Until the outbreak of the war, in 1914, I maintained close and active personal and business relations in Germany. I was well acquainted with a number of the leading personages of the country. I served in the German army thirty years ago. I took an active interest in furthering German art in America. I do not apologize for, nor am I ashamed of, my German birth. But I am ashamed--bitterly and grievously ashamed--of the Germany which stands convicted before the high tribunal of the world’s public opinion of having planned and willed war, of the revolting deeds committed in Belgium and northern France, of the infamy of the _Lusitania_ murders, of innumerable violations of The Hague conventions and the law of nations, of abominable and perfidious plotting in friendly countries, and shameless abuse of their hospitality, of crime heaped upon crime in hideous defiance of the laws of God and man. A curious phase of this whole situation is the fact that so many thousands of Germans who found the conditions in their own empire intolerable and sought homes in America, should have fostered a sentimental attachment for the fatherland as a land of comfort and happiness, and of its ruler as a glorious Lohengrin afloat upon the river of time in a swan-boat, in an atmosphere of charm and mystery, to the accompaniment of enchanting music. In their clubs and homes they so dreamed of this Germany and talked of it in the language of the land of their illusion that the sudden transformation of their knight of the swan-boat into a war lord of frightfulness and terror, seeking to plant his iron feet upon an outraged world, has only slowly penetrated to their comprehension. It is clear that there has been on America’s part a failure, that cannot be minimized or scouted, to communicate to many of the most intelligent and desirable of all our adopted citizens, the spirit of that America founded by Washington and saved by Lincoln, and all the great host who in their train-- “spread from sea to sea A thousand leagues the zone of liberty, And gave to man this refuge from his past, Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered.” IV