Herr Kapp was a well-to-do German of the middle class, an artist by profession, well educated, and about forty years old. The only objection I had to Kapp was that, like most other Germans, he was an habitual liar. However, he tried to be a good fellow, which was decidedly in his favor, and there was one other good thing about him—his unusually good sense of humor.
Realizing the uniqueness of our position, which happens only once in a couple of centuries, namely, being a member of the victorious army about to pass from the hands of the enemy, I sought to engage Herr Kapp in honest, frank conversation, since there could now be no reason for deceptions. After a while, he opened up, so I asked him when he considered the German cause was at its best. He said that it was undoubtedly in the early part of the War, when the Germans were at the gates of Paris. I asked him when he thought the tide had turned, and he said that the German people realized, on July 18, 1918, when the Allies attacked between Château-Thierry and Soissons, that thereafter Germany was fighting the War on the defensive.
“What,” I asked, “was the attitude of the German people toward their prospects of victory when America entered the War?”
“Well,” he calmly replied, “to a large number of the common people who, of course, read the Governmental propaganda, they only considered it as a big bluff, for they reasoned that it would be impossible for America to transport her army overseas. You see,” he went on, “the reports of the sinking of allied ships by our submarines had been greatly exaggerated, and the general public honestly thought that America could do no more harm as a belligerent than she could as a neutral, for she was so unprepared that, before she could possibly raise an army, the Von Tirpitz U-boat warfare would have brought the Allies to their knees. But,” he continued emphatically, “to us educated and thinking Germans, we quite well knew that, when America declared war, it was all over for us unless we succeeded in capturing Paris, which, of course, would paralyze the French Railway System, and cut off the Allies’ means of transportation and supply to the front. This was the reason for our big spring drive. It was a last hope, and we banked everything on its success. America won the war for the Allies.”