A word for the pacifists. One pacifist constitutes a quorum in any society. There were in America at the outbreak of war one hundred million people who disliked war. As the injustices of Germany multiplied, the patriotic war-haters became militarists, and there sprang up little groups of malcontents who resented, usually by German consent, any tendency on the part of the Government to avenge the insult to its independence. Social and industrial fanatics of all descriptions flocked to the standard of "Peace at Any Price," and for want of a dissenting audience soon convinced themselves that they had something to say.
Many of the peace movements which were set going during the first three years of the war were sincere, many were not. A mass meeting held at Madison Square Garden in 1915 at which Bryan was the chief speaker, was inspired by Germany. In the insincere class falls also the "Friends of Peace," organized in 1915. Its letterhead bore the invitation: "Attend the National Peace Convention, Chicago, Sept. 5 and 6," and incidentally betrayed the origin of the society. The letterhead stated that the society represented the American Truth Society (an offshoot of the National German-American Alliance), The American Women of German Descent, the American Fair Play Society, the German-American Alliance of Greater New York, the German Catholic Federation of New York, the United Irish-American Societies and the United Austrian and Hungarian-American Societies. Among the "honorable vice-chairmen" were listed Edmund von Mach, John Devoy, Justices Goff and Cohalan (a trinity of Britonophobes), Colquitt of Texas, Ex-Congressman Buchanan (of Labor's National Peace Council fame), Jeremiah O'Leary (a Sinn Feiner, mentioned in official cables from Zimmermann to Bernstorff as a good intermediary for sabotage), Judge John T. Hylan, Richard Bartholdt (a congressman active in the German political lobby), and divers officers of the Alliance.
The American Truth Society, Inc., the parent of the Friends of Peace, was founded in 1912 by Jeremiah O'Leary, a Tammany lawyer later indicted for violation of the Espionage Act, who disappeared when his case came up for trial in May, 1918; Alphonse Koelble, who conducted the German-American Alliance's New York political clearing house; Gustav Dopslaff, a German-American banker, and others interested in the German cause. In 1915 the Society, whose executives were well and favorably known to German embassy, began issuing and circulating noisy pamphlets, with such captions as "Fair Play for Germany," and "A German-American War." O'Leary and his friends also conducted a mail questionnaire of Congress in an effort to catalogue the convictions of each member on the blockade and embargo questions. Their most insidious campaign was an effort to frighten the smaller banks of the country from participating in Allied loans, by threats of a German "blacklist" after the war, to organize a "gold protest" to embarrass American banking operations, and in general to harass the Administration in its international relations.