ulting spread of Germanophobia, were bound to damage me in the
eyes of the United States Government and public opinion. It is
thus obviously absurd to accuse me of being responsible in any
way for the acts in question, seeing that any such instigation,
or even approval on my part, would have involved the utter ruin
of my own policy!

Another accusation against my conduct while in America is that
I at all events connived at the commission of crimes under the
direction of officers attached to the Embassy of which I was in
charge, or of other German Secret Service agents. The evidence
for this consists of certain cipher telegrams from the military
authorities in Germany, addressed to the Embassy in Washington;
these were decoded in England and said to contain instructions
for outrages to be committed in Canadian territory. I cannot say
if these messages were genuine or no. Military cipher telegrams,
formally addressed to the military attache, were frequently received
at the Embassy, but were always sent forward at once by the registry
to Captain von Papen's office in New York, as a matter of routine,
and without being referred to me in any way. Von Papen certainly
never told me a word about any instructions from his superiors
that he should endeavor to foment disorders as alleged. For the
present, then, I consider that there is insufficient evidence for
his having received any such orders; but in all these matters I can,
of course, speak only for myself, military matters being entirely
out of my province. Soon after von Papen's recall I entered a protest
against the sending of a successor, as there was no longer any
useful purpose to be served by the employment of a Military Attache,
whose presence would only serve as a pretext for a renewed hostile
agitation against us.

Whether the illegal acts of the Secret Agents sent to the United
States by the military authorities were committed in accordance
with their orders or on their own initiative I had no means of
knowing at the time, nor have I been able to discover since my
return home. I may observe, however, that I more than once urgently
requested the Foreign Office to use all their influence against
the dispatch of Secret Service men to America. Moreover, I had
published in the Press a notice, couched in strong terms and signed
by myself, warning all Germans domiciled in the United States not to
involve themselves in any illegal activities under any circumstances
wha