ust be proved by
restitution and reparation. Any other settlement of this world conflict
would be a world calamity. For America and for all the Allies who are
fighting for a peace worth having and keeping, the watchword must be:
Stand fast, ye free!

II

The offenses against the neutrality of the United States which were
instigated and financed by the Potsdam gang were enumerated by the
Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives in the
first week of April, 1917, and amounted to at least twenty-one distinct
crimes or unfriendly acts, including the furnishing of bogus passports
to German reservists and spies, the incitement of rebellion in India and
in Mexico, the preparation of dynamite outrages against Canada, the
placing of bombs in ships sailing from American ports, and many other
ill-judged pleasantries of a similar character.

The crown was put on this series of blundering misdeeds by the note of
January 19, 1917, sent from the German Foreign Office (under cover of
our diplomatic privilege, of course) to the German Minister in Mexico,
directing him to prepare an alliance with that country against the
United States in the event of war, urging him to use Mexico as an agent
to draw Japan into that alliance, and offering as a bribe to the
Mexicans the possession of American territory in Texas, New Mexico, and
Arizona. (See War Message and Facts Behind It, p. 13. Published by the
Committee on Public Information, Washington, Government Printing Office,
1917.)

The fact is, we have only just begun to understand the real nature of
the German secret service, which works with, and either under or over,
the diplomatic service.

It is certainly the most highly organized, systematic, and expensive,
and at the same time probably the most bone-headed and unscrupulous,
secret service in the world.

Its powers of falsification and evasion are only exceeded by its
capacity for making those mistakes which spring from a congenital
contempt for other people.

At The Hague I had numerous opportunities of observing and noting the
workings of this peculiar system. The story of many of them cannot be
publicly told without violating that reserve which I prefer to maintain
in regard to confidential communications and private affairs in which
the personal reputation of individuals is involved. But there are two or
three experiences of which I may write freely without incurring either
self-reproach or a just reproa