A Straight Deal by Owen Wister

"You will desire to know," said the Kaiser to his council at Potsdam in June, 1908, after the successful testing of the first Zeppelin, "how the hostilities will be brought about. My army of spies scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over North and South America, will take good care of that. Even now I rule supreme in the United States, where three million voters do my bidding at the Presidential elections."

Yes, they did his bidding; there, and elsewhere too. They did it at other elections as well. Do you remember the mayor they tried to elect in Chicago? and certain members of Congress? and certain manufacturers and bankers? They did his bidding in our newspapers, our public schools, and from the pulpit. Certain localities in one of the river counties of Iowa (for instance) were spots of German treason to the United States. The "exchange professors" that came from Berlin to Harvard and other universities were so many camouflaged spies. Certain prominent American citizens, dined and wined and flattered by the Kaiser for his purpose, women as well as men, came back here mere Kaiser-puppets, hypnotized by royalty. His bidding was done in as many ways as would fill a book. Shopkeepers did it, servants did it, Americans among us were decorated by him for doing it. Even after the Armistice, a school textbook "got by" the Board of Education in a western state, wherein our boys and girls were to be taught a German version -- a Kaiser version -- of Germany. Somebody protested, and the board explained that it "hadn't noticed," and the book was held up.