It is simple to answer that. It is he who himself knows in his own soul whether or not he is done with the damnable hyphen which has almost ruined America, and yet may do so. Liberty Bonds and public speaking do not prove Americanism. Not even service stars in a window make a man American. Blessed are the _pure in heart_, of Mason City or of Des Moines, of the Greater Iowa Association or the Non-Partisan League, of the Peoples’ Council, of the A. P. L., or of German or American birth. And when individual American courage is common enough to make a man fight pro-Germanism until it is dead forever, one thinks we shall indeed see God manifested again in the great civilization which once was promised for America. It can be had now in only one way, and that way will cost dear. If you are interested in your son’s future, see to it that he—and you yourself—shall be pure in heart. We want and will have no others for Americans to-day or to-morrow. CHAPTER VII THE GERMAN SPY CASES The Great Spy Cases—Details of German Propaganda—Finances and Personnel of German Forces in America—The Diplomatic Fiasco—Notorious Figures of Alien Espionage Uncovered—The Senate Judicial Investigation. To gain any adequate idea of the amount of the activities which centered in New York would mean the following out of countless concealed threads leading all over the world and covering the United States like a net. We never knew until we were well into this war that, long before we dreamed of war, our country was infested by vast numbers of the paid spies of Germany; that these worked under a well-established, and now well-known, organization; that the highest German diplomatic representatives were a part of the system; that leading financial figures of New York were figures in it also, and that the whole intricate machine was differentiated like a great and well-ordered business undertaking. It was an elaborate organization for the betrayal of a country; and that organization, like the armed forces of Germany in the field, was beaten and broken only by the loyal men of America, resolved once more that a government of the people should not perish from the earth. Let the scene shift from New York—whose defensive organization has been outlined—to the national judicial center at Washington, the seat of our intelligence system and of those courts of law which have in charge the national affairs. There, for many months, a few men have sat and watched pour into their offices such proofs of human perfidy and depravity as can never have been paralleled in the most Machiavellian days of the Dark Ages.