Further reports on criminal treatment of German-Americans by England

It's hard to find any images that show the level of viciousness against Germans stirred up by the British once they had declared war. I don't believe there are any images extant of the concentration camps in England into which they threw any German or German-named civilian  man they got their hands on, including Americans. These camps are reported to have been of the lowest quality, where some Germans who tried to complain about the inedible quality of the food were shot! Nothing like this ever occurred in Germany. 

By Carolyn Yeager

THIS IS A MUST-READ FOLLOW UP OF THE PREVIOUS POSTED REPORT asking whether American citizens are entitled to protection by the U.S. State Department. The answer unfortunately is “not always” and there will probably be more personal accounts like these two as I continue to read The Fatherland issues. I am publishing this  2nd “installment” next, but in order to do so I had to forego another important and truly heart-rending article that I was going to post next. I urge everyone to read it for themselves in the Dec. 2, 1914 issue, page 6, titled ENGLISH BARBARISM by Hans F. Kammeyer. It's incredible and extremely sad. But even though it hurts, it's what we need to know. This kind of thing has been covered up for too long. We're still protecting the guilty from these two major wars and we are the worse off for it. Time to free the long-suffering Germans.

v.1 no.18 Dec. 9, 1914 Page  9

AMERICAN CITIZENS ARRESTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

Further Proof that an American Passport Is Only “A Scrap of Paper”

By Frederick F. Schrader

WHEN a short time ago it was charged that Great Britain had refused to respect the rights of American citizens of German birth or German antecedence, a feeble denial was made at the State Department. The steady accumulation of facts showing that such citizens had been forcibly taken off neutral vessels and arrested, and that Mr. Louis Schneider of Hastings-on-Hudson and others had been threatened with death on plea that they were German spies, when brought to the attention of the State Department, elicited the reply that it had no information on the subject.

The revelations concerning the indifference both of Secretary Bryan and Asst. Secretary Lansing as to the status of German-American citizens abroad, set forth in THE FATHERLAND, has stirred up public sentiment to a high pitch of indignation throughout the country. Nevertheless, evidence is not forthcoming that there is a change of attitude on this question on the part of the administration. We are today more completely under the domination of England than any time since the Revolution, and practices which led to the war of 1812 are servilely submitted to by Bryan and his department. German-Americans are simply abandoned to the mercy of Great Britain wherever they fall into the hands of its agents, and a certificate of American citizenship is not worth the paper it is written on.

Recently a cable was received in New York from Herbert Corey, war correspondent of the New York Globe, announcing that he was being held a prisoner by the British authorities in Aldershot. Mr. Corey was the first American to call the attention of the public to the infamous concentration camps in England, and he was bold enough to print the following:

Orders from the French War Office are that, so far as possible no news whatever of this war shall be printed except the official communiques. Doubtless Gen. Kitchener has his reasons. He probably realizes that if the world knew what cruel slaughter is going on at the front there would be an effective protest against the continuance of the war. Doubtless, too, recruiting might be interfered with. Beyond any question, too, Kitchener has the war official's point of view. Civilians have no rights, except for paying the bills and being fed to guns. War correspondents are an especially loathsome form of civilian.

In another passage Mr. Corey quoted a London reporter as saying:

“The Belgians are the boys for us. They are all for us. They realize that the press has placed Belgium's case before the world and they appreciate it. Any Belgian will protect a reporter if he can. The English are the worst of all.”

Another unwarranted arrest of an American has recently been made public, that of Miss Grace Zaring, daughter of a retired New York lawyer, and niece of Harry Corson Clarke, the actor. Miss Zaring, after a tour of the world with her uncle, became a Red Cross nurse at Worthing, England, soon after her arrival there. Mr. Clarke tells her story in the New York Sun as follows:

“In the course of her work she heard a great deal about atrocities, particularly about that now famous case of the two Belgian children, with their hands cut off by the Germans.

“'Where are these children?' she asked. 'I'd like to see them.'

“She received directions how to find them among the other Belgian refugees. She found them all right—two of the healthiest specimens of mutilated children you ever saw, playing about a room with all their eight limbs intact and quite unharmed. To make quite sure, she sought out all the Belgian children in the town and found nothing to give the slightest justification for the story of German atrocities.

“I suppose she made a mistake in talking about it, but she could not refrain from expressing her opinion of such canards. Two days later, she was surprised to receive a visit from a policeman.

“ 'You're a German,' said the officer with the fine air of a man capturing a spy.

“ 'I'm not. I'm an American,' answered Grace.

“ 'But you've got a German name,' said the policeman triumphantly.

“ 'What if I have?' Grace replied. 'There are many German names in America.'

“ 'If you've got a German name you must be German,' said the officer.

“ 'Grace patiently told him that there was German blood on her father's side, and no harm in that, she guessed, but her great-grandfather on her mother's side had come from Scotland and become one of Indiana's famous men. All this did not appear to interest the policeman. He threw his trump card:

“ 'You've been to Brighton,' he accused her, fixing her with a baleful eye.

“ 'Why, yes, I've been to Brighton,' she confessed beginning almost to feel guilty, though she did not know why. 'I was there a whole afternoon, calling on Capt. Walker and his family. I met Capt. Walker in Melbourne at a reception given by Lord Denman, the Governor-General. The Captain was frightfully wounded at Mons, and I went to cheer him up if I could.

“Have you got a birth certificate?” was the next question.

