4 
 
© Harris & Ewing 
 
 ATTORNEY-GENERAL THOMAS W. GREGORY 
 Who directed the nation-wide work of arresting and prosecuting German 
 plotters and of interning dangerous enemy aliens 
 
FIGHTING 
 GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 By 
 FRENCH STROTHER 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 Garden City New York 
 
 DOUBLEDAY PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
"W 
 
 ^% 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 191 8, BY 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 
 
 TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 
 
 INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 !«■ 
 
 1 ibid * 
 
 ©CLA508107 ^ 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 "Fighting Germany's Spies" is published to bring 
 home to the public in a detailed and convincing 
 manner the character of the German activities in 
 the United States. By courtesy of the Bureau of 
 Investigation of the Department of Justice the facts 
 and documents of this narrative have been verified. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword v 
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. The inside story of the passport 
 frauds and the first glimpse of 
 Werner Horn 3 
 
 II. The inside story of Werner Horn 
 and the first glimpse of the ship 
 bombs . . ... 
 
 III. Robert Fay and the ship bombs 
 
 IV. The inside story of the Captain of 
 
 the Eitel Friedrich 
 
 V. James J. F. Archibald and his pro- 
 German activities 
 
 VI. A tale told in telegrams . = . 
 
 VII. German codes and ciphers . . 
 
 VIII. The Tiger of Berlin meets the Wolf 
 of Wall Street .... 
 IX. The American Protective League 
 X. The German-Hindu conspiracy 
 XI. Dr. Scheele, chemical spy . . 
 
 37 
 60 
 
 83 
 
 92 
 109 
 134 
 
 158 
 192 
 
 223 
 258 
 
LIST OF HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 German agents who dealt in fraudulent 
 passports 16 
 
 The official German plotters at Washington 32 
 
 Captain Thierichens and scenes on the 
 Eitel Friedrich 88 
 
 "When the water gets to the boilers" . . 112 
 
 Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski 152 
 
 Rintelen and his confederates .... 184 
 
 Officers of the American Protective League 200 
 
 LINE CUTS IN THE TEXT 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A German attache reminds Bernstorff of 
 Wedell . 6 
 
 The successful use of a fraudulent passport 18 
 
 Von Papen and Albert appear as unneutral 
 plotters 28, 29 
 
 ix 
 
x ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 pact: 
 
 The card "of the guileless stranger from 
 Tokyo" 31 
 
 Von Papen becomes accessory to a crime 33 
 
 Two of Ruroedes visitors' credentials 34 
 
 Horn's application for a furlough . . . 39 
 
 Werner Horn's plan of escape . . . .41 
 
 Werner Horn's commission in the German 
 army 48, 49 
 
 Werner Horn's confession . . . . 56, 57 
 
 The Lusitania warning ..... 94, 95 
 
 Code message transmitting money to Sir 
 Roger Casement 137 
 
 A letter from John Devoy, an Irish- 
 American, exposing his hand in a plot 
 with the Germans . . . . . . 140 
 
 Extracts from a German code expert's 
 blotter 147 
 
 Bolo's handwriting . . . . . . . 148 
 
 A tale told in cablegrams .... 150, 151 
 
 The Cohalan-Irish Revolution message 154, 155 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Espionage has always been to Americans one 
 of the hateful relics of an outworn political 
 system of Europe from which America was fortu- 
 nately free. We lived in an atmosphere not 
 tainted with dynastic ambitions or internal 
 oppression. We had no secret agents spying 
 and plotting in other countries and were slow 
 to suspect other countries of doing such things 
 here. 
 
 The war, however, disillusioned us. We found 
 our soil to be infested with representatives of an 
 unscrupulous Power which did not hesitate to 
 violate our hospitality and break its most sacred 
 pledges in using this country as a base for un- 
 neutral plots against France and Great Britain. 
 We soon learned that these plots were directed 
 against us as well. They were only another 
 manifestation of the spirit which led to the open 
 hostility of Germany which forced us into war. 
 
 For a time we were at a great disadvantage 
 in meeting the situation. We had no secret 
 police; we had no laws adequate to deal with 
 these novel offenses. 
 
 XI 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Department of Justice met the situation, 
 so far as it could under existing law, by a great 
 enlargement of its Bureau of Investigation, and 
 by the creation of a legal division devoted 
 entirely to problems arising out of the war. 
 Congress substantially supplied the deficiency 
 in the laws by the passage of appropriate 
 statutes. Under the powers obtained in these 
 two directions the Department proceeded vig- 
 orously to the suppression of sedition, the intern- 
 ment of enemy aliens, and the prosecution of 
 German agents. Its success is, I feel, attested 
 by the absence of disorder in this country under 
 war-time conditions. Open German activities 
 have long since ceased here and the more subtle 
 operations have been driven so far under cover 
 as to be ineffective. In this work the Depart- 
 ment of Justice has had the efficient and loyal 
 aid of private citizens, who have responded 
 generously to a patriotic impulse, through the 
 agency of the American Protective League and 
 similar organizations. 
 
 Mr. Strother's narrative covers some of the 
 more outstanding cases of the period when 
 German plotting was at its height. The fail- 
 ure of these plots and the retribution visited 
 upon the evil-doers are evidences, not merely of 
 governmental efficiency, but of that of old, 
 age-old, substantive laws of morality, which 
 
 xii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Germany as a nation has undertaken to flout- 
 as we now know, in vain — both here and else- 
 where. 
 
 T. W. Gregory 
 Attorney-General. 
 Washington, D. C. 
 August 14, 1918. 
 
 Xlll 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
FIGHTING 
 GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Inside Story of the Passport Frauds 
 
 and 
 The First Glimpse of Werner Horn 
 
 WHEN Carl Ruroede, the "genius" of the 
 German passport frauds, came suddenly 
 to earth in the hands of agents of the Department 
 of Justice and unbosomed himself to the United 
 States Assistant District Attorney in New York, 
 he said sadly: 
 
 "I thought I was going to get an Iron Cross; 
 but what they ought to do is to pin a little tin 
 stove on me." 
 
 The cold, strong hand of American justice 
 wrung that very human cry from Ruroede, 
 who was the central figure (though far from the 
 most sinister or the most powerful) in this 
 earliest drama of Germany's bad faith with 
 neutral America — a drama that dealt in for- 
 gery, blackmail, and lies that revealed in 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 action the motives of greed and jealousy and 
 ambition, and that ended with three diplo- 
 mats disgraced, one plotter in the penitentiary, 
 and another sent to a watery grave in the 
 Atlantic by a torpedo from a U-boat of the 
 very country he had tried to serve. This is 
 the story: 
 
 Twenty-five days after the Kaiser touched 
 the button which publicly notified the world 
 that Germany at last had decided that "The 
 Day" had come — to be exact, on Augustus, 
 1914 — Ambassador Bernstorff wrote a letter 
 effusively addressed to "My very honoured 
 Mr. Von Wedell." (Ruroede had not yet 
 appeared on the scene.) The letter? itself was 
 more restrained than the address, but in it 
 Bernstorff condescended to accept tentatively 
 an offer of Wedell's to make a nameless voyage. 
 The voyage was soon made, for on September 
 24th Wedell left Rotterdam, bearing a letter 
 from the German Consul-General there, asking 
 all German authorities to speed him on his way 
 to Berlin, because he was bearing dispatches 
 to the Foreign Office. Arrived in Berlin, Wedell 
 executed his commission and then called upon 
 his uncle, Count Botho von Wedell, a high 
 functionary of the Foreign Office. He was 
 aflame with a great idea, which he unfolded to 
 his uncle. The idea was approved, and right 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 after the elections in November he was back 
 in New York to put it into execution, incidentally 
 bearing with him some letters handed him by- 
 order of Mr. Ballin, head of the Hamburg 
 American Steamship Company, and another 
 letter "for a young lady who goes to America 
 in the interest of Germany." If unhappy 
 Wedell had let this be his last voyage — but 
 that belongs later in the story. 
 
 Wedell's scheme was this: He learned in Berlin 
 that Germany had at home all the common 
 soldiers she expected to need, but that more 
 officers were wanted. He was told that Ger- 
 many cared not at all whether the 100,000 
 reservists in America got home or not, but 
 that she cared very much indeed to get the 
 800 or 1,000 officers in North and South America 
 back to the Fatherland. Nothing but the 
 ocean and the British fleet stood in their way. 
 The ocean might be overcome. But the British 
 
 fleet ? Wedell proposed the answer: He would 
 
 buy passports from longshoremen in New York 
 — careless Swedes or Swiss or Spaniards to 
 whom $20 was of infinitely more concern than 
 a mere lie — and send the officers to Europe, 
 armed with these documents, as neutrals travel- 
 ling on business. Once in Norway or Spain or 
 Italy, to get on into Germany would be easy. 
 
 For a few weeks Wedell got along famously. 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 He bought passports and papers showing nativity 
 from Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Swiss 
 longshoremen and sailors. Meantime, he got 
 in touch with German reserve officers and passed 
 them on to Europe on these passports. 
 
 
 *N 
 
 ♦Stftl 
 
 
 A GERMAN ATTACHE REMINDS BERNSTORFF OF WEDELL 
 This telegram is from Haniel von Haimhausen, the counsellor of the 
 German Embassy in Washington, and was sent in response to an inquiry 
 from Bernstorff for the name of the man who had offered to act as a 
 messenger to Germany for him. The message reads: 
 
 Count Bernstorff, care Ritz Carlton. Hans Adam von Wedell attorney fifteen 
 William Street, New York he has been introduced by consul Hossenfelder, Haniel. 
 
 But he was not content with these foreign 
 passports. In the case of a few exceptionally 
 valuable German officers he wished to have 
 credentials that would be above all suspicion. 
 Consequently, he set about to gather a few 
 American passports. Here his troubles began, 
 and here he added the gravest burden to his 
 
 6 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 already great load of culpabilities. For Von 
 Wedell was an American citizen, and proud 
 of it. But he was prouder still of his German 
 origin and his high German connections, and 
 in his eagerness to serve them he threw over- 
 board his loyalty to the land of his adoption. 
 Von Wedell applied to a friend of his, a cer- 
 tain Tammany lawyer of pro-German sympa- 
 thies, who had supplied him with a room 
 belonging to a well-known fraternal organiza- 
 tion as a safe base from which to handle his 
 work in passports. What he wanted was an 
 agent who was an American and who had politi- 
 cal acquaintanceship that would : enable him 
 to work with less suspicion and with wider or- 
 ganization in gathering American passports. 
 Through the lawyer he came in contact with' an 
 American, who for the [purposes of this story 
 may be called Mr. Carrots, because that is not 
 his name but is remotely like it. Carrots 
 seemed willing to go into the enterprise and 
 at a meeting in Von Wedell's room Von Wedell 
 carefully unfolded the scheme, taking papers 
 from a steel cabinet in the corner to show a 
 further reason why the American passports he 
 already had would soon be useless. This reason 
 was that the Government was about to issue 
 an order requiring that a photograph of the 
 bearer should be affixed to the passport and that 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 on this photograph should appear half of the 
 embossing raised by the impression of the 
 seal of the Department of State. He agreed 
 to pay Carrots $20 apiece for all genuine pass- 
 ports he would supply to him. Carrots accepted 
 his proposal and departed. 
 
 Instead of going out to buy passports, he 
 went at once to the Surveyor of the Port of New 
 York, Mr. Thomas E. Rush, and told him what 
 Wedell was doing. Mr. Rush promptly got 
 in touch with his chief in the Treasury Depart- 
 ment at Washington, who referred the matter 
 to the State Department, and they, in turn, to 
 the Department of Justice. The result was 
 that Carrots went back to Wedell about a week 
 later and told him he would not be able to 
 go on with the work but would supply some- 
 one to take his place. This was satisfactory to 
 Wedell. 
 
 In the meantime, Wedell had introduced 
 Carrots to a fellow-conspirator, Carl Ruroede, 
 a clerk in the ship forwarding department of 
 Oelrichs & Company — a man of little position, 
 but fired by the war with the ambition to make 
 a name in German circles that would put him 
 in a position to succeed Oelrichs & Company 
 as the general agent of the North German 
 Lloyd in New York. 
 
 About this time Wedell lost his nerve. He 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 was a lawyer and realized some of the possible 
 consequences of certain of his acts. He had had 
 occasion to forge names to two passports; and 
 also he found out that he had reasons to suspect 
 that he was under surveillance. These reasons 
 were very good: he had arranged for the trans- 
 portation to Italy of a German named Doctor 
 Stark, using the passport of a friend of his in 
 the newspaper business named Charles Raoul 
 Chatillon. Wedell got wind of the fact that 
 Stark had been taken off the steamer Duca de 
 Aosta at Gibraltar, and was being detained 
 while the British looked up his credentials. 
 
 Wedell by this time was in a most unhappy 
 plight. Bernstorff and Von Papen had no use 
 for him because he had been bragging about 
 the great impression he was going to make upon 
 the Foreign Office in Berlin by his work. If 
 any impressions were to be made upon the 
 Foreign Office in Berlin by anybody in America, 
 Bernstorff and Von Papen wanted to make them. 
 Wedell was so dangerously under suspicion 
 that Von Papen, Von Igel, and his Tammany 
 lawyer friend had all warned him he had better 
 get out of the country. Wedell took their 
 advice and fled to Cuba. 
 
 The substitute whom Carrots had promised 
 now entered the case, in the person of a man 
 who called himself Aucher, but who was in 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 reality a special agent of the Department of 
 Justice. Aucher was not introduced to Ruroede, 
 the now active German, and so, when he began 
 his operations, he confronted the very difficult 
 task of making his own connections with a 
 naturally suspicious person. 
 
 Carrots had been dealing with Ruroede after 
 Wedell's disappearance; and, by the time he 
 was ready to quit, Ruroede had told him that 
 "everything was off for the present," but that 
 if he would drop around again to his office 
 about January 7, 1915, he might make use of 
 him. Aucher, now on the case, did not wait 
 for that date, but on December 18th called on 
 Ruroede at his office at room 204 of the Mari- 
 time Building, at No. 8 Bridge Street, across 
 the way from the Customs House. 
 
 In this plainly furnished office Aucher ap- 
 peared in the guise of a Bowery tough. He 
 succeeded admirably in this role — so well, 
 indeed, that Ruroede afterward declared that 
 he "succeeded wonderfully in impressing upon 
 my mind that he was a gangman, and I had 
 visions of slung shots, pistol shots, and hold- 
 ups when he saw him. Aucher opened the con- 
 versation by announcing: 
 
 "I'm a friend of Carrots." 
 
 "That's interesting," was Ruroede's only 
 acknowledgment. 
 
 10 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 "He's the guy that's getting them passports 
 for you," went on Aucher, "and all I wants 
 to know is, did you give him any cush?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked Ruroede. 
 
 "Nix on that!" Aucher exclaimed. "You 
 know what I mean. Did you give that fellow 
 any money?" 
 
 To which Ruroede replied : " I don't see why 
 I should, tell you if I did." 
 
 "Well, " retorted Aucher, " I'll tell you why. 
 I'm the guy that delivers the goods, and he 
 swears he never got a penny from you. Now 
 did he?" 
 
 It was at this point that Ruroede had his 
 visions of slung shots, so he admitted he had 
 paid Carrots #100 only a few days before. 
 
 "Well," demanded Aucher, "ain't there going 
 to be any more ? " 
 
 "Nope. Not now,' Ruroede replied. "May- 
 be next month." 
 
 "Now see here," said Aucher. "Let's cut 
 this guy out. He's just nothing but a booze 
 fighter, and he's been kidding you for money 
 without delivering the goods. What's the mat- 
 ter with just fixing it up between ourselves?" 
 
 Ruroede now tried to put Aucher off till 
 Christmas, having recalled meanwhile that the 
 steamer Bergensfjord was to sail on January 
 2d, and that he might need passports for 
 
 11 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 officers travelling on that ship. But Aucner 
 protested that he was "broke," and further 
 impressed on Ruroede that he had gotten no 
 money from Carrots or Wedell for his work 
 for them. He also produced six letters written 
 by the State Department in answer to applicants 
 for passports, and finally convinced Ruroede 
 of his good faith and that he ought to start 
 him to work right away. They haggled over 
 the price, and finally agreed on $20 apiece for 
 passports for native-born Americans and #30 
 apiece for passports of naturalized citizens — the 
 higher price for getting the latter because they 
 involved more red-tape and hence more risk. 
 Aucher was to come back on December 24th 
 and bring the passports and get some money 
 on account. 
 
 On that day Aucher called at Ruroede's 
 office, and after further quarrelling about Car- 
 rots and his honesty, Ruroede declared that 
 he was ready to do business. Aucher objected 
 to the presence of a young man in the room 
 with them, and Ruroede replied: 
 
 "Oh, he's all right. He's my son, and you 
 needn't be afraid to talk with him around." 
 
 Aucher then produced an American passport, 
 No. 45, 573, made out in the name of Howard 
 Paul Wright, for use in Holland and Germany. 
 It was a perfectly good passport, too, as it had 
 
 12 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 been especially made out for the purpose by 
 the Department of State at the request of the 
 Department of Justice. It bore Mr. Bryan's 
 genuine signature, and a photograph of 
 "Wright," who was another agent of the Bureau 
 of Investigation. Aucher also declared he was 
 on the way toward getting the other five pass- 
 ports. Ruroede threw the Wright passport on 
 his desk and said: 
 
 "I'll keep this. Go ahead and get the 
 others." 
 
 "What about money?" demanded Aucher. 
 
 "I'll pay you #25 for it — no, I'll do better 
 than that. To show you I mean business, 
 take that," and he threw a #100 bill on the 
 table. Ruroede also gave Aucher photographs 
 of four German officers, and begged him to 
 get passports right away to fit their descriptions, 
 because he wanted to get these men off on the 
 Norwegian Line steamer Bergensfjord, sailing 
 January 2d. He added that the officers of 
 the Norwegian Line had all been "smeared" 
 (otherwise "fixed") and that they would "stand 
 for anything." He also said that he would 
 take at least forty more passports from Aucher, 
 and that he would want them right along for 
 six months or a year, depending on the length 
 of the war. 
 
 Aucher delivered two more passports to 
 
 13 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Ruroede in his office on the morning of Decem- 
 ber 30th. Ruroede was rather indifferent about 
 getting them, because — alas for the glory of 
 the "invincible" Prussian arms! — two of his 
 German officers had gotten "cold feet" and had 
 refused to go. Ruroede told Aucher to come 
 back at two o'clock and he would give him 
 $100. Aucher invited Ruroede to have luncheon 
 with him, and as they left the building Ruroede 
 explained with much pride that he had chosen 
 his office here because the building had several 
 entrances on different sides of the block, and 
 he used one entrance only a few days at a time 
 and then changed to another to avoid suspicion. 
 
 The Government's special agent complimented 
 him highly on this bit of cleverness in the art 
 of evasion. Five minutes later the two were 
 sitting at a lunch counter with another special 
 agent casually lounging in and taking the seat 
 next to his fellow operative, where he could 
 overhear and corroborate the account of Ru- 
 roede's conversation. 
 
 After a discussion of Wedell's forgeries and 
 present whereabouts, and a further discussion of 
 the buying of passports (in which Ruroede 
 confided to Aucher that "there is a German 
 fund that was sent over here for that purpose") 
 the pair walked back toward Ruroede's office. 
 At the Whitehall Street entrance Ruroede 
 
 H 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 told " Aucher to come around to the Bridge 
 Street entrance in about fifteen minutes to 
 get the money, and that in the meantime he 
 would send his son out to cash a check so that 
 he could deliver it in bills. Aucher spent part 
 of the fifteen minutes signalling to four other 
 special agents who had reinforced him, and then 
 went around to the Bridge Street entrance, 
 with one of his confederates in sight. 
 
 In a few moments, Ruroede's son rushed out 
 with a bank book in his hand. Aucher stopped 
 him and told him he ought to have a coat on, a 
 device to let Aucher's fellow operative see him 
 talking to the boy so he could identify him. 
 The boy then went on to the bank, followed by 
 Aucher's confederate, who saw him cash the 
 check and followed him back to the building. 
 
 When the boy returned, Aucher again spoke 
 to him and said: "Tell your father I will be 
 in the cafe at Whitehall and Bridge streets and 
 that he is to meet me there. I don't think it 
 is a good thing for anybody to see me hanging 
 around the front entrance." 
 
 Aucher then went on into the cafe and sig- 
 nalled to the other three operatives to follow 
 him. He took a seat in a bootblack's chair 
 near the entrance and proceeded to have his 
 shoes blacked. In about ten minutes Ru- 
 roede's son came out and was about to pass by 
 
 IS 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 him when Aucher hailed him. Ruroede's son 
 then took a sealed envelope from his inside 
 pocket and handed it to Aucher. 
 
 "Where is your father ?" Aucher asked. 
 
 "Oh, he's got a man upstairs with him," 
 said young Ruroede, "and he couldn't come 
 down." 
 
 "Wait a minute," said Aucher, and tore open 
 the envelope in the presence of Ruroede's son, 
 and, so that the other special agents could 
 see him do it, counted out ten $10 bills, $100 in 
 all. As he was counting them, the operative 
 who had followed Ruroede's son to the bank 
 came in and shouldered the boy to one side 
 and then stood right by him while the money 
 was being counted. Aucher went on to impress 
 on Ruroede's son that business was business 
 and that the best of friends sometimes fell out 
 over money matters; that his father might 
 have unintentionally counted out #80 or #90 
 instead of the full $100 and it was safer to take 
 some precautions than to take a chance of 
 creating bad blood between them. He then 
 invited Ruroede's son to have a drink with 
 him, which he did, both of them taking the 
 strongest Prussian drink — milk. When they 
 were about to part on Whitehall Street Aucher 
 told Ruroede's son to tell his father he would 
 be down the next morning with the other two 
 
 16 
 
GERMAN AGENTS WHO DEALT IN FRAUDULENT PASSPORTS 
 H. A. Von Wedell Carl Ruroede 
 
 AMERICANS HIRED TO BLOW UP SHIPS AND FACTORIES 
 C. C. Crowley Lewis J. Smith 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 passports he had mentioned to him, and again 
 impressed on the boy the importance of accuracy 
 in money matters. Aucher then returned to 
 headquarters with the other special agents and 
 listed the distinguishing marks on the bills 
 and marked them for future identification. 
 
 The next morning Aucher telephoned to 
 Ruroede and told him he had been able to get 
 only one of the two passports he wanted, giving 
 as the excuse for his failure to get the other 
 the story that it had been promised to him by a 
 man working on a job in Long Island and that 
 this man had met with an accident and was 
 in the hospital; that it would take a day or 
 two to go out there to get a written order 
 from him to a brother who would turn the pass- 
 port over to Aucher. Ruroede accepted an 
 invitation to take luncheon with Aucher at 
 Davidson's restaurant at the corner of Broad 
 and Bridge streets. 
 
 Shortly after noon they met on the street 
 and went into the restaurant together. A few 
 minutes after they were seated two of the 
 special agents came in and took a table about 
 fifteen feet away. After Aucher had ordered 
 lunch for himself and Ruroede, he took out of 
 his pocket another of the series of genuine 
 passports supplied by the State Department, to 
 which he had attached one of the photographs 
 
 17 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 i^Qtc^ *&*&"■ 
 
 
 
 THE SUCCESSFUL USE OF A FRAUDULENT PASSPORT 
 An English translation of the letter, the first and last pages of which 
 are shown above, follows: 
 
 S. S. Kristianiafjord, Bordjen, Nov. 20, 1914. Most honoured Mr. Ruroede: As you 
 see, my voyage across succeeded magnificently with your kind help. The weather until 
 Sunday was fine — then three days' storm. The beginning was not of a nature to inspire 
 confidence, for five hours after we had left New York we were stopped by a cruiser and for 
 two hours the ship's papers were searched for contraband. We had also some copper on 
 board, but that was for Norway, whereupon they let us go. Our Captain then ran straight 
 North to the 63 latitude. We nearly touched Iceland in order to get out of the way of 
 other cruisers. It was only while we were making for Bergen from a northerly direction 
 yesterday that a cruiser overtook and stopped us, and for a short while six of your men were 
 feeling pretty shaky, especially I, for among the 18 first-class passengers, more than half 
 were Germans, also a former vice-consul from Japan (now captain of cavalry) of the 
 Bonn Hussars, Naval Officer from China, and others. The incident lasted only a half 
 hour. After searching for ship's papers, the gentlemen disappeared, and we breathed 
 
 more freely, and drank a cocktail to the and your prosperity. Once more many thanks 
 
 for your assistance. May you help many others as well. With best wishes, Yours, 
 Edward Eaton, in Japan named Eichelbert. 
 
 Ruroede had given him for this purpose. He 
 handed the passport to Ruroede, who opened 
 only one end of it, just enough to glance at the 
 photograph and seal. 
 
 "That's fine," said Ruroede, and was about 
 to slip it into his pocket when Aucher seized it 
 and exclaimed : 
 
 18 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 "Fine? I should say," and opened the pass- 
 port wide so that one of the other special agents 
 could see the red seal on it. "Just look at 
 that description. Eh? He is the fellow with 
 the military bearing and I gave him a description 
 I figured a man like him should answer to." 
 
 At this point, the special agent who had 
 seen the seal left his seat at the table and 
 walked to the cashier's desk. As he passed, 
 Ruroede was holding the passport in his hands 
 and Aucher was pointing out the description. 
 Ruroede then put the passport into his pocket 
 and said again: "That's fine." 
 
 Aucher then opened a discussion of Von 
 Wedell's career and disappearance. Ruroede 
 was very contemptuous of the missing man. 
 "He was a plain fool," he said. "He paid 
 $3,500 altogether and got very little in return. 
 A fellow came to him one day and told him he 
 could get him American passports and Von 
 Wedell said: 'All right; go ahead.' The fel- 
 low returned later and said he would have to 
 have some expense money and he gave him $10. 
 A little while later a friend of the first man 
 came to Von Wedell wanting expense money. 
 When Von Wedell decided to put him off, he 
 became threatening and Von Wedell, fearing 
 he might tell the Government authorities, 
 gave him some money. A few days later 
 
 19 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 about twenty fellows came looking for Von 
 Wedell. But quite aside from that sort of 
 business Von WedelPs foolishness in forging 
 names on two American passports is the thing 
 that made him get away." 
 
 "Did I understand you to say," asked 
 Aucher, "that he had gone to join his wife?" 
 
 "No," replied Ruroede, "she will be in 
 Germany before him. She sailed last Tuesday. 
 He went to Cuba first and there got a Mexican 
 passport of some sort that will take him to 
 Spain. He ought to be in Barcelona to-day 
 and from there go to Italy, and then from there 
 work his way into Germany." 
 
 "You say Von Wedell spent $3,500 of his 
 own money ? " Aucher asked. 
 
 "No, no," exclaimed Ruroede, "he got it from 
 the fund." 
 
 "Well, who puts up this money— who's back 
 ofit?" 
 
 "The Government." 
 
 "The German Government ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Ruroede. "You see it is this 
 way: There is a captain here who is attached 
 to the German Embassy at Washington. He has 
 a list of German reservists in this country and 
 is in touch with the German consulates all 
 through the country and in Peru, Mexico, 
 Chile, etc. He gets in touch with them, and 
 
 20 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 the consuls send reservists, who want to go to 
 the front, on to New York. When they get 
 here, this captain tells them: 'Well, I can't 
 do anything for you, but you go down to see 
 Ruroede/ Sometimes he gives them his 
 personal card." 
 
 "Is this captain in reserve?" Aucher inter- 
 rupted. 
 
 "Oh, no, he is active," Ruroede replied. 
 : 'You see," he continued, "he draws on this 
 fund for $200 or $300 or #1,000, whatever he 
 may need, and the checks are made to read 
 'on account of reservists/ You see, they 
 have to have food and clothing, also, so there 
 is nothing to show that this money is paid out 
 for passports or anything like that. I meet this 
 captain once a week or so, and tell him what 
 I am doing and he gives me whatever money 
 I need. You see, there must be no connection 
 between him and me; no letters, no accounts, 
 nothing in writing. If I were caught and were 
 to say what I have told you, this captain 
 would swear that he never met me in his life 
 before." > 
 
 Who this captain was became perfectly 
 clear through an odd happening two days later. 
 On that day, January 2, 1915, Aucher tele- 
 phoned to Ruroede at his office and made an 
 appointment to meet him at a quarter of one. 
 
 21 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 This meeting will doubtless remain forever 
 memorable in Ruroede's experience. 
 
 At twelve-thirty a whole flock of special 
 agents left the office of the Bureau of Investi- 
 gation of the Department of Justice in the 
 Park Row Building. There were nine repre- 
 sentatives of the Department in the group. 
 When they got near Ruroede's office they 
 were joined by two others who had been shadow- 
 ing Ruroede. They had located him at the 
 Eastern Hotel, several blocks away, where he 
 was at the moment with one of the German 
 officers who planned to sail that day on the 
 Norwegian Line steamer Bergensfjord with one 
 of the false passports. 
 
 Shortly after one o'clock one of the special 
 agents notified the group that Ruroede had 
 returned to his office and then this operative, 
 and one other, went to the Customs House 
 and stationed themselves at a window opposite 
 Ruroede's office to wait for a signal which 
 Aucher was to give when he had delivered 
 the passport to Ruroede. 
 
 When Aucher met Ruroede in the latter's 
 office Ruroede's son was present, but in a few 
 moments the younger man took his leave, and 
 his departure was noted by one of the agents 
 outside. After a few minutes' conversation 
 Aucher handed Ruroede the missing passport 
 
 22 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 and made his signal to the two men inside the 
 Customs House window. These men reported 
 to the main group on the street and thereupon 
 the whole flock descended on Ruroede's office 
 and placed both Ruroede and Aucher under 
 arrest. 
 
 They seized all of Ruroede's papers before 
 they took him away, including the passport 
 which Aucher had just delivered to him. 
 Aucher put up a fight against his brother 
 officers, so as to make Ruroede believe that his 
 arrest was genuine, but was quickly subdued 
 and taken away. A few minutes later Ruroede 
 also was taken from his office over to the 
 offices of the Bureau of Investigation, but to 
 another room than Aucher. Operatives were 
 left behind in Ruroede's office, and in a little 
 while Ruroede's son came in. He, too, was 
 arrested and taken to still another part of the 
 office of the Bureau. 
 
 Now there entered Ruroede's office a stran- 
 ger, who to this day does not know that he 
 unwittingly gave the officers of the United 
 States Government the information that Cap- 
 tain Von Papen was directly responsible for 
 the passport frauds. This man entered while 
 one of the operatives was busily gathering up 
 the papers on Ruroede's desk. He said he 
 wanted to see Mr. Ruroede. The operative 
 
 23 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 asked him what his business was, and he re- 
 plied that he had a letter to give him; and an- 
 swering an inquiry, he said this letter was given 
 him by Captain Von Papen, to be delivered to 
 Ruroede. 
 
 The operative calmly informed the caller 
 that he was Mr. Ruroede's son and that he 
 could give the letter to him. The stranger 
 refused, so the operative told him that his 
 "father/' Ruroede, would be in in a few min- 
 utes. After the few minutes were up, he told the 
 caller that he was sure that his "father" would 
 not return after all, and that he had better go 
 with him to where his "father" was. The 
 stranger agreed and they left the office to- 
 gether, the operative taking him directly to 
 the office of the Bureau of Investigation. 
 
 On the way, the stranger decided to give him 
 the letter from Captain Von Papen, and also 
 told him that he had come from Tokyo by way 
 of San Francisco; that he was very anxious 
 to get back to Germany; and that he was sorry 
 he was not sailing on the boat leaving that day. 
 He knew, he said, that Ruroede had a great 
 many officers sailing on the ship that day, and 
 asked if he thought the operative's "father" 
 could make an arrangement to start him to 
 Germany, too. He gave as a reason for his 
 urgency the fact that he had with him eight 
 
 24 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 trunks which contained very important papers 
 in connection with the war that should be de- 
 livered in Berlin without delay. 
 
 Upon arriving at the office of the Bureau of 
 Investigation the operative excused himself 
 for a moment and went into another room, 
 where he concocted a plan with a fellow agent 
 to pose as the senior Ruroede. The operative 
 then brought the stranger in and introduced 
 his confederate as his father. The stranger 
 gave this agent of the Department his card 
 which was printed in German and, which trans- 
 lated into English, read, "Wolfram von Knorr, 
 Captain of Cruiser, Naval Attache, Imperial 
 German Embassy, Tokyo. " 
 
 But let us leave the guileless caller in the 
 hands of the guileful agent of Justice for a 
 few moments, returning to him a little later. 
 
 Meanwhile, four of the agents from the 
 Department — the minute they received the 
 signal that Ruroede was under arrest — has- 
 tened to the Barge Office dock and boarded 
 the* revenue cutter Manhattan, on which they 
 overtook the Norwegian Line steamship Ber- 
 gensfjord at four o'clock, about one half hour 
 after it had set sail. They were accompanied 
 by several customs inspectors and ordered 
 the Bergensfjord to heave to. All the male 
 passengers on board were lined up. Strange 
 
 25 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 as it may seem, they discovered four Germans, 
 of such unmistakable names as Sachse, Meyer, 
 Wegener, and Muller, travelling under such 
 palpably English and Norwegian names as 
 Wright, Hansen, Martin, and Wilson. Stranger 
 still, they all turned out to be reserve officers 
 in the German army. Sache proved to be 
 travelling as none other than our friend " Howard 
 Paul Wright," for whom Aucher had supplied 
 Ruroede with the passport — as, indeed, he had 
 for the three others. 
 
 Meanwhile, Ruroede was the centre of an- 
 other little drama that lasted until well toward 
 midnight. He was being urged by the United 
 States Assistant District Attorney to "come 
 across" with the facts about his activities in 
 the passport frauds, and he had stood up pretty 
 well against the persuasions and hints of the 
 attorney and the doubts and fears of his own 
 mind. About eleven o'clock at night, as he 
 was for the many'th time protesting his ig- 
 norance and his innocence, another agent of 
 the Bureau of Investigation walked across the 
 far end of the dimly lit room — in one door and 
 out another — accompanied by a fair-haired lad 
 of nineteen. 
 
 "My God!" exclaimed Ruroede, "have they 
 got my son, too ? The boy knows nothing at 
 all about this." 
 
 26 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 This little ghost-walking scene, borrowed 
 from "Hamlet, ' broke down Ruroede's reserve, 
 and he came out with pretty much all the 
 story, ending the melancholy exclamation with 
 which this story began: "I thought I was 
 going to get an Iron Cross; but what they ought 
 to do is to pin a little tin stove on me." 
 
 Ruroede admitted that he had met Cap- 
 tain Von Papen in New York frequently and 
 that Von Papen had given him money at dif- 
 ferent times, but he denied that this money 
 was given him for use in furnishing passports. 
 On this point he stood fast, and to this day 
 he has not directly implicated Von Papen in 
 these frauds, though it cost him a sentence of 
 three years in the Federal penitentiary at 
 Atlanta, imposed just two months later. 
 
 One thing Ruroede did confess, however, 
 and in doing so he was the Hand of Fate for 
 the timorous Von Wedell. Ruroede confessed 
 that his assertion to Aucher, that Wedell was 
 then in Barcelona, was a lie, and that the truth 
 was that Wedell had recently returned from 
 Cuba and was aboard the Bergensfjord! This 
 confession came too late to serve that day, for 
 the agents of the Bureau had by that time 
 left the ship with their four prisoners and the 
 Bergensfjord was out to sea. But Fate had 
 nevertheless played Wedell a harsh trick, for 
 
 27 
 
FORMERLY BARDINS 
 
 TELEPHONES 
 
 U<34 
 
 FELIX FIEGER. Proprietor 
 N YACK-ON-H U DSO N 
 
 ^ jut v^ <7Wf*if 
 
 OL^jluLa w-*t>».*" <A^-f* 
 ( >, jw. -<u *.**> ~H ^1 7^ ,■ ; * 
 
 <f\*^ ^U* 41 ^ 
 
 U-^v^ iAwvfc&j U' tk^.c^- 
 
 
 VON PAPEN AND ALBERT APPEAR AS UNNEUTRAL PLOTTERS 
 This letter [of which the facsimiles are of the first and last pages] was 
 written by Wedell to BernstorfF to justify his action in abandoning the 
 work of gathering passports for fraudulent use. The full text follows, 
 
 28 
 
^ iJjU«*tv** n & ^ ^^ <™* t**'f^ fa 
 
 in English. It is an interesting document, not only because it reveals a 
 lot of weak human nature in the agents of "German efficiency" but 
 also because it definitely revealed Von Papen and Albert as principals in 
 the German plots as early as three months after the war started: 
 
 29 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 HOTEL ST. GEORGE Felix Fieger, Proprietor, Nyack-on-Hudson, December 26, 1914. 
 His Excellency The Imperial German Ambassador, Count Von Bernstorff, Washington, 
 D. C. Your Excellency: Allow me most obediently to put before you the following facts: 
 It seems that an attempt has been made to produce the impression upon you that I pre- 
 maturely abandoned my post in New York. That is not true. 
 
 I. My work was done. At my departure I left the service well organized and worked 
 out to its minutest details, in the hands of my successor, Mr. Carl Ruroede, picked out by 
 myself, and, despite many warnings, still tarried for several days in New York in order 
 to give him the necessary final directions and in order to hold in check the blackmailers 
 thrown on my hands by the German officers until after the passage of my travellers through 
 Gibraltar; in which I succeeded. Mr. Ruroede will testify to you that without my suit- 
 able preliminary labors, in which I left no conceivable means untried and in which I took 
 not the slightest consideration of my personal weal or woe, it would be impossible for him, 
 as well as for Mr. Von Papen, to forward officers and "aspirants" in any number whatever, 
 to Europe. This merit I lay claim to and the occurrences of the last days have unfortu- 
 nately compelled me, out of sheer self-respect, to emphasize this to your Excellency. 
 
 II. The motives which induced me to leave New York and which, to my astonishment, 
 were not communicated to you, are the following: 
 
 1. I knew that the State Department had, for three weeks, withheld a passport appli- 
 cation forged by me. Why? 
 
 2. Ten days before my departure I learnt from a telegram sent me by Mr. Von Papen, 
 which stirred me up very much, and further through the omission of a cable, that Dr. 
 Stark had fallen into the hands of the English. That gentleman's forged papers were 
 liable to come back any day and could, owing chiefly to his lack of caution, easily be traced 
 back to me. 
 
 3. Officers and aspirants of the class which I had to forward over/namely the people, 
 saddled me with a lot of criminals and blackmailers, whose eventual revelations were 
 liable to bring about any day the explosion of the bomb. 
 
 4. Mr. Von Papen had repeatedly urgently ordered me to hide myself. 
 
 5. Mr. Igel had told me I was taking the matter altogether too lightly and ought to — 
 for God's sake — disappear. 
 
 6. My counsel, . . . had advised me to hastily quit New York, inasmuch as a 
 local detective agency was ordered to go after the passport forgeries. 
 
 7. It had become clear to me that eventual arrest might yet injure the worthy underi 
 takings and that my disappearance would probably put a stop to all investigation in 
 this direction. 
 
 How urgent it was for me to go away is shown by the fact that, two days after my de- 
 parture, detectives, who had followed up my telephone calls, hunted up my wife's harmless 
 and unsuspecting cousin in Brooklyn, and subjected her to an interrogatory. 
 
 Mr. Von Papen and Mr. Albert have told my wife that I forced myself forward to do 
 this work. That is not true. When I, in Berlin, for the first time heard of this commis- 
 sion, I objected to going and represented to the gentleman that my entire livelihood which 
 I had created for myself in America by six years of labor was at stake therein. I have no 
 other means, and although Mr. Albert told my wife my practice was not worth talking 
 about, it sufficed, nevertheless, to decently support myself and wife and to build my future 
 on. I have finally, at the suasion of Count Wedell, undertaken it, ready to sacrifice my 
 future and that of my wife. I have, in order to reach my goal, despite infinite difficulties, 
 destroyed everything that I built up here for myself and my wife. I have perhaps some- 
 times been awkward, but always full of good will and I now travel back to Germany with 
 the consciousness of having done my duty as well as I understood it, and of having accom- 
 plished my task. 
 
 With expressions of the most exquisite consideration, I am, your Excellency. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 (Signed) Hans Adam von Wedell. > 
 
 the processes of extradition were instantly put 
 in motion with what strange results will in a 
 few moments be made clear. 
 
 Now we may appropriately return to the 
 conference between the guileless stranger from 
 
 30 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 
 KAcjhffJ' 
 
 THE CARD OF "THE GUILELESS1STRANGER FROM TOKYO" . 
 
 Tokyo and the guileful agent of the Bureau of 
 Investigation, in another room. The guileless 
 stranger from Tokyo revealed what Ruroede 
 would not disclose — and revealed it all uncon- 
 sciously. He talked so frankly with "young 
 Ruroede's father" that he told several most 
 important things. For one, Captain Von Knorr 
 declared that Captain Von Papen had sent 
 him. Whereupon the pretended Ruroede asked 
 him whether the fact that he was expected to 
 assist Von Knorr back to Europe was known to 
 the German Embassy at Washington. To this 
 Von Knorr replied : 
 
 "Of course. I just had a talk with Captain 
 Von Papen right here in New York." 
 
 "Ruroede" still insisted on having better 
 proof that Von Knorr came directly from the 
 Embassy, to which Von Knorr retorted that 
 
 3i 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 "Von Papen has had sufficient dealings with 
 you for you to know that any one sent by him 
 to you is all right." 
 
 Finding himself dealing with a somewhat 
 reluctant saviour, Von Knorr adopted a con- 
 ciliatory mood and slapped his broad hand 
 several times on "Ruroede's" left breast, say- 
 ing: "That chest ought to have something" — 
 meaning a decoration from Berlin. 
 
 After some verbal sparring, Von Knorr was 
 allowed to drift off the scene as innocently as he 
 had entered it, and he has yet to learn that his 
 visit was in an office of American law and that 
 his dealings were with the officers of Justice. 
 
 But he left behind a legacy quite as valuable 
 as his carefully remembered spoken words. 
 This legacy was the paper which he had brought 
 from Franz von Papen. This paper proved to 
 be not a letter, but rather a typewritten memo- 
 randum — though all doubt as to its origin was 
 removed by the innocent insistence of Von 
 Knorr that he had come with it from Von 
 Papen's hand. 
 
