exposed culprits had been equal to this self-abnegating strain on their patriotism; some, like Fay, were at first talkative in their admissions that their pursuits were officially countenanced, another recounted defense of Werner Horn, who attempted to destroy a bridge connecting Canada and the United States, even went so far as to contend that the offense was military--an act of war--and therefore not criminal, on the plea that Horn was acting as a German army officer. In other cases incriminating evidence made needless the assumption of an attitude by culprits of screening by silence the complicity of superiors. Yet despite almost daily revelations linking the names of important German officials, diplomatic and consular, with exposed plots, a further repudiation came from Berlin in December, 1915, when the New York Grand Jury's investigation was at high tide. This further disavowal read: "The German Government, naturally, has 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 counsels of violence, by contravention of law, or by any means whatever that could offend the American people in the pride of their own authority.... I can only say, and do most emphatically declare to Germans abroad, to German-American citizens of the United States, to the American people all alike, that whoever is guilty of conduct tending to associate the German cause with lawlessness of thought, suggestion or deed against life, property, and order in the United States is, in fact, an enemy of that very cause and a source of embarrassment to the German Government, notwithstanding what he or they may believe to the contrary."