“She told him she had never found it necessary to carry a birth certificate around with her. If the policeman would not believe her, there was her aunt, Mrs. Oliphant, who had lived in Worthing twelve years. No, that would not do; he must have a birth certificate. Well, Grace would go to London and get a passport from the American Embassy. Stuff and nonsense, a scrap of paper! A passport would not be recognized. And, anyhow, she would not be allowed to go to London to get it. She could not be allowed to leave Worthing under any circumstances until she showed her birth certificate. And more, she was given only three weeks to get it.

“She knew that it would be impossible to get her birth certificate from New York in three weeks, the way the mails are going now, and she began to be frightened. But she finally obtained permission to write to me in London, and you should have seen me hot footing it around to the American Embassy.”

What the Embassy did is not known. Mr. Clarke left with every assurance that his niece would come to no harm; but after his arrival in New York he received a letter from Miss Zaring informing him that she was still detained.

Let us briefly detail the experience of Mr. Fred F. Fleischer, a young man who holds an honorable discharge from the United States Army and was employed in the Singer Sewing Machine Company in Trinidad [British Jamaica]. His escape from imprisonment and possible death was due to the friendship of an official in the employ of the British government and the intercession of Mr. McConico, the American Consul. Public sentiment against everything German and Austrian was aroused to a pitch of fanaticism which extended largely to the negroes. The Trinidad papers printed the most incredible stories about German atrocities and German spies. All German-speaking residents were taken in custody and placed in St. James prison, regardless of their citizenship. American mail was opened by the officials, and the concerns of prominent business men, among them at least one New York house, were confiscated. American passports were no protection in the hands of persons with German names. In large type the Mirror printed the legend:

“Britain Recognizes No German-American Citizens.

What is the Government Going to Do About It?”

well knowing that the American Government would do nothing.

The employees of the leading hotel were dragged to prison. The fact that the manager of the hotel is an American citizen caused the following manifesto to appear in one of the local papers:

“Indeed, we are of opinion that the action taken by the Government as far as the Queen's Park Hotel is concerned, has even fallen short of what it should be, in a very important particular, in that the manager of the hotel has not been drafted on with his fellow employees to the military prison at St. James. It is all bunkum to say that this individual is a naturalized American subject. In fact, to us, the question of American naturalization, plus the original fact of German birth, makes it all the more imperative that such a person should not be in charge of the most important hotel in the colony.”

In other words, that he should be placed in jail, where he subsequently was placed.

Mr. Fleischer says that the American consul displayed entire willingness to help those in need of his assistance, but had no backing from the State Department. When Mr. Fleischer, soon after the outbreak of the war, was subjected to an inquisition, the Consul took his discharge papers and sent them to Washington to further his application for a passport. Evidently the Consul's letter was opened, for promptly another demand was made on Mr. Fleischer for his papers, with the evident expectation that in the absence of his discharge papers he would be unable to legitimatize himself. It would have gone hard with him but for a personal visit of the Consul to the Governor which resulted in his being left unmolested. Soon after, Fleischer received a hint from an inspector in the secret service to make his escape, as the Legislative Council was about to pass an order to “eradicate German influence in the island, commercially and morally.” He then tried to buy his passage to New York, but no British line would sell him a ticket [!], and he was compelled to pay a premium for a berth on a vessel of the Royal Dutch West India Mail, which landed him in New York after a voyage lasting a month and two days. Two hours before his departure he was arrested for having photographs in his possession, but again through the intercession of the detective who convinced himself of Fleischer's innocence, he escaped.

He says the feeling among the British is of the most degradedly brutal and inhuman character. The innocent people confined in the jail are treated like wild animals. Men, women and children are fed on hard tack and rum, and are kept in filthy and unhealthy cells, like felons. At any time the infuriated negoes may start to massacre them, urged on as they are by the local papers.

So far from being good sports, the English are raving maniacs when they are getting the worst of a fight. The Germans began to be treated like savages immediately after the recently destroyed Good Hope, the Berwick and the Bristol, English warships, put into the harbor. The latter had been worsted in a fight with the Karlsruhe off Porto Rico, had her funnels shot full of holes and was in a battered condition generally. The same day the Kronprinz Wilhelm sank the Indian Prince one hundred miles off Trinidad, and this started the story that the Germans had sent the Kronprinz a wireless message. This was absurd on the face, as there is but one wireless station on the island, and that is in the hands of the British Government; but this served as an excuse to persecute the inoffensive and helpless people who had trusted to the protection of the British Government.

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Page 11

“THE FATHERLAND” IN THE NEWS

[…]

We in the United States, fortunately at least can compel attention. We know that twenty million German-Americans and as many Irishmen are with us. We know that many of the ablest thinkers of native stock plead Germany's cause. But what shall we say of the poor German lured into the Dominion of Canada by the promises of the immigration agents of the Canadian Government? Cut off from their own kind, surrounded by malignant hatred and persecution, unable to reveal what is in their hearts, their only comfort must have been the news of the war as published in THE FATHERLAND, in the New Yorker Staats Zeitung, and other publications devoted to fair play. England still suppresses the news of the sinking of her Dreadnaught the Audacious. Afraid of the truth, the Canadian government first barred THE FATHERLAND and the Staats Zeitung from the mails.

On November 21, however, according to the Montreal Star, the Canadian Government announced that henceforth under the War Measures Act it is a criminal offence to sell, circulate or have in one's possession a copy of THE FATHERLAND, the Vital Issue, the New Yorker Staats Zeitung, and the Truth About Germany, one of the publications in the Fair Play Library of The Fatherland. To have in one's possession the Truth About Germany is a crime. What will the Canadians do to a man who tells them the Truth about England? ...

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Sounds strangly familiar to our times, does it not? I'll just say, Draw your own conclusions.