 Two most important facts emerged ulti- 
 mately from a study of this innocent bit of 
 paper. When Ruroede was arrested, among 
 other papers taken from his desk by the officers 
 of the law were numerous typewritten sheets 
 containing lists of names of German officers, 
 
 3 2 
 
THE OFFICIAL GERMAN PLOTTERS AT WASHINGTON 
 
 Above, Ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff; left, Capt. Franz von Papen, 
 
 Military Attache; right, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed, Naval Attache 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 MCOBS 
 
 
 Visits. 
 
 ZtssCkNa. 
 
 Gt*rri&&j9r& 
 
 
 JM 
 
 7W 
 
 tro 
 
 VON PAPEN BECOMES ACCESSORY TO A CRIME 
 Though this check was made out in favor of G. Amsinck & Co., the 
 German-American bankers of New York, the counterfoil bears the no- 
 tation "Traveling expense v W," that is, "von Wedell." This check 
 was sent him by Von Papen to enable him to escape after he had forged 
 signatures to two fraudulent passports and realized that he was under 
 surveillance — Von Papen thus becoming accessory after the fact to a 
 crime against American laws 
 
 their rank, and other facts about them. Ru- 
 roede never would admit that these were from 
 Von Papen, but that admission was made for 
 him by a far more trustworthy testimony 
 than his own. This testimony was an expert 
 comparison, under a powerful magnifying glass 
 of the typewriting on these sheets and the 
 typewriting on the Von Knorr memorandum 
 which had undoubtedly come from Von Papen. 
 
 33 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 They were beyond all questioning identical. 
 The same typewriter had written all By this 
 little microscopic test Von Papen and the 
 other ruthless underlings of Germany were 
 first brought tangibly within sight of their 
 ultimate expulsion from this country, for crimes 
 
 
 
 TWO OF RUROEDE'S VISITORS' CREDENTIALS 
 These cards were presented by two German officers in search of frau- 
 dulent passports. They were sent by Von Papen and Mudra (German 
 Consul at Philadelphia), who both frequently directed such officers to 
 Ruroede for this purpose 
 
 34 
 
THE PASSPORT FRAUDS 
 
 of which the passport frauds were the least 
 odious. 
 
 The other pregnant fact about the Von 
 Knorr memorandum was that the eyes of Jus- 
 tice rested on the name of Werner Horn and 
 lingered long enough to fix that name in mem- 
 ory. Here first swam into its ken the man who 
 tried to destroy the international bridge at 
 Vanceboro, Maine, and whose story is one of the 
 most romantic and adventurous of all the Ger- 
 man plotters ! 
 
 One last touch in this drama: A few moments 
 ago we left Von Wedell — ambitious, timorous 
 Von Wedell — on the high seas bound for Norway. 
 But Fate was after him. Ruroede's moment 
 of weakness — his moment of pique, when he 
 swore he would not shoulder all this bitterness 
 alone — had set her on his trail. A cable mes- 
 sage to London, a wireless from the Admiralty, 
 and then — this entry in the logbook of the 
 Bergensfjord for Monday, January n, 1915: 
 
 All male first and second class passengers were gathered 
 in the first-class dining saloon and their nationality in- 
 quired into. 
 
 About noon, the boarding officer of the Cruiser 
 
 (English) went back and reported to his ship. About 
 0:45 P. M. he came over with orders again to take off 
 six German stowaways and two suspected passengers. 
 These passengers were according to ship's berth list as 
 follows : 
 
 35 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 i. Rosato Sprio, Mexican, Destination Bergen, Cabin 
 71, second-class. . . . 
 
 Rosato Sprio admitted after close examination to be 
 H. A. Wedell. Claimed to be a citizen of the United 
 States. . . . 
 
 Dr. Rasmus Bjornstad claimed to be a Norwegian. . . 
 
 As both passengers apparently were travelling under 
 false pretense, the Captain did not feel justified to protest 
 against the detention of the two passengers. These 
 were accordingly . . . taken off" and put on board 
 the Auxiliary Cruiser . 
 
 Unhappy Wedell! "The Cruiser "was 
 
 a ship that never made port. Wedell's high 
 connections in the German Foreign Office could 
 not save him from the activities of the high 
 officials of the German Admiralty. A U-boat 
 
 fired a torpedo into "the Cruiser "and 
 
 sent her to the bottom with Rosato Sprio, 
 alias H. A. Wedell, aboard. 
 
 Exeunt Wedell and Ruroede. 
 
 Enter Werner Horn. 
 
 36 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Inside Story of Werner Horn 
 
 and 
 
 The First Glimpse of the Ship Bombs 
 
 THE real mystery in the case of Werner 
 Horn is this: Who was the man in Lower 
 
 3? (If he had only known !) Because, 
 
 except for this one missing fact, the story of 
 Werner Horn is as clear as day. It is the story 
 of a brave man, too honest to lie with a straight 
 face, who was used by the villainous Von 
 Bernstorff and Von Papen only after they had 
 lied without a quiver, on at least three vital 
 points, to him. He meant to fight the enemy 
 of his country as a soldier fights, and they 
 cynically sent him on an errand which they 
 meant should be an errand of miscellaneous 
 crime, including murder. He was to go to a 
 felon's death for this one of the many devilish 
 plots they were concocting against American 
 lives, while they lived in luxury in Washington 
 and lied with smiling faces to the representatives 
 of the people whose hospitality they were 
 betraying. There have been few more despic- 
 
 37 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 ably outrageous, more cold-blooded crimes 
 than this — except that other one (also of their 
 devising) in the ship bombs case; but that is 
 another story, to be told later. 
 
 The story of Werner Horn begins in Guate- 
 mala. Horn was the manager of a coffee 
 plantation at Moka. He had seen ten years 
 of service in the German Army when, in 1909, 
 he got a furlough from the authorities in Cologne 
 permitting him to go to Central America for 
 two years. This furlough writes him down 
 as an "Oberleutnant on inactive service/' That 
 means, roughly, that he was a first lieutenant 
 of the German Army, out of uniform but sub- 
 ject to call ahead of all other classes of men liable 
 for military duty. Then came the war. 
 
 Two hours after word of "The Day" reached 
 Moka, Werner Horn was packed and on his 
 way to Germany. From Belize he sailed to 
 Galveston, where he spent two weeks looking 
 in vain for passage. Then on to New York, 
 where he tried for a month to sail. Finding 
 that impossible, he went to Mexico City and 
 there learned that another man in Guatemala 
 had his job. He had just found another one, 
 on an American coffee plantation at Salto de 
 Aguas, in Chiapas, and was about to go there by 
 launch from Frontera, when he got a card 
 telling him to try again to get to Germany. 
 
 38 
 
Bazirksk^mandY^ ' -r 
 16DK.1909 jyr? " 
 
 Doom _, 
 
 Cdln 
 
 % lufanterie-BrysMte Z^T^u^t^' 
 
 
 HORN'S APPLICATION FOR A FURLOUGH 
 Issued by the military authorities of Cologne, on the Rhine near the 
 Dutch border, permitting him to leave Germany for two years. The fur- 
 lough was later extended, as Horn was gone nearly five years before the 
 war broke out 
 
 39 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 By December 26th he was back in New Orleans, 
 and a few days later he was lodging in the Arietta 
 Hotel on Staten Island. 
 
 Now began a series of conferences with Von 
 Papen. Horn was afire with honest zeal to 
 serve the Fatherland, and Von Papen was 
 unscrupulous as to how he did it. When he 
 could not get passage for him back to Ger- 
 many, Von Papen determined to use this 
 blond giant (Horn is six feet two) for another 
 purpose. He then unpacked his kit of lies. 
 
 A little after the midnight of Saturday, 
 December 29, 1914, a big German in rough 
 clothes and cloth cap entered the Grand 
 Central Station carrying a cheap brown suit- 
 case. A porter seized it from him with an 
 expansive smile. The smile faded long before 
 they reached Car 34 of the one o'clock New 
 Haven train to Boston. "Boss, yoh sho' has 
 got a load o' lead in theah," was his puff- 
 ing comment as he got his tip. The German 
 grinned, and a few minutes later swung the 
 suitcase carelessly against the steam-pipes under 
 Lower 3, and clambered to the upper. A 
 suitcase full of dynamite — and the man in 
 Lower 3 slept on. 
 
 Several people on the Maine Central train 
 that left North Station, Boston, at eight 
 o'clock the next morning, afterward identified 
 
 40 
 
STORY OF WERNER HORN 
 
 <dU/ 
 
 
 
 
 , JSP { 
 
 ***• Life 
 
 
 gP^- ^^ j, 
 
 ^ o o ' 
 
 I ° 
 
 MAINE CENTRAL RAILROAD 
 
 AND 
 
 CONNECTIONS 
 
 WERNER HORN'S PLAN OF ESCAPE 
 The pencilled line left from Vanceboro and down to Princeton was 
 Horn's own mark upon the map of the route by which he hoped to escape 
 after he had blown up the international bridge. He did not know the 
 country and hence did not calculate upon the wilderness he was planning 
 to traverse, unguided, in the dead of a New England winter. The pen- 
 cilled ring around St. John, N. B., gives the cue to his purpose in blowing 
 up the bridge — St. John was a port from which the war supplies from 
 America to Great Britain could be shipped for use against the Germans 
 
 the big blond German who left it at Vance- 
 boro, Maine, at six forty-five that evening. 
 None of them recalled his baggage. 
 
 But trust the people in a country town to 
 catalogue a stranger. Horn went directly from 
 the train about his errand; which was reckon- 
 
 4i 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 ing without the Misses Hunter and the twelve- 
 year-old Armstrong boy. They saw him toiling 
 through the snow, marked the unusual weight 
 of his suitcase from the way he carried it, 
 saw him hide it in the woodpile by the siding 
 — and then they talked. Soon Mr. Hunter 
 hurried to the Immigration Station and told an 
 inspector there about the suspicious stranger. 
 The inspector hurried down the railroad track 
 and met Horn returning from the international 
 bridge that spans the St. Croix River a few hun- 
 dred feet away. He asked where the stranger 
 was going. Horn's reply was to ask the way to a 
 hotel. When his name was next demanded he 
 gave it as Olaf Hoorn, and said he was a Dane. 
 The inspector then asked what he was in town 
 for, and Horn said he was going to buy a farm. 
 And, finally, the inspector asked him where 
 he came from. When Horn explained in detail 
 that he had come from New York via Boston 
 the inspector, with a true legal mind, decided 
 that he "had no jurisdiction," and let it go 
 at that. His concern in life was with "immi- 
 grants" from Canada — and this man had proved 
 that he had come from "an interior point." 
 Hence he could do nothing officially, for the 
 moment. 
 
 But the Misses Hunter's sharp eyes saw the 
 stranger, after this interview, recover the suit- 
 
 42 
 
STORY OF WERNER HORN 
 
 case from the woodpile before going on to 
 Tague's Vanceboro Exchange Hotel for the 
 night. The host at the hotel was not on duty 
 when Horn registered, and never saw his 
 baggage, but his mother, who happened to have 
 occasion to enter Horn's room in his absence on 
 the following Monday, noticed the suitcase, 
 tried to lift it, and wondered how any one could 
 carry it. Horn was a marked man from the 
 moment he arrived in the town. 
 
 Evidently he sensed the suspicions he aroused, 
 for he made no effort to proceed about his 
 business that night, or the next. But shortly 
 before eight o'clock on Monday night Horn 
 gave up his room and said he was going to 
 Boston on the eight o'clock train. He took 
 his suitcase and disappeared. Instead of going 
 to the station, he hid out in the woods until 
 the last train for the night should go by. At 
 eleven he was encountered in the railroad cut 
 above the bridge by an employee of the Maine 
 Central Railroad, who got such unsatisfactory 
 answers to his questions that he talked the 
 matter over with a fellow workman in the round- 
 house, though without results. So Werner 
 Horn marched out alone upon the bridge — 
 alone except for his cigar and his suitcase, the 
 spirit of the Fatherland upon him and the ly- 
 ing words of Von Papen in his ears. 
 
 43 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 He had need of the fire of patriotism to warm 
 his blood and to steel his courageous spirit. 
 It was a black winter night. The mercury 
 was at thirty degrees below zero, the wind 
 was blowing at eighty miles an hour, the ice 
 was thick upon the cross-ties beneath his 
 stumbling feet. The fine snow, like grains of 
 flying sand, cut his skin in the gale. 
 
 But Werner Horn was a patriot and a brave 
 man. Von Papen had told him that over these 
 rails flowed a tide of death to Germans — not 
 only guns and shells, but dum-dum bullets 
 that added agony to death. He must do his 
 bit to save his fellow soldiers; must help to 
 stop the tide. Destroy this bridge, and for a 
 time at least the cargoes would be kept from 
 St. John and Halifax. It was a short bridge, 
 but a strategic one, and the most accessible. 
 So Horn stumbled on. He must get beyond 
 the middle. Von Papen had not urged it, but 
 Werner Horn had balked about this business 
 from the first — not through lack of courage 
 (he would go as a soldier upon the enemy's 
 territory and there fire his single shot at any 
 risk against their millions), but he would not 
 commit a crime for anybody, not even for the 
 Kaiser; nor would he trespass on the soil of 
 hospitable America. Hence on each sleeve he 
 wore the colours of his country: three bands, 
 
 44 
 
STORY OF WERNER HORN 
 
 of red and white and black. Von Papen had 
 beguiled him into thinking these transformed 
 him from a civilian to a soldier. Twice as he 
 struggled through the darkness he slipped and 
 fell, barely saving himself from death on the 
 ice below. Each time he clung doggedly to 
 his suitcase full of dynamite. 
 
 Suddenly a whistle shrieked behind him, and 
 in a moment the glaring eyes of an express 
 train's locomotive shone upon him. Horn 
 clutched with one hand at a steel rod of the 
 bridge and swung out over black nothingness, 
 holding the suitcase safe behind him with the 
 other. The train thundered by, and left him 
 painfully to recover his uncertain footing on 
 the bridge. The second of Von Papen's lies 
 had been disproven. 
 
 He had promised Horn that the last train 
 for the night would have been gone at this 
 hour, for Horn had said he would do nothing 
 that would put human lives in peril. But 
 Horn thought only that Von Papen had mis- 
 understood the schedules. 
 
 A few moments after he had got this shock, 
 another whistle screamed at him from the 
 Canadian shore, and again he made his quick, 
 precarious escape by hanging out above the 
 river by one hand and one foot. He now decided 
 that all schedules had been put awry, and that 
 
 45 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 he must change his plans to be sure of not 
 endangering human beings. To accomplish this, 
 he cut off and threw away most of the fifty- 
 minute fuse that he had brought along, and 
 left only enough to burn three minutes. No 
 train would come sooner than this, and then the 
 explosion would warn everybody of the danger. 
 
 In doing this, Horn deliberately cut himself 
 off from hope of escaping capture. He had 
 planned such an escape— an ingenious plan, 
 too, except that it was traced on a railroad 
 time-table map of the Maine [woods in winter 
 by a strange German fresh from the tropics. 
 He had meant to walk back one station west- 
 ward, then cut across the open country to the 
 end of a branch line railroad, and then ride 
 back to Boston on another line than that on 
 which he had come east to Vanceboro. It was 
 a clever scheme, except that it missed all the 
 essentials, such as the thirty miles of trackless 
 woods, the snow feet-deep upon the level, the 
 darkness of winter nights, and the deadly cold. 
 Still, Horn childishly believed it feasible, and 
 he did a brave and honourable thing to throw 
 it overboard rather than to cause the death of 
 innocent people. 
 
 He fixed the dynamite against a girder 
 of the bridge above the Canadian bank of the 
 river, adjusted the explosive cap, and touched 
 
 4 6 
 
STORY OF WERNER HORN 
 
 his cigar to the end of the three-minute fuse. 
 Then he stumbled back across the gale-swept, 
 icy bridge, made no effort to escape, and walked 
 back into the hotel in Vanceboro, with both 
 hands frozen, as well as his ears, his feet, and 
 his nose. A moment after he entered the 
 hotel the dynamite exploded with a report 
 that broke the windows in half the houses 
 in the town and twisted rods and girders on 
 the bridge sufficiently to make it unsafe but 
 not enough to ruin it. 
 
 Everybody in Vanceboro was aroused. Host 
 Tague, of the Exchange Hotel, leaped from 
 his bed and looked out of the window. See- 
 ing nothing, he struck a light and looked at 
 his watch, which said 1:10, and then he hurried 
 into the hall, headed for the cellar, to see if 
 his boiler had exploded. In the hall he faced 
 the bathroom. There stood Werner Horn, 
 who mildly said "Good morning " to his 
 astonished host. Tague returned the greeting 
 and went back to get his clothes on. He had 
 surmised the truth, and Horn's connection 
 with it. When he came back out into the hall, 
 Horn was still in the bathroom, and said: 
 "I freeze my hands." Small wonder, after 
 five hours in that bitter gale. Tague opened 
 the bathroom window and gave him some 
 snow to rub on his frozen fingers, and then 
 
 47 
 
Rwv~ 
 
 & . X-. JCC.-JK. .-^> ,*w^ ^ 
 
 ■ tr**-^T-7S*-j, 
 
 
 
 zr~ 
 
 WERNER HORN'S COMMISSION IN THE GERMAN ARMY 
 Found in an ironbound trunk in his room in the Arietta Hotel on 
 Staten Island. His position was approximately that of a first 
 
 4 8 
 
^ 
 
 
 j&£* >*£***« 'Cwe^6e^^//fs/xsw,'& 
 
 « ***> £-*£*//* V s - fCCt'/ZCdsC' 
 
 lieutenant, returned to civil life, but of the class first subject to duty 
 m tne event of war 
 
 49 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 hurried to the bridge to see the damage. He 
 found enough to make him press on to the station 
 on the Canadian side, and then come back 
 to Vanceboro, so that trains would be held 
 from attempting to cross it. 
 
 When he got back to his hotel, Horn asked 
 to have again the room he had given up that 
 evening. Tague had let it to another guest, 
 but gave Horn a room on the third floor. There 
 the German turned in and went to sleep. 
 
 Meanwhile, human nature as artless as 
 Werner Horn's was at work in Vanceboro. 
 The chief officer of law thereabouts was " John 
 Doe," a deputy sheriff, chief fish and game 
 warden, and licensed detective for the state 
 of Maine. His later testimony doubtless would 
 have had a sympathetic reader in the Man 
 in Lower 3 (if only he had known): "I was 
 asleep at my home, which is about three or 
 four hundred feet from the bridge; heard a 
 noise about 1:10 a.m., which I thought was 
 an earthquake, a collision of engines, or a 
 boiler explosion in the heating plant. The 
 noise disturbed me so that I could not get to 
 sleep. (And the Man in Lower 3 slept on!) 
 I got up in the morning at about half-past 
 five; met a man who said they had blown up 
 the bridge." 
 
 But while Mr. Doe was about his disturbed 
 
 50 
 
STORY OF WERNER HORN 
 
 slumbers, the superintendent of the Maine 
 Central Railroad was making a Sheridan's 
 Ride through the night by special train from 
 Mattawamkeag, fifty miles away. , He, at least, 
 was on the job — he had brought along a claim 
 agent of the road, to take care of \ damage 
 suits. When |they reached the Vanceboro 
 station, they sent for Mr. Doe, and when he 
 arrived at seven o'clock, Canada also was 
 represented by two constables in uniform. This 
 being a case for Law and not for Commerce, 
 Mr. Doe took charge. He told the others 
 that the first thing to do was to cover all the 
 stations by telegraph and arrest all suspicious 
 parties. Then he led his posse to the hotel. 
 
 There Mr. Tague told them about the Ger- 
 man peacefully asleep upstairs. He led them 
 to the upper floor and pointed out the room, 
 but went no farther, as he thought there might 
 be shooting. His sister, being of the same 
 mind, sought the cellar. Doe knocked upon 
 the door. 
 
 "What do you want?" called Werner Horn. 
 
 "Open the door," commanded Doe. 
 
 The door swung open, and the big German 
 sat back on his bed. Then he saw the Cana- 
 dian uniforms and jumped for his coat. Doe 
 shoved him back, and one of the constables 
 got the coat, and the revolver in it. When 
 
 Si 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Doe told Horn he was an American officer, 
 Horn stopped resisting and said: 
 
 "That's all right, then. I thought you 
 were all Canadians. I wouldn't harm any one 
 from here." 
 
 Doe handcuffed Horn to his own arm and 
 took him to the Immigration Station to make 
 an inquiry. Here Horn told a straightforward 
 story, but with one embellishment that caused 
 more excitement than all the rest, and that 
 ultimately revealed his own character in its 
 clearest light. This story was that he had 
 not brought the dynamite in his suitcase, 
 but that, by prearrangement, he had carried 
 the empty suitcase to the bridge and there 
 met an Irishman from Canada, to whom he 
 gave the password "Tommy," and that this 
 Irishman had given him the explosive and 
 then disappeared. 
 
 "Tommy" immediately became a sensation 
 who overshadowed Horn himself. Canadian 
 officers scoured the Canadian shore for days, 
 looking for this dangerous renegade, and Amer- 
 icans were as zealous on our side of the river. 
 
 But Horn himself was in a dangerous posi- 
 tion. Lynching bees were discussed on both 
 sides of the river, and probably only prompt 
 action by the local authorities prevented one. 
 Both to hold Horn for more serious prosecution 
 
STORY OF WERNER HORN 
 
 and to get him out of peril, he was charged 
 in the local police court with malicious mischief 
 in breaking the window glass in one of the 
 houses in Vanceboro; he pleaded guilty and 
 was at once removed to Machias, the county 
 seat, to serve thirty days in jail. Five days 
 after the explosion, the Department of Justice 
 had Horn's signed confession, taken in person 
 by the Chief of the Bureau of Investigation. 
 
 It was in the giving of this confession that 
 Werner Horn revealed himself most fully as 
 a patriot and a gentleman, and, all uncon- 
 sciously, revealed that the cynical Von Papen 
 was a liar, a cold-blooded criminal, and, for 
 the second time in the first months of the war, 
 the secret hand behind the violations of 
 American neutrality instigated through him 
 and Bernstorff at the behest of the Imperial 
 German Government. 
 
 When the government agent saw Horn in 
 jail at Machias, and warned him that what he 
 said would be used against him in proceed- 
 ings for his extradition into Canada, or 
 prosecution here, Horn told the same straight- 
 forward story, with the same embellishment 
 about "Tommy." "I met a white man," 
 so Horn said, "whom I had never seen before, 
 but who was about 35 or 40 years of age 
 clean shaven — ' Tommy' — I was told to say 
 
 S3 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Tommy' when I met him — I cannot say 
 anything that would involve the consulate 
 or the embassy — Germany is at war — I re- 
 ceived, however, an order which was from one 
 who had a right to give it, a verbal order only — 
 received it two or three days before leaving 
 New York for Vanceboro." 
 
 Later he said: "I cannot speak of the rank 
 of the man who gave the orders — I cannot 
 even say that he was an officer. No one was 
 present when the orders were given me in 
 New York City. I cannot tell more because 
 it was a matter for the Fatherland. I would 
 rather go to Canada [where he knew they 
 wanted to lynch him] than to tell more about 
 my orders — this would be Impossible — at least 
 until after the war is over." 
 
 Horn admitted he had met Von Papen sev- 
 eral times at the German Club in New York 
 City, but no art could compel him to admit 
 that he had got his orders from him. But, 
 as the agent noticed, his manner gave his 
 words the lie; and whenever he tried to tell 
 anything that was inaccurate he did so with 
 great difficulty and embarrassment. But find- 
 ing him determined, at whatever risk, to 
 withhold this information, and determined, 
 too, to stick to the absurd story about "Tom- 
 my," the agent wrote out by t}^pewriter a 
 
 54 
 
STORY OF WERNER HORN 
 
 statement of the facts as he had given them 
 for Horn to sign. 
 
 Horn read the statement over and said that 
 he would sign it. Then the agent took out his 
 pen, added a few items of new information, 
 and wrote these words : 
 
 "I certify on my honour as a German officer 
 that the foregoing statements are true," and 
 handed Horn the pen to sign it. Horn read 
 the last sentence and seemed nonplussed. 
 He turned back through the pages of the 
 statement, blushed, scratched his head, and 
 finally grinned up at the agent with the one 
 word : 
 
 "Tommy." 
 
 The agent grinned in turn: 
 
 "You mean it's all right except for Tommy?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Horn would not sign a lie and pledge his 
 honour it was truth. A close scrutiny of the cut 
 on page 57 will show where the period after 
 the word "true" has been erased, so that the 
 sentence could go on to say, before he signed it, 
 "except as to Tommy' — that I did not buy 
 the nitro-glycerine but received it in New 
 York and took it with me in the suitcase. I 
 cannot say from whom I received it. Wer- 
 ner Horn." 
 
 If Werner Horn had been less honest, less 
 
 55 
 
V' : Fb~-*'%,/?/S < Machias, ?Iain«, 
 
 Feb., 7, 1915. 
 I ,~~ Werner Horn, after having been advised that, my extradition 
 to Canada has been a3ked by the Governmant of Great Britain and 
 that anything I may say will or may beused against me in an extra- 
 dition proceeding by the United States or in a prosecution by the 
 United States if it shall be found that I have violated any of the 
 laws ojf that country and -that I may decline to talk at all or to 
 answer any particular questions do voluntsaly, willling and without 
 any promises other than ihat my case will be de&l$. with by the 
 United States' fairly, impartially and in accordance with the law* 
 make this statement. 
 
 I am thirty-seven years of age, a citizen of Germany and* at 
 the .outbreak of the war was the manager of a coffee plantation in 
 duatamala^ that I am an Over-lieutenant in the German p e o e rvo army , i/v«*» 
 v *J^naving had ten years active service in the German army, that two- 
 hours after receiving the call to return for army service' I was on 
 my way. I , wenSL'fr'o'm Guatama'la to Galveston, Texas, in August, 1914, 
 remained there fourteeen days, proceeded to New York City, waited 
 there four week3 trying to get a steamer to return to Germany, 
 found that this was impossible, started to Mexlcao, remaining, en 
 route 16 days in San Antonio, Texas, that in MexiceoCity I received 
 a card from .the coffeeeplantation in Guatamala that another man had my 
 position, th?.t I. .secured a position on an American coffee plantation, 
 that about four hours before going ^>«» Frontera H received<?a card ^>- 
 that all German officers should proceed to Germany, that I returned 
 on the same launch <?n which i had intended to go -k« Frontera, -saw 
 frfte Q je rman c o n etrib— in-V a r a— Q&&&, sailed on a Norwegian steamer from 
 Vera Cijua. to New Orleans, was on the sea on Christmas day, arrived 
 in. New Orleans December 26, 1914, proceeded at once to New York by 
 train, reported to the German Consul' there either$BaA. S& or S«, 
 asked Captain -on Papen if it. was possible to go to Germany, be sCftad 
 that it was impossible-, that l stayed at the Arietta Hotel on 
 Arietta Street, ortaten Island-, three otr four weeks and then went 
 "to Yaiiceboro, :.:aine, 
 
 WERNER HORN'S CONFESSION 
 In which he unintentionally revealed the guilty purposes of Von 
 Papen to violate American neutrality and commit a crime against 
 human life, and which Horn refused to sign upon his "honour as 
 
 56 
 
j^U.^ ^Aa-JL O^^rv*. ^sJ^-l^lAX^M 
 
 1 * 
 
 -CC 
 
 a German officer" until it was altered to remove the fantastic tale 
 about a confederate in Canada. By looking closely the erasure of 
 the period after the word "true" can be seen, made to permit this 
 correction to be added 
 
 57 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 humane, the black wickedness of his Imperial 
 masters would have been less clearly visible. 
 He was the one who was punctilious to respect 
 American neutrality — while they flouted it. 
 He was the one who risked his own life rather 
 than imperil others — while they sat snug in 
 Washington devising means to place on the 
 rudders of American ships the bombs that 
 would add another horrid chapter to their 
 crimes. A mere criminal at Vanceboro might 
 have been accused of exceeding their criminal 
 instructions — Werner Horn refused to carry 
 out the instructions they had given. 
 
 One cannot forbear to publish here a humor 
 ous incident in this case, in no way related to 
 its immediate currents, but so characteristic 
 of the American attitude in general at that 
 time. Here was a drama of international 
 politics, fertilizing the germs of war — the seeds 
 of our own entrance into the conflict, with its 
 present expenditures of billions in treasure and 
 its prospective expenditure of human blood 
 and tears. Into this epic picture walks a 
 Yankee trader with a bottle of liniment for 
 frost bite in his hand, and asks for a "testi- 
 monial. 55 It is significant, because it was a 
 faithful miniature of America at large in 
 February, 191 5 — asleep to the perils of its 
 "isolation, 55 but wide awake to the main 
 
 58 
 
STORY OF WERNER HORN 
 
 chance in war-begotten trade. Well could Von 
 Papen and Von Bernstorff, well could the 
 Kaiser in Berlin, afford to smile a little longer, 
 and marvel again at a people still "so stupid." 
 But the American Government was on still 
 other German plotters' trails. They were not 
 asleep, nor stupid. Even while they went 
 through the long, legal processes in which 
 German intrigue tried in vain to save Werner 
 Horn from delivery to Canadian justice (and 
 Horn was supplied with good counsel and 
 every facility for making his defence), among 
 the Yankee traders there was alert activity 
 as well as dormant patriotism. The way in 
 which the Department of Justice, through these 
 merchants, lawyers, doctors, men of the "main 
 chance/ 5 soon had a network of special agents 
 in every city, town, and hamlet in the country, 
 is one of the cleverest pieces of American 
 Government detective work born of the war. 
 
 59 
 
CHAPTER III 
 Robert Fay and the Ship Bombs 
 
 ROBERT FAY landed in New York on 
 April 23, 1915. He landed in jail just 
 six months and one day later — on October 24th. 
 In those six months he slowly perfected one of 
 the most infernal devices that ever emerged 
 from the mind of man. He painfully had it 
 manufactured piece by piece. With true Ger- 
 man thoroughness he covered his trail at every 
 point — excepting one. And five days after he 
 had aroused suspicion at that point, he and 
 his entire group of fellow conspirators were in 
 jail. The agents of American justice who put 
 him there had unravelled his whole ingenious 
 scheme and had evidence enough to have sent 
 him to the penitentiary for life if laws since 
 passed had then been in effect. 
 
 Only the mind that conceived the sinking of 
 the Lusitania could have improved upon the 
 devilish device which Robert Fay invented 
 and had ready for use when he was arrested. 
 It was a box containing forty pounds of tri- 
 nitrotoluol, to be fastened to the rudder post of 
 
 60 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 a vessel, and so geared to the rudder itself 
 that its oscillations would slowly release the 
 catch of a spring, which would then drive 
 home the firing pin and cause an explosion 
 that would instantly tear off the whole stern 
 of the ship, sinking it in mid-ocean in a few 
 minutes. Experts in mechanics and experts 
 in explosives and experts in shipbuilding all 
 tested the machine, and all agreed that it was 
 perfect for the work which Fay had planned 
 that it should do. 
 
 Fay had three of these machines completed, 
 he had others in course of construction, he 
 had bought and tested the explosive to go 
 into them, he had cruised New York harbour in 
 a motor boat and proved by experience that 
 he could attach them undetected where he 
 wished, and he had the names and sailing dates 
 of the vessels that he meant to sink without 
 a trace. Only one little link that broke — and 
 the quick and thorough work of American 
 justice — robbed him of another Iron Cross 
 besides the one he wore. That link — but that 
 comes later in the story. 
 
 Fay and his device came straight from the 
 heart of the German Army, with the approval 
 and the money of his government behind him. 
 He, like Werner Horn, came originally from 
 Cologne; but they were very different men. 
 
 61 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Where Horn was almost childishly simple, 
 Fay's mind was subtle and quick to an extraor- 
 dinary degree. Where Horn had been hu- 
 mane to the point of risking his life to save 
 others, Fay had spent months in a cold-blooded 
 solution of a complex problem in destruction 
 that he knew certainly involved a horrible 
 death for dozens, and more likely hundreds, 
 of helpless human beings. Horn refused to 
 swear to a lie even where the lie was a matter of 
 no great moment. Fay told at his trial a story 
 so ingenious that it would have done credit to 
 a novelist and would have been wholly con- 
 vincing if other evidence had not disproved 
 the substance of it. The truth of the case 
 runs like this: 
 
 Fay was in Germany when the war broke 
 out and was sent to the Vosges Mountains in 
 the early days of the conflict. Soon men were 
 needed in the Champagne sector, and Fay was 
 transferred to that front. Here he saw some 
 of the bitterest fighting of the war, and here 
 he led a detachment of Germans in a surprise 
 attack on a trench full of Frenchmen in su- 
 perior force. His success in this dangerous 
 business won him an Iron Cross of the second 
 class. During these days the superiority of the 
 Allied artillery over the German caused the 
 Germans great distress, and they became very 
 
 62 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 bitter when they realized, from a study of the 
 shells that exploded around them, how much 
 of this superiority was due to the material 
 that came from the United States for use by 
 the French and British guns. Fay's ingenious 
 mind formed a scheme to stop this supply, and 
 he put his plan before his superior officers. The 
 result was that, in a few weeks, he left the army 
 and left Germany, armed with passports and 
 $3,500 in American money, bound for the 
 United States on the steamer Rotterdam. He 
 reached New York on April 23, 191 5. 
 
 One of Fay's qualifications for the task he 
 had set for himself was his familiarity with the 
 English language and with the United States. 
 He had come to America in 1902, spending a 
 few months on a farm in Manitoba and then 
 going on to Chicago, where he had worked 
 for several years for the J. I. Case Machinery 
 Company, makers of agricultural implements. 
 During these years, Fay was taking an extended 
 correspondence school course in electrical and 
 steam engineering, so that altogether he had 
 good technical background for the events of 
 1915. In 1906, he went back to Germany. 
 
 What he may have lacked in technical 
 equipment, Fay made up by the first connec- 
 tion he made when he reached New York in 
 1915. The first man he looked up was Walter 
 
 63 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Scholz, his brother-in-law, who had been in 
 this country for four years and who was a civil 
 engineer who had worked here chiefly as a 
 draftsman — part of the time for the Lacka- 
 wanna Railroad — and who had studied me- 
 chanical engineering on the side. When Fay 
 arrived, Scholz had been out of a job in his own 
 profession and was working on a rich man's 
 estate in Connecticut. Fay, armed with 
 plenty of money and his big idea, got Scholz 
 to go into the scheme with him, and the two 
 were soon living together in a boarding house 
 at 28 Fourth Street, Weehawken, across the 
 river from uptown New York. 
 
 To conceal the true nature of their opera- 
 tions they hired a small building on Main 
 Street and put a sign over the door announcing 
 themselves in business as "The Riverside 
 Garage." They added verisimilitude to this 
 scheme by buying a second-hand car in bad 
 condition and dismantling it, scattering the 
 parts around the room so that it would look as 
 if they were engaged in making repairs. Every 
 once in a while they would shift these parts 
 about so as to alter the appearance of the 
 place. However, they did not accept any 
 business — whenever a man took the sign at its 
 face value and came in asking to have work 
 done, Fay or Scholz would take him to a near-by 
 
 64 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 saloon and buy him a few drinks and pass him 
 along, referring him to some other garage. 
 
 The most of their time they spent about the 
 real business in hand. They took care to 
 have the windows of their room in the board- 
 ing house heavily curtained to keep out prying 
 eyes, and here, under a student lamp, they 
 spent hours over mechanical drawings which 
 were afterward produced in evidence at the 
 trial of their case. The mechanism that Fay 
 had conceived was carefully perfected on paper, 
 and then they confronted the task of getting 
 the machinery assembled. Some of the parts 
 were standard — that is, they could be bought 
 at any big hardware store. Others, however, 
 were peculiar to this device and had to be made 
 to order from the drawings. They had the 
 tanks made by a sheet-metal worker named 
 Ignatz Schiering, at 344 West 42nd Street, 
 New York. Scholz went to him with a draw- 
 ing, telling him that it was for a gasolene tank 
 for a motor boat. Scholz made several trips 
 to the shop to supervise some of the details of 
 the construction and once to order more tanks 
 of a new size and shape. 
 
 At the same time Scholz went to Bernard 
 McMillan, doing business under the name of 
 McMillan & Werner, 81 Centre Street, New 
 York, to have him make special kinds of 
 
 65 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 wheels and gears for the internal mechanism 
 of the bomb, from sketches which Scholz 
 supplied. At odd times between June 10th 
 and October 20th McMillan was working on 
 these things and delivered the last of them to 
 Scholz just a few days before he was arrested. 
 In the meanwhile, Fay was taking care of 
 the other necessary elements of his scheme. 
 Besides the mechanism of the bomb, he had 
 to become familiar with the shipping in the 
 port of New York, and he had to get the ex- 
 plosive with which to charge the bomb. For 
 the former purpose he and Scholz bought a 
 motor boat — a 28-footer — and in this they 
 cruised about New York harbour at odd times, 
 studying the docks at which ships were being 
 loaded with supplies for the Allies and cal- 
 culating the best means and time for placing 
 the bombs on the rudder posts of these ships. 
 Fay finally determined by experience that 
 between two and three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing was the best time. The watchmen on 
 board the ships were at that hour most likely to, 
 be asleep or the night dark enough so that 
 he could work in safety. He made some ac- 
 tual experiments in fastening the empty tanks 
 to the rudder posts, and found that it was 
 perfectly easy to do so. His scheme was to 
 fasten them just above the water line on a 
 
 66 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 ship while it was light, so that when it was 
 loaded they were submerged and all possibility 
 of detection was removed. 
 
 The getting of explosives was, however, the 
 most difficult part of Fay's undertaking. This 
 was true not only because he was here most 
 likely to arouse suspicion, but also because 
 of his relative lack of knowledge of the thing 
 he was dealing with. He did know enough, 
 however, to begin his search for explosives in 
 the least suspicious field, and it was only as 
 he became ambitious to produce a more power- 
 ful effect that he came to grief. 
 
 The material he decided to use at first was 
 chlorate of potash. This substance in itself 
 is so harmless that it is an ingredient of tooth 
 powders and is used commonly in other ways. 
 When, however, it is mixed with any substance 
 high in carbons, such as sugar, sulphur, char- 
 coal, or kerosene, it becomes an explosive of con- 
 siderable power. Fay set about to get some of 
 the chlorate. 
 
 But it is now time to get acquainted with 
 Fay's fellow conspirators, and to follow them 
 through the drama of human relationships 
 that led to Fay's undoing. All these men were 
 Germans — some of them German-Americans — 
 and each in his own way was doing the work 
 of the Kaiser in this country. Herbert Kienzle 
 
 6 7 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 was a dealer in clocks with a store on Park 
 Place, in New York. He had learned the 
 business in his father's clock factory deep in 
 the Black Forest in Germany and had come to 
 this country years ago to go into the same 
 business, getting his start by acting as agent 
 for his father's factory over here. After the 
 war broke out he had become obsessed with 
 the wild tales which German propaganda had 
 spread in this country about dum-dum bullets 
 being shipped back for use against the soldiers 
 of the Fatherland. He had brooded on the 
 3ubject, had written very feelingly about it 
 to the folks at home, and had prepared for 
 distribution in the United States a pamphlet 
 denouncing this traffic. Fay had heard of Kienzle 
 before leaving Germany, and soon after he 
 reached New York he got in touch with him as 
 a man with a fellow feeling for the kind of work 
 he was undertaking to do. 
 
 One of the first things in Fay's carefully 
 worked-out plan was to locate a place to which 
 he could quietly retire when his work of de- 
 struction should be done — a place where he 
 felt he could be safe from suspicion. After a 
 talk with Kienzle he decided that Lush's 
 Sanatorium, at Butler, N. J., would serve the 
 purpose. This sanatorium was run by Ger- 
 mans and Kienzle was well known there. 
 
 68 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 Acting on a prearranged plan with Kienzle, 
 Fay went to Butler and was met at the station 
 by a man named Bronkhorst, who was in 
 charge of the grounds at the sanatorium. 
 They identified each other by prearranged 
 signals and Fay made various arrangements, 
 some of which are of importance later in the 
 story. 
 
 Another friend of Kienzle's was Max Brie- 
 tung, a young German employed by his uncle, 
 E. N. Brietung, who was in the shipping busi- 
 ness in New York. Young Brietung was con- 
 sequently in a position to know at first hand 
 about the movements of ships out of New 
 York harbour. Brietung supplied Fay with the 
 information he needed regarding which ships 
 Fay- should elect to destroy. But first Brietung 
 made himself useful in another way. 
 
 Fay asked Kienzle how he could get some 
 chlorate of potash, and Kienzle asked his young 
 friend Brietung if he could help him out. 
 Brietung said he could, and went at once to 
 another German who was operating in New 
 York ostensibly as a broker in copper under 
 the name of Carl L. Oppegaard. 
 
 It is just as well to get better acquainted 
 with Oppegaard because he was a vital link 
 in Fay's undoing. His real name was Paul 
 Siebs and for the purpose of this story he might 
 
 69 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 as well be known by that name. Siebs had 
 also been in this country in earlier days and 
 during his residence in Chicago, from 1910 
 to 191 3, he had gotten acquainted with young 
 Brietung. He, too, had gone back to Germany 
 before the war, but soon after it began he had 
 come back to the United States under his false 
 name, ostensibly as an agent of an electrical 
 concern in Gothenburg, Sweden, for the pur- 
 pose of buying copper. He frankly admitted 
 later that this copper was intended for re- 
 export to Germany to be used in the manu- 
 facture of munitions of war. He did not have 
 much success in his enterprise and he was 
 finally forced to make a living from hand to 
 mouth by small business transactions of almost 
 any kind. He could not afford a separate 
 office, so he rented desk room in the office of 
 the Whitehall Trading Company, a small sub- 
 sidiary of the Raymond-Hadley Corporation. 
 His desk was in the same room with the mana- 
 ger of the company, Carl L. Wettig. 
 
 When Brietung asked Siebs to buy him 
 some chlorate of potash Siebs was delighted at 
 the opportunity to make some money and 
 immediately undertook the commission. He 
 had been instructed to get a small amount, 
 perhaps 200 pounds. He needed money so 
 badly, however, that he was very glad to find 
 
 70 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 that the smallest kegs of the chlorate of potash 
 were 112 pounds each, and he ordered three 
 kegs. He paid for them with money supplied 
 by Brietung and took a delivery slip. Ulti- 
 mately this delivery slip was presented by Scholz 
 who appeared one day with a truck and driver 
 and took the chemical away. 
 
