For years before it plunged the world into war the German Government, as in every country in which it could obtain the necessary foothold, had been applying in the United States its policy of “peaceful penetration.” Toward that end it had endeavored by many apparently innocent means to hold the loyalty of American citizens or residents of German birth or extraction, to create a dominant body of sentiment in favor of anything and everything German, and to secure the open or concealed control of vast quantities of business through which it could operate for the furtherance of German interests, political, industrial, financial or cultural. German methods and ideals accepted in schools and colleges; German departments in universities that were centers of influence for the spreading of admiration of everything German; in some regions Germanized public schools; a country-wide net-work of German societies and associations through which love and loyalty for the “fatherland” were kept alive; millions of dollars of German money invested in American business, frequently under disguised ownership; German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats using their offices and privileges for the promotion of all manner of intrigue against the interests of the country; plots for the control of industry, the destruction of property, the inciting of sedition, the hatching of conspiracies, the rousing of enmity against us in friendly nations--these were some of the things the American people found had been going on under their very noses, many of which they had thoughtlessly aided, when the shock of war opened their eyes to the character and the methods of the enemy who, for the sake of civilization, had to be rendered innocuous. It was an enemy who had not only to be fought on the open battlefield but foiled in all the underground tricks and activities in which he was exceptionally expert and incessantly busy.