26th Of June 1928 How America Entered The War Flynn Writes About The Diplomatic Secret Service By F W Elven Correspondent Of The M nchen 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