 Fay and Scholz made some experiments 
 with the chlorate of potash and Fay decided 
 it was not strong enough to serve his purpose. 
 He then determined to try dynamite. Again 
 he wished to avoid suspicion and this time, 
 after consultation with Kienzle, he recalled 
 Bronkhorst down at the Lush Sanatorium in 
 New Jersey. Bronkhorst, in his work as 
 superintendent of the grounds at the sana- 
 torium, was occasionally engaged in laying 
 water mains in the rocky soil there, and for 
 this purpose kept dynamite on hand. Fay 
 got a quantity of dynamite from him. Later, 
 however, he decided that he wanted a still more 
 powerful explosive. 
 
 Again he applied to Kienzle, and this time 
 Kienzle got in touch with Siebs direct. By 
 prearrangement, Kienzle and Siebs met Fay 
 underneath the Manhattan end of the Brook- 
 lyn Bridge, and there Siebs was introduced to 
 Fay. They walked around City Hall Park 
 together discussing the subject; and Fay, not 
 
 7i 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 knowing the name of what he was after, tried 
 to make Siebs understand what explosive he 
 wanted by describing its properties. Siebs 
 finally realized that what Fay had in mind 
 was trinitrotoluol, one of the three highest 
 explosives known. Siebs finally undertook to 
 get some of it for him, but pointed out to 
 him the obvious difficulties of buying it in as 
 small quantities as he wanted. It was easy 
 enough to buy chlorate of potash because that 
 was in common commercial use for many 
 purposes. It was also easy to buy dynamite 
 because that also is used in all quantities 
 and for many purposes. But trinitrotoluol 
 is too powerful for any but military use, and 
 it is consequently handled only in large lots 
 and practically invariably is made to the order 
 of some government. However, Siebs had an 
 idea and proceeded to act on it. 
 
 He went back to the Whitehall Trading 
 Company, where he had desk room, and saw 
 his fellow occupant, Carl Wettig. Wettig 
 had been engaged in a small way in a brokerage 
 business in war supplies, and had even taken a 
 few small turns in the handling of explosives. 
 Siebs had overheard him discussing with a 
 customer the market price of trinitrotoluol 
 some weeks before, and on this account thought 
 possibly Wettig might help him out. When 
 
 72 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 he put the proposition up to Wettig the latter 
 agreed to do what he could to fill the order. 
 
 In the meanwhile Fay had sent another 
 friend of Brietung's to Bridgeport to see if he 
 could get trinitrotoluol in that great city of 
 munitions. There he called upon another 
 German who was running an employment 
 agency — finding jobs for Austro-Hungarians who 
 were working in the munitions plants, so that 
 he could take them out of the plants and 
 divert their labour from the making of war 
 supplies for use against the Teutons. The only 
 result of this visit was that Brietung's friend 
 brought back some loaded rifle cartridges which 
 ultimately were used in the bombs as caps to 
 fire the charge. But otherwise his trip was of 
 no use to Fay. 
 
 Carl Wettig was the weak link in Fay's' 
 chain of fortune. He did indeed secure the 
 high explosive that Fay wanted, and was in 
 other ways obliging. But he got the explosive 
 from a source that would have given Fay heart 
 failure if he had known of it, and he was oblig- 
 ing for reasons that Fay lived to regret. Siebs 
 made his inquiry of Wettig on the 19th of 
 October. The small quantity of explosives 
 that he asked for aroused Wettig' s suspicions 
 and as soon as he promised to get it he went 
 to the French Chamber of Commerce, near by, 
 
 73 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 told them what he suspected, and asked to be 
 put in touch with responsible police author- 
 ities under whose direction he wished to act 
 in supplying the trinitrotoluol. 
 
 From that moment Fay, Siebs, and Kienzle 
 were "waked up in the morning and put to 
 bed at night" by detectives from the police de- 
 partment of New York City and operatives 
 of the Secret Service of the United States. 
 By arrangement with them Wettig obtained a 
 keg containing 25 pounds of trinitrotoluol, and 
 in the absence of Fay and Scholz from their 
 boarding house in Weehawken, he delivered 
 it personally to their room and left it on their 
 dresser. He told Siebs he had delivered it and 
 Siebs promptly set about collecting his com- 
 mission from Fay. 
 
 Siebs had some difficulty in doing this, be- 
 cause Fay and Scholz, being unfamiliar with 
 the use of the explosive, were unable to explode 
 a sample of it and decided that it was no good. 
 They had come home in the evening and found 
 the keg on their dresser and had opened it. 
 Inside they found the explosive in the form of 
 loose white flakes. To keep it more safely, 
 they poured it out into several small cloth bags. 
 They then took a sample of it and tried by 
 every means they could think of to explode it. 
 They even laid some of it on an anvil and broke 
 
 74 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 two or three hammers pounding on it, but 
 could get no result. They then told Siebs 
 that the stuff he had delivered was useless. 
 Wettig volunteered to show them how it should 
 be handled. Accordingly, he joined them the 
 following day at their room in Weehawken 
 and went with them out into the woods behind 
 Fort Lee, taking along a small sample of the 
 powder in a paper bag. In the woods the 
 men picked up the top of a small tin can, built 
 a fire in the stump of a tree, and melted some 
 of the flake "T. N. T." in it. Before it cooled, 
 Wettig embedded in it a mercury cap. When 
 cooled after being melted, T. N. T. forms a solid 
 mass resembling resin in appearance, and is 
 now more powerful because more compact. 
 
 However, before the experiment could be 
 concluded, one of the swarm of detectives who 
 had followed them into the woods stepped on a 
 dry twig, and when the men started at its 
 crackling, the detectives concluded they had 
 better make their arrests before the men might 
 get away; and so all were taken into custody. 
 A quick search of their boarding house, the 
 garage, a storage warehouse in which Fay had 
 stored some trunks, and the boathouse where 
 the motor boat was stored, resulted in rounding 
 up the entire paraphernalia that had been used 
 in working out the whole plot. All the people 
 
 75 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 connected with every phase of it were soon 
 arrested. 
 
 Out of the stories these men told upon exami- 
 nation emerged not only the hideous perfec- 
 tion of the bomb itself, but the direct hand 
 that the German Government and its agents 
 in this country had in the scheme of putting 
 it to its fiendish purpose. First of all appeared 
 Fay's admission that he had left Germany with 
 money and a passport supplied by a man 
 in the German Secret Service. Later, on the 
 witness stand, when Fay had had time enough 
 carefully to think out the most plausible story, 
 he attempted to get away from this admission 
 by claiming to have deserted from the German 
 Army. He said that he had been financed in 
 his exit from the German Empire by a group of 
 business men who had put up a lot of money to 
 back an automobile invention of his, which he 
 had worked on before the war began. These 
 men, so he claimed, were afraid they would 
 lose all their money if he should happen to be 
 killed before the invention was perfected. 
 This tale, ingenious though it was, was too 
 fantastic to be swallowed when taken in connec- 
 tion with all the things found in Fay's posses- 
 sion when he was arrested. Beyond all doubt 
 his scheme to destroy ships was studied and 
 approved by his military superiors in Germany 
 
 7 6 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 before he left, and that scheme alone was his 
 errand to this country. 
 
 Far less ingenious but equally damning was 
 his attempt to explain away his relations 
 with Von Papen. The sinister figure of the 
 military attache of the German Embassy at 
 Washington leers from the background of all 
 the German plots; and this case was no excep- 
 tion. It was known that Fay had had dealings 
 with Von Papen in New York, and on the wit- 
 ness stand he felt called upon to explain them 
 in a way that would clear the diplomatic ser- 
 vice of participation in his evil doings. He 
 declared that he had taken his invention to 
 Von Papen and that Von Papen had resolutely 
 refused to have anything to do with it. This 
 would have been well enough if Fay's explana- 
 tion had stopped here. 
 
 But Fay's evil genius prompted him to make 
 his explanation more convincing by an elabo- 
 ration of the story, so he gave Von Papen's 
 reasons for refusal. These were not at all 
 that the device was calculated to do murder 
 upon hundreds of helpless men, nor at all 
 that to have any part in the business was to 
 play the unneutral villain under the cloak of 
 diplomatic privilege. Not at all. At the 
 first interview, seeing only a rough sketch 
 and hearing only Fay's description of prelim- 
 
 77 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 inary experiments, Von Papen's sole objection 
 was: 
 
 "Well, you might obtain an explosion once 
 and the next ten apparatuses might fail." 
 
 To continue Fay's explanation: 
 
 "He casually asked me what the cost of it 
 would be and I told him in my estimation the 
 cost would not be more than #20 apiece. [$20 
 apiece for the destruction of thirty lives and a 
 million-dollar ship and cargo !] As a matter of 
 fact, in Germany I will be able to get these 
 things made for half that price. 'If it is not 
 more than that/ Von Papen said, 'you might 
 go ahead, but I cannot promise you anything 
 whatever.'" 
 
 Fay then went back to his experiments and 
 when he felt that he had practically perfected 
 his device he called upon Von Papen for the 
 second time. This time Von Papen's reply was : 
 
 "Well, this thing has been placed before our 
 experts and also we have gone into the political 
 condition of the whole suggestion. Now in the 
 first place our experts say this apparatus is not 
 at all seaworthy; but as regards political con- 
 ditions I am sorry to say we cannot consider it 
 and, therefore, we cannot consider the whole 
 situation." 
 
 In other words, with no thought of the moral 
 turpitude of the scheme, with no thought of 
 
 78 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 the abuse of diplomatic freedom, but only 
 with thoughts of the practicability of this de- 
 vice and of the effect upon political conditions 
 of its use, Von Papen had put the question 
 before technical men and before Von Bernstorff, 
 and their decision had been adverse solely on 
 those considerations — first, that it would not 
 work, and second, that it would arouse hostility 
 in the United States. At no stage, according 
 to Fay's best face upon the matter, was any 
 thought given to its character as a hideous crime. 
 
 The device itself was studied independently 
 by two sets of military experts of the United 
 States Government with these results: 
 
 First, that it was mechanically perfect; 
 second, that it was practical under the condi- 
 tions of adjustment to a ship's rudder which 
 Fay had devised; and third, that the charge of 
 trinitrotoluol, for which the container was 
 designed, was nearly half the quantity which is 
 used on our own floating mines and which is 
 calculated upon explosion twenty feet from a 
 battleship to put it out of action, and upon 
 explosion in direct contact, absolutely to de- 
 stroy and sink the heaviest superdreadnaught. 
 In other words, beyond all question the bomb 
 would have shattered the entire stern of any 
 ship to which it was attached, and would have 
 caused it to sink in a few minutes. 
 
 79 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 A brief description of the contrivance re- 
 veals the mechanical ingenuity and practical 
 efficiency of Fay's bomb. A rod attached to the 
 rudder, at every swing the rudder gave, turned 
 up, by one notch, the first of the bevelled wheels 
 within the bomb. After a certain number of 
 revolutions of that wheel, it in turn gave one 
 revolution to the next; and so on through the 
 series. The last wheel was connected with 
 the threaded cap around the upper end of 
 the square bolt, and made this cap slowly un- 
 screw, until at length the bolt dropped clear 
 of it and yielded to the waiting pressure of the 
 strong steel spring above. This pressure drove 
 it downward and brought the sharp points 
 at its lower end down on the caps of the two 
 rifle cartridges fixed below it — like the blow 
 of a rifle's hammer. The detonation from 
 the explosion of these cartridges would set off 
 a small charge of impregnated chlorate of potash, 
 which in turn would fire the small charge of 
 the more sluggish but stronger dynamite, and 
 that in turn would explode the still more 
 sluggish but tremendously more powerful tri- 
 nitrotoluol. 
 
 The whole operation, once the spring was 
 free, would take place in a flash; and instantly 
 its deadly work would be accomplished. 
 
 Picture the scene that Fay had in his mind 
 80 
 
THE SHIP BOMBS 
 
 as he toiled his six laborious months upon this 
 dark invention. He saw himself, in imagina- 
 tion, fixing his infernal box upon the rudder 
 post of a ship loading at a dock in New York 
 harbour. As the cargo weighed the ship down, 
 the box would disappear beneath the water. 
 At length the ship starts on its voyage, and, as 
 the rudder swings her into the stream, the first 
 beat in the slow, sure knell of death for ship 
 and crew is clicked out by its very turning. 
 Out upon the sea the shift of wind and blow of 
 wave require a constant correction with the 
 rudder to hold the true course forward. At 
 every swing the helmsman unconsciously taps 
 out another of the lurking beats of death. 
 Somewhere in midocean, perhaps at black mid- 
 night, in a driving storm, the patient mecha- 
 nism hid below has turned the last of its calcu- 
 lated revolutions. The neckpiece from the bolt 
 slips loose, the spring drives downward, there 
 is a flash, a deafening explosion, and five min- 
 utes later a few mangled bodies and a chaos 
 of floating wreckage are all that is left above 
 the water's surface. 
 
 This is the hideous dream Fay dreamed in 
 the methodical 180 days of his planning and 
 experimenting in New York. This is the 
 dream to realize which he was able to enlist the 
 cooperation of half a dozen other Germans. 
 
 81 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 This is the dream his superiors in Germany 
 viewed with favour, and financed. This is the 
 dream the sinister Von Papen encouraged and 
 which he finally dismissed only because he 
 believed it too good to be true. This is the 
 dream Fay himself on the witness stand said he 
 had thought of as "a good joke on the British." 
 In this picture of infernal imaginings the 
 true character of German plottings in this 
 country stands revealed. Ingenuity of con- 
 ception characterized them, method and pa- 
 tience and painstaking made them perfect. 
 Flawless logic, flawless mechanism. But on 
 the human side, only the blackest passions and 
 an utter disregard of human life; no thought of 
 honour, no trace of human pity. It happened 
 in the case of Fay that the agent himself was 
 ruthless and deserved far more than what the 
 limit of existing law was able to give him when 
 he was convicted of his crimes. But through all 
 the plots Von Papen, Von Bernstorff, and the 
 Imperial German Government in Berlin were 
 consistent. Their hand was at the helm of all, 
 and the same ruthless grasping after domina- 
 tion of the world at any price led to the same 
 barbarous code of conduct in them all. 
 
 82 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Inside Story of the Captain of the 
 
 "ElTEL FrIEDRICH" 
 
 OUT of the black picture of the German de- 
 pravity in fighting this war have emerged 
 four or five dramatic episodes that have stirred 
 the imagination of the world and appealed to 
 the romantic and chivalric instincts even of 
 Germany's enemies. The cruise of the Emden 
 will always remain one of the glorious traditions 
 of the sea. The knightly spirit of those Ger- 
 man aviators who flew low over the bier of 
 their fallen foe of the French cavalry of the 
 clouds, and strewed flowers upon it, was in 
 the spirit of the best that war produces. 
 America was the scene of two such episodes. 
 The first unexpected appearance of the U-53 
 upon our shores, rising unheralded from the 
 unsuspected waters, thrilled the sporting instinct 
 of our people. But perhaps the most dramatic 
 incident was the arrival of the Prinz Eitel 
 Friedrich. 
 
 83 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 During the night of March 9-10, 191 5, this 
 gallant cruiser of the Kaiserliche Marine, 
 slipped into the harbour at Norfolk, having 
 run the British blockade of cruisers outside 
 the three-mile limit, ending a career of six 
 months as a commerce raider, recalling the 
 feats of the Alabama in the Civil War. The 
 Eitel Friedrich was soon interned for the period 
 of the war and her officers and crew put under 
 formal arrest. Even the British, whose fleet 
 had been outwitted, gave their tribute of 
 praise to the men who had taken their fair 
 chance and had got away.;- Captain Max Thier- 
 ichens and his crew became objects of admira- 
 tion to the world. They were showered with 
 felicitations, most of all, as was natural enough, 
 from Germans and German-Americans. 
 
 That is the bright side of the picture — and 
 no" one, even now, would care to dim its lus- 
 tre. 
 
 But even at his best the German of the ruling 
 class seems tainted with the ineradicable nature 
 of the beast. The world has long accepted 
 the Latin affinity of Mars and Venus — perhaps 
 too complacently, though not without reason 
 — so it would not have been surprised if the 
 gallant Thierichens had not measured up to 
 the standards of a Galahad. Nevertheless, 
 it had a right to expect that he would not 
 
 84 
 
THE STORY OF CAPTAIN THIERICHENS 
 
 descend to the level of a Caliban; and Thieri- 
 chens fell below even that low standard. 
 
 Among the great quantities of letters of con- 
 gratulation which Captain Thierichens re- 
 ceived were many from German-American 
 women. They were stirred by the brilliancy 
 of his exploit : it was a ray of light in the gloom 
 that had fallen on the Teuton peoples after 
 the Battle of the Marne, when the rosy vision 
 of quick victory had turned to the gray fog of 
 a long, defensive war. These letters breathed 
 the passionate loyalty of the German spirit 
 to the Fatherland. To these women, Thieri- 
 chens was the embodiment of the martial spirit 
 of their race — the spirit of the sons they saw 
 themselves in imagination sending forth to war. 
 Some phrases from their letters strike the key: 
 
 It is a pleasure for us to help our German brothers, but 
 I also understand that you, my dear brother, are waiting 
 to come out from your predicament. How grand it is 
 that you are receiving letters from the Fatherland. We 
 don't hear ar diing. Can't write anything, as the letters 
 are not being delivered. So far good news. It is wonder- 
 ful. My heart is jumping with joy. I look with con- 
 fidence in tl : i have to please so many; have so 
 many times to defend my Germany, but I have an unlim- 
 ited confidence in God and in the truth. 
 
 Again: Hold your head high and do not forget: "star- 
 light itself is in the night and God does not forsake his 
 
 8S 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Their attitude was one of high patriotism 
 and maternal solicitude. They sent him books 
 and delicacies, scraps of news from Germany, 
 and in every way sought to comfort and inspirit 
 their hero. 
 
 Thierichens was indifferent to the lofty pur- 
 pose of these letters. His mind was depraved 
 by the social custom of military Germany by 
 which men of the officer class are in youth 
 taught to consider themselves above the moral 
 law. He was quite aware of the kinship of 
 all emotions, and he promptly undertook to 
 change the direction of these currents of pas- 
 sion into a channel more pleasing to his tastes. 
 It was not long until he had narrowed his 
 correspondence chiefly to three women and 
 of these more particularly to two. Of these 
 latter one was a German servant girl of rather 
 better than average understanding, and the 
 other a kindergarten teacher in the Middle 
 West, one twenty-five and the other forty-five 
 years of age. Their correspondence in both 
 cases started on an exalted plane. It ended in 
 depravity unprintable. Only < ^~ of the 
 
 complete series of Thierichens's letters to these 
 women could give a full understanding of the 
 heartlessness, the baseness, and the ingenuity 
 with which this man, always playing upon their 
 patriotic fervour, transmuted their finer feelings 
 
 86 
 
THE STORY OF CAPTAIN THIERICHENS 
 
 into the most degrading travesty of romantic 
 love. He and the kindergarten teacher never 
 met. But by the time their correspondence 
 came under Government censorship it had 
 become a blend of exalted patriotism and of 
 passion perverted to the obscenities pictured 
 on the walls of ruined Pompeii. 
 
 Terrible as was the plight to which the teacher 
 had descended, the case in which the German 
 servant found herself was infinitely worse. 
 Thierichens and she had met after their first 
 interchange of letters and they had entered 
 on a liaison of a character that became so base 
 it cannot even be suggested. 
 
 All this while Thierichens was in corres- 
 pondence with at least eight other misguided 
 women. Fortunately for them the strong hand 
 of the law intervened and Thierichens to-day 
 is safely behind prison bars for his crimes. 
 In the midst of this promiscuous correspondence 
 he was receiving letters of affection and devotion 
 from his wife and children, two of which may well 
 be reproduced to make clearer the depth to which 
 he fell. One is from his little daughter Christel, 
 the other from his wife. They are as follows: 
 
 Kiel, November 26, 1916. 
 My Dear Father: 
 
 My darling, to-day the day of my 6th birthday, I 
 will thank you all alone for the pretty things, lovely 
 
 87 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 kisses for same. I hope my next birthday you will be 
 with us again. I am praying every evening and morning 
 to the dear God that he will protect my dear father, 
 and that the war will soon be ended, and you come 
 again to the dear Fatherland. 
 Many hundred thousand kisses sent you, 
 
 Your thankful daughter, 
 
 Christel. 
 
 Kiel, Germany, 23rd March, 191 7. 
 My Only Muckicken : 
 
 I want to chat with you again a little to-day; had 
 very little time yesterday; did some shopping morning, 
 and some stocking mending in the afternoon; some 
 linen work in the evening; went early to bed; had love 
 pains; had a little cold. This morning I went with 
 Christel to Karestadt, bought some stockings, a school 
 hat and gloves for her; also a leather hat for Elly; very 
 neat. I am dressing Elly still like a child; she also is 
 still wearing her hair down her back; she is any way a 
 child yet. To-morrow I will get some bones from the 
 war kitchen for Fritz, and then I shall ride together with 
 the children to Aunt Niemann. To-day is a sunny 
 day, but still a little cold. And now I shall answer 
 No. 50. From Christmas Eve, 24-12-16. No, darling, 
 we want to hope that we shall enjoy the 6th Christmas 
 evening together; a description of our Christmas evening 
 you probably received. You darling, you're writing so 
 as if we were hungry, no, my darling, we have not had 
 any hunger here in Germany yet. We are having our 
 butter, eggs, meat, bread, and potatoes every day; only 
 not so much of it as in times of peace. Well, of course, 
 then everything was extravagantly used. So now every- 
 body has to learn to be economical which is a good lesson 
 
 88 
 
CAPTAIN THIERICHENS (top) 
 And scenes on the Eitel Friedrich, which escaped from Tsing-tau and interned 
 
 at Norfolk 
 
THE STORY OF CAPTAIN THIERICHENS 
 
 for days to come, so please don't listen to the talk of our 
 enemies, — we are all right; nobody will conquer us; God, 
 the Lord, won't leave us alone, — we are all brave. What 
 did Russia gain by the revolution? Something of that 
 kind is impossible in Germany. The responsibility for 
 same rests with England again. We shall wait to see 
 how everything turns out. England will be punished 
 surely. Now, my darling, enough for to-day. Please re- 
 main healthy, and retain your humor. Be thankful and 
 bravely greeted from your three sprouts and Thiere. 
 
 To make complete the picture of this hero 
 of the Prussian officer class, it may be well 
 to quote also the round robin of the crew 
 of the Prinz Eitel Friedrich. To them even the 
 air of an American internment camp was 
 the breath of freedom compared to their service 
 on a ship of his Imperial Majesty's Marine. 
 Here is their opinion of life in it and of their 
 gallant captain : 
 
 Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., 
 July 8. 
 United States District Attorney, 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 We of the crew of the Prince Eitel Friedrich, beg to 
 inform you about the conditions as there had been existing 
 on board said vessel, and of the character of Captain 
 Max Thierichens. He is one of the most cruel and dis- 
 honest men who ever had been in charge of a vessel. He 
 is a disgrace to any military organization, and we feel 
 ashamed that he brought disgrace to our vessel. He is 
 
 8 9 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 one of the worst egoists in existence, without any feeling 
 for his fellowmen. He is guilty of using the United 
 States mails for fraudulent purposes, advertising in the 
 papers that he would receive liebesgaben (love packages) 
 for the soldiers in order to benefit himself, and later 
 selling the same in the cantine after an inspection and 
 rilling; he kept everything of value. He has received 
 1,000 of packages and money from very near every Ger- 
 man society and countless private people, but his men 
 never saw a penny of the same. The money he has spent 
 for himself and some of his officers in his orgies. 
 
 As we had been out on the high seas, he only had an 
 eye for his personal welfare. If we met a vessel, after 
 stopping the same, the first thing he always did was to 
 secure as much wine and other good things for himself, 
 and officers, so that they always had plenty. He would 
 not allow his sailors to bring enough potatoes and common 
 food on board to satisfy their hunger. There had been 
 cases where men had been severe punished just for taking 
 a piece of meat from the table of one of the sunken vessels. 
 The men did not even have drinking water but he and 
 his officers used the same for bathing. He had been 
 afraid that the U. S. Government would find out about 
 his various misdeeds, so in order to make the Govern- 
 ment think that he was all he should have represented he 
 pulled off the biggest blufF ever thought of. He told ten 
 men that they could run off, supplied the same with 
 money, and after a few moments sent some other boys 
 over the side to make as much noise as possible to call 
 the attention of the guards. He had his men maltreated 
 wherever there was a chance to do so. He even did this 
 after we had been brought to Fort Oglethorpe. We have 
 to thank the U. S. Officers for putting a stop to it. The 
 captain had been mad that he lost the power over the 
 
 90 
 
THE STORY OF CAPTAIN THIERICHENS 
 
 men. He swore he would bring the men to a military 
 prison for years to come, simply because they refused 
 to be treated like dogs after being informed by the U. S. 
 Officers that they don't have to stand for anything like 
 that. If it was not for the iron discipline maintained 
 by the Germans, there would have been a mutiny on 
 board the ship. Even a common man hates to see good 
 supplies going to waste just because the captain could 
 not get quick enough to his wine, and the men feed on 
 hardtack that was full of worms. Some of the men are 
 willing to appear in court against the captain to bear out 
 because they are not protected by the U. S. Government, 
 and may have to face a court martial law if they are 
 returned to Germany. We do hope that there will be 
 an investigation of the evil doings of said Captain. If 
 found guilty, we do hope that he may find out what it 
 does mean to do wrong to his fellowmen. 
 
 91 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 James J. F. Archibald and His Pro-German 
 Activities 
 
 THE case of James J. F. Archibald, war 
 correspondent, is another sample of the 
 Germans' fatal gift for trusting a weak link 
 in an otherwise ingenious and complete chain. 
 Their "cleverness" was the cleverness of the 
 cocky boy who thinks he can outwit any one. 
 The sad ending of Archibald's career, the igno- 
 minious exposure of his character as a messenger 
 for the Germans, was simplicity itself. And the 
 revelations contained in the messages he carried 
 were most discreditable to the honour and the 
 wisdom of the plotters in the Teutonic embassies. 
 The story begins on July 29, 19 14, six days 
 after Austria's ultimatum to Serbia and three 
 days before the formal historical date of the 
 opening of the war. On that day an enter- 
 prising American newspaper syndicate tele- 
 graphed Mr. Archibald as follows: 
 
 Please telegraph us your terms for going to the European 
 war, so that we can size up the syndicate field. As soon 
 as received will try for quick action. 
 
 The Wheeler Syndicate, Inc. 
 
 92 
 
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 
 
 Archibald soon had his arrangements made, 
 though his employers were ignorant of the 
 reason for the surprising ease with which he 
 obtained the highest possible entree to the 
 best possible points of observation within the 
 German lines. It should be said at once that 
 their attitude was perfectly correct and that 
 the moment they discovered the true nature 
 of his errand they discharged him by cable, 
 on October 27th. But that comes later in 
 the story. 
 
 Archibald was a man of true grandiose 
 German style. Writing to the syndicate on 
 September 4th he said: 
 
 You should not confound my efforts with more than 
 five hundred correspondents of every description who have 
 attempted to get to the English, French, and Belgian 
 fronts, none of them with any official recognition and most 
 of them without even a passport. At the hysterical 
 beginning of the war, correspondents are very much in 
 the way but every cartoonist, humorist, and amateur 
 millionaire who wanted a little private excitement rushed 
 to the front and embarrassed the armies in their mobil- 
 ization and naturally they were not gladly received. 
 I have been working quietly, just as I did in the Russian 
 War when I was the first, and only, foreign correspondent 
 to be accepted after four months' waiting. 
 
 There is no necessity of coming into conflict with any 
 censors if one knows military censorship as I do, for all 
 they require is that you will not embarrass their present 
 actual movements. There is not one single foreign cor- 
 
 93 
 
WASHINGTON p. C 
 
 J.Nfi A 2875. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 I oeg to enclose a .notice" to prospective 
 American travellers and to ask whether you could have 
 it printed as advertisement in the newspapers mention 
 ed on the enclosed list once a week during the next 
 three or four" weeks. I presume that the prices given 
 are correct and "that. it will be possible to reduce 
 the rates somewhat for a repetition of th8 advertise- 
 ment. 
 
 Thanking you lrf advance for a kind answer at 
 your earliest convenience, I am 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 For .the German Ambassador 
 
 Councillor of the Embassy. 
 
 Ir. Albert J. Sehaffer, 
 Washington,.D.C. 
 
 THE " LUSITANIA " WARNING 
 This letter, signed by Haniel, the Councillor of the German Embassy 
 in Washington, clears up the mystery of the advertisement printed 
 in leading newspapers in all parts of the country on May I, 1915, 
 
 94 
 
.NOTICE! 
 
 TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage 
 are reminded that a State of War exists between Germany and 
 her Allies and Great Britain and her Allies; that the zone 
 of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; 
 that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperia 
 German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain 
 or of any of her Allies, are liable to destruction in those 
 waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships 
 of Great Britain or her Allies do so at their own risk. 
 
 IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY 
 Washington, D.C., April 22,1915. 
 
 I LINE 
 
 ■Screir Steaiflsbjps 
 
 to GLASGOW 
 
 May 1, Noon 
 
 rom Piar 64, N. R. 
 
 %,Mav7fSp.m. 
 
 Liverpool. 
 
 I All-the-Way 
 i. by- Water 
 
 •• LINE. Steamships 
 Etar. Lve. Pier 18, 
 
 it., 6 P. M.' Tups., 
 
 }l*htfu! a90-mile, 22- 
 the CtTT BEAUTI- 
 
 ,80 Tourist and N. Y. 
 
 Phone; 8980 — Cort. 
 
 IP COBPOBATION. 
 
 . LINE 
 
 thern Boots 
 
 *our» from Pari*. 
 
 ES * MARSEILLES 
 Sant' Anna.. June 6 
 LUbon.4! Marseilles 
 Roma.'. ...i Am 
 ■-. 17State Bt. " 
 
 \LIANO 
 
 11 D A t a. . 
 
 mm 
 
 SUt! 
 
 TLOBIDA 
 
 •*«i o$6*3. 
 
 ___ ADYBBTIBtoaENT. 
 
 NOTICE! 
 
 TRAVELLERS intending to 
 embark on the Atlantic voyage 
 are reminded that a state of 
 war exists between Germany 
 and her allies and Great Britain 
 and her allies; that the zone of 
 war includes the waters" adja- 
 cent to the British Isles; that, 
 in accordance with formal no- 
 tice given by the Imperial Ger- 
 man Government, vessels fly- 
 ing the flag of Great Britain, or 
 of any of her allies, are liable to 
 destruction in those waters and 
 that travellers sailing in the war 
 zone on ships of Great Britain 
 or her allies da so at their own 
 risk. 
 
 IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C, APRIL 22, 1815. 
 
 BANSBtPTOT NOTICEB. 
 
 '■"or'a.T .w»«* 
 
 .-a. Open inae lift; > s«» 
 8. B. MANWABINO.- 
 
 'STEW KNGIAND-SlaMa, 
 
 heatopTh^ 
 
 Stockbridge, Massa* 
 
 in th« Berkshire R 
 
 WILL OPEN JUTO 
 
 Tbla Modern Hotel Is FInoly. A 
 Delightfully Located. The Man, 
 Havlll, -will fed at the Botel HHi 
 47th St., New York, from April. 
 10th. Information regarding rati 
 he promptly attended to. 
 
 / Marblehead, Ma 
 
 THE.ROCK-W 
 
 Hotel de Luxe Opens' 
 
 \ Faces all the YacI 
 BOOKLETS G. H. BRA 
 
 EARLY GO! 
 
 AT 
 
 STOCKBRIDGE, F 
 
 RED LION I 
 
 N9W OWN. 
 
 KICHIGAS. 
 
 Mount Hi 
 
 OPEN AIL 
 
 five days before the Lusitania was sunk. The date on Haniel's letter 
 and the repetition of it on the copy of the advertisement as supplied by 
 him, clears up the hitherto unexplained discrepancy between the date on 
 the advertisement and the date of its publication ta ' 
 
 95 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 respondent with either the German or Austrian armies, 
 and it will be a great achievement to get dispatches out 
 from there and I am positive, with the papers that I now 
 hold, that there will be no difficulty whatever. The 
 difficulty is merely in establishing one's responsibility 
 with these armies, and my residence in Washington for 
 the last ten years has been for that purpose alone. 
 
 Archibald was soon in Germany and began 
 sending back cable dispatches to a syndicate of 
 papers, the principal ones of which were the 
 New York Times, Tribune, and World. His 
 dispatches, however, were so blatantly pro- 
 German and had so much more propaganda 
 than news in them that these papers quickly 
 became dissatisfied. For example, the Times 
 cut out of one of his dispatches a large section 
 of fulsome eulogy of the German Government. 
 Imagine their astonishment the next morning 
 to receive a telephone call from Captain 
 Boy-Ed, the Naval Attache of the German 
 Embassy with offices in New York. Captain 
 Boy-Ed demanded the reason for the omis- 
 sion of these paragraphs. The Times natur- 
 ally demanded Captain Boy-Ed's source of 
 information that such paragraphs existed. 
 It soon developed that Boy-Ed was receiving 
 direct from Germany duplicates of all the 
 material that Archibald was cabling for pub- 
 lication. As soon as the American news- 
 
 9 6 
 
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 
 
 papers understood this situation they declined 
 to proceed further. In the same spirit and 
 simultaneously the Wheeler Syndicate " fired" 
 Mr. Archibald by cable and wrote him a sting- 
 ing letter from which the following two para- 
 graphs may be quoted: 
 
 Perhaps because of the nature of your stuff, at any 
 rate, we have to face the veiled insinuation that you are 
 in the pay of the German and Austrian Governments. 
 In this connection, we have been told that the German 
 and Austrian Ambassadors to this country have received 
 in skeleton form the several wireless dispatches you sent 
 to us addressed care the Times. We think you should 
 know this, and also know that, with the nature of your 
 dispatches such as they were, we dared not allow our- 
 selves, by continuing the service, to be laid open to the 
 charge that we were in the employ of the German and 
 Austrian Governments. So we had to terminate the 
 service. 
 
 We have instructed the Times not to accept any more 
 wireless dispatches from you, and the wireless company 
 has been notified that no dispatches will be accepted. 
 We regret exceedingly the situation, but it is one that has 
 arisen solely from the fact that you have sent over your 
 personal pro-German opinions instead of the battlefront 
 news you assured us that you would furnish us. 
 
 Nothing daunted by these rebuffs, Archi- 
 bald continued his exploits as "war corres- 
 pondent, " interspersing his labours at the front 
 with voyages back to the United States, osten- 
 sibly to deliver lectures. The true character 
 
 97 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 of his movements stands revealed in a letter 
 Archibald received from Bernstorff, the Ger- 
 man Ambassador, a few days before he em- 
 barked on the voyage from New York which 
 was to be his last. This letter was written 
 from Bernstorff's summer home at Cedarhurst, 
 Long Island, on the 19th of August, 191 5, 
 and reads as follows: 
 
 Dear Mr. Archibald: 
 
 I send you herewith the two letters of recommenda- 
 tion asked for and hope that they will be useful to you. 
 I learn with pleasure that you wish once again to return 
 to Germany and Austria as you have interceded for our 
 concerns here so courageously and successfully. 
 With best compliments, 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 Bernstorff. 
 
 One of these letters was as follows: 
 
 The German Frontier Custom Authorities are re- 
 quested to kindly give to the bearer of this letter, Mr 
 James J. F. Archibald, from New York, who is going to 
 Germany with photographic apparatus, etc., in order to 
 collect material for lectures in the United States in the 
 interests of Germany, all possible facilities compatible 
 with regulations in the dispatching of his luggage. 
 
 Imperial Ambassador 
 Bernstorff. 
 
 The familiar story of what happened next 
 is that Archibald carried some secret docu- 
 ments for Bernstorff and Dumba in a hollow 
 
 98 
 
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 
 
 cane. This could scarcely be, for the docu- 
 ments he carried were so numerous and some 
 of them so bulky that the cane would need to 
 have been a giant's walking stick. In any 
 event, the documents themselves are of more 
 interest than their vehicle. They were taken 
 from Archibald by the British authorities at 
 Falmouth. The series can be best introduced 
 by a letter from Ambassador Dumba to his 
 chief, Baron Burian, Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs in Vienna, which reads: 
 
 My Lord: 
 
 Yesterday evening Consul General von Nuber received 
 the inclosed aide memoir e from the chief editor of the 
 locally known paper s Szabodsog, after a previous con- 
 ference with him and in pursuance of his proposals to 
 arrange for strikes in the Bethlehem Schwab steel and 
 munitions war factory, and also in the Middle West. 
 
 Dr. Archibald, who is well known to your lordship, 
 leaves to-day at 12 o'clock on board the Rotterdam, for 
 Berlin and Vienna. I take this rare and safe opportunity 
 to warmly recommend the proposal to your lordship's 
 favourable consideration. 
 
 It is my impression that we can disorganize and hold 
 up for months, if not entirely prevent, the manufacture 
 of munitions in Bethlehem and the Middle West, which, 
 in the opinion of the German military attache, is of great 
 importance and amply outweighs the expenditure of 
 money involved. 
 
 But even if strikes do not come off, it is probable that 
 we should extort, under the pressure of the crisis, more 
 
 99 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 favourable conditions of labour for our poor, down-trodden 
 fellow countrymen. In Bethlehem these white slaves are 
 now working for twelve hours a day and seven days a week. 
 All weak persons succumb and become consumptives. 
 
 So far as German workmen are found among the 
 skilled hands, a means of leaving will be provided for 
 them. 
 
 Besides this a private German registry office has 
 been established, which provided employment for persons 
 who have voluntarily given up their places, and is already 
 working well. They will also join, and the widest support 
 is assured me. 
 
 I beg your excellency to be so good as to inform me 
 with reference to this letter by wireless telegraphy., reply- 
 ing whether y6u agree. 
 
 Dumba. 
 
 The consideration which "Doctor" Archi- 
 bald received for his complacency in giving 
 his friends Dumba and Bernstorff "this rare 
 and safe opportunity" is indicated by his 
 receipt of April 24, 1915, to the German 
 Embassy in Washington for #5,000 for propa- 
 ganda work. 
 
 Further light upon "the enclosed aide 
 memoire. ... in pursuance of his pro- 
 posals to arrange for strikes in the Bethlehem 
 Schwab steel and munitions war factory," is 
 gained by the following quotations from the 
 enclosure mentioned by Dumba in his letter 
 to Burian. The enclosure was an outline of 
 a scheme for fomenting strikes, submitted to 
 
 100 
 
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 
 
 Dumba by William Warm, the Editor of 
 
 Szabodsog [in English, Freedom.] 
 
 In my opinion we must start a very strong agitation 
 on this question in the Freedom (Szabodsog) a leading 
 organ, with respect to the Bethlehem works and the 
 conditions there. This can be done in two ways, and 
 both must be utilized. In the first place, a regular daily 
 section must be devoted to the conditions obtaining there 
 and a campaign must be regularly conducted against 
 those indescribably degrading conditions. The Freedom 
 has already done something similar in the recent past, 
 when the strike movement began at Bridgeport. It 
 must naturally take the form of strong, deliberate, decided, 
 and courageous action. Secondly, the writer of these 
 lines would begin a labour novel in that newspaper much 
 on the lines of Upton Sinclair's celebrated story, and this 
 might be published in other local Hungarian, Slovak, 
 and German newspapers also. Here we arrive at the 
 point that naturally we shall also require other news- 
 papers. The American Magyar Nepszava (Word of the 
 People) will undoubtedly be compelled willingly or un- 
 willingly to follow the movement initiated by the Free- 
 dom (Szabodsog), for it will be pleasing to the entire 
 Hungarian element in America, and an absolute patriotic 
 act to which that open journal (the Nepszava) could 
 not adopt a hostile attitude. . . . 
 
 In the interest of successful action at Bethlehem and 
 the Middle West, besides the Szabodsog, the Nepszava, 
 the new daily paper of Pittsburg must be set in motion, 
 and those of Bridgeport Youngtown District, etc., also 
 two Slovak papers. Under these circumstances, the 
 first necessity is money. To Bethlehem must be sent 
 as many reliable Hungarian and German workmen as 
 
 IOI 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 I can lay my hands on who will join the factories and 
 begin their work in secret among their fellow workmen. 
 For this purpose, I have my men Turners in Steelwork. 
 We must send an organizer, who in the interests of the 
 Union will begin the business in his own way. We 
 must , also send so-called "soap-box" orators who 
 will know, and so to start a useful agitation. We shall 
 want money for popular meetings and possibly for or- 
 ganizing picnics. In general, the same applies to the 
 Middle West. I am thinking of Pittsburg and Cleveland 
 in the first instance, as to which I could give details only 
 if I were to return and spend at least a few days there. 
 
 It is my opinion that for the special object of starting 
 the Bethlehem business and for the Bethlehem and 
 Western newspaper campaign, $15,000 to $20,000 must 
 be able to be disposed of, but it is not possible to reckon 
 how much will ultimately be required; when a beginning 
 has been made it will be possible to see how things de- 
 velop, and where and how much it is worth while to 
 spend. The above-mentioned preliminary sum would 
 suffice to partially satisfy the demands of the necessary 
 newspapers and to a considerable extent those of the 
 Bethlehem campaign. 
 
