(26th Of June, 1928)
How America Entered The War
Flynn Writes About The Diplomatic Secret Service  By F. W. Elven, Correspondent Of The München Latest
News  Cincinnati, Mid June
William J. Flynn has published a part of his War Memoirs in the weekly Liberty, which is much read here.
During the war, Flynn was the Head Of The United States Secret Service. The Service encompasses the whole
country, and is brilliantly organised. In peacetime it primarily provides for the personal security of the President.
Its attention is enjoyed by whatever else in the national capital is in need of protection, or thinks it needs so. It
keeps under surveillance all doubtful elements somehow suspected of connections with political tendencies
hostile to the government and its spokesmen. During the war its principal task was to keep an eye on those who
more or less loudly had made themselves noticeable in opposition to the war, or who merely were suspected of
not being in agreement with the Wilsonian war policy. Germans also enjoyed its special care, and at that time
many fell into the traps which had been laid everywhere by the Federal Secret Service.
From Flynn's memoirs, however, we learn that the Secret Service had been assigned an important mission even
before our entry into the war. In the year 1915, a full two years before the declaration of war, the most efficient
telephone expert was summoned to Washington and assigned the task of arranging the leading telephone wires
to the German and Austrian embassies in such a way that Secret Service officials could tap every conversation
from any source that was held between the ambassadors and their personnel, as well as every conversation
emanating from the embassy offices. A room was set up with which all the wires were linked in such an
ingenious way that not even a single conversation could be missed. Service men sat in this room day and night,
dictating the overheard conversations to the stenographers seated beside them. Every night the head of the Secret
Service Bureau, that is, the author of the article in Liberty, received a stenographic report of all the conversations
held in the preceding twenty four hours, so that on the very same evening he was able to communicate
everything important to the State Department and to President Wilson.
Let us bear in mind the time this installation was created, at the beginning of the year 1915, that is, at the time
when the United States still lived in peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, and Wilson never tired of giving
assurances that he harboured no hostile intentions against Germany. It was also the time when the German
Ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff, neglected no opportunity to show due appreciation of Wilson's
friendly disposition and feelings for Germany and the German Folk. It was also the time when Wilson gave his
confidant Baruch instructions to begin the gradual mobilisation of industry for war; also the time in which it
became increasingly obvious, as the American historian Harry Elmer Barnes also sets forth in his book On The
Origins Of The Great War, that Wilson was firmly decided to enter the war, and postponed the execution of his
bellicose plans only because public opinion first had to be won over for these plans.
Flynn's memoirs must finally remove the ground from the foolish chatter that Wilson was pushed into the war
against his will by German submarine warfare. The tapping of the telephone wires leading to the German
embassy took place with his knowledge. We also learn this from Flynn's memoirs. The author adds that the
material thus gathered against Germany contributed considerably to the eventual break. This can prove only that
this put means in Wilson's hands to win public opinion for the war long planned by him. And in fact this
material was wholly and ideally suited for it. The Memoirs confirm to the fullest extent what unfortunately must
still be said, that Germany at that time was represented in Washington in a downright incredibly incompetent
and incredibly unworthy way. If we hear that in one passage Flynn writes that the stenographic reports prepared
for him daily contained enough material to keep a divorce lawyer busy for months on end, then we get a general
idea of what went on.
The Secret Service maintained women agents in Washington and New York whose job it was to sound out the
members of the German Embassy, Bernstorff included, whenever anything important happened. One of these
woman agents kept a better class apartment in Washington in which the gentlemen met their ladies, and where
occasionally even Secretary Of State Lansing dropped in to hear what was new. On New Year's Day, 1916,
when the