“Tell me, do they insult you in Berlin like this?”

I replied that I seldom encountered such antagonism in Berlin; that it was chiefly the army which was anti-American.

“Well, that’s the difference between the diplomats and the army.  If the army was running the government we would probably have had war with America a long time ago,” he concluded, smiling sarcastically.

Shortly after the sinking of the Lusitania the naval propaganda bureau had bronze medals cast and placed on sale at souvenir shops throughout Germany.  Ambassador Gerard received one day, in exchanging some money, a fifty mark bill, with the words stamped in purple ink across the face: 

“God punish England and America.”  For some weeks this rubber stamp was used very effectively.

The Navy Department realised, too, that another way to attack America and especially Americans in Berlin, was to arouse the suspicion that every one who spoke English was an enemy.  The result was that most Americans had to be exceedingly careful not to talk aloud in public places.  The American correspondents were even warned at the General Staff not to speak English at the front.  Some of the correspondents who did not speak German were not taken to the battle areas because the Foreign Office desired to avoid insults.

The year and a half between the sinking of the Lusitania and the severance of diplomatic relations was a period of terror for most Americans in Germany.  Only those who were so sympathetic with Germany that they were anti-American found it pleasant to live there.  One day one of the American girls employed in the confidential file room of the American Embassy was slapped in the face until she cried, by a German in civilian clothes, because she was speaking English in the subway.  At another time the wife of a prominent American business man was spit upon and chased out of a public bus because she was speaking English.  Then a group of women chased her down the street.  Another American woman was stabbed by a soldier when she was walking on Friedrichstrasse with a friend because she was speaking English.  When the State Department instructed Ambassador Gerard to bring the matter to the attention of the Foreign Office and to demand an apology Wilhelmstrasse referred the matter to the General Staff for investigation.  The soldier was arrested and secretly examined.  After many weeks had elapsed the Foreign Office explained that the man who had stabbed the woman was really not a soldier but a red cross worker.  It was explained that he had been wounded and was not responsible for what he did.  The testimony of the woman, however, and of other witnesses, showed that the man at the time he attacked the American was dressed in a soldier’s uniform, which is grey, and which could not he mistaken for the black uniform of a red cross worker.

It was often said in Berlin, “Germany hates England, fights France, fears Russia but loathes America.”  No one, not even American officials, questioned it.