 These documents should be read in the 
 light of their date, August 20, 1915, and of the 
 fact that the United States was a neutral 
 nation, still harbouring the representatives of 
 the "friendly" German and Austro-Hungarian 
 empires. They are conclusive enough, in 
 themselves, of the pernicious activities of 
 these Embassies, but they wall become doubly 
 significant in a later article in this series when 
 
 * 102 
 
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 
 
 they are read in the light of the activities of 
 "Labour's National Peace Council/' 
 
 Another document which Dumba entrusted 
 to Archibald was his report to Burian on the 
 then recent publication in the New York World 
 of the papers taken from a satchel left in an 
 elevated train by Dr. Heinrich Albert, the 
 financial adviser of the German Embassy in 
 America and the paymaster for a great deal 
 of its work in plots and propaganda. This 
 dispatch of Dumba's is worthy of reproduction 
 in full. It is : 
 
 A map and a number of documents — typed but un- 
 finished copies or statements of petitioners — were stolen 
 from the financial adviser of the German Embassy here, 
 obviously by the English Secret Service. These docu- 
 ments are now published in the current issue of the 
 World, which has gone over to the English "Yingolager" 
 (Jingo camp) as a great sensation, with cheap advertise- 
 ment. The paper makes the most violent accusations 
 against the German Embassy, mainly against Count Von 
 BernstorfF, Military Attache Captain Von Papen, and 
 Geheimrat Albert, who are said to have conspired secretly 
 against the safety of the United States, in that they have 
 bought arms and munition factories, have concluded 
 bogus contracts for delivery with France and Russia, 
 have purchased large quantities of explosive materials, 
 have incited strikes in the munition factories, have sought 
 to corrupt the press, and have spread far-reaching agitation 
 for the effecting of an embargo in the different American 
 circles. The other important New York papers second 
 
 103 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 the World although with less violence, for, in their leading 
 articles, by misrepresentation of the facts, they accuse 
 Germany of all possible and impossible machinations — 
 for instance, they, like the World, bring forward the asser- 
 tion that the German Government wished to stop the 
 supply of ammunition to the Allies, while itself secretly 
 sending quantities over. 
 
 Count Von Rernstorfftook the view that these calumnies 
 were beneath reply, and by a happy inspiration, refused 
 any explanation. He is in no way compromised. On 
 the contrary, it appears from the published correspondence 
 of various press agents that he vetoed the purchase of 
 a press agency. 
 
 On the other hand, Geheimrat Albert published in 
 the newspapers a very cleverly worded explanation, 
 the tenor of which I venture to submit to Your Excellency 
 in an enclosure. It is especially to the credit of the 
 German Embassy that on July 15th last it informed the 
 State Department officially that it found itself compelled 
 to buy as many materials of war in this country as it 
 possibly could, and to control their production, with the 
 intention of preventing their being supplied to the 
 enemy. These materials, it stated, were at any time at 
 the disposal of the American Government at favourable 
 prices, either as a whole or in parts, and of course this 
 could only further the readiness of the United States for 
 taking the field in war. 
 
 Here the absurd accusations of the conspiracy collapse. 
 Also, with regard to the accusations as to the incitement 
 of strikes, there is no proof of the empty statements made. 
 Nevertheless, everything German here is slandered and 
 run down with emphasis and consistency. An impartial 
 individual can hardly escape the feeling of appreciation 
 with which the far-reaching activity of Geheimrat Albert 
 
 104 
 
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 
 
 must inspire him. But there are very few impartial 
 persons in New York. 
 
 The torpedoing of the Arabic , in the event of its having 
 been done without warning, or its having caused American 
 passengers to lose their lives, will do more than any 
 newspaper accusations to prejudice Germany in the public 
 opinion of the United States. 
 
 The Imperial and Royal Ambassador, 
 
 ' (Signed) C. Dumba. 
 
 Archibald carried numerous other papers — 
 for the Germans as well as for the Austrians. 
 The most interesting of these was a report 
 from Franz von Papen, military attache of the 
 German Embassy upon the same World ex- 
 posure. The following are extracts from this 
 dispatch: 
 
 Military Report 
 The "Sensational Revelations" of the New York World 
 
 On July 31 important papers were abstracted from 
 Herr Geheimrat Dr. Albert in the elevated railway, 
 apparently by an individual in the employ of the English 
 Secret Service. These papers were sold to the World and 
 formed the basis of the revelations (Enclosure 1) which 
 gave to the New York press, friendly to the Allies, a wel- 
 come opportunity to make a fresh outburst against the 
 Imperial Government and the Imperial representatives 
 in this country. . . . 
 
 Apart from political results the consequences of the 
 publications for us show themselves in connection with 
 business. 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Bridgeport Projectile Co. 
 
 The report of June 30 of the Treasurer of this Company 
 which I forwarded to the Royal Ministry of War on July 
 13, J. No. 1888, was among the stolen papers. 
 
 The declaration, published in the papers, of the Presi- 
 dent of the Aetna Explosive Co. that he intended to 
 throw up powder contracts with the Bridgeport Pro- 
 jectile Co. is of course only newspaper gossip and was 
 already much weakened yesterday through a fresh expla- 
 nation by the firm (Enclosure V). 
 
 In connection also with the delivery of presses, I 
 do not believe that the manufacturers will place difficulties 
 in our way because the careful drawing up of the contract 
 excludes all attack on the Projectile Co. under the well- 
 known Sherman Law, and the claim that the manufacturers 
 had supposed the deliveries to be intended for the Allies — 
 in other words, that the contracts had been obtained by 
 us under false representations — offers a legal basis too 
 weak to enable the persons who undertake delivery to 
 risk the expense and results of a lawsuit. 
 
 The only actual damage consists in that the Russian 
 and English committee have at once broken off their 
 negotiations with the Bridgeport Projectile Co. and that 
 thus our plans to cut off, by the acceptance and non- 
 delivery of a shrapnel contract, other firms here from the 
 possibility of beginning the furnishing of war material 
 have come to nothing. 
 
 The purchase of phenol by Dr. Schweitzer of the 
 Edison Co., which has at the same time been disclosed, 
 is disposed of by the explanation published to the effect 
 that this phenol is only to be worked up into medicine. 
 
 Most of all have our efforts for the purchase of liquid 
 chlorine been interfered with, since the tying up through 
 middlemen of the Castner Chemical Company, which 
 
 106 
 
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAMES ARCHIBALD 
 
 is friendly to England, appears now to be out of the 
 question. 
 
 I shall use the means placed at my disposal (informa- 
 tion of Herr Grothen) for the purpose of arriving at an 
 agreement with the Electro Bleaching Company. The 
 published negotiations for the acquisition of the Wright's 
 patent is without importance, since on our behalf a judical 
 decision against the Curtiss Company so far as one can 
 see, would not have been obtained. 
 
 Part of the significance of Von Papen's 
 dispatch is his reference to the Bridgeport 
 Projectile Company. Other documents in the 
 possession of the United States Government 
 demonstrate completely the ownership of this 
 corporation by the Teutonic Allies. Hans 
 Tauscher, the agent of Krupps and other 
 German munition factories in this country, 
 was in the habit of reporting direct to the 
 War Ministry in Berlin as if he were its repre- 
 sentative in this country — as indeed he was 
 though not ostensibly so. Among other papers 
 in the hands of the Government is a letter 
 from the President of the Bridgeport Projectile 
 Company, informing him that the company 
 is being reorganized and that hereafter Mr. 
 Tauscher will hold as trustee only 60 per cent. 
 of the capital stock. Naturally Tauscher was 
 not acting as trustee for anybody but his em- 
 ployers. 
 
 Another document, of little importance, is 
 107 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 a letter Von Papen wrote to his wife and sent 
 by Archibald. But two parts of it are inter- 
 esting. After speaking again of the World ex- 
 posure he, says : 
 
 The answer of Albert I am sending you herewith so 
 you can see how we defend ourselves. The document we 
 drew up together yesterday. 
 
 But the bright spot for the Americans whose 
 hospitality he was abusing lies in this: 
 
 How splendid in the East! I always say to these 
 idiotic Yankees that they should shut their mouths and 
 better still be full of admiration for all that heroism. 
 My friends from the Army are in this respect quite 
 different. 
 
 Papen's "friends from the Army" have, with 
 a good many of "these idiotic Yankees/' or- 
 ganized an army and are looking for Captain 
 Franz again, this time over the top in France, 
 with the determination to settle the question 
 with his government on the battlefield. 
 
 108 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A Tale Told in Telegrams 
 
 ONE day in October, 1915, a good-looking 
 young fellow wandered into the office of 
 the United States Attorney at Detroit and 
 inquired if the office was making any investi- 
 gations into dynamite cases. His inquiry was 
 odd enough of itself, but coupled with his 
 personal appearance and his entirely unexpected 
 arrival on the scene, it was doubly mysterious. 
 Lewis J. Smith, as his name turned out to be, 
 looked like a handsome, big, farmer's boy who 
 had come to town and made a little money. 
 He was well dressed in what he considered 
 the style, and in conversation developed a 
 winning smile and a very engaging and con- 
 vincing personality. There was the fresh whole- 
 someness of country breeding about him that 
 comported strangely with his guarded and 
 mysterious talk of dynamite. The United 
 States Attorney thought he must be a "little 
 off/' but referred him to the local agent of 
 the Department of Justice. 
 To this agent Smith told at first an incoher- 
 109 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 ent story. But the agent was tactful and sym- 
 pathetic and by asking a question now and 
 then and even more by refraining from asking 
 questions at embarrassing moments, he drew 
 out from Smith most of the details of one of 
 the most dangerous German plots, incidentally 
 exposing the organization of theGerman spysys- 
 tem west of the Mississippi River. 
 
 The story revealed by Smith and by the 
 corroborative testimony in the subsequent in- 
 vestigation was this: Consul-General Bopp 
 discovered that the California Powder Mills 
 at Pinole, across the bay from San Francisco, 
 was manufacturing powder for the use of 
 the Russians on the Eastern Front in Europe, 
 and that this powder was being shipped from 
 Tacoma and Seattle to Vladivostok. One 
 particularly large shipment was under way 
 and he wanted to stop it. He employed 
 C. C. Crowley, who had been for many years 
 head detective for the Southern Pacific Rail- 
 road but lately discharged for grafting, to 
 undertake this job along with several others. 
 Crowley lived in the Hotel Gartland in San 
 Francisco, and bought his cigars at a little 
 German stand across the street. Through this 
 German, who was also patronized by Smith, 
 Crowley learned that Smith had been employed 
 recently in the California Powder Mills but 
 
 no 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 was out of a job. Crowley introduced him- 
 self to Smith and first gave him the task of 
 going back to the mill and finding out exactly 
 how the powder for Russia was being routed. 
 He gave Smith several hundred dollars, and 
 the next day Smith's former fellow employees 
 were astonished to see him ride up to the works 
 in an automobile, completely outfitted in new 
 clothes and flourishing a roll of bills big enough 
 to make them gasp. Smith soon found how 
 the powder was packed and marked and also 
 that it was being loaded on a big scow and would 
 be towed by sea to Tacoma for loading there 
 on ships for Vladivostok. 
 
 A few days later Crowley told Smith to go 
 to Tacoma and register at the Donnelly Hotel, 
 and that he would join him there, going by 
 another train. There they would manufacture 
 bombs of a type which Smith had devised, 
 and Smith was to place these bombs on the 
 ships that would carry the powder to Russia. 
 
 Smith took his wife to Tacoma. They 
 registered at the Donnelly Hotel, but as they 
 soon discovered they would have to spend 
 some time in the city, they took an apartment. 
 Smith and Crowley were constantly meeting 
 and between them surveyed all the shipping 
 in the harbour and found out when the boats 
 would sail and what they were carrying. The 
 
 in 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 barge load of powder from California was 
 towed into the harbour while they were there, 
 and anchored in midstream to await the light- 
 ering of its cargo to the trans-Pacific ships. 
 These ships proved to be the Kifuku Maru and 
 the Shinsei Maru (Japanese), the Hazel Dollar, 
 an American boat flying the British flag, and 
 the TalthybiuSy a British ship. Smith under- 
 took to place bombs on all of them. 
 
 What Smith actually did was to visit small 
 stores in Tacoma and near Seattle and buy 
 regular commercial 40 per cent, dynamite in 
 sticks, telling the storekeepers that he was 
 clearing a farm and wanted the dynamite for 
 use in blowing up stumps. He loaded a lot of 
 it into an old suitcase and left Crowley one 
 afternoon, telling him he was going to place 
 this on one of the ships that night. Instead, 
 he went out into the woods with it, cached it 
 under a log, the position of which he fixed in 
 memory by a big stump and a tree that had a 
 big rock in its fork, then walked on down to the 
 railroad track, carrying his suitcase, and later 
 threw the suitcase away down an embankment. 
 He reported to Crowley that he had not been 
 able to get anything on the Kifuku Maru, 
 which was the first to sail, but that he had 
 " fixed" the Hazel Dollar, the Shinsei Maru, 
 and the Talthybius. 
 
 112 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 Crowley, in the meantime, had been keeping 
 in touch with the Germans in San Francisco. 
 It had been arranged that all dealings with 
 them were to be through Von Brincken. 
 Crowley, on his part, kept in touch with his 
 secretary, Mrs. Cornell, she communicating 
 in person, or by telephone, with Von Brincken, 
 and Von Brincken reporting to Bopp and get- 
 ting further orders. 
 
 A great deal of the story from this point on 
 is A Tale Told in Telegrams.' The first of 
 these telegrams, which figured in the subsequent 
 trial, was dated Tacoma, May 13, 1915. It 
 was addressed to Crowley who had not yet 
 joined Smith. The message was: 
 
 Fine weather Kaifuku Box 244 five days. 
 
 S. Hotel Donnelly. 
 
 This message was, of course, from Smith and 
 was in the crude code that had been agreed 
 upon. "Fine weather " meant that every- 
 thing was O. K. "Kaifuku" gave the name 
 of the ship on which the powder would probably 
 be carried. "Box 244" was the post-office 
 address through which Smith could be reached, 
 and "five days" was the probable sailing date 
 of the Kifuku. 
 
 It so happened, however, that a few hours 
 after Smith had sent this telegram Crowley 
 
 113 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 arrived in Tacoma. Crowley was always full 
 of fear that he would be detected, and he 
 was afraid of the message that Smith had sent. 
 He, therefore, immediately telegraphed to Mrs. 
 Cornell to go to the Gartland Hotel in San Fran- 
 cisco and get this telegram, and telegraphed also 
 to the hotel to give it to her when she called. 
 
 Between one and two o'clock in the morn- 
 ing of Sunday, May 30th (Decoration Day), 
 everybody in Tacoma and Seattle was jarred 
 from his slumbers by a terrific explosion in 
 the harbour. The scow load of powder had 
 disappeared in one grand flash, crash, and cloud 
 of smoke, carrying with it the night watch- 
 man who had been living on it. One hundred 
 thousand dollars' worth of plate glass in Tacoma 
 and Seattle was destroyed and news of the 
 explosion was telegraphed to the papers all 
 over the country. Crowley had got the main, 
 part of his job done in one quick stroke. 
 
 Here was good news for the Germans. 
 Crowley could not wait for the mails to carry 
 it, so the next day he sent the following tele- 
 gram to Mrs. Cornell: 
 
 Work has been good. And all fixed. No connection 
 v/ith the big Circus it was an accident to the Elephant. 
 
 This cryptic message meant: 
 "Work has been good and all fixed," that he 
 114 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 and Smith had had good luck in their plots 
 against the ships and that bombs had been 
 placed on all of them. "No connection with 
 the big Circus it was an accident to the Ele- 
 phant," the "big Circus" was the four ships 
 for Vladivostok and the "Elephant" was the 
 scow — in other words, the explosion had not 
 interfered with their work against the ships. 
 
 Before Crowley got his message off, however, 
 Mrs. Crowley had sent one to him. The Ger- 
 mans were in a panic. Von Brincken had tele- 
 phoned her that Bopp had word that Smith 
 had been arrested and had given the game away, 
 so she telegraphed : 
 
 Von learned your friend told all before leaving. 
 Anxious. Answer. 
 
 M. W. C. 
 
 To this Crowley replied: 
 
 Show that telegram to him also say I do not credit 
 report on S. he made good. 
 
 c. 
 
 "That telegram" meant his message about 
 the circus. To this Mrs. Cornell replied: 
 
 Don't understand your message. Get letter Portland 
 Post-office on arrival. 
 
 M. W. C. 
 
 Crowley ? she knew, was leaving immediately 
 for San Francisco. 
 
 ii5 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 There were some grounds for the Germans 
 apprehension. Smith was arrested and charged 
 with having caused the explosion on the scow. 
 But after a little manoeuvring he managed to 
 get free of the charge and, with money wired 
 to him at Tacoma by Crowley, went back to 
 San Francisco where Crowley paid him first 
 #300 and then $600 in currency. 
 
 The Germans, however, had been pretty 
 well frightened and they thought it was about 
 time to get both Smith and Crowley away. 
 Smith and his wife were hustled off to Sacra- 
 mento where they lived at a hotel for a little 
 while and then Mrs. Smith was sent on ahead 
 to New York, while Crowley and Smith arranged 
 to meet in Chicago to carry out a new plan 
 that the Germans had devised. 
 
 This plot was to use Detroit as headquarters 
 for operations in Canada and there to blow 
 up the stockyards at St. Thomas, Ontario, and 
 trains carrying horses for shipment to Europe. 
 Crowley and Smith got together in Chicago 
 and visited the stockyards to spot the ship- 
 ments of horses toward the Atlantic seaboard. 
 They learned that a good many of these ship- 
 ments were being routed through Canada by 
 way of Detroit. In the meantime, however, 
 the Germans in San Francisco were getting rest- 
 less. They had expected almost every day 
 
 116 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 that the ships for Vladivostok would be re- 
 ported blown up or missing. They had heard 
 neither, and they were beginning to suspect 
 that they had been deceived. They had been 
 deceived, but so had Crowley — and this ex- 
 plains the tenor of his replies in the Second 
 Tale Told in Telegrams. The first intimation 
 of trouble he received was a telegram from 
 Mrs. Cornell on June 21st, to which she signed 
 her middle initial: 
 
 Saw him noon gave message. He was astonished. 
 
 Said we'll ± suspend judgment for a few days. Queer 
 
 news this morning. He suspects you were interested 
 in the failure. 
 
 W. 
 
 1 
 
 Meantime, Crowley had gone on to Detroit 
 and this message was wired to him at the 
 Hotel Statler there. His reply is missing, but 
 he evidently expressed astonishment at the 
 message, giving some instructions for his office 
 and asking for more particulars. To this mes- 
 sage Mrs. Cornell replied: 
 
 Your instructions will be acted- upon. Wired you 
 first arrived. 
 
 W. 
 
 The second sentence of the message meant 
 that the first boat, the Shinsei Maru, had ar- 
 rived safely at Vladivostok, despite Crowley's 
 previous assurances that it had been "fixed." 
 
 117 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 This was what the Germans could not under- 
 stand, and what had aroused their suspicions 
 that Crowley had been deceiving them, and 
 that he had possibly even been in somebody 
 else's pay to "double cross" them. Their sus- 
 picions were redoubled, as seems natural enough 
 in the light of Mrs. Cornell's message of June 
 29th to Crowley: 
 
 All three arrived. I am waiting your advice. Some- 
 thing queer. 
 
 W. 
 
 In other words, the other two boats, the Hazel 
 Dollar and the Talthybius, had safely made 
 Vladivostok. 
 
 Meanwhile, Crowley had been having other 
 troubles with Smith. One day he called for 
 him at the Briggs Hotel in Chicago and found 
 that he had disappeared. He learned that he 
 had gone on to New York, leaving as his for- 
 warding address simply "Station L, General 
 Delivery, New York." Smith had two causes 
 for anxiety. In the first place, he had not heard 
 from his wife and did not know whether she 
 had arrived safely. Consequently, on June 
 1 8th he had telegraphed to a friend in New 
 York: 
 
 Can you give my wife's address. Important. An- 
 swer paid, 
 
 and received a reply the same day giving the 
 
 118 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 address. He left Chicago at once and tele- 
 graphed her from Buffalo the following evening: 
 
 On train 36 Grand Central Depot 703 Sunday morning. 
 
 Lewis. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon Crowley telegraphed 
 him from Chicago: 
 
 What is the matter? Was surprised when found you 
 had gone. Send me some word to Stratford Hotel. 
 
 c. c. c. 
 
 Smith did not reply until four days later, after 
 he had learned that Crowley had gone on from 
 Chicago to Detroit. He then telegraphed him: 
 
 From Tacoma at Chicago. Address 308 East Fiftieth 
 St., New York City. 
 
 S. 
 
 To Crowley the second sentence was plain 
 enough, but the first one was unintelligible, 
 so he wired Smith: 
 
 Do not understand message. Let me know if you 
 are coming here. Important. 
 
 C. 
 
 Smith did not dare to explain by telegraph 
 what the matter was, but he had become con- 
 vinced that detectives were on his trail and 
 that he had been followed all the way from 
 Tacoma to Chicago. He had suddenly de- 
 cided to give them the slip and temporarily to 
 break his connection with Crowley until 
 
 119 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Crowley should be at a safer place for him to 
 get in touch with him again. Also he wanted 
 to "work" Crowley for some more money, 
 consequently his reply on June 25th was: 
 
 Cannot explain by wire. Would come but finances 
 don't permit. Can't find wife. Answer. 
 
 s. 
 
 The latter part of this message was another lie 
 because he was with his wife at the time, but 
 it served to excuse his absence and baited the 
 hook for more money. Crowley promptly bit 
 and replied : 
 
 I wired you fifty dollars. Come W. U. 
 
 C. 
 
 Corroborating this message was a service 
 message of the Western Union operator to 
 their New York Office at 24 Walker Street : 
 
 Send notice to L. J. Smith, 308 East 50 St. Report 
 delay of transfer payable at Grand Central Terminal. 
 
 M. T. A. 
 
 This telegram authorized the payment of $50. 
 
 At the same time Crowley undertook to 
 satisfy his German employers and to divert 
 their minds from their previous disappointment 
 by promising them some results on the new 
 venture. He telegraphed Mrs. Cornell on 
 June 25th: 
 
 Tell him I expect S. by Sunday then action. 
 
 120 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 The "him" was Von Brincken and the "S" 
 was, of course, Smith. The promised " action" 
 was action in the plot to dynamite the cattle 
 trains at St. Thomas, Ontario. The next day 
 Smith was on his way to Detroit, sending a 
 message on the train to his wife to let her know 
 he was all right : 
 
 Arrived at Toledo O. K. 
 
 L. 
 
 Smith met Crowley in Detroit the following 
 day and Crowley immediately telegraphed Mrs. 
 Cornell further reassuring news for his German 
 friends : 
 
 He arrived and will be in action in day or two. Weather 
 cool. All O. K. Give all clippings to him let me know 
 if any word from Hazel and friend. Let him know of S. 
 
 C. 
 
 This message meant that Smith had arrived 
 and would dynamite the stockyards in a day 
 or two, that there was nothing exciting to 
 report, and everything was going well. The 
 "action" referred to was the blowing up of the 
 cattle trains and the St. Clair Tunnel at Port 
 Huron. The "clippings" were newspaper re- 
 ports of the explosion on the scow at Tacoma 
 which he wanted Mrs. Cornell to give to 
 "him" that is to Von Brincken. "Let him 
 know of S" meant: "Tell Von Brincken that 
 
 121 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Smith is here." "Let me know if any word 
 from Hazel and friend/' meant that Crowley 
 had not given up hope that there was a mistake 
 about the ships having made Vladivostok in 
 safety and that he expected still to hear that 
 Hazel (that is the Hazel Dollar) and "friend" 
 (Talthybius)had been destroyed. 
 
 The promised "action" was now, so Crowley 
 thought, about to be produced. He was going 
 to take Smith into Canada and cause some 
 explosions. Consequently he telegraphed Mrs. 
 Cornell on June 29th: 
 
 Night letter follows. Go to Toronto few days. Don't 
 wire until Friday. 
 
 C. 
 This announced the approaching trip for action. 
 
 Crowley's scheme for "action" was this: 
 Smith was to carry a suitcase full of dynamite 
 and buy a ticket to St. Thomas, Ontario. 
 Crowley was to carry a suitcase very similar 
 in appearance, containing his travelling things, 
 and was to buy a through ticket to Buffalo which 
 would take him over the same route through 
 Canada that Smith was to travel. This plan 
 was actually worked out with one exception. 
 Smith had a perfectly good imagination and 
 a perfectly developed yellow streak in his 
 courage. He still wanted the $300 monthly 
 he was making and was determined to con- 
 
 122 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 tinue getting it, but he had no relish at all for 
 the pictures conjured in his mind of what 
 would happen to him if he were discovered in 
 Canada with a suitcase full of dynamite. He 
 showed the dynamite packed in the case to 
 Crowley. Then he went out into the suburbs 
 of Detroit, got rid of the dynamite and, from 
 a night watchman on a brick building in course 
 of construction, bought a half-dozen bricks with 
 which he filled the suitcase. This Irishman was 
 afterward discovered and readily recalled both 
 Smith and the circumstances, as he had been both 
 puzzled]and amused at the idea of anybody buying 
 bricks when he could easily have stolen them. 
 
 As they had arranged, Smith boarded the 
 Michigan Central train at Detroit late Sunday 
 afternoon on July the 4th, and took a seat in 
 the day coach. Crowley, who did not walk 
 with him but followed close behind, took the 
 seat behind Smith. Each, of course, stowed 
 his suitcase at his feet. In a few minutes 
 Smith walked to the front end of the car for a 
 drink of water, whereupon Crowley stepped out 
 on the platform at the rear. Smith came back 
 and took Crowley's seat. Crowley returned 
 and took Smith's seat. Shortly after, the cus- 
 toms inspector came through the train with 
 the conductor. His presence was the reason 
 for this exchange of seats. As Crowley had a 
 
 123 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 through ticket to Buffalo and would not leave 
 the train, the customs inspector did not open 
 his suitcase but simply pasted on it the through 
 ticket label by which it would be identified 
 by the other customs inspector who would 
 board the train at Niagara Falls, when the train 
 was about to reenter the United States at 
 Buffalo. Hence the suitcase containing the sup- 
 posed dynamite was not opened, and this was 
 Crowley's plan. Crowley's own suitcase, now 
 in the seat with Smith, was, of course, opened 
 and examined. But it contained nothing but 
 Crowley's personal belongings. An hour or so 
 later the stratagem was repeated and Smith and 
 Crowley resumed their original seats and got 
 possession of their original baggage. Smith 
 dropped off the train at St. Thomas at about 
 eleven o'clock that night and Crowley went on 
 through to Buffalo. 
 
 Smith's nerve was no better this time than 
 it had been before. In St. Thomas he emptied 
 the bricks out of his suitcase, bought some 
 travelling things to replace them, and took the 
 train on to New York. In the meantime, Crow- 
 ley had been having his troubles with the 
 anxious and irritated Germans in San Francisco. 
 There was an interchange of messages based 
 on his need for money and on a break in the 
 chain of communication between him and Bopp. 
 
 124 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 Von Brincken had been made very unhappy 
 by Bopp, as the latter was in a furious rage 
 over the failure of the earlier plot at Tacoma, 
 and had accused Von Brincken of everything 
 from embezzlement to treachery and had made 
 his life so miserable that he was glad of an 
 excuse to get out of San Francisco. The imme- 
 diate occasion he made for his leaving was 
 an opportunity he had to go to Tia Juana, 
 Mexico, just across the border from California. 
 As both Crowley and his representative Mrs. 
 Cornell had been positively forbidden to com- 
 municate with Bopp, Crowley was at the moment 
 considerably embarrassed by his inability to 
 get in touch with headquarters. This explains 
 the meaning of Mrs. Cornell's message of July 
 2d, addressed to Crowley at Detroit: 
 
 Am trying to find him. Waited to hear from you. 
 
 W. 
 
 She did manage to reach Von Brincken just 
 before he left for Mexico late the same day, 
 again telegraphing Crowley: 
 
 He said: If you have plans go ahead with them. State 
 amount required. Have been looking for results. 
 
 W. 
 
 Crowley replied the next morning: 
 
 Tell him have planned action for within a week. No 
 doubt able to make showing. Ans. 
 
 125 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 His reply, however, was too late. Von Brincken 
 had gone to Mexico, hence Mrs. Cornell tele- 
 graphed : 
 
 Cannot get in touch with him. Have tried everything. 
 Wired you last night state amount required. Advise 
 
 me. 
 
 W. 
 
 To this message Crowley replied: 
 
 Don't worry. Did he get night letter thirtyth? Go 
 to Buffalo to-morrow night. Statler. If you find him 
 wire me. Don't send money until decided. 
 
 C. 
 
 The following day was the Sunday on which 
 Crowley and Smith left Detroit together. Smith 
 dropped off at St. Thomas and Crowley pro- 
 ceeded to Buffalo. The following evening Crow- 
 ley again telegraphed Mrs. Cornell from Buffalo: 
 
 Nothing from you. Send me long letter to-night. 
 
 C. 
 
 Her reply was : 
 
 Nothing from him since last Wednesday except one 
 phone telling you state amount. Believe he is fighting 
 for time. Don't commit yourself he has no authority. 
 Told me he expected to take another position in a month 
 as the atmosphere was intolerable. I gave up apartment 
 Saturday morning. Will wire. 
 
 Mrs. Cornell had been unable to reach 
 Von Brincken for the very good reason that he 
 was out of town. Her quotation of his remark 
 
 126 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 that he "expected to take another position 
 within a month" referred to Von Brincken's 
 untenable position in the Consulate in San 
 Francisco, and to his manoeuvres to get himself 
 transferred to the New York end of the German 
 spy system with his friend Von Papen, with whom 
 he had become quite chummy on a recent visit 
 of Von Papen's to the Pacific Coast. 
 
 Two days later, however, Von Brincken had 
 come back to San Francisco and Mrs. Cornell 
 had a talk with him. Following this talk she 
 telegraphed to Crowley, who was now in New 
 York, stopping at the Wallick Hotel: 
 
 Manager informed Bradford that experiences made 
 were discouraging that outlook of lawsuit was too poor 
 to justify advances for appeal. He is willing to offer 
 lawyer contingent fee depending upon success only. 
 Bradford privately advises see his friend in New York 
 at once. Will send night letter. 
 
 W. 
 
 In this message Mrs. Cornell dropped into the 
 code they had agreed to use before Crowley 
 left San Francisco. "Manager" was Bopp, the 
 head German in San Francisco. "Bradford" 
 was Von Brincken. The " lawsuit " was the plot. 
 The "lawyer" was Smith. "Bradford's friend 
 in New York" was Von Papen. 
 
 In her promised night letter Mrs. Cornell said : 
 
 I asked for a hundred. They refused let him have it. 
 He was indignant at refusal but decided it would be best 
 
 127 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 A few days later, telegraphing from an office 
 on the Exposition Grounds, in San Francisco, 
 Crowley sent a message to Smith in New York: 
 
 Two hundred to-morrow one hundred Tuesday both 
 
 Postal. Come. 
 
 C. 
 
 Crowley had now managed to restore some 
 degree of confidence in his work and Smith's, 
 and had adopted his favourite method of divert- 
 ing attention from past failures by setting forth 
 a glowing prospectus of a new scheme. For 
 a third time the Germans "bit." In his 
 eagerness Crowley thereupon sent a rush mes- 
 sage to Smith : 
 
 Come to San Francisco at once. 
 
 C. 
 
 Smith promptly replied: 
 
 Enroute to-night. 
 
 S. 
 
 He arrived in San Francisco six days later, 
 telephoned to Crowley at the Gartland Hotel, 
 and Crowley in turn telephoned to Bopp that 
 Smith was on hand. That evening Crowley 
 and Smith got together in Crowley's room and 
 made out a statement of Smith's expenses. 
 This statement was a work of art. At Crow- 
 ley's suggestion Smith carefully "padded" the 
 account so that they both made a handsome 
 profit on that besides their salaries. They met 
 
 130 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 Bopp in the Palace Hotel the following morning 
 and he there paid the amount of the expense 
 account, #845, in bills. 
 
 Bopp and Crowley told Smith that they 
 would probably have more work for him to do 
 and for him to go back East. He left San 
 Francisco on July 28th, telegraphing when he 
 started to his wife at Cedarhurst, L. L: 
 
 Remain one more week then meet me at Detroit. 
 Answer at once. 
 
 L. Occidental Hotel. 
 
 She replied that she would meet him as directed. 
 Smith went on to Detroit and stopped first 
 at the Normandie Hotel and then moved out to a 
 boarding house. 
 
 In a couple of weeks Crowley had got fur- 
 ther orders from Bopp and wrote a letter to 
 Smith in Detroit, saying that Bopp would give 
 #500 apiece for blowing up the powder works 
 outside Gary, Ind., and Ishpeming, Mich., 
 besides paying his salary of $300 a month and 
 expenses. Before Smith had time to get the 
 letter he got another telegram from Crowley: 
 
 The matter in my letter is off. Write me letter 
 
 C. 
 
 What had happened was: Bopp had decided 
 that Smith could get better results by working 
 in California where he was more familiar with 
 
 131 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 A few days later, telegraphing from an office 
 on the Exposition Grounds, in San Francisco, 
 Crowley sent a message to Smith in New York: 
 
 Two hundred to-morrow one hundred Tuesday both 
 
 Postal. Come. 
 
 C. 
 
 Crowley had now managed to restore some 
 degree of confidence in his work -and Smith's, 
 and had adopted his favourite method of divert- 
 ing attention from past failures by setting forth 
 a glowing prospectus of a new scheme. For 
 a third time the Germans "bit." In his 
 eagerness Crowley thereupon sent a rush mes- 
 sage to Smith: 
 
 Come to San Francisco at once. 
 
 C. 
 
 Smith promptly replied: 
 
 Enroute to-night. 
 
 S. 
 
 He arrived in San Francisco six days later, 
 telephoned to Crowley at the Gartland Hotel, 
 and Crowley in turn telephoned to Bopp that 
 Smith was on hand. That evening Crowley 
 and Smith got together in Crowley's room and 
 made out a statement of Smith's expenses. 
 This statement was a work of art. At Crow- 
 ley's suggestion Smith carefully "padded" the 
 account so that they both made a handsome 
 profit on that besides their salaries. They met 
 
 130 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 Bopp in the Palace Hotel the following morning 
 and he there paid the amount of the expense 
 account, $845, in bills. 
 
 Bopp and Crowley told Smith that they 
 would probably have more work for him to do 
 and for him to go back East. He left San 
 Francisco on July 28th, telegraphing when he 
 started to his wife at Cedarhurst, L. L: 
 
 Remain one more week then meet me at Detroit. 
 Answer at once. 
 
 L. Occidental Hotel. 
 
 She replied that she would meet him as directed. 
 Smith went on to Detroit and stopped first 
 at the Normandie Hotel and then moved out to a 
 boarding house. 
 
 In a couple of weeks Crowley had got fur- 
 ther orders from Bopp and wrote a letter to 
 Smith in Detroit, saying that Bopp would give 
 #500 apiece for blowing up the powder works 
 outside Gary, Ind., and Ishpeming, Mich., 
 besides paying his salary of #300 a month and 
 expenses. Before Smith had time to get the 
 letter he got another telegram from Crowley: 
 
 The matter in my letter is off. Write me letter 
 
 C. 
 
 What had happened was: Bopp had decided 
 that Smith could get better results by working 
 in California where he was more familiar with 
 
 131 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 the powder plants and where he would be more 
 closely under his direction and not under Von 
 Papen's direction. After a discussion with 
 Crowley, Bopp had agreed to a plan to have 
 Smith return to California and get a job again 
 in the California Powder Mills at Pinole, now 
 owned by the Hercules Powder Company, and 
 cause an explosion there. Following this agree- 
 ment Crowley telegraphed Smith on August 30th: 
 
 Delay in information you want also in getting Consent 
 on other matter will know in few days and will advise 
 you. Will recommend if you can get good title to place 
 here and the one north you be given an amount. Round 
 trip transportation be furnished no other expense allowed. 
 
 Garrett. 
 
 Crowley had used the name of Garrett several 
 times and often received mail under this name 
 at his hotel in San Francisco, z. The meat of 
 this message was: "if you can, get good title to 
 the one here" and "the one north." The 
 "place here" was the California Powder Mills, 
 and "the one north" was a powder mill of the 
 iEtna Explosive Company outside Tacoma with 
 which Smith was familiar as a result of his 
 trip there at the time of the explosion on the 
 scow. 
 On September 7th Crowley telegraphed Smith: 
 
 They cannot decide on matter. 
 
 132 
 
A TALE TOLD IN TELEGRAMS 
 
 Smith waited a week for a decision and then 
 wired Von Shack again: 
 
 I expect immediate and satisfactory answer from you. 
 Crowley has my letter. 
 
 L. J. Smith. 
 
 The satisfactory answer did not come. The 
 Germans in San Francisco had spent all they 
 were willing to spend without getting any re- 
 sult. Smith got a job in an automobile fac- 
 tory in Detroit, and his wife returned to her 
 vocation as a masseuse in a Turkish bath. 
 Pretty soon they both began to "see things" — 
 Mrs. Smith in particular. First she thought 
 she saw Crowley following her in disguise on 
 the street one night. Smith began to suspect 
 also that they were being trailed by detectives 
 in the employ of the Germans, and finally he 
 feared both bodily harm and violence, and the 
 possibility of the American Government hav- 
 ing gotten wind of some of his activities and 
 dogging his steps to arrest him. He finally 
 decided that the safe thing to do was to turn 
 State's evidence, and hence he wandered into 
 the office of the United States Attorney and 
 started various trains of investigation that ulti- 
 mately sent Bopp, Crowley, Von Brincken, and 
 Von Shack to two years in prison, and Mrs. 
 Cornell to one year. Smith and his wife were 
 given immunity for turning State's evidence. 
 
 133 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 German Codes and Ciphers 
 
 SECRECY is, of course, the most important 
 consideration in the German plots in this 
 country. When Bernstorff wished to arrange 
 with Berlin to give Bolo Pasha ten million francs 
 to betray his country, he naturally did not write 
 out his messages in plain English for every wire- 
 less station on both sides of the Atlantic to 
 read them as they went through the air. He 
 did, to be sure, write the messages in English, 
 and they looked plain enough — and innocent 
 enough — but they meant something very dif- 
 ferent from what they seemed to mean. And 
 when it got down to the actual transfer of the 
 money, another German agent in New York 
 signed the messages, which likewise were not 
 what they seemed. 
 
 Those messages were in code. (They are 
 reproduced and explained in this chapter.) 
 
 Now code should not be confused with cipher. 
 When some Hindus in New York, subsidized 
 by Berlin, wished to write their plans to some 
 other Hindus in San Francisco, concerning their 
 
 134 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 common purpose of fomenting revolution against 
 British rule in India, they wrote out messages 
 that consisted entirely of groups of Arabic 
 numerals. 
 
 Those messages were in cipher. 
 
 To any one but an expert, many code mes- 
 sages look simple and harmless, and cipher 
 messages usually look unintelligible and sus- 
 picious. Yet, oddly enough, the cipher mes- 
 sages are by far the easier to make out. In- 
 deed, unless you have a copy of the code, code 
 messages can almost never be translated, whereas 
 a straight cipher message can almost invariably 
 be unraveled by an expert, if you give him 
 enough time and material. Hence, by people 
 who know the subject (and nobody had mastered 
 it so "thoroughly as the Germans), codes are 
 used for secrecy, and ciphers are used simply 
 as an added precaution and to delay the un- 
 raveling of a message if, by any chance, the 
 enemyjhas gotten possession of a copy of the code. 
 
 German plot messages, therefore, are usually 
 written out first in plain German, then coded, 
 and the code then put into cipher. Such messages 
 are called enciphered code. 
 
 For an enemy to get them to make sense, 
 he has first to decipher them, and then decode 
 them. Any expert can decipher them — in time. 
 Decoding them is a very different matter. 
 
 135 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Before taking up some of the German code 
 and cipher messages that have been translated, 
 with dramatic results, it will be well to discuss 
 codes and ciphers in general. 
 
 A code is an arrangement by which two 
 people agree, when exchanging messages, always 
 to substitute certain words or symbols for the 
 real words of the message. Thus, they might 
 agree on these substitutions: 
 
 a = the 
 French ship = market 
 sailed from New York = price 
 sailed from Boston = quotation 
 to-day = is 
 for Marseilles = any even number 
 for Bordeaux = any number with a fraction 
 
 With such a code, a German spy in New York 
 could cable a seemingly harmless message to a 
 friend in Holland, such as: 
 
 "The market price is no." 
 
 That would mean, of course: 
 
 "A French ship sailed from New York to-day for 
 Marseilles." 
 
 Whereas a very slight change in wording: 
 
 "The market quotation is nof." 
 
 would mean: 
 
 "A French ship sailed from Boston to-day for Bor- 
 deaux." 
 
 136 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 Messages of that sort could be exchanged 
 daily between a broker in Wall Street and a 
 broker in Amsterdam, and, by the addition of 
 a few more words, could be infinitely varied 
 
 J. Kr. 307/W 
 
 Ue'w York, den 10. April m*. 
 
 42S1 4696 4366 90972 91660 4166 4311 2032 98600 4SSS 
 91692 rait der 13G7 6122 8778 0266 8102 7004 7330 3734. 1S9Z 
 8060 2646 91778 90210. E» wlrdgehor«air.st gobeten, aerngtrnKsn zu 
 rerfahren und den Bfltrag der KrUsfir-»chricht«H8tolle ** b*l*e- 
 tani Stapfangsbeechelnigung liegt em. 
 
 K. V. St. 
 
 den Xalserlichen Bctschnftor 
 
 Hf>rrn Crafen von Bcrngtorff 
 
 Washington, P. t. 
 
 ** M «r w-^g, ,* «-■ »*" *"" '"^ *> 
 
 -Herr- John Devoy/hat hier.$600 eingezahlt/mit der Bitta 
 //I*. f ?7 f „>/,- fat-jm* y)to i?** *r,* site xjw to?r j*no . 
 
 sie telegraphlsch an Sir- Roger Ca*«5nent zu ifberweisen. Es wird 
 
 gehoraamet'cebeten, demgemSas zu verf'ahren und den Detrag der 
 
 g 
 Krlegsjiacbricttenetelle zu belasten. Empgansbescheinlgung ll.egt 
 
 «In. 
 
 CODE MESSAGE TRANSMITTING MONEY TO SIR ROGER CASEMENT 
 In English it reads: "Embassy. 307-16, New York, April 10, 1916. 
 Mr. John Devoy has paid in $500 here with the request that they be 
 transmitted telegraphically to Sir Roger Casement. You are respect- 
 fully requested to proceed accordingly and to charge the amount to the 
 Military Information Bureau. Receipt enclosed." 
 
 137 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 and would look like perfectly legitimate com- 
 mercial correspondence. In fact, most inter- 
 national business before the war (the Govern- 
 ment now requires that all messages appear 
 in plain English) was carried on by coded 
 cables which turned long messages into short 
 groups of words that of themselves made 
 gibberish. Several code books for business 
 use were on the market, containing hundreds 
 of pages of these arbitrary substitutions, which 
 were useful, not for secrecy but for economy. 
 A dozen words could be made to say what 
 normally would require five hundred words. 
 
