The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective LeagueHough, Emerson
History
The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective League
Hough, Emerson
American Protective League; Propaganda, German; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- United States
Germany fell because she was rotten in heart and in soul. That was
why she fought foul—because she _was_ foul, foul to the core. It was
an amazing and an abhorrent “kultur,” this which she offered to the
world. It is no wonder that her ways of warfare were cruel, merciless,
unchivalrous; no wonder that she crucified men and tortured women and
children until there is no human way ever of squaring the account with
her. She no longer belongs on the clear avenues of the world, and the
one epitaph she has earned is the one word, “Unclean!” History has not
usually recorded such statements. No. And history has not usually been
in the way of discovering such truths.
It was this Dr. Scheele, an upper class German who lived here
twenty-five years as a spy, who, under German Government order, started
this friendly plan against America. You cannot call that military
genius. You cannot call such a man a soldier. His is simply an instance
of perverted intellect. It is not even to be dignified by the term
malicious. It is unmoral, base, intellectually obscene, as Thierichens
was emotionally obscene.
But Scheele himself, now grown old—for he was a major when he came
to America twenty-five years ago—is to-day a pleasant man of genial
manner. He used to visit the home of one of his guards—to whom he stuck
very close in his walks on the street, the guard having told him he
would kill him on his first step toward escape—and there he always
was kind to the children. “He was such a nice man,” said the guard’s
wife—“so courtly.” He is a very egotistical man, and it requires a
certain playing up to his vanity to get him to talk freely. Yet he has
talked freely, and has given much valuable information to the United
States. The men who accompany him in his city walks would dearly love
to drop him out a high window or see him try to escape. They do not
love him.
But Scheele loves himself. Asked one time as to some statement he had
made, he took offense at suspicion of his veracity. He, twenty-five
years a spy in America, a state’s-evidence man at last against his
original country which he thus betrayed in turn, at this imputation
slapped himself on the chest and said: “On my honor as a German
officer!” Great God!
In his statements he was not often found tripping. For instance, when
he said that 200,000 rifles for German revolutionists were stored
in a German club in New York, its searchers did find evidence that
rifles had earlier been stored there, but later removed. Scheele was
taken from Washington to New York to point out these rifles. He would
not go with less than four men as a guard. He is always afraid some
German will kill him. Oh, yes, he is still alive. The secret men of the
United States know where he is. He can be seen. He will talk. He is an
elderly, kindly-looking man now—a man who speaks of his “honor as a
German officer!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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