Page:A personal letter to the Kaiser.pdf/7

 know who is a spy and who isn't. It makes me wonder every time a man named Schwartz or Hinderburg calls on me whether he is going to lift some private papers off my desk when he goes out. And when my friend Hensel comes over to have dinner at the house—though I've known him for years—I just can't help wondering, when he admires my new rug, whether he's thinking how nice it will look in his house when his friends in uniform arrive.

It may be a foolish way to feel, Wilhelm, but I can't help it. I've got some dandy German friends over here. I love them! I want to keep on loving them. Don't you see what a terrible injustice you are doing them, when you make me wonder all the time whether they are, in fact, all that they seem to be, whether they are really and truly my friends, or only pretending to be my friends because it will boost your game? For the sake of our future business relations you simply must let me know where you stand on this spy question. Life is too short to do business if one must keep one hand on a revolver and be looking into a mirror all the time.

It isn't I alone who feel this way. All over the world people are feeling nervous because of the wonderful efficiency of your system of spies. Only last night I was reading about the fight in Holland's Parliament over the admission of twenty-six Germans to citizenship. Holland has always been proud of her hospitality; she has opened the doors of her citizenship freely. But these twenty-six applicants were your countrymen.

"We have a right to know the real motives of these men for requesting a change of nationality," said Mr. Van Doorn, the leader of the opposition.

Was it because they really wanted to become citizens of Holland, or was it a part of a well worked out plan of "peaceful penetration"? Holland wouldn't have asked that question before the war; she took your countrymen at their face value. It is the revelations of your spy system that have changed her attitude from frankness to suspicion. Don't you see what an injustice such a system does to Germans in every corner of the world? Can't you understand how it is going to make it hard for them to do business anywhere? Don't you owe it to them, Wilhelm, to put all your efficiency at work now in cleansing that suspicion from the thought and memory of the world?

I know that I shouldn't call you Wilhelm; the proper formula, of course, is Your Majesty or something like that. But I've called you Wilhelm deliberately, for your own good. I want to get you used to it. For when your men get back from the trenches, Wilhelm, and see you all nice and warm and cozy in Potsdam, you're going to notice something in their attitude that wasn't there in 1913. They're going to be a little restless and shuffle their feet a bit when you tell them how God has called you to rule over them; and they are going to