 Ciphers, however, have almost always been 
 resorted to when secrecy was desired. This 
 sounds like a contradiction. But people who 
 are not experts use them because they think 
 they are more secret, since they look so. And 
 experts us'e them when they are concerned 
 only with temporary secrecy. They use them, 
 then, because cipher messages can be written 
 and translated (by one's correspondent) with- 
 out any equipment, like a code book, and much 
 more rapidly than code. Thus, if a general 
 in the field wishes to send a message ordering 
 a colonel to advance in two hours, he sends it 
 in cipher, because it would take the enemy more 
 than two hours to decipher the message even if 
 he intercepted it immediately, and because after 
 
 138 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 the two hours have elapsed the information in 
 the message would be of no value to him. 
 
 A cipher is the substitution of some symbol 
 for a letter of the alphabet. The substituted 
 symbol may be another letter — as writing e 
 when you mean a. Or it may be a figure — 
 as using 42 when you mean m. Or it may be 
 an arbitrary sign — as * to mean c. In cipher, 
 then, every word is spelled out, but the word 
 Washington might be spelled x= II \ ? ! a: ° B 
 if you had agreed that 
 
 w=x 
 
 n=! 
 
 a= = 
 
 g=A 
 
 s= II 
 
 t=: 
 
 h = | 
 
 o = ° 
 
 i=? 
 
 n = B 
 
 That is called a substitution cipher, because 
 some other letter or symbol is arbitrarily sub- 
 stituted for every letter. 
 
 But another kind is called a transposition 
 cipher, because in this the letters of the alphabet 
 are simply transposed by agreement — the 
 simplest and most obvious example being to 
 reverse the alphabet, so that z stands for a 
 and 3; for b y etc. Such a transposition cipher 
 would read : 
 
 Alphabet of plain text abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 
 Alphabet of cipher zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba 
 
 139 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 ZWT. 
 
 Mtroh as, leie. 
 
 '.'!> to to-dpy there hae been no eablegren fronr,th4neeaenger. to 
 arranged three e«J» of oablee— — one for. eafe arrival, another fa* 
 the possibility of delay and the third to "denote, that seaetllng had 
 gone wrong* so, ee. wo have reoleed nono It Bust moan that the' party 
 Is unlor restraint— prooably hold In Liverpool for examination, 
 trnlaea they oould gat tho key of the cipher, it is unlikely t&tt 
 even an export ooum dooipher the message for a considerable tlae, 
 but our f riend s, are unaware ej^ tho qontente of the ggggaggy they 
 will probably get the duplicate by April 8, as the messenger who 
 too* it has never been euepeoted and ie not a passenger « Ho is 
 never searched or questioned* Re- will oabeeon arrival* 
 
 Another messenger will etart next Saturday end wita oable vk§ 
 arrival. 
 
 So far, the ohief difficulty la the failure to get the pro- 
 position to our friends. In ease the enemy hae learned or eue- 
 peots the protest we shall probably have some evidenoe in time 
 to send warning to your people, but it ie well to lot then know 
 that this hitoh hae ooourred. -, 
 
 A letter from John Devoy, an Irish-American, exposing his hand in a 
 plot with the Germans to foment revolution in Ireland 
 
 and Washington would be spelled dzhsrmtglm. 
 
 Perhaps the cleverest transposition cipher 
 ever devised — it is so good that the British 
 Army uses it in the field and, moreover, has 
 published text books about it — is the very- 
 simple "Playfair" cipher. First a square is 
 drawn, divided into fifths each way. This 
 arrangement gives twenty-five spaces, to con- 
 tain the letters of the alphabet — / and / being 
 
 140 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 put in one square because there would never 
 be any plain sentence in which it would not be 
 quite obvious which one of them is needed to 
 complete a word of which the other letters are 
 known. 
 
 Next a "key word" is chosen — and herein 
 lie the cleverness and the simplicity of this 
 cipher, because every time the key word is 
 changed, the whole pattern 
 of the alphabet is changed. 
 Suppose the key word is 
 Gardenia. It is now spelled 
 out in the squares: 
 
 The second A is left out, 
 as there must not, of course, 
 be duplicates on the key- 
 board. Now the rest of the alphabet is written 
 into the squares in their reg- 
 ular sequence: 
 
 That is the complete key- 
 board. The method for us- 
 ing it is this : 
 
 The message is written 
 out in plain text; for exam- 
 ple: 
 
 DESTROY BRIDGE AT ONCE 
 
 (Only capital letters are commonly used in 
 cipher work.) This message is now divided 
 
 141 
 
 G 
 
 A 
 
 R 
 
 D 
 
 E 
 
 N 
 
 IJ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 G 
 
 A 
 
 R 
 
 D 
 
 E 
 
 N 
 
 IJ 
 
 B 
 
 C 
 
 F 
 
 H 
 
 K 
 
 L 
 
 M 
 
 O 
 
 P 
 
 Q 
 
 s 
 
 T 
 
 U 
 
 V 
 
 w 
 
 X 
 
 Y 
 
 Z 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 into groups of two letters, in the same order, so 
 that it reads: 
 
 DE ST RO YB RI DG EA TO NC EX 
 
 (The X is added to complete the group and is 
 called a null.) These groups of twos are now 
 ciphered from the keyboard into other groups 
 of twos, by the following method : 
 
 Where two joined letters of the original mes- 
 sage appear in the same horizontal row on the 
 keyboard, the next letter to the right is sub- 
 stituted for each. Thus, the first two letters 
 of our message are DE. They occur in the 
 same horizontal row on our keyboard. Con- 
 sequently, for D we write E, and for E we go 
 "on around the world" to the right, or back 
 to the other end of the row, and write G for 
 E. This gives us DE enciphered as EG. 
 
 Where two joined letters of the original 
 message appear in the same vertical row on the 
 keyboard, the next letter below is substituted 
 for each. 
 
 Where two joined letters of the original 
 message appear neither in the same horizontal 
 nor the same vertical row on the keyboard, 
 we imagine a rectangle with the two letters 
 at the opposite corners, and in each case sub- 
 stitute the letter found on the keyboard at 
 the other corner of the same horizontal row. 
 
 142 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 This looks complicated, but in reality is very 
 simple. For example, take the third two- 
 letter group of our message — RO. The rec- 
 tangle in this case is 
 
 RDE 
 BCF 
 LMO 
 
 and for R we substitute E, and for O we sub- 
 stitute L. 
 
 Substituting our whole message by this system, 
 it reads : 
 
 Original DE ST RO YB RI DG EA TO NC EX 
 Cipher EG TU EL XC AB EA GR UM IF RZ 
 
 As telegraph operators are accustomed to 
 send these gibberish messages in groups of 
 five letters (so that they can check errors, 
 knowing that when only four appear in a group, 
 for example, something has been left out) these 
 enciphered groups of twos are now combined 
 into groups of fives, so that the finished cipher 
 reads : 
 
 EGTUE LXCAB EAGRU MIFRZ 
 
 The foregoing looks extremely compli- 
 cated, but the truth is that anybody, after half 
 an hour's practice, can put a message into this 
 kind of cipher ("Playfair" cipher) almost as 
 fast as he can print the straight English of it in 
 capital letters. And unless the person who reads 
 
 143 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 it knows the key word which determined the 
 pattern on his keyboard, he would have to be an 
 expert to decipher it, and even he could do it 
 only after a good deal of work. , 
 
 Another ingenious cipher is called the "Chess 
 Board." First, a sheet of paper is ruled into 
 squares exactly like a chess board — that is, a 
 square divided into eighths each way. This 
 arrangement gives, of course, sixty-four small 
 squares. Then, by agreement between the 
 people who intend to use this cipher, sixteen of 
 these squares are agreed upon and are cut out 
 of the sheet with a knife. Suppose, for example, 
 this pattern is chosen: 
 
 and the squares showing 
 in white are cut out. 
 
 Next, another sheet of 
 paper is ruled into a 
 chess board, of exactly 
 the same size as the first. 
 The perforated sheet is 
 now laid on top of the 
 second sheet, so that the 
 squares on the one exactly cover the squares 
 on the other. Now, with a pen or pencil, 
 the plain text of the secret message is printed 
 on the under sheet by writing through the 
 perforations of the upper sheet, only one letter 
 being written in each square. This, of course, 
 
 144 
 
 □■□■□□□□ 
 □□■□■□□□ 
 □□□■□■□□ 
 
 □□□■□□□□ 
 ■□□□□□□ 
 
 □HBEEEE 
 □■□□□□□ 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 permits the writing of sixteen letters of the mes- 
 sage. 
 
 Suppose the complete message is to be: 
 
 "Authorize payment ten million dollars to 
 
 buy copper for shipment to Germany." Then 
 
 the lower sheet, after we have written through 
 
 the perforations, will look like this : 
 
 The perforated sheet 
 is now turned to the right 
 through one fourth of a 
 complete revolution, so 
 that the top of it is at 
 the right side of the lower 
 sheet and so that the two 
 chess boards again 
 "match up." This op- 
 eration exposes, through the perforations, a new 
 set of sixteen open squares on the lower sheet. 
 The writing of the message is continued, and the 
 lower sheet now looks like this (left) : 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 U 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 T 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 R 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 Z 
 
 
 
 
 E 
 
 
 
 
 
 p 
 
 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Y 
 
 
 M 
 
 E 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 N 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 T 
 
 
 A 
 
 O 
 
 U 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 S 
 
 A 
 
 a 
 
 U 
 
 r 
 
 c* 
 
 ^ 
 
 > 
 
 > 
 
 r 
 
 T 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 > 
 
 r 
 
 T 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
 d 
 
 H 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 o 
 
 - 
 
 R 
 
 Z 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 r 
 
 Z 
 
 o 
 
 ~ 
 
 R 
 
 Z 
 
 3 
 
 I 
 
 
 Z 
 
 2 
 
 
 »-H 
 
 E 
 
 W 
 
 I 
 
 S 
 
 z 
 
 z 
 
 a 
 
 ~ 
 
 E 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 
 P 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 ~ 
 
 d 
 
 w 
 
 p 
 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 2 
 
 D 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 Y 
 
 A 
 
 Oh 
 
 A 
 
 H 
 
 n 
 
 r 
 
 < 
 
 Y 
 
 
 M 
 
 E 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 
 £ 
 
 M 
 
 E 
 
 9 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 2 
 
 Z 
 
 * 
 
 N 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 
 
 T 
 
 7* 
 
 N 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 X 
 
 tt 
 
 s 
 
 T 
 
 145 
 
s 
 
 A 
 
 D 
 
 U 
 
 L 
 
 R 
 
 R 
 
 Y 
 
 A 
 
 L 
 
 T 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 O 
 
 F 
 
 T 
 
 R 
 
 L 
 
 N 
 
 O 
 
 I 
 
 R 
 
 N 
 
 E 
 
 I 
 
 M 
 
 Z 
 
 N 
 
 P 
 
 I 
 
 E 
 
 E 
 
 I 
 
 P 
 
 E 
 
 P 
 
 G 
 
 O 
 
 M 
 
 C 
 
 A 
 
 P 
 
 Y 
 
 T 
 
 U 
 
 L 
 
 A 
 
 Y 
 
 H 
 
 M 
 
 E 
 
 B 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 M 
 
 N 
 
 R 
 
 N 
 
 O 
 
 T 
 
 T 
 
 E 
 
 S 
 
 T 
 
 FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Again the perforated sheet is turned to the right, 
 and sixteen s more letters are written. Once 
 more, and the whole sixty-four squares are uti- 
 lized, looking like the last cut on the previous page. 
 These letters are now put upright, like this. 
 
 They are now read 
 from left to right and 
 from the first line down, 
 like ordinary r reading 
 matter. They are then 
 grouped into fives for 
 telegraphic transmis- 
 sion, and an X added at 
 the end to make an even 
 five-group there. Thus the message, as trans- 
 mitted, reads : 
 
 SADUL RRYAL TOHOF TRLNO IRNEI 
 MZNPI EEIPE PGOMC APYTU LAYHM 
 EBOOM NRNOT TESTX 
 
 When this message is received, it can, of course, 
 be quickly deciphered by printing it out on a 
 chess board and placing over it a sheet perfo- 
 rated according to the prearranged pattern. 
 
 This survey of codes and ciphers does not more 
 than scratch the surface of the subject, nor more 
 than suggest the almost infinite variations that 
 are possible — in ciphers especially. It simply 
 gives a groundwork for an understanding of the 
 German secret messages now to be described. 
 
 146 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 '4\-et*U!/f 
 
 *&■£ »M ki\%t Uft te E» VR A ^&T 
 
 ioe i^OTa 
 
 
 
 
 2,iVCI Ff^IT.I 
 
 
 ^t Won i V(5/xc 
 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM A GERMAN CODE EXPERT'S BLOTTER 
 
 Showing the use of capital letters in the actual work of enciphering a 
 
 message, and the combined use of cipher and code 
 
 Among the most interesting of these secret 
 messages is the series of wireless telegrams 
 by means of which the German money was paid 
 to Bolo Pasha for the purchase of the Paris 
 Journal — one of the principal episodes in the 
 treasonable intrigue for which Bolo was recently 
 executed by a French firing squad. These 
 messages were in English, and meant exactly 
 what they said, except for the proper names and 
 the figures, which were code. To decode them, 
 it was necessary only to make the following 
 substitutions : 
 William Foxley = Foreign Office 
 Charles Gledhill = Count Bernstorff 
 Fred Hooven = Guaranty Trust Company (New York) 
 $500 =$500,000 
 
 147 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 and to all other figures add three ciphers to 
 arrive at the real amount. For example, one 
 of these messages read: "Paid Charles Gledhill 
 five hundred dollars through Fred Hooven." 
 This meant: "Paid Count Bernstorff five hun- 
 dred thousand dollars through Guaranty Trust 
 Company." 
 
 
 
 ******* <+JZL ^Onr^JU. i\\^. 
 
 
 &~ rt^^utt **-* *— i» *- 
 
 *A**-^' 
 
 •£*— Ccuur-tr J&.* - «»>/£^£**«-:« 
 
 
 i ' II i 
 
 
 
 
 BOLO'S HANDWRITING 
 A letter written in New York to his bankers in transactions for the pur- 
 chase of the Paris Journal, with German money, the crime for which he 
 was shot 
 
 148 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 The story of these messages is briefly this: 
 Marie Paul Bolo started life as a barber, became 
 an adventurer and, in the service of the Khedive 
 of Egypt, received the title of Pasha for a finan- 
 cial service which he rendered him. Returning 
 to France as Bolo Pasha, he married two wealthy 
 women and lived in grand style on their money. 
 He became an intimate of Charles Humbert, 
 another adventurer, who achieved political 
 power by questionable methods and became a 
 member of the French Senate. In the mean- 
 time, the Khedive had been deposed by the 
 British on account of his pro-Turkish (and hence 
 pro-German) activities after the Great War be- 
 gan. Abbas Hilmi joined the colony of ex- 
 rulers in Switzerland, and there became a part 
 of the German system of intrigue. He received 
 money from the Germans and, after he had de- 
 ducted his "squeeze" (which sometimes amount- 
 ed to half the total), he paid over the rest to 
 Bolo, to be used by Bolo, Humbert, and ex- 
 Premier Caillaux in an effort to restore Caillaux 
 to power and then to further the propaganda 
 for an early and hence inconclusive peace. 
 
 Either this method of supplying the French 
 traitors with funds became too dangerous, or the 
 Germans preferred to keep their gold and wished 
 to use their credit in the United States to get 
 American gold for this purpose. In any event, 
 
 149 
 

 WIRELESS yiA' sAYrma.- 
 Deutsche' Bank Dltfelftioh Berlin* 
 
 CojuntirvJott^e with * Uliaiu ■'gggfeg and .telegraph 
 whether he has" plr.ped money at my dlBBOaaOritlS W&* 
 
 .fcugo, $cnaldt 
 
 Charge ; John <T.MeClem6nt 
 March 6th,' 1916. 
 
 : Wireless von Deutsche Bank/ Berlin, f^ 
 
 en IS. Maertjl916. ., * 
 
 ^plying your cable about TSlnu K'l i KUiUlt^ toff iW IMwuli w ill 
 receive money for our account you nay dispose according tor 
 letters .tfoveaiber twentyfourth 19X4 to^ 4 ^**^^^ 4 ^^ 
 
 X 
 
 
 WIRELESS. TtA SAYVtLLE.. 
 
 Dautscbe Bajvk Direktion Berlin . .*. /a, 
 
 .Your wireieafr received jgald CluUlUi i QIuJIij ^, 
 Q**kk,.ju*rf* /H stop Afww« 
 f fivehundred dollars througw *rrt-«ee>*w» . QlmaTlM. requires 
 
 further 'eleven hundred "dallnra which ehall^pay gradually 
 
 «anarg*BWobR ..&.■ UfaCieiiiBnt 
 March. 13th, 1916. 
 
 X 
 
 Wireless von Deutsche Bank,,,, Berlin 
 
 You may dispose or] 
 36Venteenthousand DoilaKs 
 
 A TALE TOLD IN CABLEGRAMS 
 Code messages in the Bolo Pasha case, explained in the accompanying 
 
 pages 
 
 15° 
 
Deutsche Bank Direction 
 ©srlin 
 T*ro Unri e l l j Ut a il a eb e nt . Ci t yb a na ii a to p. pa id- 
 further twohundrgd Ddlara 
 
 
 Huga Schmidt. 
 March IS; ,1918 
 
 VTISELESS VIA SAYVILLE. 
 
 Deutsche iffank Direction. , Berlin 
 
 • ' /Tt^ti paid i safirtjca i,lumiUl 'further, threehundred- 
 
 *yO Hu£0 ScTjmlit' 
 
 Charge?- -Jbhn-HV-McClemant. 
 March 20th. 1916. 
 
 flxreless via, Sayville 
 
 j^ Deutsche Bank Direktlon A* 
 
 ' Berlin, ^-f ""* 
 
 n » nf » i>rnngmnn nm» nr»lir a> s hall I a i sa oun* J t a p dtiitjiataA 
 
 i7fn.,j.ii^.-Bnm.,.hi.w "Hi n x -1i-innTn"n""rn"cfrl i rr * 
 i/j3f Ola i jliill .further 1 twohundred dollars 
 *» — 8"~>*ff- *•* <""> Hu £ a Schmi 
 
 < ^ Sferch 24, 1916 
 
 X 
 
 WIRELESS VIA SAYVILLE 
 DeetsChe Bank Dirslctior. Berlin 
 
 - r n i ajjuUajJXfc 
 
 /? 
 
 Raid- "'i i i l ii "Inrllii 1 fniirhnnTrrrT ri^tiTytriri'in" 
 
 aha If dollars aa final payment Ttrp - null j i n i r nffTTm nTriii rt 
 
 fcee jr>»o pnnow t my eilii i r iupmnir. 
 
 flugo-SchfflidV 
 
 Charge: 'John H. .MeClemenfc 
 
 April 1st. 1916. ^^ 
 
 151 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Bolo Pasha appeared in New York early in 
 March, 19 16. Strangely enough, this French 
 citizen bore letters of introduction to several 
 Germans. The most important was addressed 
 to Adolf Pavenstedt, who was senior partner in 
 G. Amsinck & Company and for many years a 
 chief paymaster of the German spy system in 
 this country. Through Pavenstedt, Bolo met 
 Hugo Schmidt, a director of the Deutsche Bank 
 of Berlin, a government institution, who had 
 been sent to this country soon after the war 
 broke out to provide complete cooperation be- 
 tween the older representatives of the Deutsche 
 Bank here and the management in Berlin. 
 
 Through Pavenstedt, as messenger, Bolo also 
 got in touch with Bernstorff, and arranged the 
 details of the plan by which Bolo was to receive 
 10 million francs from the German Government. 
 He was to use this money to buy the Paris Jour- 
 nal, which would then be edited by Senator 
 Humbert, who agreed to change its editorial 
 policy to favour an immediate peace. As the 
 Journal is one of the most powerful dailies in 
 France, with a circulation among more than a 
 million and a half readers, the sinister possibili- 
 ties of this scheme are readily seen. 
 
 Bernstorff committed the financial details to 
 Hugo Schmidt. He, in turn, asked Berlin by 
 wireless for suitable credits in American bank- 
 
 i5 2 
 
MR. A. BRUCE BIELASKI 
 Who, as Chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice, 
 
 organized and managed the Government agents 
 plots and captured the plotters 
 
 rho unraveled the German 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 ing houses. These were arranged with the 
 Guaranty Trust Company and the National 
 Park Bank — for many years American corres- 
 pondents of the Deutsche Bank. The amounts 
 were then credited to G. Amsinck & Company, 
 of which Pavenstedt had long been senior part- 
 ner. He, in turn, placed them, with the New 
 York branch of the Royal Bank of Canada, to 
 the account of Bolo Pasha. As the exchange 
 rate at the time ran in favour of American dol- 
 lars and against French francs, the 10 million 
 francs (normally equal to about 2 million dol- 
 lars) which Bolo got, required only $1,683,500 
 of American money — which is just the sum of 
 the amounts named in the wireless messages. 
 
 The Journal was actually bought by Bolo and 
 Humbert, but before they could do much damage 
 with it, they were arrested, and Bolo has already 
 been executed. 
 
 The Hindus in this country, who were plot- 
 ting with the Germans the revolution that 
 should destroy the British rule in India, used 
 two systems for their secret messages. The 
 first was this substitution cipher : 
 
 1234567 
 
 1 A B C D E F G 
 
 2 H I J K L M N 
 
 3OP.QRS T U 
 4 V W X Y Z 
 
 153 
 
J. JBr. 356/16 
 
 IBB gqftola . Saa'York, den 17. April. 1916. 
 
 729G 1703 4098 6279 2810 m .90166 folfiender BemsrkuoeMU 
 "72(34 450? 94076 4769 Mr 2668 9081* Wtsn 90987 93285 
 0S19 90452. Andernf alls. 4621 93437 imstand#, 8122 91778 
 90404, Bonn euch erst 6121 4156 2613 47(2. Deshalfc. 4621 
 4410 6367. 1975 sollt* be«tehen BtuiKchst 4607 6602 0311 
 2513 4507 93437 90309 3215 0311 3926 693* 94077 7284. 
 1777 »*nn in* nd m*alich 5294 90G26 91160 6071 4607 
 •4076, svefttueli 2I0C 2637 c471 90987 5608. .1974 »0rd» 
 7706j9d326 94077 4105 3000 93437 6995 6636, JBOlfU 0334 
 8334:3435 90086 1444 0265 94077 5225, 0122 91809 0204 
 Olv.i. 93437. 2684 1906 72Q4 Jcann daher 1883 6121 2683 # » 
 2637 bittet in dlasem Slnm 6778 6121 92884 91778 Jill. 
 
 6132 8187 
 
 An Se. Excellr.nz 
 
 den fciloerllc en Sot^ciafter 
 
 H»rrn C: affsn tfon Bcr»»tonff 
 
 Washington," P. .C. 
 
 THE COHALAN-IRISH REVOLUTION MESSAGE 
 Above is the code message from Von Papen's office in New York 
 to Bernstorff, transmitting a message from Justice Cohalan, of the 
 Supreme Court of New York, advising the Germans upon the best 
 means to make Sir Roger Casement's revolution in Ireland a success. 
 On page 155 is the message written out and coded for transmission. In 
 English it reads as follows: "No. 335 — 16 very secret New York, April 
 17, 1916. Judge Cohalan requests the transmission the following 
 remarks: 'The Revolution in Ireland can only be successful if sup- 
 ported from Germany. Otherwise, England will be able to suppress 
 it, even though it be only .after hard struggles. Therefore, help is 
 
 154 
 
Rlehtor Cohalan/oreucht un Uebermittlnng folgender Bemerkmnngen: 
 ." >>-#y yr,7 jf^(, v 7 t 9 „CU 303/ ?/>f? 7 
 
 Revolution In Irland kann nur erfolgreich pain, nenn «** von 
 
 7 Deutsonland aus unteretQtzt w*rd. Andernfalle lar England imatande, 
 
 f/»- V7jt 'W<f </*'/ WSJ- *JVJ <*?i-y 
 
 sie su unterdruoken, wenn auch arst nach hapten Kanpf en. . Deahalb 
 
 V*W W/* ii.C~) 'Iff H r 07 HoX oif >s<j 
 
 let Hllf o nctwendig. Dlese eollte beatehen sonfichst In Uxt tangrlf f en 
 *irtf ?Jfoj feiif **-><r <*->" jf>j- s-fj-* Jy«77 ;><>* 
 
 in England und Flottendiveraion gleichzeltlg nit lriacner Revolution 
 
 '777 " ,„ ^r* <}o*^(. ?„j-a . i, ? , ■ r.-e-j 
 
 Data venn lrgend nSgliob Landung Truppen nasi Waf f en Kanitlon in 
 
 9**/i vJ#£ ~Ul/' £>,■>, f ffy jf^ /} 7 * 
 
 Irland, eventuell einiger Offiziar von Zeppelins. Dies wttrde 
 •pjU f*^vfc 9**7?! V"S~ "it** fJfiy ^■f'-. , <r£j£> 
 
 '/Schlieseung IriBOher HSfen gegen England laSglic'n 'nachen, Eowie 
 oil* *3i* 3fti <?D+fi /«yy 6*tr fW? *"*■*;*" o/^- 
 
 anlage Statlonen fOr. Tauchbote an irlocher KUeta, AbaohnMCoag 
 9'**1 <>*¥ t,y> fjy-r? * 
 
 Zufuhr Rthrungsnlttel naoh England. < 
 fc4J7. *V* £n-t -1 *■£■**!■ *'9?* "Z' 
 
 £f bittev. in dleaajB JSinnel^ach. Berlin xa berlohtan* 
 
 'Erf els der Revolution kann daher den Krieg ent.scheiden* 
 
 m* 
 
 P-rt3 
 
 y/;v Ittj 
 
 e>M> 
 
 necessary. This should consist primarily of aerial "attacks in England 
 and a diversion of the fleet simultaneously with Irish revolution. Then, 
 if possible, a landing of troops, arms/j and ammunition in Ireland, and 
 possibly some officers from Zeppelins. This would enable the Irish 
 ports to be closed against England and the establishment of stations 
 for submarines on the Irish coast, and the cutting off [of the supply 
 of food for England. The success of the revolution may therefore 
 decide the war.' He asks that a telegram to this effect be sent to Berlin. 
 5132 8167 0230 To His Excellency Count von Bernstorff, Imperial Ambas- 
 sador, Washington, D. C." 
 
 155 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 The message, "Leave San Francisco" would be 
 written, in this cipher, as follows: 
 
 25 15 11 41 15 35 11 27 16 34 11 27 13 22 35 13 31 
 
 by giving each letter of the message the number 
 to the, left of it, combined with the number above 
 it. 
 
 The other system used by the Hindus was a 
 book code. They agreed upon a small English 
 dictionary of a certain edition, and wrote from 
 it messages that were also groups of numbers, 
 after this fashion: 625-2-1 1 27-1-36 45-2-20 
 and so on. The first figure in each group was 
 the number of the page on which the word would 
 be found, the second figure gave the column, 
 and the third figure was the number of the word 
 in the column, counting from the top of the 
 page. 
 
 But perhaps the most dramatic of all the 
 intercepted messages (except the Luxburg and 
 Zimmerman notes, of which the story cannot 
 yet be told) were those which revealed the part 
 played by well-known Irish- American leaders 
 in the ill-fated Casement revolution in Ireland. 
 The story of the Casement expedition is too 
 familiar to need to be retold. And comment 
 upon the political morals of Justice Cohalan 
 and John Devoy becomes superfluous in the 
 light of these messages. American citizens 
 
 1S6 
 
GERMAN CODES AND CIPHERS 
 
 (one of them signally honoured with public 
 office in New York), both held their Irish blood 
 superior, in their duty of loyalty, to the United 
 States, using their citizenship as a cloak under 
 which to strike at Great Britain, which has been 
 for a quarter century the chief bulwark of this 
 country against Germany's plan to conquer us 
 and to impose upon our country the most hateful 
 tyranny in the history of the world. 
 
 157 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Tiger of Berlin Meets the Wolf 
 of Wall Street 
 
 FRANZ VON RINTELEN was the German 
 tiger who missed his spring. He was the 
 most powerful, the most dangerous, agent of the 
 Kaiser in the United States : and to-day he nurses 
 his hatred of us behind prison bars. But tie 
 did not retire to confinement until after our 
 Government completed an extremely difficult 
 and tedious investigation that was made nec- 
 essary by his care in concealing the insidious 
 work of propaganda and destruction in which 
 he had engaged. 
 
 Rintelen was a tiger in the implacable hatred 
 he bore this country and in the ferocity with 
 which he carried that hatred into action. Sent 
 to America in 1915 to hinder the shipment of 
 munitions to the Allies, he sought first to poison 
 the press, then to corrupt labour, and, not con- 
 tent with these things, he finally tried to hire 
 thugs to burn, to dynamite, and to assassinate, 
 where other persuasions failed; and he did suc- 
 ceed in setting fire to thirty-six ships at sea, 
 
 1S8 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 causing millions of dollars of loss, and imperil- 
 ing hundreds of human lives. 
 
 Rintelen had, however, the other side of the 
 
 tiger's character — its graces. When the 
 
 made port at New York on April 3, 191 5, it 
 bore as passenger one Emil Gasche, a Swiss. 
 The moment Gasch6 passed the customs officers 
 Gasche* ceased to exist, and in his place appeared 
 handsome young Von Rintelen, unexpectedly 
 arrived in America for his fourth visit and re- 
 newing pleasant acquaintanceships in society and 
 in Wall Street. He was "the same old chap," 
 to quote his own description of himself in one 
 of his letters — rich, of a family long accustomed 
 to riches; well-bred, of a family long proud of 
 its aristocratic connection with the Imperial 
 Court at Berlin (his father had long been the 
 equivalent of our Secretary of the Treasury); 
 young, the youngest of the chief bankers of 
 Germany; handsome, with the good looks that 
 come of regular features and of a slender frame 
 hardened by athletics and made distinguished 
 by the bearing of an officer; a sportsman, who 
 raced his yacht in the Emperor's regattas at Kiel 
 — an affable, cultivated, witty, accomplished 
 man of the world. No wonder he had been 
 popular on his former visits. On one of them 
 he had opened in New York a branch of the 
 Deutsche Bank, one of the greatest of the gov- 
 
 159 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 ernment-controlled banks of Germany, and on 
 another he had widened these financial relation- 
 ships with Wall Street. He had travelled the 
 country over and knew people everywhere; and 
 he knew about hundreds more, even to their 
 private affairs in money and politics and those 
 intimate weaknesses that pass into the gossip of 
 the smoking-room. He spoke the language with 
 only the slightest accent but in its purest form, 
 and was adept in our peculiar kind of humour — 
 altogether, a fine and likable fellow, who liked us. 
 
 Until the war. And until the Germans, stung 
 by the lost illusions of a quick and glorious vic- 
 tory, facing the gray outlook of a long and bitter 
 struggle, looking about for some one to blame for 
 their plight, and wearied of "strafeing" Eng- 
 land, found a new narcotic in a hatred of Amer- 
 ica., America, that made the cartridges and 
 shells "that "patched up^the ;unpreparedness ' of 
 France and Britain and Russia, which Germany 
 had calculated as one of the factors in the equa- 
 tion of victory. America,* that — as their rising 
 rage made their voices shriller— "is murdering 
 our sons and brothers on every battlefield from 
 Switzerland to the sea for the sake of blood- 
 bought gold." 
 
 This cry became an article of fanatical faith 
 to the German people. It became likewise 
 a very practical problem to the hard-headed 
 
 160 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 leaders in Berlin. If they could cut off this 
 supply of munitions, the Allies could be beaten. 
 There was no hope of cutting it off at sea — the 
 British Navy would attend to that. It must 
 be stopped at its source: stopped in America, 
 by a made-to-order public opinion, or by cor- 
 ruption, or by violence — but stopped. 
 
 "Whom shall we send to America ?" was 
 their problem. Rintelen was chosen. He could 
 be trusted — he was a director of the Deutsche 
 Bank, he knew America. He was given credit 
 at the Hamburg-American Line office in New 
 York for $547,000, authority for as many millions 
 more as he wanted, independent powers as 
 great as the German Ambassador's at Wash- 
 ington, the instructions of the German Govern- 
 ment, and the blessing of the Fatherland. 
 
 An American traitor in Berlin gave Rintelen 
 his cue for operations in America. This man's 
 name is known, and will one day be written 
 alongside Benedict Arnold's, but to disclose 
 it now would interfere with more practical 
 efforts for his mortal punishment. Part of 
 that punishment he is already enduring — he is 
 still in Germany. This traitor told Rintelen 
 that the most useful man in America for his 
 purpose was David Lamar, of New York. 
 Rintelen fixed that name in his memory, and 
 left Berlin. 
 
 161 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 His first barrier was the old, old barrier to 
 German conquest, the British blockade. Rin- 
 telen ran that under cover of the Swiss pass- 
 port, under the name of Gasche\ 
 
 Arrived in New York on April 3d, Rintelen 
 lost no time in getting acquainted with Lamar. 
 He disclosed to him his mission to this country 
 and the money he had to execute it. The 
 Tiger of Berlin met the Wolf of Wall Street. 
 
 And how the Wolf's eyes must have glistened, 
 for he was at the leanest of the hungry days 
 which regularly followed seasons of opulence 
 in the ups and downs which varied the career 
 of this extraordinary man. For Lamar was, 
 and is, an extraordinary man. Endowed by 
 nature with a fascinating personality and with 
 a brilliant mind, which he had enriched by study, 
 a man capable of great things, he was possessed 
 by that strange perversity which often afHicts 
 men of exceptional cleverness — he would rather 
 make one dollar by adroit crookedness than a 
 million by unexciting honesty. Perhaps his 
 origin affected his character — he declined, on 
 the witness stand, to give his true name and 
 parentage on the ground that to do so would 
 bring disgrace upon persons still living. He 
 entered Wall Street as a young man from 
 nowhere, and at first gave promise of a brilliant 
 and honourable career. He early made his mark 
 
 162 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 in finance. He was employed by J. P. Morgan 
 & Company and other great banking concerns, 
 and in those days of his legitimate activities 
 amassed a large fortune. But this was dis- 
 sipated in gambling on the stock market, and 
 then Lamar gravitated to the gutter. For 
 years it was a by-word on the Street that if 
 you wanted a clever man to do a crooked job, 
 David Lamar was the man you were looking 
 for. He had the brains to do it right, he had the 
 presence to "get away with it," and he would 
 do anything for money. 
 
 These traits had got him into trouble shortly 
 before Rintelen met him. When the Pujo Com- 
 mittee of Congress was investigating the "money 
 trust" several years ago, some crooked brokers 
 in Wall Street wanted some inside information 
 that was going to affect the price of certain 
 stocks in which they were interested. They 
 could not get this information by legitimate 
 means, and so they adopted Lamarian means. 
 Lamar knew that a member of Congress was 
 entitled to ask for this information. Mr. Mit- 
 chell Palmer was a Member of Congress. Lamar 
 had one of his devious inspirations. He called 
 up a banker's office, got the man there who 
 knew what Lamar wanted to know, declared 
 that he was Mr. Palmer, and demanded the 
 information — and got it. Lamar repeated the 
 
 163 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 exploit several times. But once too often. He 
 was detected, arrested and tried, convicted, 
 and on December 3, 1914, was sentenced to 
 two years' imprisonment for the crime of imper- 
 sonating an officer of the Government. He 
 appealed the case on the ground that a Repre- 
 sentative in Congress was not "an officer of 
 the Government/' When Rintelen met him 
 the following April, Lamar was out on bail 
 pending the decision on this appeal. 
 
 Lamar was then in desperate straits. Bad 
 luck had followed him in the Street for two 
 years, and had crowned his misfortunes with 
 this expensive trial and threatened imprison- 
 ment. He owed money everywhere for personal 
 expenses; the merchants with whom he traded 
 had stopped his credit; he had descended to 
 borrowing from his friends in sums as small as 
 two dollars at a time. Then he met Rintelen, 
 who was on fire with a passion that blinded him 
 to consequences and who flourished before the 
 eyes of the famished Wolf a half million dollars 
 of real money. Here was manna fallen from 
 heaven. 
 
 "Could Lamar help Rintelen!" With his 
 most convincing eloquence, Lamar assured him 
 that he could. Never had Rintelen been better 
 advised, so Lamar declared to him, than when 
 his friend in Berlin had given him his name, 
 
 164 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 Far he had friends in Washington, he whispered, 
 men powerful in the Government. And friends 
 among the labouring people, the men whose 
 hands made those munitions Rintelen had come 
 to stop, and whose hands might be paralyzed 
 by the clever use of brains and money. Lamar 
 would supply the brains: Rintelen would sup- 
 ply the money. The Wolf saw good hunting 
 ahead. 
 
 Lamar laid before Rintelen a scheme. They 
 would capitalize the American passion for peace: 
 they would capitalize in particular the labouring 
 man's aversion to war. A section of opinion 
 among labouring men held that wars were 
 instigated by capitalists for gain, and were fought 
 by labouring men who gave their lives to make 
 good the selfish ambitions of the rich. And one 
 of the American people's deepest convictions 
 was that war was an odious moral crime; and 
 that universal peace was attainable by the pur- 
 suit of moral ideals. 
 
 Lamar declared, then, that by working 
 through his friends in labour, he could organize 
 the workers of America so that they would re- 
 fuse ~to work on the implements of destruction 
 of "capitalistic" war. And that, by working 
 through his friends in the Government, he 
 could create a national sentiment that would 
 force Congress to place an embargo on muni- 
 
 165 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 tions. But these things would cost money. 
 Lamar never forgot money. 
 
 Now, we see a sudden transformation in Lamar's 
 circumstances. The frayed debtor _ appeared 
 in his old haunts garbed in the most fastid- 
 ious selections of the tailor; the accumulated 
 debts of years were paid; the subway and the 
 street car gave way to automobiles — and Lamar 
 was particular that the garage should supply 
 only the fine car that was father to the Liberty 
 motor. He moved his family from a cheap 
 apartment in New York to a fine house at Pitts- 
 field, Mass. His own quarters were the hotels 
 Astor and Belmont in New York, the Willard in 
 Washington, the La Salle in Chicago, the Clay- 
 pool in Indianapolis. Things were looking up. 
 
 Lamar carried other men with him on his 
 rising tide of fortune. Frank Buchanan, labour 
 Representative in Congress from the Seventh 
 District of Illinois (North Chicago), likewise 
 became a traveller and the patron of exclusive 
 hotels. Henry B. Martin, who eked out a 
 precarious living in the lobbies of Congress, 
 after a dubious career as an officer of the Knights 
 of Labour in the 'nineties, framed his wizened 
 figure in a new and luxurious setting. H. 
 Robert Fowler, the splendid high light of whose 
 gray life as a half-lawyer, half-farmer, in a 
 country town in Illinois, was expiring in the last 
 
 166 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 days of a term in Congress, was suddenly re- 
 vived, before his final extinguishment, by the 
 light glittering from anonymous gold. Herman 
 J. Schulteis, whose talents, insufficient for suc- 
 cess in the law, had been more profitably em- 
 ployed in the defunct Anti-Trust League (of 
 which more later), rose rapidly in the monetary 
 scale. 
 
 These men were the instruments Lamar used 
 in his scheme to stop the munitions industry and 
 to get Rintelen's money. That scheme was to 
 build up a great political organization of labour- 
 ing men and farmers. This organization would 
 oppose the making and shipment of munitions; 
 it would exert pressure to compel workers to 
 abandon the factories, and it would exert pres- 
 sure to compel Congress to declare an embargo 
 on the shipment of arms. This organization was 
 labelled "Labour's National Peace Council." 
 
 Lamar, fortified with Rintelen's money, 
 launched his scheme in Washington. This scheme 
 was an inspiration of genius. Able lawyers 
 have declared that no cleverer conspiracy has 
 ever come to their attention. Its beauty was 
 its simplicity. Rintelen dealt with no one but 
 Lamar — the other leaders never saw him, and 
 most of them never heard of him until after the 
 scheme was exposed by the Government. In 
 his turn, Lamar operated entirely through 
 
 167 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Martin. To Martin he gave his instructions to 
 see labour leaders, to organize the fake Peace 
 Council, to hold its camouflage "convention," 
 to flood the country with lecturers and printed 
 matter urging an embargo on munitions. And 
 through Martin he paid the bills. 
 
 Lamar and Martin were old associates. 
 They had worked together in the Anti-Trust 
 League, another of the creations of Lamar's 
 restless mind. The Anti-Trust League origi- 
 nated in the feverish 'nineties, when the country 
 had its fears that the growth of great corpora- 
 tions spelled the control of the Government by 
 monopolies. The League had its days of promi- 
 nence when it was financed by big interests 
 that used it to fight other big interests to get the 
 things they both wanted. But in 1915 the 
 League was a skeleton, consisting of Lamar, 
 Martin, Schulteis, and a few others, held to- 
 gether by the bond of small salaries drawn 
 from some source that preferred to remain un- 
 known. 
 
 When Martin undertook to organize Labour's 
 National Peace Council, under the direction 
 of Lamar, the first man he approached was 
 Frank Buchanan. Buchanan was labour's lead- 
 ing champion on the floor of Congress. He 
 had been president of the international union 
 of the structural iron workers, and he had earned 
 
 168 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 the confidence of organized labour, and the 
 friendship of Samuel Gompers, the patriarch of 
 organized labour. 
 
 Lamar, Buchanan, and Martin, assisted by- 
 Fowler and Schulteis, engineered a mass meeting 
 of workingmen in Chicago in June, 1915, at 
 which resolutions were adopted calling for a 
 convention of labourers and farmers at Washing- 
 ton to protest against the traffic in munitions. 
 The same men, with this " mandate" behind 
 them, met in Washington on June 22d, and or- 
 ganized Labour's National Peace Council. They 
 prepared printed appeals, in the high language 
 of humanitarianism, addressed to the labour 
 unions and the granges, and mailed them by the 
 ton to all parts of the country. They offered 
 to pay all travelling expenses and for lost time 
 to delegates which these bodies should send to a 
 convention to be held in Washington on July 
 31st and August 1st. 
 
 As a preliminary to this convention, Martin 
 paid labour leaders and other speakers to go 
 into all sections of the United States and ad- 
 dress labour unions and granges. Probably 
 all these speakers acted in good faith. They 
 were pacifists, and when they got an oppor- 
 tunity to preach their doctrine, they accepted 
 it. The opportunity seemed legitimate enough 
 — the name of Frank Buchanan as a sponsor 
 
 169 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 of the movement was sufficient. Their audi- 
 ences, too, were sincere. Workmen and farm- 
 ers had before their eyes the contrast of their 
 own peaceful land with a Europe drenched in 
 blood. The blessings of peace were never more 
 apparent. They sent delegates gladly to a 
 meeting that seemed designed to perpetuate 
 those blessings. 
 
 But Samuel Gompers opposed the conven- 
 tion of Labour's National Peace Council. He, 
 too, was a pacifist — had for years taken a leading 
 part in the movement for international peace. 
 But Gompers was a thoughtful man as well. 
 And experienced. And wise. He told Bu- 
 chanan some things Buchanan should have told 
 himself. Buchanan came from Chicago to At- 
 lantic City to meet Mr. Gompers and upbraid 
 him for his opposition to the Council. Mr. Gom- 
 pers gave him some fatherly advice. In effect, 
 he said: 
 
 "Frank, you have earned a good name in 
 labour. We are proud of you, and we trust 
 you. You are at life's meridian, with years of 
 useful service ahead. But listen to an old man, 
 who sees the shadows growing very long, and 
 who has watched many movements come and 
 go. You are in wrong. This scheme is bad. 
 There is too much easy money being passed 
 around in it. Labour hasn't got money to spend 
 
 170 " 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 like this. Somebody who has not labour's inter- 
 ests at heart is putting up that money. 
 
 "And take the Council's aims themselves. 
 Suppose you succeed in stopping the manu- 
 facture of munitions — what will happen to 
 labour? Two years ago, our boys were walking 
 the streets, begging for a job. To-day, every 
 man of them has work, and wages are going up. 
 War work has done that. Do you want to stop 
 the opportunity of labour to make a living?" 
 
 But Gompers's eloquence left Buchanan cold. 
 In the face of his pleadings and advice, Bu- 
 chanan accepted $2,700 from Martin in the 
 following six weeks. He saved his face at the 
 last minute by resigning the presidency of 
 Labour's National Peace Council the day before 
 the convention met. 
 
 The convention met in Washington on July 
 31st, at the New Willard Hotel. Its members 
 were impressed, as it was intended that they 
 and the country in general should be impressed, 
 by the sonorous voice and important presence 
 of Hannis Taylor, former American Minister 
 to Spain and author of text books on consti- 
 tutional and international law, such as "The 
 Origin and Growth of the English Constitution" 
 and "International Public Law." He made an 
 opening address in which, from his heights of 
 knowledge, he solemnly declared that munitions 
 
 171 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 shipments were in violation of international 
 law. His address was largely devoted to assur- 
 ances to his hearers that he was an authority 
 on such matters and that they could take his 
 opinion as disposing of the legal aspect of this 
 question. Mr. Taylor was there to lend dis- 
 tinction to the gathering, and he left no doubts 
 in their minds that he thought he was doing it. 
 
 But when the delegates got down to business, 
 there was trouble. The farmer delegates became 
 suspicious — they had vague fears of the source 
 of the money that was paying the bills; they 
 did not like the company they found themselves 
 in. They first declined to bind their constitu- 
 ents to the resolutions that were offered: then 
 they left the convention. 
 
 On the second day, the labour delegates 
 became equally restless. Buchanan had with- 
 drawn. The delegates who used the oppor- 
 tunity of being in Washington to call on 
 Mr. Gompers came away from his office with 
 heavy hearts. Returning to the Willard, they 
 saw the machinery being manipulated by the 
 descredited Martin and Schulteis. "What have 
 these fellows got to do with us?" they asked 
 one another. And then they asked "these 
 fellows" quite bluntly, "Who's putting up the 
 money for this show?" Martin, backed to the 
 wall of the Willard bar by their insistent demand 
 
 172 
 
THE TfGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 for an answer, replied with an evasive, "What 
 difference does it make?" And when they 
 shouted that it made a profane lot of difference, 
 he answered defiantly that it was all right 
 "even if it's German money." 
 
 That finished the labour delegates. They, too, 
 went home. 
 
 But the ringleaders had put out a resound- 
 ing resolution calling for an embargo on muni- 
 tions. And though the convention had fizzed 
 out, it had done an enormous lot of harm. 
 Thousands of labouring men and farmers had 
 been indoctrinated with a specious pacifism 
 that was reflected later in the attempts to evade 
 the Conscription Act when we entered the war. 
 The Government to-day is contending with 
 the moral antagonisms aroused in certain sections 
 of the country by the orators and writers of 
 Labour's National Peace Council. 
 
 In this moral infection, the work of Hannis 
 Taylor played an important part. He wrote 
 legal opinions for the Council, declaring that 
 the traffic in munitions was unconstitutional. 
 He received $700 for this work. These opinions 
 were printed and distributed broadcast, and 
 did much harm. More recently, Taylor was 
 counsel for Robert Cox, the Missouri draft 
 registrant who sued to restrain General Leonard 
 Wood from sending him with his regiment to 
 
 173 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 France. On his behalf, Hannis Taylor con- 
 tended^ that the Conscription Act was uncon- 
 stitutional, asserting that the only power of 
 Congress to call out troops was under the 
 militia clause of the Constitution which reads: 
 "To execute the laws of the Union, suppress 
 insurrections and repel invasions." This meant, 
 so Taylor contended, that no citizen could be 
 sent, against his will, outside the United States 
 to fight its battles. 
 
 This absurd doctrine, which would force us 
 to fight this war on our own soil instead of 
 allowing us to defend ourselves in Europe against 
 German aggression, was promptly punctured 
 by the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 In his brief before that Court Hannis Tay- 
 lor used language so violent that the counsel 
 for the Government asked that it be expunged 
 from the record. Taylor in his brief accused 
 the President of being a "dictator," of seizing 
 powers "in open defiance of the judgments " 
 of the Supreme Court, and of demanding "such 
 an aggregation of powers as no monarch ever 
 wielded in any constitutional government that 
 ever existed." 
 
 The decision of the Supreme Court, affirming 
 the Government's right to draft its citizens 
 for service overseas, was delivered by Chief 
 Justice White. That stern old veteran of the 
 
 174 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 Lost Cause in our Civil War, speaking with the 
 aloofness and dignity of that august Court, in 
 measured terms expressed an opinion of Mr. 
 Hannis Taylor that is worth repeating. He 
 said: 
 
 . . . we must notice a suggestion made by the 
 Government that because of impertinent and scandalous 
 passages contained in the brief of the appellant the brief 
 should be stricken from the files. Considering the pas- 
 sages referred to and making every allowance for intensity 
 of zeal and an extreme of earnestness on the part of 
 counsel, we are nevertheless constrained to the conclusion 
 that the passages justify the terms of censure by which 
 they are characterized in the suggestion made by the 
 Government. But despite this conclusion whictTwe re- 
 gretfully reach, we see no useful purpose to be subserved 
 by granting the motion to strike. On the contrary, we 
 think the passages on their face are so obviously in- 
 temperate and so patently unwarranted that if as a result 
 of permitting the passages to remain on the files they 
 should come under future observation, they would but 
 serve to indicate to what intemperance of statement an 
 absence of self-restraint or forgetfulness of decorum will 
 lead and therefore admonish of the duty to be sedulous 
 to obey and respect the limitations which an adhesion to 
 them must exact. 
 
 In all the operations of Labour's National 
 Peace Council, including its convention, Lamar 
 kept in the background, as he knew labour had 
 no reason to own him or to love him. Buchanan 
 and the rest supplied the proper colour of pro- 
 
 175 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 priety. From his retreat in the Willard Hotel 
 in Washington, Lamar was sending ecstatic 
 telegrams, reporting progress, signing the name 
 of David H. Lewis, and receiving in reply 
 approving messages from Rintelen, who used 
 Jones, Miller, and Muller as aliases. The con- 
 vention seemed a great success. And its prepa- 
 ration and operation had got the German's 
 money. t Of the #547,000 that Rintelen brought, 
 Lamar got more than $300,000. It looked so 
 good to Rintelen that he was ready to get more — 
 from Germany or from his limitless sources of 
 credit here. 
 
 But all was not well with Rintelen. He had 
 other lines out besides Lamar's, and he caught 
 some disquieting fish — some of which he did 
 not identify until later. First, he was playing 
 the social game not wisely but too well. He 
 gave '-dinner parties; was a guests at others. 
 He should have been more politic than he was. 
 The Lusitania was sunk on May 7th. Instead of 
 adopting the manner of a man deep enough in 
 intrigue to know that he should speak of this 
 crime as a lamentable blunder of his country's, 
 he justified it. His words gave the gravest 
 offense to his guests. He went further, and 
 threw out hinted threats of other perils that 
 would confront ships carrying munitions — hints 
 that he himself had had a hand in the mysterious 
 
 176 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 fires on ships that were almost a daily occurrence. 
 Some dinner guests in New York took him 
 seriously and reported him to the Government, 
 which had been suspicious of him almost from 
 the day of his arrival in this country. 
 I Also, Rintelen undertook to get newspaper 
 publicity favourable to an embargo on the ship- 
 ment of munitions. He got himself introduced 
 to "Jack" Hammond, an old newspaper man 
 in New York, and closed with him a contract 
 for syndicate articles in a chain of papers across 
 the|country. He met Hammond as one Fred 
 Hansen, a ship captain. (Hammond later testi- 
 fied that Rintelen told him that he "killed" 
 Hansen the day after the Lusitania was sunk.) 
 After sizing Hammond up as worthy of trust, he 
 re-introduced himself as E. V. Gibbons, a purchas- 
 ing agent, with offices in the building occupied in 
 part by the Transatlantic Trust Company. And 
 at length he confided to Hammond his real im- 
 portance in the scheme of things German. 
 
 Early in this relationship Hammond be- 
 came sure that this man was planning to violate 
 the laws of the United States, and he reported 
 the matter to the Department of Justice. The 
 Department, already suspicious, asked Ham- 
 mond to keep up his connection with Rin- 
 telen, and through this means 'it learned a 
 great deal about him. Not enough to cause 
 
 177 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 his arrest — Rintelen never confided that much 
 in any American but Lamar, who had his own 
 reasons for silence. 
 
 \ Out of Rintelen's multifarious activities arose 
 many of the mysterious fires and explosions 
 in munitions plants, the burning of ships at sea, 
 the attempts on the Welland Canal in Canada, 
 strikes in war industries, and the like. The 
 discovery of Dr. Walter A. Scheele's part in the 
 incendiary bombs matter, and his connection 
 with Rintelen, began to make the ground fairly 
 warm under Rintelen's feet. And the Govern- 
 ment was taking an uncomfortable interest in 
 Labour's National Peace Council. Rintelen be- 
 came uneasy. 
 
 | His fears were now fed from a new quarter. 
 'Andrew D. Meloy became a confidant of his, 
 and Meloy had his own axe to grind. Rin- 
 telen had taken an interest in the German 
 activities in Mexico, and almost from the day 
 of his arrival had been intimate in this work 
 with Federico Stallforth, a German banker of 
 Mexico City who joined Rintelen in New York. 
 Stallforth had offices with Meloy at 55 Liberty 
 Street, and when the Transatlantic Trust Com- 
 pany became embarrassed by Rintelen's pres- 
 ence, Stallforth persuaded Meloy to rent Rin- 
 telen desk room. Their acquaintance started 
 there, about July 1st. 
 
 178 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 Meloy was a well-known engineer and pro- 
 moter. He had exploited concessions in Mexico 
 — railroad rights of way and gold mines — and 
 in his home state of New Jersey had floated 
 some real-estate "developments." Meloy saw 
 in Rintelen exactly what Lamar had seen — 
 a lot of real money and an eagerness too great 
 for caution. He began to belittle Lamar's 
 scheme. Labour's National Peace Council would 
 never do. It looked good on paper, but it 
 would never stop the shipment of munitions. 
 He even hinted that Lamar had been "playing" 
 Rintelen. Now, if Rintelen wanted a real 
 scheme, certain to succeed, he knew the very 
 thing. Direct action — stop the bluffing and 
 the dangerous intrigues. Buy the whole mu- 
 nitions output of the country. Bid high enough 
 to get it, pay for it outright, and store it. That 
 would cost money, lots of it: but what was 
 money in comparison with the certainty of 
 German victory which this plan would insure? 
 
 Rintelen was dazzled. Here was the authen- 
 tic voice of American big business speaking. 
 A magnificent scheme. He would take it to 
 Germany, take Meloy with him,; and get his 
 Government to O. K. it. 
 
 But how get back to Germany? . He had grave 
 doubts about the Gasche passport being good 
 again. He put the question to Meloy, and 
 
 179 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Meloy advised against it. There was a better 
 way: get a new passport under a new name. So 
 for a few days Rintelen became "Edward V. 
 Gates, wine merchant, of Millersburg, Pa." 
 In this guise Meloy introduced him to one of 
 his own real-estate salesmen, and Rintelen took 
 this man to dinner once or twice to work up the 
 illusion. Then, one day, he asked the salesman 
 to go with him to the passport bureau in New 
 York and be his witness to an application for a 
 passport. The salesman went, and in good 
 faith swore that Rintelen was Edward V. Gates. 
 His faith was not so good when he swore he 
 had known him for three years. The appli- 
 cation was transmitted telegraphically to Wash- 
 ington. Much to Rintelen's astonishment and 
 alarm, it was denied. 
 
 Meanwhile, Meloy had been working on a 
 devious scheme to protect himself in his mis- 
 sion to Berlin. He must be cloaked in emi- 
 nent respectability on this errand, for it would 
 be an unpopular one with the British if they 
 knew its real purpose, and he must hide that. 
 First of all, he would take his wife, who did not 
 know what his mission was. She had taken an 
 active interest before the war in the peace move- 
 ments centring at The Hague, and nothing was 
 more natural than that she should wish now, 
 during the war, to renew her friendships in Hol- 
 
 180 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 land with an eye to furthering a cause now more 
 than ever vital to the world. 
 
 But Meloy was not content with only one 
 companion. He must have others who would 
 expand the picture of innocence abroad. One 
 of his neighbours in the suburb on the Jersey 
 Coast where he made his country home was a 
 wealthy woman known widely in America for 
 her interest both in the peace and suffrage 
 movements. Meloy telephoned to her and 
 asked her to see him at his home. This lady 
 drove over one summer evening in her motor 
 car, accompanied by two women friends. The 
 friends sat in the open car while she sat on the 
 porch talking to Meloy. Meloy is very deaf; 
 the lady had to talk loudly to make him hear. 
 Meloy differed from most deaf people, who 
 usually speak in a lower tone than those who 
 hear well — he went rather to the other extreme, 
 and spoke louder than most folks do. The 
 women in the car heard the conversation, and 
 they heard it a second time when their friend 
 repeated it to them on the way home. And the 
 Government heard it also, from the lips of all 
 three. 
 
 The burden of the conversation was this: 
 Meloy was taking his wife to Europe for a vaca- 
 tion; they were going to Holland, where so many 
 forward-looking movements for the good of 
 
 igi 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 mankind made their international headquarters; 
 he would be drawn aside a great deal by busi- 
 ness affairs and Mrs. Meloy would be lone- 
 some; he was anxious to provide companionship 
 for her, if the lady would accompany them, he 
 would pay all her expenses, he would assure her 
 that her journey would be made de luxe, he 
 would (he put it more delicately) even add a 
 money consideration, he would see that the 
 journey included a visit to war-bound Germany, 
 now so difficult of access, that in Germany she 
 should have entree to social circles so exclusive 
 that they were inaccessible even to the American 
 Ambassador, and that, to crown all, she should 
 be presented to the Kaiser. 
 
 The lady said she would think it over. It 
 was an attractive invitation, but she did not 
 just like it — perhaps it was too attractive. She 
 talked it over with her friends: they advised 
 against it. She telephoned Meloy next day and 
 declined. 
 
 Meloy repeated the invitation to several 
 women. All declined. Then, as the Noordam 
 was to sail on August 3d, and he had no more 
 time, he decided to take his secretary, a Miss 
 Brophy. 
 
 Rintelen was now thoroughly alarmed. The 
 Government's refusal to grant his fraudulent 
 application for a passport indicated that it 
 
 182 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 knew about him. The Government was get- 
 ting "warm" in its investigation of the incen- 
 diary bombs. The Government was taking an 
 unpleasant interest in Labour's National Peace 
 Council. Rintelen felt irresistibly the pangs of 
 Heimzueh, the longing for home. He must go, at 
 any risk. He would chance it as Gasche again. 
 
 So he sailed on the Noordam, with Meloy 
 and party. He bore with him Lamar's urgent 
 appeals for more funds for Labour's National 
 Peace Council, now at the high tide of its 
 success. And he was in the hands of Meloy, 
 who was at the first of his own rainbow of hope 
 of millions with which to buy America's munition 
 output — on commission. 
 
 At Falmouth the Noordam was detained for 
 fourteen hours. The British took a great 
 interest in the Gasche-Meloy party. Gasche's 
 baggage revealed nothing suspicious, but Gasche 
 was removed to a long residence in an intern- 
 ment camp near London. Meloy was detained 
 for several days. Mrs. Meloy soon appeared 
 to be beyond suspicion. Miss Brophy de- 
 clared that her baggage contained only personal 
 effects. But at the bottom of her last trunk 
 was found a wallet containing Gasche's papers. 
 These were seized, and Miss Brophy and Mrs. 
 Meloy were allowed to proceed to Holland, 
 where they were later rejoined by Meloy. 
 
 183 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 The Gasche papers were most interesting. 
 They contained some of Rintelen's letters show- 
 ing his intimacy with well-known New Yorkers, 
 and letters in which he referred to his "official 
 mission" to the United States that were very 
 important, for they proved what Rintelen 
 steadfastly denied, namely, that he was in this 
 country by orders of the German Government. 
 In one of them to a man in Germany, whom 
 he addressed as "Most Honourable Counsellor/' 
 he wrote: "Your letter of the 25th March 
 [191 5] was sent after me when I was on an 
 official journey, and I request you to excuse 
 the delaying in replying." And another letter, 
 from the National Bank Fuer Deutschland, 
 dated Berlin, 25th May, 1915, and addressed 
 "To the Landed Proprietor, Von Preskow," 
 contained this sentence: "Director Rintelen, 
 who looked after Major Von Katte's account, 
 entered the navy on the outbreak of hostilities, 
 and as he is at present on an official journey is 
 not available at the moment." 
 
 With Rintelen's internment ended Lamar's 
 golden fortune and Meloy's golden vision and 
 Rintelen's dream of destruction. And now 
 began one of the most difficult and one of the 
 longest tasks of the Department of Justice. 
 For, out of the fragments of evidence at its 
 command, and out of the seemingly innocent 
 
 184 
 
m*^ 
 
 V* 
 
 m 
 
 
 /</y$/rr////m/ ry ■ //s//e 
 
 ^ 
 
 ft* W 
 
 M 
 
 /ft/////'//'//*/// ////:js ///y:js///j .*//////. r/>///s\. //■///?////: \S | %, v 
 
 /„„/,,, 
 
 '/'"/' 
 
 wrsm A*/*,, 
 
 RINTELEN AND HIS CONFEDERATES 
 Above, Rintelen's photograph on a false passoort with which he tried to escape 
 from the United States; left, Andrew D. Meloy; right, David Lamar, "the 
 Wolf of Wall Street" 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 public acts of Labour's National Peace Council, 
 and out of the obscure and isolated outrages 
 to ships and factories in the United States, 
 the Department of Justice had to construct a 
 pattern that should prove, by tangible legal 
 evidence, the guilt of Rintelen and Lamar in 
 a plot to violate the laws of the United States. 
 
 This long investigation was a fascinating 
 study in human nature. If only Lamar had 
 been a little different in his manners, he might 
 have escaped the clutches of the law. If Rin- 
 telen had been as wise as he was clever, he 
 might still be in an internment camp instead 
 of a prison. 
 
 Lamar, it may be recalled, had a weakness 
 for automobiles. He hired them on all occasions. 
 They were especially useful to him for con- 
 ferences with Rintelen. They did not wish to 
 be seen together, so Lamar would drive to an 
 unfrequented spot in Central Park. Rintelen 
 would drive up in another car and get into 
 Lamar's, and then they would go for a long ride 
 while they discussed their plans. Sometimes 
 they would go for hours on the North Shore 
 of Long Island; sometimes for long excursions 
 in the Pelham region of Westchester County, 
 stopping perhaps at a wayside inn and taking 
 a room for greater privacy in their conferences. 
 
 An agent of the Department of Justice spent 
 
 i85 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 six weeks making the rounds of the garages 
 in New York. He carried Lamar's picture in 
 his pocket. He showed it to every chauffeur 
 in every garage. And every chauffeur who had 
 driven a car for Lamar during that summer of 
 1915 recognized the picture, and every one of 
 them applied the same epithet to its original 
 that Trampas applied to the Virginian in Owen 
 Wister's book when the Virginian, in response, 
 drew his gun and demanded that "when you 
 call me that, smile!" For Lamar, who was the 
 suave, the gracious, the ultra-polite and charm- 
 ing man to people whom he wished to cajole, 
 was overbearing, fault-finding, and peremptory 
 toward those who served him. His movements 
 in the hotels about the country were several 
 times traced by a rough description completed 
 by a remark about his manner toward servants. 
 No waiter or bell-boy ever forgot him. He was 
 forever "kicking about the service." 
 
 This vivid impression that he made on the 
 chauffeurs contributed greatly to his undoing. 
 They remembered him perfectly, and recalled 
 his companions. They recognized Rintelen's 
 photograph. And several of them had over- 
 heard parts of the conversations that were 
 useful to the Government. Through these 
 men, Lamar's connection with Rintelen in a 
 conspiracy to violate the Sherman Act by 
 
 186 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 restraining our foreign trade in munitions was 
 established. 
 
 One's laundry, too, may be a dangerous 
 thing. Lamar denied that he had stopped 
 at hotels in Chicago and Indianapolis and 
 elsewhere at the same time that Martin and 
 others were there. But handwriting experts 
 proved that the names "David Lenaur," "David 
 Lewis," and the like, on hotel registers on those 
 days were in Lamar's handwriting. And the 
 conclusive proof of their evidence was that the 
 laundry lists of the hotels on those days showed 
 that the laundry mark on the linen of "Lenaur" 
 and of "Lewis" was the laundry mark of Lamar. 
 
 Charge accounts at stores may also prove 
 troublesome. It became necessary to find out 
 where Lamar banked his money. That was dis- 
 covered through Lamar's stomach trouble. He 
 was a patron of a druggist in New York who had 
 his pet prescription for his pet ailment. Lamar 
 sometimes wrote, and sometimes telegraphed, 
 for another bottle of this medicine. A telegram 
 of this kind sent the Government agent to the 
 druggist. Did Lamar ever pay by check? 
 On what banks? The answers led to those 
 banks and thence to others and thence to 
 Lamar's brokers, from one of whom alone evi- 
 dence was obtained that the whilom bankrupt 
 had lost, in one series of speculations that sum- 
 
 187 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 mer, #38,000 in cash. Whose cash? The Gov- 
 ernment was able to prove that Lamar had got 
 thousands of dollars from Rintelen, because 
 they produced the men who saw Rintelen pay 
 it, and Lamar was not able to prove that he 
 had got any such sums from anybody else, 
 so the jury took the Government's theory as 
 fact that Lamar was Rintelen's man. 
 
 The story of this proof is worth telling. On 
 the witness stand at the trial, George Plockman, 
 the treasurer of the Transatlantic Trust Com- 
 pany (the Austrian bank in New York with 
 which Rintelen kept his funds) described the 
 arrangement Rintelen had made to conceal 
 the passage of money for illegal acts. He had 
 instructed the Transatlantic Trust Company, 
 when it received checks drawn by him in a 
 certain form, to cash them without questioning 
 the identity of the bearer and without requiring 
 him to endorse them. 
 
 One check of this kind was presented at the 
 bank one day, and the paying teller brought it 
 to Plockman to ask if he should pay it. 
 
 "Who presented it ?" asked Plockman. 
 
 "That dark man over there," replied the 
 paying teller. 
 
 "I thought/' said Plockman on the witness 
 stand, "that this man was a Mexican, but while I 
 was looking at him our vice-president came up 
 
 188' . 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 and when he understood the situation and saw 
 the man he said : *Mein Gott ! Dot is de Volf of 
 Vail Street! I hope Rintelen has not got into 
 his clutches !'" 
 
 One other incident of the trial should be told." 
 Testimony was brought in that showed how 
 the money for the Peace Council was spent. 
 One item was for funds to pay the expenses of a 
 German preacher from St. Louis to attend the 
 convention at Washington and open the pro- 
 ceedings with prayer. Lamar had never heard 
 of this until he heard it in the courtroom. It 
 was too much for him. When this evidence 
 came out, of the lengths to which his own pupils 
 had out-distanced even their teacher in the art 
 of political camouflage, he burst into roars of 
 uncontrollable laughter which literally stopped 
 all proceedings in court, the tears rolling down 
 his cheeks as he struggled to subdue his mirth. 
 
 Out of all the investigations of the Govern- 
 ment arose a card index of every man that Rinte- 
 len and Lamar had seen during the four months 
 from April 3 to August 3, 191 5, of every hotel 
 they had visited, of practically every telephone 
 call they had made and every telegram sent or 
 received, of nearly every dollar they had had and 
 spent. Thousands upon thousands of these cards 
 were made and filed. They convicted both men. 
 
 The Government indicted Rintelen, Lamar, 
 189 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Buchanan, Fowler, Martin, Schulteis, and a 
 man named Monnett, for conspiracy to violate 
 the Sherman Act in the operations of Labour's 
 National Peace Council to restrain our foreign 
 trade. Rintelen, Lamar, and Martin were con- 
 victed. The rest got the benefit of a very slim 
 doubt, except Frank B. Monnett, the farmer 
 attorney-general of Ohio, whose reputation in 
 the early suit of Ohio to oust the Standard 
 Oil Company from the state had been used as 
 " stage setting" by Martin. He was freed by 
 the Court before the jury was sent out to de- 
 liberate. The convicted men got the limit of 
 the law — one year in jail. Rintelen was like- 
 wise indicted for perjury in his application for 
 a passport as Edward V. Gates, and again for 
 another crime against our laws. He was con- 
 victed on both charges, and sentenced to several 
 months' imprisonment on each. 
 
 No one realized better than the judges who 
 sentenced him how inadequate these punish- 
 ments to expiate his crimes. But the laws 
 under which Rintelen was convicted — and they 
 were the only laws under which his acts (all 
 committed before our entry into the war) could 
 be questioned — were enacted in times of peace, 
 when no one dreamed of the world conflict or 
 could have imagined how it would affect us 
 when it came. 
 
 190 
 
THE TIGER AND WOLF MEET 
 
 Rintelen has completed serving time on the 
 first of his three sentences, and has the other 
 two still to serve. The Tiger of Berlin is 
 securely caged, and not likely soon to be again 
 at large. 
 
 191 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 The American Protective League 
 
 ON GOING to war with the great masters 
 of spy craft last year, the United States 
 had only a handful of secret service men to 
 guard its internal frontier. Within our borders 
 were a million and a half men and youths who 
 were enemy aliens. Not all of them hostile, it 
 is true; but all potentially dangerous because 
 great national organizations existed — even shoot- 
 ing societies — through which German influences 
 might reach in a few hours or days. And in 
 every centre of population there were captains 
 and field marshals of German intrigue, supplied 
 with unlimited money, to appeal to their feelings 
 and to lead them should a chance come to 
 strike. 
 
 Yet America, during the first year of war, 
 has been singularly peaceful. No serious dis- 
 turbance has hampered war preparations con- 
 ducted on a gigantic scale. Even the Selective 
 Service Act, inconsistent with all our volunteer 
 traditions and pride, was accepted almost with- 
 out opposition. Instead of a red reign of con- 
 
 192 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 flagration and civil strife, there have been no 
 outbreaks worthy of the name; and, according 
 to the Underwriters' Association, not a single 
 fire in our munitions plants of a clearly estab- 
 lished incendiary character. 
 
 Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory, in 
 fact, had solid grounds for declaring to the 
 executive committee of the American Bar Asso- 
 ciation recently: "I do not believe that there is 
 to-day any country which is being more capably 
 policed than is the United States/' He added 
 that for every man engaged in detecting and in- 
 vestigating violations of federal laws in April, 
 1917, there are at least one thousand to-day; while 
 reports on new cases are coming in at the rate 
 of fifteen hundred a day! 
 
 That sounds like a miracle of organization, 
 doesn't it? Even the army, with its pride- 
 compelling record of expansion, is a slow coach 
 beside these legions of "plain-clothes" soldiers 
 who hold our inner lines. Let's see how it 
 happened. 
 
 When the war broke, the only secret service 
 work done by the Government was handled 
 by five small organizations. The Department 
 of Justice had its Bureau of Investigation, 
 charged with the discovery of offenses against 
 the federal statutes — not a large force, but 
 quite adequate to its peace-time job. The 
 
 193 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Treasury Department maintained a secret ser- 
 vice with two definite functions — to protect the 
 President's life and person, and to prevent 
 counterfeiting. The Army and Navy had each 
 a few officers detailed to its intelligence service 
 —the gathering of military and naval informa- 
 tion and the protection of our own plans and 
 operations. And finally the State Department 
 possessed a small intelligence section of its own. 
 But by comparison with the territory to be 
 covered and the number of active German and 
 Austrian agents in the country, there were few 
 experienced men available for counter-espionage. 
 And there in the background were that million 
 and a half enemy aliens who would bear a lot 
 of watching. 
 
 The declaration of war, then, instantly brought 
 an emergency. Part of it the Department of 
 Justice met by striking swift and hard at all 
 who were unquestionably enemy agents. Be- 
 cause of their propaganda and other activities 
 against the Entente Allies, these agents had 
 been under observation for some time. Within 
 forty-eight hours the more dangerous had been 
 rounded up — under the hoary old act of 1798, 
 which gave the President power to intern enemy 
 aliens when their being at liberty might con- 
 stitute a menace to the public safety. 
 
 There remained the urgent need of an immense 
 194 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 increase in the Government's counter-espionage 
 forces. It would take thousands of trained and 
 intelligent operatives to keep watch of the 
 German agents and German sympathizers who 
 swarmed throughout the country. As a class, 
 such operatives did not exist: to draft the right 
 kind of raw material from civil life would in- 
 volve delays, great personal sacrifices on the 
 part of the men drafted, and an enormous yearly 
 budget. Thousands of business and profes- 
 sional careers would be interrupted at critical 
 stages. Most of the men who accepted the call 
 would be risking after-the-war failure in their 
 chosen callings. The work simply couldn't be 
 done that way. 
 
 Then it was that the American Protective 
 League found a way to do it. 
 
 The League is a volunteer body of 250,000 
 patriotic Americans, organized with the ap- 
 proval and operating under the direction of the 
 Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation. 
 It cross-cuts every commercial, industrial, pro- 
 fessional, social, and economic level in American 
 life. Bank presidents and bell hops, judges 
 and janitors, managers and mechanics — all ranks 
 meet on its common platform of loyalty and 
 service. It has woven a net of discreet surveil- 
 lance across more than a thousand American 
 cities and towns; and the meshes are so small 
 
 195 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 that few active German agents slip through. 
 It reaches out into the country as well. More 
 than 52,000,000 people — about half the popula- 
 tion of the United States — live in communities 
 where the League has active and effective organ- 
 izations; where too, propaganda, or sedition, 
 sabotage or plain slacking are neither popular 
 nor healthy. 
 
 The League was born in March, last year, 
 two weeks before we declared war. The idea 
 originated with Mr. A. M. Briggs of Chicago. 
 Mr. Briggs is now Chairman of the National 
 Board of Directors of the American Protective 
 League. He secured authority to establish it 
 as a volunteer auxiliary of the Department of 
 Justice on March 22, 1917. Within a month 
 he had the League in operation with several 
 thousand members. With him, Captain Charles 
 Daniel Frey and Mr. Victor Elting were re- 
 sponsible for its development and the organiza- 
 tion of the work. Mr. Frey is organizer and 
 First Chief of the Chicago District, the original 
 working unit of the American Protective League. 
 The plan, the policies, and the methods de- 
 veloped in the Chicago District, which includes 
 280 cities and towns, were approved by the 
 Department of Justice, and have been generally 
 followed throughout the country as the model 
 and standard for subsequent organizations. Mr. 
 
 196 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 Elting, as Assistant Chief at Chicago, has from 
 the inception of the League been active in the 
 development of its policy. These three, now 
 national directors with headquarters at Wash- 
 ington, are modest about taking any credit for 
 the amazing extension of the League and its 
 extraordinary present usefulness. They insist 
 that the first great response was due to the 
 general recognition of a national crisis, the 
 impulse to do something to meet it, and the 
 patriotic and unselfish cooperation of every local 
 chief and individual operative in the country. 
 At all events, it was knowledge of how wide- 
 spread and unscrupulous was the German spy 
 system, and how seriously it was affecting the 
 temper and loyalty of aliens and naturalized 
 citizens, that launched the League. Proposal 
 was made to the Department of Justice that a 
 volunteer auxiliary of simon-pure Americans be 
 formed to keep watch for the Government in 
 every neighbourhood and to make most of the 
 Department's investigations for it. The service 
 would be without pay. No inquiries would be 
 undertaken without reference of the case to the 
 Department first. And no expense accounts 
 would be presented for money spent. Doubts 
 may have existed regarding the feasibility of 
 the plan. Such men as were needed would be 
 hard to interest in the drudgery of police in- 
 
 197 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 vestigation. But Mr. Briggs was confident that 
 there were thousands of business and profes- 
 sional men past service age and necessary to 
 their families and communities who still were 
 fired with patriotism and filled with wrath 
 at the progress of German propaganda and 
 plotting in this country. They were success- 
 ful men of affairs — men of proved judgment, 
 intelligence, initiative, and energy. The De- 
 partment could not buy their full time at any 
 price, but it could command their spare time, 
 plus as many work-hours, on occasions, as were 
 necessary to complete any task. There were 
 also men of service age, eager to fight but held 
 at home by obligations or other causes, who 
 would not stint either time or energy in the 
 League's service. 
 
 Given authority to go ahead March 22, 1917, 
 the League was organized on military lines. 
 The plan was that each city and its tributary 
 country should be broken up into divisions, in 
 charge of inspectors. Divisions were cut up 
 into districts, with captains in command. And 
 each captain recruited as many working squads, 
 under lieutenants, as the size and character of 
 his district demanded. Reinforcing this terri- 
 torial organization was another which treated 
 every important industry, trade, and profes- 
 sion, and even large business establishments 
 
 198 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 and office buildings as individual organization 
 units. The territorial organization was known 
 as the Bureau of Investigation; the classified 
 trade, professional, and industrial force as the 
 Bureau of Information. As a matter of fact, 
 they were just the right and left arms of the 
 League. Each had its specialized work to do, 
 but the big jobs in each case were the same. 
 
 From the start, the two main functions of 
 the League stood out boldly. The first was 
 "to make prompt and reliable report of all dis- 
 loyal or enemy activities and of all infractions 
 or evasions of the war code of the United States." 
 The second followed naturally: "to make prompt 
 and thorough investigation of all matters of 
 similar nature referred to it by the Department 
 of Justice. " Close cooperation with the local 
 agent of the Department was essential in both 
 instances. 
 
 Because the plan had been carefully worked 
 out, the League made a flying start in a great 
 Western city. Inspectors, captains, lieutenants 
 were commissioned and assigned to their units. 
 "Operatives," picked with equal caution, were 
 sworn in and given their credentials. By May 
 first, there were a thousand men engaged in 
 the absorbing new game. 
 
 Thousands of investigations taxed the young 
 ardour and endurance of the League — suspected 
 
 199 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 spy activities, seditious speeches, lying reports 
 about the Red Cross, Y. M. G. A., and Knights 
 of Columbus, pro-German propaganda, sus- 
 pected treasonable conspiracies, sabotage cases 
 and, later, organized and individual efforts to 
 evade the draft. But every member was under 
 pledge to run down to the end any case assigned 
 to him, whether it took a day or a week, and 
 results came speedily. 
 
 Though lacking in experience, most of the 
 members had unusual 'equipment as investiga- 
 tors. Nearly all had imagination and logical, 
 work-trained minds. Many of them were men 
 of means and could devote all of their time to 
 urgent cases. Instead of waiting for an 0. K. 
 on a requisition for a motor car, they had ma- 
 chines of their own to use. Without consider- 
 ing how an item would strike a government 
 auditor, they could and did spend their own 
 money to get the facts they sought. Without 
 having to finesse approaches to necessary sources 
 of information, they could usually draw on a 
 wide circle of friends for inside facts which a 
 professional detective might require days to 
 secure. 
 
 The League's rule in assigning cases, indeed, 
 is to choose as investigator the man whose 
 social, professional, or business connections are 
 such that he can "clean up" with the least 
 
 200 
 
Officers of the American Protective League, an organization of 250,000 
 patriotic American business men who cooperate effectively with the Depart- 
 ment of Justice in its operations against spies, slackers, and seditionists. 
 Above, Mr. A. M. Briggs, founder; left, Capt. Daniel Frey, and right, Mr. 
 Victor Eltino. National Directors 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 effort and in the shortest space of time. When 
 there are many places to visit, the case goes to 
 a man owning a motor car. If it is complex in 
 character, with lines extending into various 
 industries, clubs, trades, and so on, the work 
 may be divided and several members assigned 
 to it. The main idea is to get the work done, 
 and done quickly— the secondary purpose to 
 make it as easy as may be for the members. 
 
 League members knew little about methods 
 of investigation. But they had that priceless 
 gift, intelligence, and they learned by doing. 
 There was such a mass of complaints, tips, 
 and wild guesses concerning enemy activities 
 waiting to be handled, that no extensive school- 
 ing could be attempted. The cleverest govern- 
 ment operatives available and experienced city 
 and private detectives talked to groups of 
 captains and lieutenants, and these passed 
 along the information to their men. A. Bruce 
 Bielaski, Chief of the Bureau of Investigation, 
 Department of Justice, was quick to recognize 
 the possibilities of the League. Everywhere his 
 organization gave invaluable aid and coopera- 
 tion in training League members. 
 
 Able lawyers made brief but comprehensive 
 digests of the laws involved and 'the rules of 
 evidence to be observed. Methods of work 
 and problems of authority and conduct were 
 
 20 1 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 explained at length in a handbook. Supple- 
 menting the handbook and the law digest, 
 bulletins were published at intervals to suggest 
 better methods, to report fresh evidence of Ger- 
 man plans and propaganda, or to sum up and 
 interpret the new laws which Congress was 
 enacting for the punishment of espionage and 
 sedition. 
 
 Close touch was kept at every step with the 
 Department of Justice. Forms for reports and 
 records were adopted, conforming to the system 
 in use by the Department. Carbons of all re- 
 ports and records were made for the files of 
 the Bureau of Investigation. Eventually a com- 
 plete record of each case found its way to the 
 master file in Washington. In this way dupli- 
 cation of effort was avoided, complete coopera- 
 tion assured, and the exact status of any inquiry 
 could be learned in a moment by any one 
 needing the information. 
 
 Far from running wild in its enthusiasm to 
 corral all enemy agents, the League tried to 
 give every alien it investigated an American 
 square deal. Perhaps the finest paragraph in 
 the handbook is this one urging the right of 
 aliens to considerate treatment until their uu- 
 friendly attitude is revealed: 
 
 "Many aliens resident in this country are 
 absolutely loyal to its institutions and its laws, 
 
 202 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 and many individuals having the legal status 
 of alien enemies are not only conducting them- 
 selves with due respect to our laws, but are of 
 great value in industry and business. Great 
 care must be exercised by members to avoid 
 unnecessary alarm to aliens and to avoid causing 
 apprehension upon their part as to the fairness 
 and justice of the attitude of the Government 
 toward them. In this regard members will be 
 called upon for the exercise of judgment and 
 discretion of a high order. They should protect 
 citizens and aliens from unjust suspicion, but 
 must fearlessly ascertain and report treason 
 and disloyalty wherever found." 
 
 All this has to do with the investigation of 
 specific cases after they have been brought to 
 the League's attention by the report of a mem- 
 ber, an outside complaint, or a request from the 
 Department of Justice for an inquiry into the 
 facts. Quite as important in discouraging dis- 
 loyalty or pro-German activities is the service 
 of League members as eyes and ears for the 
 Government in detecting and making first re- 
 ports on offenses or intended offenses against 
 the war code of the United States. 
 
 This means that every League member is 
 always on the lookout for any word or act that 
 smacks of sedition or espionage. It is here 
 that the classified organization by industries, 
 
 203 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 trades, professions, and individual business es- 
 tablishments develops its full value. When a 
 factory making munitions, clothing, motor trucks, 
 or any other war necessity has been organized 
 as a League unit, the members are on the 
 alert for signs of disturbance. They can quickly 
 report to their supervisor what they have seen 
 or heard, and, after comparing notes, can take 
 precautions against the threatened trouble. If 
 they need outside help in checking up a suspect 
 after working hours, the territorial organization 
 is ready to cooperate. The suspect need never 
 know that he is under suspicion until his guilt 
 or innocence is pretty well established. 
 
 Such a factory unit is typical of the League 
 organization in the larger cities. Besides the 
 strictly industrial group, there are usually 
 eight broad divisions, any one of which may be 
 important enough to have an assistant bureau 
 chief, and several captains, lieutenants, and in- 
 dividual units. These divisions take in the real 
 estate, financial, insurance, and professional 
 groups, the ' hotels, transportation companies, 
 public utilities, and merchandising interests — 
 wholesale, retail, and mail-order. And the in- 
 dustries alone may be numerous and powerful 
 enough to call for separate divisions — munitions, 
 packers' products, food stuffs, war equipment, 
 metal trades, lumber, motor cars, electrical 
 
 204 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 machinery and supplies, chemicals and paints, 
 and so on. It all depends on how numerous 
 and how large are the establishments in each 
 line. Outside the larger cities territorial organi- 
 zation is the rule. When the district is identified 
 with some industry of special value in war, 
 like mining, lumbering, or cattle raising, protec- 
 tion of that industry may be the chief function 
 of the League. 
 
 Not only does the classified method of or- 
 ganization help each trade and profession to 
 police itself; it greatly facilitates important 
 inquiries. For example, suppose that the Gov- 
 ernment wants to find and learn the local errand 
 of a visiting electrical engineer with a German 
 name and considerable cash whom it has had 
 under surveillance elsewhere. On being asked 
 for a report, the League's local Chief assigns the 
 case to one of his deputies. The latter notifies 
 the supervisors of the various hotel units to 
 watch out for the stranger, report his arrival, 
 and keep watch of his letters and telephone 
 calls. He also communicates with the head of 
 the professional division and asks that an 
 electrical engineer be detailed on the case. 
 
 When the suspect has been located and the 
 hotel supervisor has transmitted any other in- 
 formation he has been able to get, the engineer 
 member begins work. Going to the hotel he 
 
 205 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 finds or makes a way to become acquainted with 
 the stranger, offers him the usual professional 
 courtesies, and gives him a chance to suggest 
 why he is in town or whom he wants to see. 
 Direct questions are not asked, of course, since 
 they would put the stranger on his guard. After 
 he has carried the inquiry as far as he can, the 
 engineer member quietly and casually goes his 
 way, unless the stranger has accepted his offers 
 of help or hospitality. 
 
 If the suspect has "covered up" more than 
 an honest engineer should, he is systematically 
 shadowed by other League operatives during 
 the remainder of his stay. Walking out or 
 staying in his room, travelling in taxicabs or in 
 street cars, making business calls or social calls, 
 one or more of his two "shadows" would 
 probably keep him in sight and make memo- 
 randa regarding every person he met and spoke 
 with and every significant circumstance that 
 took place. Only when in a private house or 
 in his hotel room would he escape observation 
 — and even then a fairly close tab would be 
 kept on what he was doing. 
 
 A record would be made of every telephone 
 call, every telegram, every letter received, with 
 particular reference to the postmark, dates, 
 and the return cards on the envelopes. His 
 baggage would be inventoried and described, 
 
 206 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 even to its hotel labels, its character, and its 
 probable price and origin. When he finally 
 departed, if the porter bought his tickets for him 
 or whether he purchased them himself at the 
 station, his route, and his first destination — 
 all would be matters of history. One of his 
 "shadows" would even see him safely past the 
 last suburban stop from which he might double 
 back to the city or to a waiting confederate. 
 
 This seems a mighty pother to make about 
 an apparently innocent traveller. But the 
 League prefers to work overtime and play safe. 
 The narratives of some of the "tailings" would 
 make marvellous reading if they only led up to 
 the proper dramatic climax. Many of them 
 do — but those are not to be talked about yet 
 awhile. And the others are significant only be- 
 cause they are the records of uninteresting tasks 
 as faithfully executed as though the sheltering 
 doorway or hotel lobby chair were a listening 
 post in France. 
 
 Remember that these tasks were made both 
 complex and difficult by the lack of laws de- 
 fining espionage, disloyalty, and sedition as 
 punishable crimes. That ancient act of 1798 
 could be invoked for the internment of danger- 
 ous enemy aliens. But an American citizen, 
 native or naturalized, could spit treason and 
 plot trouble unchecked so long as he did not 
 
 207 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 run foul of the civil or the criminal code. That 
 is all changed now; the amended Espionage and 
 Sedition Law, signed by the President in June, 
 1 91 7, is so broad and has such a fine set of ser- 
 viceable teeth that no disloyal citizen or un- 
 friendly alien can escape the penalty if his guilt 
 can be proved. 
 
 For more than a year, however, the League 
 was compelled not only to prove a citizen's 
 pro-German activities; it had also to find a way 
 to punish them, or at least to discourage them. 
 Every inquiry into such a case, therefore, had 
 to be supplemented by an effort to find evidence 
 of an offense against the civil or criminal statutes. 
 And where this failed, a good old-fasnioned 
 "talking to" often had the desired effect. 
 
 Hatred of "Prussian militarism" and pre- 
 tended allegiance to the United States were the 
 favourite pose of many propagandists whom the 
 League rounded up and secured billets for in 
 various internment camps. Most of these had 
 taken out their first naturalization papers; 
 except in a few middle and western states like 
 Nebraska, where "first papers" and six months 
 of residence confer the right to vote, this was 
 no protection when evidence of disloyalty or pro- 
 German activity was adduced against them. 
 
 Typical of this class was the case of an Aus- 
 trian officer of reserves who was six months 
 
 208 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 under investigation before he was arrested. 
 Like so many other interned Teutons, his entry 
 into the United States had been by way of the 
 Argentine. Traced back, it was discovered that 
 he had reported to the Austrian Consul in 
 Buenos Aires as an officer of reserves at the 
 first mobilization call, July 27, 1914; and again 
 when he sailed for the United States with a 
 false Swedish passport in 191 5. Then, in suc- 
 cession, he had registered at the San Francisco, 
 St. Louis, and Chicago consulates — at the last 
 on September 30, 1915. 
 
 In less than six months, however, he had 
 applied for naturalization papers and was ar- 
 ranging to return to Buenos Aires as selling 
 agent for several American houses. When the 
 State Department denied him a passport, he 
 devised another means of keeping watch of 
 American efforts to supplant German houses 
 in the South American markets. This was an 
 export information bureau, but his information 
 was not live enough to hold his clients long. 
 Next he projected a $2,000,000 corporation to 
 take over and operate the German interned 
 steamships at New York. By turns also he 
 was advertising solicitor and automobile sales- 
 man. 
 
 The occupation he followed always allowed 
 him maximum freedom in moving about and a 
 
 209 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 plausible excuse for approaching almost any- 
 one he wanted to reach. Very early in the 
 inquiry, his defenselessness appeared; he had 
 entered the country under a false passport and 
 could be arrested whenever the Department of 
 Justice chose to move. Because he had arrived 
 in San Francisco eighteen months before our 
 declaration of war, he was given the benefit 
 of the doubt. Not until his character as a 
 dangerous enemy alien had been established was 
 he interned. He will be deported at the end 
 of the war. 
 
 Different in detail, but similar in character 
 and outcome, was the Odyssey of a missionary 
 of German culture, whose earnings were as 
 nominal as his expenditures were excessive. 
 Arriving in New York in 19 12, also by way of 
 the Argentine, he had spent the intervening 
 time travelling about the country^ in various 
 roles which would bring him in contact with 
 rich Americans of German birth or blood. At 
 various times he was a dealer in pictures, in 
 stocks and bonds, and in subscription editions 
 of the German classics. 
 
 As a side line, he seems to have been check- 
 ing up American efforts to develop sources of 
 potash, Germany's one great monopoly in min- 
 erals. He even engaged himself as stock sales- 
 man for an Eastern company organized to 
 
 210 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 extract potash from the Pacific kelp fields and 
 made at least one trip to the coast to study that 
 new industry. Always his scale of living was 
 far in excess of his earnings from such sources 
 of income as could be traced. After a long and 
 patient inquiry — covering nearly eight months 
 from the time the man's pro-German utterances 
 were first reported — he was finally interned for 
 the duration of the war. 
 
 Enemy aliens have not been alone in keeping 
 League members up at night. Far more numer- 
 ous have been the investigations bearing upon 
 the character and loyalty of American citizens, 
 particularly candidates for commissions in the 
 Army and Navy and applicants for civilian 
 service in positions of trust. Still a third class 
 of inquiries which have lacked the thrill of 
 espionage cases have been the thousands of 
 investigations made of claims for exemption or 
 deferred classification under the selective service 
 law. 
 
 Anything like a divided allegiance, of course, 
 would destroy the usefulness of an army or 
 naval officer — if, indeed, it did not make him 
 a positive menace to his country. Every char- 
 acter and loyalty inquiry, therefore, has this 
 background of danger, especially when the sub- 
 ject is of German or of Austrian ancestry. And 
 sometimes the League operative must have a 
 
 211 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 keen scent for significant minor details to detect 
 the danger signal. 
 
 For instance, one of the candidates for a 
 recent special officers' training camp was a 
 young Cincinnati man with a German name. 
 He was a citizen, of draft age, of such intelli- 
 gence, experience, and physique that his ac- 
 ceptance was a foregone conclusion if his loyalty 
 were assured. Investigation showed him to have 
 been pro-German in his sympathies before our 
 declaration of war, and practically silent 
 on war subjects since. His attitude was correct; 
 and his application for training was a positive 
 count in his favour. But the League investigator, 
 digging around for information, learned that his 
 man had been a contributor to a fund raised 
 by a Gaelic newspaper for the defence of Sir 
 Roger Casement, when that famous Irish rebel 
 was on trial in London. 
 
 If the man had been of Irish blood, such a con- 
 tribution would have had little significance; 
 natural sympathy for a compatriot in trouble 
 might have prompted it. Such an act by a 
 German or an American, however, suggested 
 more than a passing interest in the violent pro- 
 German, anti-English propaganda which this 
 particular weekly exploited. Verifying the story 
 by reference to the files of the newspaper, the 
 investigator called attention to the fact in his 
 
 212 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 report, and gave it as his opinion that the candi- 
 date wanted a commission to escape the draft 
 and that he lacked the whole-hearted loyalty and 
 enthusiasm an Army officer must have to be suc- 
 cessful. And, as the final decision coincided with 
 the investigator's, the application was refused. 
 
 Another incident — double-barrelled in its effect 
 — has also its humorous side. One of the 
 Chicago League officials picked up two deserters 
 on Michigan Avenue early one evening last 
 December. Neither had an overcoat, one had 
 evidently " hocked " his blouse to provide food 
 or drink. The League man knew he must 
 turn them over to the police, but the boys 
 were so cold and wretched that he determined 
 to give them a good dinner before surrendering 
 them. 
 
 At his club, his "guests" created a certain 
 amount of stir — and seemed to enjoy it. They 
 "didn't miss a station from soup to cigarettes," 
 as one of them expressed it. They were finishing 
 up when a young man in a captain's uniform 
 came over and interjected himself into the feast. 
 
 "Excuse me," he began as the host arose, 
 "may I ask what your interest in these men is ?" 
 
 His tone was a shade too crisp, even for so 
 young a captain. 
 
 "May I ask yours?" the League man count- 
 ered. 
 
 213 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 "I'm in command of the provost guard in 
 Chicago," the other declared. "It's my busi- 
 ness to look after deserters." 
 
 It was a fatal bit of brag. The League man 
 knew the provost marshal — knew this fellow 
 was an imposter. But one job at a time. 
 
 "I know these chaps and Fm looking after 
 them," he answered. "Come along, boys." 
 And they departed in the olive splendour of a 
 taxicab. Then it pulled up a little later before 
 a red light, and a policeman opened the door. 
 The lads were crestfallen but game. 
 
 "It was bully while it lasted," they declared. 
 "Anyway, they'd have got us sooner or later." 
 
 Before noon next day the youthful pseudo- 
 captain was wiping his tears away and explain- 
 ing why he had been impersonating an officer. 
 There was a group of musical comedy girls in 
 the foreground and a trail of forged checks and 
 unpaid club and hotel bills in the background. 
 He is learning in Leavenworth prison, now, that 
 the lion's skin is dangerous apparel and that 
 discretion is the better part of a masquerade. 
 
 The League files are crammed with reports 
 which have blacker themes — -or the scarlet 
 motive which stands for constructive treason. 
 There are folders that deal with reported graft 
 in the purchase of materials for Army camps 
 and subsequent fires which covered up the 
 
 214 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 scanting of buildings. There are others on cases 
 of undue influence brought to bear on members 
 of exemption boards; and sickening instances of 
 "quacks" who have ruined strong but cow- 
 ardly young bodies for blood money. There 
 are tales of extortion by shyster lawyers for 
 filling out questionnaires — and other tales of 
 money paid by enemy aliens to disreputable 
 "fixers" for pretended protection against the 
 draft. 
 
 The mere classified index of the master file 
 at Washington intrigues the imagination. Just 
 a glance at the main "guides" will indicate 
 the range : 
 
 Enemy aliens 
 Unfriendly neutrals 
 "First-paper" aliens 
 Disloyal citizens 
 Pro-German "radicals" 
 
 Native-born 
 
 Naturalized 
 Disloyal Government employees 
 Possible spies or German agents 
 Pro-German applicants for Government positions 
 Citizens or aliens living in luxury without visible sources 
 
 of income 
 Suspicious foreigners 
 Enemy propaganda 
 
 (Twenty sub-heads here) 
 Enemy alien funds 
 Alien extortion cases 
 
 215 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 I. W. W. agitators 
 
 Check of jury panels to keep out pro-Germans 
 
 Incendiary fires in war-material plants 
 
 Wireless stations 
 
 Bomb and dynamite cases 
 
 Passport applicants 
 
 Seditious utterances 
 
 Seditious publications 
 
 Seditious meetings 
 
 Anti-military activities 
 
 Organizations to resist draft 
 
 Attempted draft evasions 
 
 False exemption claims 
 
 Physical disability 
 
 Dependent relatives 
 Desertion of wife to enlist in Army 
 Fraudulent claims of marriage 
 Army deserters 
 Impersonation of officers 
 Sale of liquor to soldiers and sailors 
 Sale of narcotics to men in service 
 Hotel surveillance of doubtful transients 
 Liberty Bond and Red Cross slackers 
 Theft of Red Cross supplies 
 Hoarding of foods 
 Destruction of foods 
 Character and loyalty of applicants for commissions 
 
 In making these investigations the League 
 has cooperated, not only with the Department 
 of Justice, but also with Army Intelligence, 
 Navy Intelligence, the Alien Property Custodian, 
 the Food Administration, the Shipping Board, 
 
 216 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., and with various 
 other offices at Washington. 
 
 The number and variety of cases handled 
 have not constituted the major service of the 
 League, however. Rather, it has been the 
 character and intelligence of the membership — 
 the ability to enter and comb any social, pro- 
 fessional, or business circle for information 
 without betraying that an inquiry was afoot. 
 From this angle alone the original idea was 
 pretty close to an inspiration, since it impro- 
 vised in the hour of need such an organization 
 as not even a generation of effort and many 
 million dollars could have built up. 
 
 Just because it was improvised and its per- 
 sonnel kept secret, the League could meet the 
 most dangerous German agents on their own 
 ground and paralyze their efforts by keeping 
 them guessing. Propaganda dies on the lips 
 of the man who can't be certain that his listener 
 is not making mental notes for an official re- 
 port of the conversation. And the most subtle 
 scheme of spying or sabotage is bound to drag 
 when the plot master is harassed by doubts 
 of the native-born or naturalized accomplices 
 he must enlist for its execution. 
 
 One instance to show how much a local or- 
 ganization must depend upon its specialists. 
 Last summer it became necessary to know be- 
 
 217 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 yond question whether or not a prominent 
 young German-American in a seaboard city 
 was supplying the funds for the local agitation 
 against the draft. Suspicion attached to him 
 because he spent many evenings aboard his 
 fast-racing schooner in the yacht club harbour, 
 and could not be induced, in any polite and 
 casual way, to invite any of the League's yacht- 
 ing members aboard. His crew, two Scandi- 
 navians, were as voluble as oysters. 
 
 The schooner was being tuned up for the 
 annual club cruise late in July. Two extra sail- 
 ors would be needed for the race. The League 
 provided one of them. An upstanding young 
 American, too young for the first officers' train- 
 ing camp but in line for the second, was taken 
 into the League, carefully coached, and turned 
 loose in the harbour with a loaned cat-boat to 
 impress the German-American skipper with his 
 sailing skill. The boy finessed his approach 
 successfully and was asked to train with the 
 crew. But he found nothing material to report 
 until the schooner had actually won the big 
 race. 
 
 That night after the victory had been cele- 
 brated in a flood of champagne, which he alone 
 avoided, he quietly went through all the private 
 papers in the owner's cabin, made notes, or 
 copied all that referred in any way to pro- 
 
 218 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 German activities and returned by rail to the 
 home port next morning. It turned out that 
 the owner had been guilty of no real disloyalty, 
 though he had skirted the edge more than once; 
 but his papers pointed straight to the real source 
 of the propaganda and the latter was speedily 
 apprehended. 
 
 Another interesting case was that of a noted 
 pro-German "pacifist" who for months was 
 kept under surveillance without evidence being 
 secured which would bring a conviction under 
 the existing law. He had declared again and 
 again that nine out of ten Americans were 
 opposed to the war; that thousands of armed 
 men in Arizona, New Mexico, and western 
 Texas were only waiting for the signal to rise 
 against the Government; that another thousand 
 in New York City were watching for the same 
 signal and a leader. He even intimated that 
 he had been asked to be that leader. And 
 though the League could account for every 
 hour of his time, knew every citizen and Con- 
 gressman he had conferred with and most of 
 the folk he had written to, it was December 
 before an indictment could be secured against 
 him. 
 
 That this man is still at liberty, on bail, 
 until the courts reach the hearing of his case 
 is only a detail. The compensating facts are 
 
 219 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 that he served the League for some time as a 
 stalking horse for other citizens and aliens of 
 doubtful loyalty — that ultimately the close 
 watch on him cut down his activities — and 
 that under the amended espionage law any 
 one of a hundred things he did or said would 
 land him quickly in a Federal prison. 
 
 In the application of the Selective Service 
 Act the League has taken off the shoulders of 
 the Government one of its heaviest and most 
 important tasks. The draft was and is a 
 favoured field of German agents, who have 
 played upon ignorance and prejudice, religious 
 and union labour fears, racial antipathies, and 
 the baser emotions of cupidity and cowardice. 
 They have utilized every device to persuade 
 men to avoid their military obligations to the 
 country. To the League is assigned the task 
 of checking up all claims for exemptions and 
 all failures to appear before exemption boards. 
 This work, especially in the cities, has entailed 
 enormous labour. 
 
 Space forbids a complete review of the League, 
 but at least a paragraph may be inserted about 
 its organization, which is a model of simplicity 
 and flexibility. The League creates and is re- 
 sponsible for its own organization in all of its 
 branches. Executive control of the organi- 
 zation is centred in a Board of National 
 
 220 
 
THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE 
 
 Directors operating from National Headquar- 
 ters at Washington, D. C, in cooperation with 
 the Attorney-General and the officials of the 
 Bureau of Investigation of the Department of 
 Justice, and through the latter with other de- 
 partments and agencies of the Government. 
 
 In each local office the chief is supreme. He 
 investigates his own men, invites them to join, 
 and directs their work. As already stated, 
 there is a double organization of the local 
 field — a classified organization of trades, pro- 
 fessions, industries, hotels, large individual es- 
 tablishments, and office buildings; and a Bureau 
 of Investigation whose organization is territorial. 
 Uniform blanks for reports and records are made 
 up after models supplied by national headquar- 
 ters, and uniform methods of making investi- 
 gations are adopted. This simple plan allows 
 each local organization to select the types of 
 men that best suit its needs and to adapt itself 
 entirely to local conditions, while maintaining 
 at the same time complete touch and coopera- 
 tion with other communities, with the national 
 organization, and with the Government. 
 
 The success of the League is attested by 
 Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory himself. 
 In his annual report to the Congress of the 
 United States he said of the League: "It has 
 proved to be invaluable and constitutes a most 
 
 221 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 important auxiliary and reserve force for the 
 Bureau of Investigation. . . . This organ- 
 ization has been of the greatest possible aid in 
 thousands of cases. ... Its work has been 
 performed in a thoroughly commendable manner 
 with a minimum of friction and complaint and 
 with motives of the highest patriotism. It is a 
 self-supporting organization, and it would be 
 difficult to exaggerate the value of its service 
 to the United States Department of Justice." 
 
 222 
 
CHAPTER X 
 The German-Hindu Conspiracy 
 
 THE German-Hindu plot to foment revo- 
 lution in India is an international drama 
 with touches of "Treasure Island" adventure 
 in the South Seas. The characters include Zim- 
 mermann, many German agents in the United 
 States (among them Bernstorff), some venal 
 Americans, and a horde of Hindus — some of 
 them ardent fanatics and some plain grafters. 
 The climax produced several executions, one 
 suicide, two cases of insanity, and a murder. 
 The production cost the Germans more than a 
 million dollars, and the net receipts were a 
 deficit. The scenes were laid in Berlin, Con- 
 stantinople, Switzerland, New York, Washing- 
 ton, Chicago, San Francisco, Socorro Island, 
 Honolulu, Manila, Java, Japan, China, Siam, 
 and India. The last act was laid in a Federal 
 penitentiary. 
 
 Writing from San Francisco, on November 4, 
 19x6, Wilhelm von Brincken, the military attache 
 of the German Consulate, addressed a letter to 
 his father to be "transmitted through the sub- 
 
 223 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 marine Deutschland on its second voyage from 
 the United States." The letter was never de- 
 livered; its boastful first paragraph and its later 
 candid text were read only by agents of the 
 United States Government. Von Brincken be- 
 gan: 
 
 My Dear Father: At last an opportunity presents it- 
 self to send an uncensored letter to all of you. May the 
 carrier, Germany's pride, have a happy voyage and reach 
 the home shore unscathed. 
 
 He then launched into bitter criticism of his 
 treatment at the Consulate, complaining es- 
 pecially of its niggardly support of his work. 
 Then lie wrote (the italics are mine): 
 
 As you know, / am the head and organizer of the Hindu 
 Nationalists on the Pacific. Revolutionary and propa- 
 ganda work costs money — much money. Berlin knows 
 that and does not economize. The Consul General [Franz 
 Bopp] also is under instructions to support the movement to 
 the best of his ability and to further it financially. How- 
 ever, there is a shortcoming in this respect. Whenever 
 money is urgently needed and I report to that effect, I 
 invariably meet with the same opposition. In ninety-nine 
 cases out of a hundred, the required amount is refused. 
 As a result, the work suffers, is delayed, good opportuni- 
 ties are missed, and my people — the Hindus — are fre- 
 quently exposed to danger of their lives. Just how many 
 fell into the hands of the English and were hung, owing to 
 unnecessary lack of funds, is, of course, wholly beyond 
 our calculation. The "old man" evidently dislikes this 
 type of work and, therefore, has no understanding for it. 
 
 224 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 The other day a Hindu was here, who came directly from 
 Switzerland, as messenger from Mr. Von Wesendonck, of 
 the Foreign Office {who has charge of Hindu matters there). 
 This Hindu wondered why work in San Francisco dragged 
 in such a manner and I told him quite frankly that if the 
 Hindu work were not reorganized from the ground up, and 
 made independent of the Consulate, the work would not 
 only suffer but half of it would be harmful. - 
 
 Later in the letter he says: 
 
 My Hindu described Wesendonck as a particularly 
 pleasing and fine person. 
 
 These extracts were written in November of 
 
 1916. They illuminate an earlier cable from 
 
 Von Wesendonck's chief, Zimmermann (the 
 
 German Foreign Minister in Berlin) written in 
 
 February of 1916 to Bernstorff at Washington, 
 
 which was "transmitted respectfully for your 
 
 information" to Von Papen in New York, and 
 
 which reads as follows: 
 
 Berlin, Feb. 4, 1916. 
 The German Embassy, 
 
 Washington. 
 
 In future all Indian affairs are to be exclusively handled 
 by the Committee to be formed by Dr. Chakravarty. 
 Dhriendra Sarkar and Heramba Lai Gupta, which latter 
 person has meantime been expelled from Japan, thus 
 cease to be independent representatives of the Indian 
 Independence Committee existing here. 
 
 Zimmermann. 
 
 In other words, before February, 19 16, the 
 German Government had been plotting with 
 
 225 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Hindus in the United States for the national 
 independence of India. Indeed, they had begun 
 the work before 1914, and they had become 
 active in it in July of that year — before they 
 started the World War, but after they had de- 
 cided to start it. By December, they were 
 directing Indian plots from Berlin with rami- 
 fications in nearly every neutral country in the 
 world. Two of these plots were hatched in the 
 United States — one in San Francisco and one 
 in Chicago. They were conspiracies to organize 
 military expeditions to India. Our Govern- 
 ment spoiled both of them, and the day after 
 we went into the war, or on April 7, 1917, the 
 United States' authorities arrested thirty-four 
 German-Hindu plotters in half a dozen cities 
 and subsequently convicted them all but one 
 of conspiracy. 
 
 The story begins in San Francisco. In 191 1, 
 a fanatical Indian agitator named Har Dayal 
 came to this country. He worked among the 
 large colonies of turbaned Hindu labourers on the 
 Pacific Coast who had succeeded the Chinese 
 and Japanese coolies in the orchards and gardens 
 and on the railroad tracks in that region of 
 abundant climate and scarce labour. Dayal or- 
 ganized the Hindu Pacific Coast Association and 
 established its headquarters in San Francisco, 
 to which these men came looking for a job or a 
 
 226 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 night's lodging, and where they were fed on 
 rice and revolution. Dayal next established a 
 printing plant and began to publish a paper 
 called Ghadr, which means The Revolution. The 
 Ghadr was out for blood. It preached Hindu 
 uprising in terms of assassination and dynamite. 
 The first number of the Ghadr was published 
 in November, 191 3. At once it disclosed a Ger- 
 man influence. In the issue of November 15, 
 
 1913, it printed these sentences: "The Germans 
 have great sympathy with our movement, be- 
 cause they and ourselves have a common enemy 
 (the English). In the future Germany can 
 draw assistance from us, and they can render 
 us great assistance also." 
 
 As the World War approached, this German 
 influence became more manifest. On July 21, 
 
 1914, two days before Austria's ultimatum to 
 Serbia, the Ghadr said : 
 
 "All intelligent people know that Germany is 
 an enemy of England. We also are mortal 
 enemies of England. So the enemy of our 
 enemy is our friend. " 
 
 A week later, the Ghadr welcomed the ap- 
 proach of war: 
 
 "If this war does not start to-day, it will 
 to-morrow. So welcome ! India has got her 
 chance. . . . Hasten preparations for meet- 
 ing with the speed of wind and storm, and no 
 
 227 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 sooner the war starts in Europe, you start a 
 mutiny in India." 
 
 And on August 4th it declared : 
 
 "O Warriors! The opportunity that you 
 have been searching for years has come . . . 
 there is hope that Germany will help you." 
 
 In all this the United States had no interest. 
 We were neutral, and what Germany did to 
 England was (we thought) England's lookout. 
 Also, we were "the asylum of the oppressed" 
 and "the home of free speech" — and if the 
 Hindus thought they ought to talk revolution 
 we were not concerned. It was not until the 
 Hindus and the Germans started "gun running" 
 from our West Coast that we took a hand. 
 
 Har Dayal, nevertheless, was too ferocious 
 even for the home of free speech. Early in 
 1 9 14, he made speeches so villainously offensive 
 to common decency and order that he was 
 arrested and held for deportation on the ground 
 of being an undesirable alien. He jumped bail 
 in March and fled — to Berlin. He arrived there 
 about the time the war clouds began to darken 
 the skies of Europe, and found a sympathetic 
 haven in the German Foreign Office. In com- 
 pany with other Hindu revolutionists, and under 
 the fostering care of Von Wesendonck, he or- 
 ganized that "Indian Independence Committee 
 existing here" of which Zimmermann spoke 
 
 228 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 affectionately in his cable to Bernstorff, already 
 quoted. 
 
 In Har Dayal's place in San Francisco arose 
 another Hindu revolutionary leader, one Ram 
 Chandra. He succeeded to the management of 
 the Hindu Pacific Coast Association, to the 
 editorship of the Ghadr, and to the sympathetic 
 understanding with the German agents in San 
 Francisco. These German agents were Bopp, 
 the consul-general, and his staff, of whom Von 
 Brincken, the military attache, was the agent 
 with whom all personal dealings were carried 
 on. Of the scores of Hindus with unpro- 
 nounceable names and of their noisy speeches 
 and noisome writings, there is no need to make 
 record. But the warlike activities of the Hindus 
 and their German friends were important, dan- 
 gerous, and interesting. 
 
 On January 9, 1915, W. C. Hughes, of 103 
 Duane Street, New York, shipped ten carloads 
 of freight to San Diego, Cal. The freight bill 
 was heavy — $11,783.74 — and it was prepaid by 
 a check on the Guaranty Trust Company, 
 signed by a German named Hans Tauscher. 
 This German was the well-known American 
 agent of Krupps, and it later developed that 
 the ten carloads of freight were eight thousand 
 rifles and four million cartridges. They were 
 sent to "Juan Bernardo Bowen," in care of 
 
 229 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 M. Martinez & Company, ship brokers of San 
 Diego. 
 
 This same " Bowen, " whose home address was 
 given as Topolobampo, Mexico, acting through 
 the same Martinez & Company, on January 19th, 
 chartered a sailing vessel for a round trip from 
 San Diego to Topolobampo. This vessel was 
 the Annie Larsen. The charter price was 
 $19,000, and this money was paid by J. Clyde 
 Hizar, of San Diego, "Bowen's" attorney. 
 Hizar got the money by wire from a bank in 
 San Francisco, which in turn got it from a 
 woman depositor, who in turn got it from Von 
 Brincken, who in turn got it from the German 
 Consulate's funds. This roundabout method 
 was, of course, designed to conceal the German 
 source of the money. 
 
 At about the same time, a company was or- 
 ganized in San Francisco to buy the oil tanker 
 Maverick from the Standard Oil Company. 
 Fred Jebsen, former lieutenant in the German 
 Navy, put up the money. The Maverick was 
 commanded by Captain H. C. Nelson, and her 
 movements were directed by a young American 
 adventurer, J. B. Starr-Hunt, whom Jebson 
 put aboard as super-cargo ("super-cargo" is an 
 agent put aboard ship by the owner of the mer- 
 chandise to have charge of the cargo). Parts of 
 a statement subsequently made by young Starr- 
 
 230 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 Hunt tell the rest of the story of the Maverick 
 and the Annie Larsen : 
 
 "I was born in San Antonio, Texas, in Novem- 
 ber, 1892. I went to a German school in Mexico 
 for nine years. Then I was at Dr. Holbrook's 
 school for four years at Ossining-on-Hudson, 
 New York. I was then for a year at the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia; three months at the Univer- 
 sity of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. Besides 
 this I always had private tutors. After leaving 
 the last-named college I joined my father's law 
 office in Mexico City. This was in the latter 
 part of 191 2. My father is one of the leading 
 foreign lawyers in Mexico. In December, 191 2, 
 I started for San Francisco to join F. Jebsen 
 & Co., a German firm of shipping agents. I 
 worked in Jebsen's office from February, 191 3, 
 to April, 191 5; that is, up to the time I joined 
 the Maverick. I was not actually in Jebsen's 
 office all this time; I made several trips to 
 various parts of the U. S. A. and Mexico. 
 
 "About 1st April, 1915, while I was at Chihua- 
 hua, I got a telegram from Jebsen asking me to 
 proceed at once to Los Angeles. I met Jebsen 
 there. He asked me if I cared to proceed to 
 San Jose del Cabo on the Maverick and then 
 transfer to another ship, the Annie Larsen y 
 either at San Jose* del Cabo or at any other point 
 on the Mexican coast. He told me that the 
 
 231 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Annie Larsen s cargo consisted of war material, 
 which was to be transhipped to the Maverick 
 at whatever point they should meet in Mexican 
 or Central American waters; that a man named 
 Page (I do not remember his initials, but per- 
 haps they were A. W.) who would be on the 
 Annie Larsen, was to take charge of the Maverick, 
 and that I myself was to take over the Annie 
 Larsen and proceed to trade with her in whatever 
 manner I might wish to, for six months, between 
 Mexican or Central American ports, but I was 
 not to return to any American port until after 
 the expiration of six months. He did not tell 
 me why the Annie Larsen was not to return to 
 an American port for six months, but the 
 reason was quite clear to me. As a matter of 
 fact, I had heard while I was in Chihuahua 
 that the Annie Larsen had departed from San 
 Diego with a cargo of war material, presumably 
 for some belligerent faction in Mexico. She 
 had cleared from San Diego for Topolobampo. 
 This fact had given rise to considerable comment 
 and notoriety. American papers had taken the 
 matter up, and the several arrests of Americans 
 and Mexicans made by the Government in San 
 Diego at the time were popularly believed to 
 have been in connection with the Annie Larsen 
 and her cargo. Evidently Jebsen, therefore, 
 thought that, if the Annie Larsen returned im- 
 
 232 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 mediately to an American port, complications 
 might arise. Jebsen was not explicit as to either 
 the destination, or the purpose, of the cargo. 
 One thing I was, however, sure of was that it 
 was not intended for the Mexican rebels. All 
 that Jebsen told me was that the cargo was 
 intended for the Orient, and in the course of 
 conversation he once mentioned Borneo. 
 
 "On the (?) of April, the Maverick finally 
 sailed from Los Angeles. On the morning of 
 that day Jebsen gave me a sealed letter, ad- 
 dressed to nobody, with verbal instructions to 
 hand it over to Page on the Annie Larsen 
 immediately after I met him. Jebsen seemed 
 to be anxious regarding this letter, and warned 
 me to be careful and to see that it fell into no other 
 hands. He also handed me another unaddressed 
 letter to be given to the same man. This was an 
 open letter which I read soon after leaving Los 
 Angeles. There were two enclosures which 
 were printed. One was a circular or memorandum 
 of instructions as to how to work the machine 
 gun or a small Hotchkiss, the diagram of which 
 was given on the second enclosure. I am not 
 quite certain of the type of weapon drawn on 
 that second enclosure, but I think it was one 
 of the two I have mentioned. The printed 
 circular was evidently from the makers of that 
 arm, but the manufacturer's name was care- 
 
 233 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 fully cut out from it. Jebsen also handed me 
 a third letter, without address, for Page, and 
 open. It contained typewritten instructions as 
 to how to stow the cargo to be transhipped from 
 the Annie Lars en. It was just a short note, 
 more in the nature of a suggestion than in- 
 structions. It said that the cases containing 
 rifles were to be stowed in one of the two empty 
 tanks of the Maverick and flooded with oil. 
 The ammunition cases were to be stowed in the 
 other empty tank, which was not to be flooded 
 except as a last resort. This note, too, was 
 intended for Page. There was a fourth open 
 note for myself which contained suggestions as 
 to what I should do in future with the Annie 
 Larsen. Jebsen, at the same time, made over 
 to me a bundle, consisting of about ten letters, 
 with instructions to hand it over to Page. All 
 these letters were addressed to Captain Oth- 
 mann. Although Jebsen did not tell me so, 
 I concluded that 'Page' and 'Othmann' were one 
 and the same man, and that 'Page' was an as- 
 sumed name. 
 
 "The day before sailing Jebsen introduced me 
 to a man named B. Miller, who, he said, was a 
 Swedish mining engineer, and who was going 
 on the Maverick as far as San Jose del Cabo, to 
 proceed thence to the mines near La Paz. 
 Jebsen asked me to assist Miller in taking five 
 
 234 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 'Persians' from Los Angeles to San Pedro, and in 
 finding quarters for them there for the night 
 as they were to go on board the Maverick the 
 following day. Jebsen told me nothing about 
 these five Persians except that they were going 
 with the Maverick as passengers right through 
 to her destination, and were to be signed on the 
 articles as anything. Accordingly I met Miller 
 again the same evening at the Los Angeles 
 railway station. I found five black men with 
 him. On seeing me, he said: 'Here are my men/ 
 He purchased tickets for them, and we all left 
 by train for San Pedro, where I found lodgings 
 for them in a cheap boarding-house for the 
 night. 
 
 "The next morning I went on board the 
 Maverick at San Pedro, where I met the Port 
 Commissioner and the crew, who were already 
 on board signed on. Captain Nelson was 
 present. Miller signed on as 'store-keeper' 
 and the five Persians as 'waiters.' 
 
 "One of the five Persian waiters, named 
 Jehangir, was evidently the leader and generally 
 kept himself away from the rest. As far as I 
 remember, the names of the others were Khan, 
 Dutt, Deen, and Sham Slier. Later on I dis- 
 covered that all these were false names. Je- 
 hangir's real name, I believe, was Hari Singh; 
 he signed his accounts and receipts as Hari 
 
 235 
 
FIGHTING QERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Singh. I have no idea of the real names of 
 the others. 
 
 "Five days after leaving Los Angeles we 
 arrived at San Jose del Cabo, 27th April, I 
 think. There Miller left us, and there, at 
 Nelson's instance, I applied for and got fresh 
 clearance for 'Anjer, Java, via Pacific Islands.' 
 This is the first time that any definite port 
 was mentioned to me as the Maverick's des- 
 tination. There were evidently two reasons 
 for not obtaining this clearance from the original 
 port of departure; first, they did not want the 
 American authorities to know the precise desti- 
 nation of the Maverick, which already had roused 
 a certain amount of suspicion; and, secondly, 
 because, I am sure, such a clearance as we 
 desired would not be granted by any American 
 port. According to it the Maverick could have 
 touched at every island in the Pacific before 
 arriving at Anjer. Jebsen had given me to 
 understand that we might meet the Annie 
 Larsen at San Jose del Cabo, but she was not 
 there; so we left that port on the 28th of April 
 and proceeded to Socorro Island where we 
 arrived at 9 p. m. on the 29th and anchored in 
 a bay some thirty yards off the shore. As we 
 anchored, Nelson informed the crew that he 
 was expecting to meet at that place the schooner 
 Annie Larsen and asked them to be on the look- 
 
 236 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 out for her. Altogether we were twenty-nine 
 days at that island waiting for the schooner, 
 which did not turn up after all. By the time 
 we had anchored it was very dark and the 
 first sign of life on the island was as camp fire 
 close to the shore. Shortly after, a small boat 
 pulled alongside with two American sailors in it. 
 One of them came on the bridge and saw the 
 captain, and after putting the question 'Are 
 you the people who are looking for the Annie 
 Larsen? 9 and getting a reply in the affirmative, 
 he said that the Annie Larsen had been at the 
 island, and being short of water, had left some 
 thirteen days before. He delivered a note to 
 Nelson stating that it was left by the Annie 
 Larsen s super-cargo, Page. Nelson passed the 
 note over to me to read. It was a short note in 
 English, saying: 'This will be delivered to you by 
 a member of the crew of the schooner Emma, 
 who will explain his own position. I have been 
 waiting for you a month, and am now going to 
 the Mexican West Coast for supplies and water. 
 I will return as soon as possible. Please await 
 my return/ (Signed) 'Page.' 
 
 "The sailor man then told the following story : 
 that he and his companion in the boat and two 
 Mexican customs-house officials, who were in 
 camp ashore, had left San Jose del Cabo some 
 time before on the small American schooner 
 
 237 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 Emma, with a cargo of bark for the Mexican 
 port of Loreto; that the captain had proven 
 himself incompetent, and they had lost their 
 bearings, and after sailing for many days had 
 eventually arrived at this island, which the 
 master declared was a point close to Man- 
 zanillo, but which they discovered to be an 
 island. The mate had died at sea; the master's 
 name was Clarke. These four men declined to 
 go any farther with the captain of that ship 
 and preferred to be left on the island on the 
 off chance of being picked up by a passing vessel. 
 The captain and the cook, the only other mem- 
 bers of the crew, had left some days earlier for 
 the Mexican coast. At the same time the 
 Emma touched the island the Annie Larsen 
 was there, and she provided the castaways 
 with three empty water tanks, a rifle, and a few 
 provisions. Since the departure of the Annie 
 Larsen they were hoping for assistance being 
 sent to them from the Mexican coast. We 
 subsequently discovered that these castaways 
 had rigged up a sort of condenser with the aid 
 of their tanks and some old piping. 
 
 "The castaway who came on the Maverick 
 at Socorro further told us that Page had told 
 him that he had left another letter buried 
 somewhere on the island close to the shore by 
 the bay, which could be easily found if we 
 
 238 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 would make a search for it. Assisted by some 
 of the castaways I made a search for the second 
 note left by Page and found it buried in a 
 bottle under a sign which read: Took Here/ 
 The second note was a lengthy repetition of 
 the first. Page asked us to help the castaways 
 but cautioned us not to take them aboard our 
 ship. He said he would return as soon as he 
 could get water and that we were to wait for 
 him. I returned to the ship with the note 
 and read it out to Nelson. Disregarding Page's 
 warning not to take the castaways aboard, he 
 immediately asked them to come aboard, if they 
 cared, which they did. They remained on the 
 Maverick till the 6th of May when the American 
 collier (Government ship) Nanshan arrived and 
 took them off. 
 
 "The following Thursday, 13th May, H. M. S. 
 Kent arrived; two officers boarded us immedi- 
 ately and examined our papers. They returned 
 and came on again the next morning accom- 
 panied by several marines. They made a 
 thorough search of the vessel this time and 
 returned to their ship. Nelson returned the 
 call. On his return Nelson told me that the 
 Kent's commander had questioned him rather 
 closely as to what the Maverick was doing 
 there and that in reply he had told him 
 that he could not disclose his real purpose 
 
 239 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 but in a roundabout sort of way hinted 
 that she was there in connection with the 
 Mexican troubles. The Kent remained there for 
 about forty hours, during which I struck up 
 an acquaintance with several of the officers. I 
 directed them where good fishing and shooting 
 were to be had and provided them with a few 
 supplies. Although there was no water to be 
 had on that island there were plenty of wild 
 sheep. I am unable to say how they existed 
 without water outside the rainy season. 
 
 "The Annie Lars en not turning up, we left 
 about the 26th of May. Just before we left 
 I went ashore and left there two notes in bottles 
 for the Annie Larsen addressed to Page in case 
 the ship should turn up after we had left. I 
 put one of the bottles in a conspicuous place 
 in the castaways' camp. This note read as 
 follows: 'Consult our Post Office/ by 'our 
 Post Office' I meant the place where Page him- 
 self had buried his note for us. The other 
 bottle I buried where I had found Page's, and put 
 up another signboard saying 'Look again.' This 
 note told Page all that had occurred during our 
 stay at the island and that we were going some- 
 where where we could get further instructions. 
 
 "Immediately after the first boarding party 
 from H. M. S. Kent had left the Maverick after 
 going through our papers, I was sent for by 
 
 240 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 Captain Nelson on the bridge. When I got up 
 there I found him in conversation with Jehangir. 
 I gathered from Nelson that Jehangir had aboard 
 two sacks and six suitcases full of literature 
 which he was very anxious to hide from the 
 Kent. We were expecting another visit from 
 the Kent for the purpose of searching the ship, 
 and Jehangir said he would not like the literature 
 to fall into the hands of the Kent party. Jehangir 
 did not like the idea of destroying the literature 
 and suggested that it should be quietly taken 
 ashore and buried there, pending the departure 
 of the Kent. Neither Nelson nor myself fell 
 in with the suggestion and were of opinion 
 that it should be destroyed straight away, if 
 it were dangerous to retain it. Jehangir event- 
 ually agreed to this and said he would just 
 keep a sample of the various papers and pam- 
 phlets he had. Nelson grumbled even at that. 
 I am not sure whether Jehangir did really pre- 
 serve any specimens, but I think he did. The 
 two sacks with their contents and the con- 
 tents of the six suitcases were immediately 
 burnt in the engine room. I personally saw 
 some of this literature. It was all printed 
 matter in a character unknown to me. Some 
 of it was in newspaper form, some in leaflets, 
 but most of it was in the form of pamphlets; 
 the outside cover being mostly pink. The six 
 
 241 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 empty suitcases were appropriated by various 
 members of the crew, I took one of them myself, 
 and it is with me at the present moment. 
 Later I learned from Jehangir that the literature 
 was printed in San Francisco and copies of it 
 'existed' in Constantinople and Berlin. 
 
 "Aft^r depositing the two notes on the shore, 
 we weighed anchor. Nelson informed me that 
 he intended proceeding to San Diego . . . 
 
 "After about thirty hours' absence ashore at 
 San Diego the party returned to the Maverick, 
 bringing with them a few supplies. Nelson in- 
 formed me that he was now going to Hilo, 
 Hawaii, and when we were well under way he 
 told me that from the Brewster Hotel, San 
 Diego, he had rung up Jebsen at San Francisco 
 on the long distance telephone and was told 
 in reply to wait at the hotel until he heard from 
 him (Jebsen) further. The following morning 
 he got a wire from Jebsen instructing Nelson 
 to proceed to Hilo, Hawaii, where he would 
 receive further orders. Nelson said he had no 
 word of the Annie Larsen. 
 
 "We left for Coronados Island on or about the 
 2d of June and arrived at Hilo on or about the 
 14th. Port officials came alongside and de- 
 manded who we were and what out business was. 
 The captain told them what sort of clearance 
 we had and that we had entered Hilo to commu- 
 
 242 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 nicate with his owners. At about 8 p. m., when 
 it was dark, Captain Elbo, of the war-bound 
 German merchantman Ahlers, came alongside in 
 a small dinghy rowed by one German sailor and 
 asked to be allowed aboard to speak to the 
 captain. Nelson spoke to him over the rail, 
 declining to take the German captain aboard as 
 the health officer had not cleared the ship, but 
 offered to see him the following morning. Be- 
 fore Elbo left, however, he passed a note up to 
 Nelson, who showed it to me later on in his 
 cabin. It read as follows: 'Maverick is to 
 proceed to Johnson Island and then await the 
 arrival of the schooner Annie Larsen and the 
 rest of the ship's programme is to be just as 
 settled before/ namely, that after transferring 
 the cargo to the Maverick, the Maverick was to 
 proceed on her original voyage. 
 
 "Later Captain Elbo took us to the office of 
 Hackfield & Company. There we met a young 
 German named Schroeder who, Elbo gave us to 
 understand, was the chief representative of the 
 Maverick Company at Honolulu and had spe- 
 cially come down to Hilo to meet Nelson about 
 Maverick's future plans. It appeared that while 
 we were still at the Collector's office a war- 
 telegrams slip had been out, and among other 
 items of interest was mentioned the arrival in 
 Hilo of the mysterious ship Maverick, whose 
 
 243 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 captain had made a statement that he had been 
 trading in the South Sea Islands and he intended 
 leaving for Anjer, Java, stopping at Johnson 
 Island on the way. Schroeder had seen this 
 slip just before we called on him and was 
 apparently highly indignant that Nelson should 
 have disclosed the future movements of the 
 Maverick to the press representative. Schroeder 
 told Nelson that it would be impossible for him 
 to permit him, Nelson, to go on to Johnson 
 Island after the news had been made public and 
 that he, Schroeder, would have now to recast 
 his plans. He asked Nelson to wait at Hilo 
 till he should hear from him from Honolulu, 
 where he, Schroeder, must return to arrange 
 for fresh plans. At Nelson's request Schroeder 
 authorized Hackfleld to pay all bills f O. K'd' 
 by Nelson and to give him such money as he 
 might require. 
 
 "Thus we were at Hilo close on two weeks, 
 during which time I personally attended to all 
 the ship's needs. I was assisted by Captain 
 Elbo. 
 
 "A couple of days before we sailed from Hilo, 
 Nelson and I met Elbo and another captain of a 
 war-bound German merchantman in Honolulu, 
 who, we were told, had specially come down to 
 give Nelson final instructions. The Honolulu 
 captain told us that the original plans of the 
 
 244 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 Maverick were now finally abandoned, as it was 
 impossible to use the Maverick any more for the. 
 purpose she was intended for, in view of the 
 notoriety she had obtained. The Maverick was 
 now to proceed to Anjer-Java, calling at Johnson 
 Island; that on arrival at Anjer she was to clear 
 for Batavia and report herself to Behn Meyers, 
 the Maverick Company's agents. Elbo and the 
 Honolulu captain came aboard the Maverick. 
 The Honolulu captain had a private talk with 
 me alone in my cabin. He handed me a sealed 
 packet which evidently contained a plate of 
 something heavy. The letter was unaddressed. 
 I was instructed to hand this over to Helfferich 
 at Behn Meyers upon arrival in Batavia. I did 
 not know then who this Helfferich was, nor did 
 I ask who he was. I was merely told that 
 he was the manager of Behn Meyers. I was 
 asked to be careful of that letter, and I was not 
 to give it to anybody else. Shortly after, the 
 Honolulu captain and Elbo left, and we put 
 to sea. 
 
 "When we were a couple or three days out of 
 Hilo, Hari Singh, during a conversation, referred 
 once more to the literature we had destroyed at 
 Socorro, and said that it was the product of many 
 of his countrymen who were in America and that 
 he himself had contributed to it. He claimed to 
 have the whole of it by heart and could repeat it 
 
 245 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 without mistake. He was evidently an exile, 
 for he said that 'during the many years of his 
 exile from India' he had at various times written 
 a good deal against the British rule in India. 
 He gave me to understand that formerly he 
 belonged to the Indian Army. He said his 
 home was in the far interior of the country 
 inhabited by ignorant classes, and that if he 
 could only succeed in getting to them, he would 
 easily incite them to revolt against the British 
 Government by promising to provide them with 
 arms and ammunition. He was still under the 
 impression that we were on our way to India, and 
 said that he knew the place we were bound for 
 very well, and so did the other four, and that 
 he could be of great assistance after we got 
 there. 
 
 "We got to Johnson Island five days after our 
 departure from Hilo. There was no Annie Lar- 
 sen there. I went ashore together with the mate 
 and left a bottle with a message as follows: 
 'The American steamer Maverick entered and 
 cleared here to-day/ We left there the same 
 afternoon and made for Anjer, Java. After over 
 three weeks' voyage we arrived at Anjer about 
 the 20th of July. After examination we asked for 
 and obtained permission to proceed to Batavia, 
 and we set sail the same afternoon accompanied 
 by a Dutch torpedo boat. Early next morning 
 
 246 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 we arrived outside Batavia, and later we were 
 taken into port by the harbour master. 
 
 "Two or three days outside Anjer I read the 
 letter made over to me by Jebsen at Los Angeles 
 for Page. Owing to Jebsen's warning to be care- 
 ful about it, I had always carried this letter on 
 my person so as not to lose it. The result was 
 that the envelope had almost fallen to bits; 
 now and again I put the letter, together with the 
 old cover, into a new envelope, but toward the 
 end they, too, got broken up. So I had not to 
 open it to read it. The contents were type- 
 written in German, and were a sheet and a half 
 of the ordinary square business paper. As far 
 as I am able to recollect, the letter read as 
 follows : 'Upon the meeting of the Annie Larsen 
 with the Maverick at . . . (blank) the 
 transhipment of the cargo must be commenced 
 at once. The official reason to be given out 
 was that the Maverick is going to Batavia or 
 some other Oriental port to be sold or chartered. 
 It may be suggested that she is good for oil 
 trade on the China Coast. The cases con- 
 taining rifles should be stowed in one of the two 
 empty tanks and flooded, and the cases of 
 ammunition should be placed in the other, but 
 need not be flooded unless as a last resort. 
 Maverick should then proceed to Anjer, Java. 
 No attempt is to be made to escape from British 
 
 247 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 warships, if encountered at sea, nor should she 
 try to avoid meeting merchantmen or warships 
 of other nationalities. In case of her meeting 
 a warship she should act in a manner abso- 
 lutely open and above suspicion. In case of her 
 being boarded by enemy officers all cordiality 
 should be shown to them, and, in fact, an in- 
 spection should actually be offered, to put them 
 off their suspicion. Under no condition is the 
 steamer or the cargo to be permitted to fall 
 into their hands. Should the cargo be dis- 
 covered, and should there be no escape from 
 capture, the Captain is ordered not to hesitate 
 to have recourse to the last resort, namely, to 
 sink the ship. Upon arriving at Anjer the 
 Maverick will be met in the Sunda Strait by 
 a small friendly boat which will instruct you 
 regarding further details. Should you not be 
 met at Anjer you are to proceed to Bangkok, 
 where you are to arrive toward dusk. Here 
 you will be met by a German pilot who will 
 give you further instructions; should you not 
 be met here, also, you are to proceed to Karachi. 
 Outside Karachi the Maverick is to be met by 
 numerous small friendly fishing craft. The 
 fishing craft, together with the five blacks 
 aboard, will attend to the unloading and landing 
 of the cargo. Two of the blacks should go 
 ashore immediately on arrival and proceed in- 
 
 248 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 land to notify your arrival to "the people. " 
 The remaining three blacks and the friendly 
 natives will assist in burying the cargo. Should 
 no friendly fishing boats meet you, two of the 
 blacks should go ashore and do the notifying 
 of the people.' 
 
 "After the mission was over, that is whether 
 the Maverick was successful or not, she was to go 
 to Batavia and report to Behn Meyers & Com- 
 pany. The last instruction in the letter was 
 that all undelivered papers were to be handed 
 over to Behn Meyers. In accordance with this 
 I made over the letter to Helfferich on our 
 arrival. 
 
 "After we had been in. the harbour (Batavia) 
 for about an hour or so a German came aboard 
 and introduced himself as Kolbe, 2d Officer of 
 the war-bound merchantman Silesia. Nelson 
 signed me to leave them alone, which I did. 
 After they had conversed for about twenty 
 minutes, Kolbe, Nelson, and myself went ashore 
 together and motored down to Helfferich's 
 residence at Konigsplein W. 8. On the way 
 we stopped at the American Consulate; Nelson 
 went in alone. While waiting for him outside 
 in the car I had a talk with Kolbe. He knew 
 all about the Maverick and her mission. When 
 I told him that I should like to interview the 
 manager of Behn Meyers to deliver the letter 
 
 249 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 given to me by Dinart at Hilo, Kolbe replied 
 that Helfferich, the man we were on our way 
 to, was the manager and I could make the 
 letter over to him. Dinart had not mentioned 
 Helfferich by name at the time of handing 
 the letter to me. He asked me just to de- 
 liver it to Behn Meyers. When Nelson joined 
 us again we proceeded to Helfferich's place 
 where I met for the first time the brothers 
 Theodore and Emile Helfferich. Kolbe and I 
 retired to another part of the house while 
 Nelson and the brothers held a conversation 
 for half an hour or so. After Nelson had done, 
 he left with Kolbe, leaving me with the brothers. 
 I spent about an hour with them. I gave 
 Theodore Helfferich Dinart's letter which he 
 opened in my presence. It was a typewritten 
 sheet in code. Helfferich said it would take 
 him some time to decode it. The 'weight' inside 
 the letter I have spoken of was what looked like 
 a thin slab of lead enclosed in another cover. 
 Helfferich opened this cover and on seeing that 
 it was a thin slab, threw it aside without taking 
 the trouble of examining it closely. I have no 
 idea what it was for, but I imagine that in 
 case it had to be suddenly thrown overboard 
 the weight inside the cover would sink the 
 letter at once. I told them all about our trip, 
 and showed them the letters I had brought with 
 
 250 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 me. Helfferich read the letter intended for 
 Page, and remarked that the arrangements 
 made at this end were substantially the same 
 as those indicated in the letter. He said the 
 signals were the same, and password was the 
 same, and the code was the same. Emile 
 spoke up and said that he had waited for the 
 Maverick for three weeks in the Sunda Strait. 
 They deeply regretted the failure of the Maverick 
 in not bringing the arms and said that their 
 arrangements on this side were excellent and 
 they were only waiting the arrival of the cargo 
 when they could have easily put their whole 
 scheme through. They observed that 'the 
 people' in India were all ready and prepared 
 and had only been waiting for the arms to turn 
 up. They did not discuss their own scheme 
 with me. Theodore Helfferich expressed his dis- 
 gust at the Maverick being thrust upon him 
 and could not understand the object of her 
 being sent to Batavia when she was not carrying 
 the cargo, and when she could have as easily 
 returned to America. It was then arranged 
 that I should take up my lodging in a hotel 
 ashore and in the meantime Helfferich would 
 decipher the code letter. Things were to be 
 left alone until he had read that. 
 
 "A couple of days after, I was rung up by 
 Helfferich and I went and saw him at his place 
 
 251 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 in the evening. He had deciphered the letter 
 which had 'originated' from San Francisco. 
 Helfferich said that the letter directed the 
 abandonment of the Maverick, which was either 
 to be sold or chartered to anybody or that she 
 could be used for any regular purpose if Helf- 
 ferich so desired. She was, if not sold, to be 
 retained in this part of the world and on no 
 account to be returned to America." 
 
 So fizzled the German-Hindu gun-running 
 expedition to India. The Maverick had arrived, 
 with five "Persians" and no guns, at a Dutch port 
 in the Indies — not India. The Hindus and the 
 crew scattered to the winds; Starr-Hunt started 
 to return to Los Angeles but was detained by 
 the British authorities at Singapore, and ulti- 
 mately appeared in the Federal court-room at 
 San Francisco as the chief witness for the 
 Government in its case against the German 
 consul and his staff, the complacent Americans, 
 and the Hindu conspirators. The Annie Larsen 
 wandered up and down the Pacific Coast, and 
 finally put in at Hoquiam, Wash., where she 
 was promptly seized and her cargo of arms 
 and ammunition locked up by the United 
 States Government. 
 
 Von Brincken bore bitter testimony to the fail- 
 ure of the Maverick expedition, in the course of a 
 "Report Concerning My Activities at the Im- 
 
 252 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 perial Consulate in San Francisco, California" — 
 a report written November 10, 1916, and in- 
 tended for the eyes of the German Foreign 
 Office. He said: 
 
 "I complied with that instruction and met 
 Ram Chandra and other leaders of the Hindu 
 Nationalists, and there laid the foundation for 
 the entire Hindu work which has since then been 
 carried out here on the Pacific. . . . Up to 
 the present date, I have fulfilled this assignment 
 absolutely alone . . . Mr. Von Schack has 
 seen Ram Chandra only a few times during the 
 entire period — while Consul-General Bopp saw 
 the man only once. I had nothing to do with 
 the ship-matters in connection with the Hindu 
 affair. Therefore, I am not responsible for the 
 failure of the 6 Maverick Expedition/ I had only 
 planned the point of landing at Karachi. Besides, 
 through messengers, I had prepared the populace 
 of the Punjab for the arrival of the Maverick." . 
 
 At the time of the Maverick enterprise, and 
 after its failure, the Germans engineered a half 
 dozen plots with the Hindus, looking toward 
 revolution in India. Von Papen in New York 
 directed a scheme for an incursion into north- 
 western India through Afghanistan. The Ger- 
 man Consul-General in Chicago shipped two 
 German officers and two Hindu agitators to 
 the Orient to train Hindu soldiers in upper Siam 
 
 253 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 for an invasion of Burma. Wesendonck sent 
 Har Dayal from Berlin to Constantinople to 
 act as chairman of a committee of Moham- 
 medans who were to incite the Mussulman 
 population of India to revolt. Ram Chandra, 
 at the instigation of Von Brincken, sent Hindu 
 emissaries from San Francisco to organize revo- 
 lutionary movements among the Indians in Ma- 
 nila, Tokyo, Shanghai — even in Seoul and Peking. 
 Other emissaries, gathering men and money or 
 transmitting messages, worked in Panama, in 
 Switzerland, in the Sinai Peninsula, in Sweden — 
 scarcely a country in the world but was touched 
 by a filament of this spider's web of German 
 intrigue. 
 
 And, like gossamer, it all came to airy nothing- 
 ness. A few dacoities [robberies accompanied 
 by violence], a few vain attempts to suborn 
 loyal native troops in India, were the net results 
 of enormous labours, lengthy journeys, and huge 
 expenditures of money. 
 
 By December, 1915, the German Govern- 
 ment became impatient of this much ado about 
 nothing. But it did not abandon hope. Zim- 
 mermann summoned a little, nervous, excitable 
 Hindu from New York to Berlin. Dr. Chak- 
 ravarty left America on a false passport, and in 
 February, 1916, was appointed in Berlin to head 
 the Indian intrigues in America. Zimmermann's 
 
 254 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 cable to Bernstorff, quoted in the first part of 
 this article, notified the German authorities here 
 of his appointment. By August, Dr. Chakrav- 
 arty was in San Francisco, consulting with Ram 
 Chandra and the Germans there. 
 
 Chakravarty and Ram Chandra had one thing 
 in common — both knew the value of real estate. 
 Out of their joint operations in the insubstantial 
 pursuit of Indian liberty, each emerged with 
 some perfectly sound investments in mundane 
 property, paid for with money subtracted from 
 the German gold that passed through their hands 
 for the "freeing of the oppressed." Chakrav- 
 arty put about forty thousand dollars into New 
 York apartments, and Ram Chandra several 
 thousands into residence and business property 
 in San Francisco. 
 
 Ram Chandra's real-estate ventures got him 
 into trouble. They gave the needed opportunity 
 to his rival for control of the Hindu organization 
 in California. This rival was Bhagwan Singh, 
 the poet and orator of the "Movement." Late 
 in 1916, he accused Ram Chandra of stealing 
 Hindu funds. The directors of the Hindu 
 Pacific Coast Association investigated the charge, 
 and threw Ram Chandra out. Bhagwan Singh 
 became president of the association and editor 
 of the Ghadr. A few months later, when the 
 United States entered the war, the whole crew 
 
 255 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 was arrested, along with the German agents 
 in San Francisco and Honolulu and with the 
 Americans and German-Americans implicated in 
 the Maverick enterprise. 
 
 The trial of these men was one of the most 
 picturesque scenes ever enacted in an American 
 court. In the prisoner's dock aggressive blond 
 German officers sat beside anaemic, swarthy, 
 turbaned Hindus and plain American business 
 men. To make the evidence intelligible to the 
 jury, a map of half the world was painted on one 
 wall of the court-room, showing America and 
 Asia and the Pacific Ocean, splotched with red 
 dots and routes of travel. Beside the map were 
 printed the names of the defendants, so that 
 their strangeness might be somewhat simplified. 
 Among the polyglot evidence were Hindu publi- 
 cations in six Oriental languages, including Per- 
 sian; cipher messages which, when deciphered, 
 proved to be an Indian revolutionist's letters 
 which had to be translated by reference to page 
 and line of an American's book about "Germany 
 and the Germans"; enciphered code, written 
 in Berlin by the German Foreign Minister, 
 transmitted to Stockholm and thence by the 
 Swedish Government to Buenos Aires and thence 
 by Count Luxburg to Bernstorff in Washington, 
 telling him to pay an East Indian in New York 
 money for use in San Francisco to send arms to 
 
 256 
 
THE GERMAN-HINDU CONSPIRACY 
 
 revolutionists near Calcutta — besides other 
 oddities of men and places and documents too 
 numerous to mention. 
 
 The episode of the Maverick and the Annie 
 Larsen occupied a large place in the trial. One 
 of the humours of that fiasco was the proof that 
 "Juan Bernardo Bowen," of Topolobampo, 
 Mexico, was a romantic imagining to conceal 
 plain Bernard Manning of San Diego. There 
 was no Juan Bernardo. The man who got 
 Tauscher's shipment of arms for the Annie 
 Larsen was Manning. 
 
 The prosecution proved that the funds for 
 the purchase of the Maverick and for the charter 
 of the Annie Larsen were got from the German 
 Consulate's bank accounts in San Francisco, and 
 were concealed by an elaborate jugglery through 
 a chain of American lawyers and shipping agents 
 in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. 
 
 The end of the story is briefly told in the 
 following despatch to the New York Sun, dated 
 San Francisco, April 24, 191 8 : 
 
 Twenty-nine men, charged with conspiring on Ameri- 
 can soil to start a revolution against British rule in India, 
 were found guilty by a jury in Federal Court early to-day. 
 
 Just as court adjourned for the noon recess yesterday, 
 the last day of the trial, Ram Singh, a defendant, shot 
 and killed Ram Chandra, another defendant. United 
 States Marshal James Holohan shot Ram Singh dead in his 
 tracks. 
 
 257 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Dr. Scheele, Chemical Spy 
 
 ONE day the Department of Justice in 
 Washington received a brief code message, 
 dated from Havana, saying that "Dr. Scheele" 
 was coming home. The War Department also 
 had received a code message; these started 
 a little hum of activity. The messages gave 
 a key to the possession of certain papers. 
 Hurriedly a special agent of the Department 
 of Justice was provided with a letter written in 
 the cipher designated. The agent spoke Ger- 
 man, looked German, and hastened to the home 
 of an unsuspecting custodian of some of the 
 Fatherland's most damaging records, and there 
 arranged with the guardian for a safer place 
 for such papers. But the duly-accredited 
 messenger wasn't German at all, and the 
 papers handed over widened out the trail of 
 one big German plot. 
 
 Who was this Dr. Scheele? He was a quiet 
 German chemist who sometimes aided the 
 police in detecting traces of crime. JDidn't 
 his neighbours know him? Of course; he was 
 
 258 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 that genial and entertaining German-American 
 who owned a drug store in Brooklyn, one of 
 the desirable kind of citizens, the law-abiding 
 kind of foreigner whom we welcomed in our 
 midst. Did the business world know him? 
 Yes; he was president of the New Jersey Agri- 
 cultural Chemical Company, a concern which 
 kept its contracts and paid its debts. America 
 was satisfied with this president, the adopted 
 son, who had married an American wife and 
 resided peacefully among us for twenty-four 
 years, Why not ? 
 
 When the French liner La Lorraine caught 
 fire at sea with hospital nurses and supplies 
 of mercy on board, what could this have to do 
 with an inconspicuous druggist in Brooklyn? — 
 or when numerous ships sailed loaded with sugar 
 or supplies for the needy neutrals abroad, and 
 never after were heard of? 
 
 Finally a British cruiser with an inquisitive 
 captain overhauled the steamship Rize which 
 was carrying a cargo of fertilizer badly needed 
 for the fields in Denmark. There was nothing 
 particularly suspicious about a cargo packed 
 in sacks, just ordinary brown powdered fer- 
 tilizer of the most common variety and shipped 
 by the New Jersey Agricultural Chemical Co. 
 But for some reason the papers didn't entirely 
 satisfy. The cargo was confiscated, analyzed, 
 
 259 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 and an astonished chemist reported that the 
 " fertilizer " was composed of highest grade 
 lubricating oil, mixed with a certain chemical 
 which had reduced the oil to a solid but when 
 the mixture was treated with a little acid 
 the sacks yielded oil fit for the Kaiser's best 
 Unterseeboten. 
 
 The Department of Justice paid an official 
 call on the New Jersey company — the " Pres- 
 ident " was away; he remained away during 
 two years of very painstaking search by the 
 officials of the Department's secret service, 
 which had an ever-increasing desire to make 
 the acquaintance of the inconspicuous chemist 
 who seemed to possess some of the mythical 
 powers of the ancient alchemists. 
 
 There seemed also to be an unusual bank 
 account connected with this gentleman, engaged 
 in such magnificent business enterprises, that 
 yielded such meagre profits, as were evidenced 
 by the President's home life and general cir- 
 cumstances. Who is he, and where is he? 
 were questions that vexed the bureau in Wash- 
 ington. Two years rolled by; numbers of 
 Germans connected with "the Doctor" were 
 sent to jail, but only rumours were got of trails 
 of the chemist. 
 
 Fate, however, transferred our story to the 
 shadowy neighbourhood of Morro Castle; there, 
 
 260 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 an excited and still unidentified German who 
 was trying to board a vessel at Matanzas, 
 Cuba, for a port in Mexico, was brought into 
 Havana in front of the bayonets of a not-too- 
 careful Rural Guard. Then a newly arrived 
 representative of the Department of Ju c "Lc 
 undertook some negotiations with th^ rvoan 
 Government for a safe passage b^ for a 
 certain Dr. Walter T. Scheele and , xiis pay- 
 master. 
 
 An ancient fort, which is the military prison 
 in Havana and a part of the old fortified wall 
 which follows the water front of the picturesque 
 harbour, was shrouded in darkness when the 
 hour of departure arrived. Between the old 
 fort and the grim outline of "the Monro" 
 lay a Cuban gunboat with black smoke pouring 
 out of her funnels; a tropical storm blowing 
 in over the Gulf Stream alternately darkened 
 the sky a deeper tone and lit it up with vivid 
 lightning flashes. Presently a little group ap- 
 peared on the sea walls and a flash of lightning 
 showed an American in plain clothes, the regalia 
 of the agents of Justice and a colonel of the 
 regular army who were signing a receipt for 
 two quiet figures in alpine hats. A courteous 
 Cuban officer saluted and shook hands with 
 the departing guests, handcuffs were silently 
 slipped on to thick German wrists, and the little 
 
 261 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 steam pinnace of the warship sped off through 
 the darkness alongside its gangway. 
 
 An interview none the less sombre and creepy 
 occurred on the other side of the Gulf Stream 
 within the walls of Fort Taylor. Two automobiles 
 iven up in the darkness to an emplace- 
 n ggjjeath the shadow of a heavy gun. The 
 party vvhld 1 na d left Havana descended in a 
 dimly lighted courtyard where a squad of non- 
 commissiont A offices was waiting. One figure 
 in an alpine ibat had to be lifted from the 
 automobile while the other stood erect. 
 
 Here is the story of ^r. Scheele, the more im- 
 portant of these two agents of the Kaiser: 
 
 Twenty-five years ago a German youth (one 
 of the favourite pupils of the great chemist, 
 Professor Keukle) graduated at Bonn. He 
 came of an illustrious family; his grandfather, 
 the Swedish professor, Scheele, discovered 
 chlorine gas. His father, born in Germany, 
 died in the discovery of " prussic acid," the 
 most quickly fatal drug known. The youth, 
 with sixteen deep scars on his head and face 
 from duelling under the vicious German code, 
 was a man of proved valour. Who was better 
 to send to the great developing home of liberty 
 and freedom and study its industry, and pre- 
 pare for a day which was already dazzling the 
 newly enthroned Kaiser ? 
 
 262 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 Dr. Hugo Schweitzer was chosen to go with 
 him and collaborate. He, as the head of the 
 Bayer Chemical Company — a German concern 
 that practically monopolized the trade in syn- 
 thetic drugs in the United States — was to report 
 on, to model, or undermine our development of 
 industrial chemistry. Dr. Scheele was to re- 
 port on and develop the plan and chemistry 
 of warfare, explosives, incendiaries, poison gas, 
 and the products Germany should import and 
 accumulate to make her sure and independent 
 on the day she should strike the world. Did 
 these young men faithfully accomplish their 
 tasks ? 
 
 Dye making was almost an unknown art in 
 America when the war broke out; chlorine gas was 
 a laboratory curiosity; potash was a German 
 salt — we had been led to believe our millions of 
 tons of the mineral were insoluble. Where neces- 
 sary, those of our chemists who had learned the 
 secrets were retained and paid. The list of our 
 chemical houses reads like the telephone di- 
 rectory of Unter den Linden, and the Alien 
 Property Custodian has since spent many nights 
 over their affairs. 
 
 While the German plenipotentiaries were 
 busy at The Hague agreeing to the elimination 
 of poison gas and incendiaries from warfare, 
 their chemists in the United States, paid 
 
 263 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 regularly but meagrely through the Embassy 
 at Washington, exchanged views in writing 
 and by cable with the chemists of the Father- 
 land over the most fatal methods for the use 
 of the gas which had just been developed for 
 the purpose. 
 
 Mustard gas was used against the Allies 
 in 19 1 7, a new and atrocious device, "only 
 discovered and recently used by the Germans 
 because of the brutality of their enemies." 
 A few formulae for this product were in Dr. 
 Scheele's laboratory in New York about five 
 years before the war, and tactics of the uses 
 discussed in the trips which he made home every 
 two years "to keep up to date/' 
 
 Two methods of stifling American production 
 have not yet been mentioned. The first was 
 this: When a man began to make a reputation 
 as a chemist in an American-owned concern, 
 he was hired away to work for a German- 
 owned factory. Salary was no consideration; 
 they simply bid the price required to get him. 
 The second method was: when an American 
 chemist invented a new product or a new 
 process, and patented it, it was bought from 
 him before it could be commercially developed. 
 Again price was no consideration. The only 
 instructions were: "Pay as little as you can, 
 but get it." 
 
 264 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 The operation of this system was the duty 
 of Dr. Scheele and Dr. Schweitzer. Report- 
 ing to them was at least one loyal German 
 chemist in every chemical factory in the United 
 States; dozens of them in the larger ones. At 
 their disposal were the resources of the Imperial 
 German Government. These, too, were made 
 accessible through Dr. Heinrich Albert in 
 German-American banking and brokerage con- 
 cerns, chiefly G. Amsinck & Company, the 
 Trans-Atlantic Trust Company, and Knauth, 
 Nochode & Kuhne, of New York, every one of 
 them in reality a local American agency of one 
 or another of the imperially controlled banks of 
 Germany and Austria — such as the Reichsbank, 
 the Disconto Gesellschaft, or the Deutsche Bank. 
 
 The chief of these American branches was 
 G. Amsinck & Company, operating as commis- 
 sion merchants and private bankers. The head 
 of this concern was Adolf Pavenstedt, an 
 accomplished man of the world, a shrewd 
 banker, and under the iron discipline of the 
 Kaiser's military organization. Pavenstedt 
 lived at the German Club in Central Park 
 South, in New York, took his vacations in 
 Cuba in the winter and the Berkshires in the 
 summer, was received in the best society in 
 New York, passed easily in Wall Street as a 
 man of large personal fortune and of sound 
 
 265 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 business judgment — altogether a characteristic 
 German hypocrite and government agent acting 
 under Dr. Albert and Bernstorff. He was a 
 paymaster of Germany's nation-wide organi- 
 zation to control our industrial life, to spy 
 out our military plans, and to keep us power- 
 less against the day when Prussia should be 
 ready to sweep the world. He was also the finan- 
 cial go-between in the Bolo Pasha case. Fortu- 
 nately, he has now long been a resident of an 
 Army internment camp. 
 
 Two years ago the Government indicted 
 Dr. Scheele for his part in the incendiary 
 bomb plot. The details of this fiendish device 
 will be given later in the story. Dr. Scheele 
 was forewarned of probable detection on the 
 31st of March, 1916, by a special-delivery 
 letter telling him to see Wolf von Igel immedi- 
 ately at 60 Wall Street in New York. Von 
 Igel told him to start for Cuba by the next train. 
 Dr. Scheele feared that such a precipitate 
 flight would expose him to certain arrest. 
 Hence, he violated his instruction and went 
 south to Jacksonville by easy stages. There 
 he called upon one Sperber, the editor of the 
 Florida Deutsche Staatszeitung, who warned 
 him not to sail from Key West, as that port 
 was being watched both by our officers and 
 by the British cruisers outside the three-mile 
 
 266 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 limit. Sperber gave Dr. Scheele letters of 
 introduction and credentials under the name 
 of W. T. Rheinfelder, to act as a correspondent 
 for his paper. He supplied him also with 
 fake calling cards and other forged documents, 
 establishing him in his role. Still fearing to 
 leave for Cuba, he waited. 
 
 His superiors again instructed him to go 
 to Cuba. He landed in Cuba on April 16th. 
 There he reported to the German Minister, 
 Count Verdy du Vernois, who passed him on 
 to an attache of the Legation with this strange 
 result: that Dr. Scheele next found himself 
 installed as a "guest" in the house of one Juan 
 Pozas, under the name of James G. Williams, 
 and in the character of a visiting American. 
 
 His strange and unexpected host appeared 
 at first to be simply a wealthy Cuban merchant. 
 His manner of life strengthened this impression. 
 Dr. Scheele found himself comfortably installed 
 in a large room in a magnificent house, sur- 
 rounded by grounds of a city block square, 
 in the suburb Guana Bacca of Havana. In 
 reality, Pozas was the king of the Cuban 
 smugglers. His splendid establishment and his 
 social prestige rested upon a picturesque founda- 
 tion of the work of silent men in little boats 
 working in the dark of the moon along the 
 tropical Cuban shore. 
 
 267 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 To Dr. Scheele, Pozas soon appeared to be 
 not only host but jailer. Though he was 
 treated with every courtesy and as a member 
 of the family, he was not allowed outside the 
 house for six months after his arrival. The 
 confinement so told upon his health that he 
 was finally permitted the freedom of the garden, 
 and, to while away the time, he worked among 
 the flowers, making at length a beauty spot 
 of the whole place. At the same time, he was 
 devoting other spare hours to covering the 
 walls of the Pozas mansion with beautiful 
 mural paintings. Again it may be noted that 
 Dr. Scheele is a remarkable man. 
 
 In this strange retreat the doctor spent 
 two years. Then suddenly, without warning, 
 he was hurried hither and yon about the island, 
 travelling under guard by automobile by night, 
 and lying hidden by day in the houses of trusted 
 German agents. He finally arrived at Man- 
 tanzas. Here, the man in whose house 
 he was to stay hidden became fearful that he 
 would be discovered there and the man him- 
 self get into desperate trouble. He, therefore, 
 directed Dr. Scheele to a neighbouring hotel, 
 but the doctor was unable to obtain accommo- 
 dation, so that he spent the night sitting in a 
 railroad station. 
 
 Simultaneously another German of Havana 
 268 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 was taken into custody. He was implicated 
 in the Scheele affair by reason of his payments 
 to the doctor, besides being involved in numer- 
 ous violations of the neutrality of Cuba, for 
 which the Cuban Government meant to hold 
 him responsible. 
 
 The close investigation of this man revealed 
 much valuable data. A collection of papers 
 had been buried by Dr. Scheele in the tropical 
 garden he had built about the Pozas mansion. 
 There they were unearthed by the agent of 
 the Department of Justice of the United States 
 who had gone to Cuba to bring him back. 
 Taking a pick and shovel and digging among 
 the flowers cherished by the doctor, he found 
 these damning documents from Potsdam, con- 
 taining their secret instructions for the working 
 out of the industrial conquest of Vereinigten 
 Staaten — These United States. 
 
 Another set of documents was obtained by 
 a very clever piece of work by agents of the 
 Department of Justice. These were papers 
 left behind by Wolf von Igel when he left 
 the United States — papers that he dared not 
 risk having seized and read by the British 
 authorities on his way to Germany. They 
 were packed in a suitcase and were committed 
 to the care of a German in Englewood, New 
 Jersey. On instructions from the head office 
 
 269 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 of the Department of Justice In Washington, 
 agents in the New York office of the Depart- 
 ment wrote out in German, on a typewriter, 
 the letter telling this German to deliver the 
 suitcase to the bearer and including in its mes- 
 sage the magic password. This letter was 
 entrusted to an agent who spoke German 
 perfectly. 
 
 He executed the commission without a hitch. 
 He called upon the German and introduced 
 himself in low tones as a loyal subject of the 
 Kaiser and asked to be taken into the house. 
 There he presented his letter. When the Ger- 
 man read it, he broke into a hearty laugh and 
 said the password no longer really applied, 
 because it referred to the coal pile. He had 
 found, on account of the coal shortage, that 
 at times he could not keep enough coal in 
 the cellar to keep the suitcase covered, and 
 that consequently he had had to conceal it 
 elsewhere in the house. The caller joined 
 him in laughter at this piece of humour, and the 
 German excused himself and soon returned 
 with the suitcase. It was not till several 
 days later that he had the slightest inkling 
 that the man he had entertained was an oper- 
 ative of the American Government. 
 
 The plot for which Dr. Scheele was brought 
 to earth was only a detail in the vast scheme 
 
 270 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 of Germany's treachery, but it was one of the 
 most dastardly and most dramatic of those 
 details, and its detection and unravelling re- 
 vealed the men at the head of the German 
 system in this country and their mutual rela- 
 tionships. In a previous chapter I have told 
 something of the career of Franz von Rintelen. 
 At this point he appears as an agent of Ger- 
 many seeking to destroy the ships bearing 
 American supplies to the Allies. One day 
 Dr. Scheele received a caller, Eno Bode, 
 a captain in the service of the North Ger- 
 man Lloyd Steamship Company. Bode bore 
 a card from Von Papen, ordering Scheele to 
 execute any orders which Bode gave. Von 
 Papen's orders, in their turn, had come through 
 Rintelen. 
 
 Bode now disclosed to Dr. Scheele a most 
 infernal plan. He was instructed to invent a 
 bomb of simple mechanism, which could be placed 
 in a ship's cargo or its coal and which would 
 not explode, but set fire to anything inflammable 
 with which it came in contact. It must be 
 devised to operate at any predetermined time 
 after it was placed on board. 
 
 To Dr. Scheele, a great chemist himself and 
 possessed of every secret of the greatest nation 
 of chemists in the world, this was a simple 
 order. In his instructions he was forbidden 
 
 271 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 to apply for his materials to any American 
 concern through which the purchase might 
 ever be traced. Consequently, he asked for 
 technical assistance and was referred to Captain 
 Carl Schmidt, the chief engineer of the Fried- 
 rich der Grosse, one of the great German 
 liners interned at Hoboken. Schmidt placed 
 at his disposal Charles Becker, the electrician 
 of the Friedrich der Grosse. From him he 
 obtained sections of lead pipe and thin sheets 
 of lead and tin. The chemicals were easily 
 obtained from strictly German sources. 
 
 Dr. Scheele now made a few experiments 
 and quickly evolved a bomb that was as simple 
 as it was efficient. It consisted merely of a 
 section of lead pipe, about two and a half 
 inches in diameter and three or four inches 
 long. This cylinder was separated into two 
 water-tight compartments by a thin disk of 
 the sheet tin. In one of the two compartments 
 was placed a chemical, and in the other a 
 corrosive acid. The ends were then sealed 
 and the bomb was complete. The acid slowly 
 ate its way through the tin partition, and when 
 at length a tiny hole was made, the acid and 
 the chemical mingled and their action was to 
 produce, without noise, a heat so intense 
 that it melted the lead in the cylinder and the 
 whole bomb flowed down into a molten mass 
 
 272 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 so fervent that it would ignite any ordinary 
 substance, such as coal or wood. No timing 
 mechanism was necessary. The thickness of 
 the tin partition determined the time at which 
 the bomb would act. By careful experiment, 
 Dr. Scheele was able to manufacture bombs 
 that would become effective in two days, four 
 days, six days, eight days — at will. For ex- 
 ample, if the tin partition was made one 
 sixtieth of an inch in thickness, the bomb 
 would operate in forty-eight hours. The thick- 
 ness necessary for the longer periods was es- 
 tablished by actual test. 
 
 As soon as the bomb was perfected, its 
 manufacture was undertaken on a big scale. 
 Soon the workroom aboard the Friedrich der 
 Grosse was turning out thirty-five of these 
 "cigars," as the Germans called them, every 
 day. Altogether, before the game became too 
 dangerous and Dr. Scheele was forced to flee, 
 nearly five hundred bombs were manufactured. 
 
 Next came the necessity for an organization 
 to place these bombs upon the ships. First, 
 the ships themselves must be known — their 
 sailing dates, their names, their berths and 
 cargoes. Through German sources of informa- 
 tion, the data about merchant ships were 
 gathered and by Dr. Carl Schimmel, another 
 German agent in New York City, were listed and 
 
 273 
 
FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES 
 
 classified. These records were placed at the 
 disposal of the bomb-placing squad. 
 
 Captain Carl Wolpert was in charge of this 
 work. He was the superintendent of the Atlas 
 Line, a subsidiary of the Hamburg-American 
 Steamship Company, and an officer of the 
 German Naval Reserve. Armed by Scheele 
 with the "cigars," by Schimmel with the 
 list of ships, and by Von Rintelen with un- 
 limited money, Wolpert chose a group of trusted 
 lieutenants from among the Germans in New 
 York. These men frequented the water-front 
 and the neighbouring saloons, where they sought 
 out stevedores, who could be bribed to place 
 the bombs where they were directed. For- 
 tunately for the lives of seamen and for the 
 property of the Allies, many of these men 
 took the German money but threw the bombs 
 into the bay. Enough, however, earned their 
 blood money so that many ships were set afire 
 on their voyage across the Atlantic, some of 
 them burning to the water's edge, most of 
 them being greatly damaged, the total loss 
 figuring well up in the millions of dollars. Many 
 a captain in mid-ocean fought the flames on 
 his vessel, from the second or third day of his 
 voyage, all the way into port. A fire would 
 break out in his bunker coal; it might be 
 quenched, only to break out in the cargo two 
 
 274 
 
DR. SCHEELE, CHEMICAL SPY 
 
 days later, and perhaps a day after that start up 
 again in the coal. 
 
 This fiendish work was done in cold blood, 
 do not forget, at the command of the Imperial 
 German Government, at its expense, under the 
 direction of one of its most highly placed 
 aristocrats, by one of Germany's greatest chem- 
 ists, with the cooperation of officers of the 
 German Navy and with the cognizance of the 
 German Ambassador to our friendly Govern- 
 ment. Here was no passion of battle, no 
 extemporized savagery of revenge. It was a 
 calculated atrocity, perpetrated by the highest 
 authorities of one of the most "civilized" of 
 the "Christian" nations, using the most tech- 
 nical processes of one of the most complex 
 arts of modern life. The magic by which the 
 slimy refuse of burning coal is transmuted into 
 dyes which give to paints and fabrics the 
 splendour of the dawn and the beauty of the 
 rose, was here debased to the infamous uses 
 of treachery and murder. 
 
 THE END 
 
 275 
 
Ari 3^0 
 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y.