THE GERMAN SECRET
SERVICE IN AMERICA
1914-1918

Count Johann von Bernstorff, the
responsible director of Ger-
many's secret policies
in America

THE GERMAN SECRET
SERVICE IN AMERICA
1914-1918

BY

JOHN PRICE JONES

AUTHOR OF "AMERICA ENTANGLED"

AND

PAUL MERRICK HOLLISTER

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1918,
By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)

"It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign government. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance—and some of these agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her—and that, not by indirection but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their neighbors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arms? Much as we have desired peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under which we serve would have been dishonored had we withheld our hand."

—Woodrow Wilson, Flag Day Address
June 14, 1917

INTRODUCTION

A nation at war wants nothing less than complete information of her enemy. It is hard for the mind to conceive exactly what "complete information" means, for it includes every fact which may contain the lightest indication of the enemy strength, her use of that strength, and her intention. The nation which sets out to obtain complete information of her enemy must pry into every neglected corner, fish every innocent pool, and collect a mass of matter concerning the industrial, social and military organization of the enemy which when correlated, appraises her strength—and her weakness. Nothing less than full information will satisfy the mathematical maker of war.

Germany was always precociously fond of international statistics. She wanted—the present tense is equally applicable—full information of America and her allies so as to attack their vulnerable points. She got a ghastly amount of it, and she attacked. This book sets forth how secret agents of the Teutonic governments acting under orders have attacked our national life, both before and after our declaration of war; how men and women in Germany's employ on American soil, planned and executed bribery, sedition, arson, the destruction of property and even murder, not to mention lesser violations of American law; how they sought to subvert to the advantage of the Central Powers the aims of the Government of the United States; how, in short, they made enemies of the United States immediately the European war had broken out.

The facts were obtained by the writer first as a reporter on the New York Sun who for more than a year busied himself with no other concern, and afterwards in an independent investigation. Some of them he has cited in a previous work. This book brings the story of Germany's secret agencies in America up to the early months of 1918. Because the writer during the past six months has devoted his entire time to the Liberty Loan, it became necessary for him to leave the rearrangement of the work entirely in the hands of the co-author, and he desires to acknowledge his complete indebtedness to the co-author for undertaking and carrying out an assignment for which the full measure of reward will be derived from a sharper American consciousness of the true nature of our enemy at home and abroad.

So we dedicate this chronicle to our country.

John Price Jones.

New York, June 1, 1918.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

THE GERMAN SECRET
SERVICE IN AMERICA

CHAPTER I THE ORGANIZATION

The economic, diplomatic and military aspects of secret warfare in America—Germany's peace-time organization—von Bernstorff, the diplomat—Albert, the economist—von Papen and Boy-Ed, the men of war.

When, in the summer of 1914, the loaded dice fell for war, Germany began a campaign overseas as thoughtfully forecasted as that first headlong flood which rolled to the Marne. World-domination was the Prussian objective. It is quite natural that the United States, whose influence affected a large part of the world, should have received swift attention from Berlin. America and Americans could serve Germany's purpose in numerous ways, and the possible assets of the United States had been searchingly assayed in Berlin long before the arrival of "Der Tag."

The day dawned—and Germany found herself hemmed in by enemies. Her navy did not control the oceans upon which she had depended for a large percentage of her required food and raw materials, and upon which she must continue to depend if her output were to keep pace with her war needs. If surprise-attack should fail to bring the contest to a sudden and favorable conclusion, Germany was prepared to accept the more probable alternative of a contest of economic endurance. Therefore, she reasoned, supplies must continue to come from America.

Of importance scarcely secondary to the economic phase of her warfare in the United States was the diplomatic problem. Here was a nation of infinite resources, a people of infinite resource. This nation must be enlisted on the side of the Central Powers; failing that, must be kept friendly; under no circumstances was she to be allowed to enlist with the Allies. One fundamental trait of Americans Germany held too lightly—their blood-kinship to Britons—and it is a grimly amusing commentary upon the confidence of the German in bonds Teutonic that he believed that the antidote to this racial "weakness" of ours lay in the large numbers of Germans who had settled here and become Americans of sorts. But the German was alarmingly if not absolutely correct in his estimate, for upon the conduct and zeal of Germans in America actually depended much of the success of Germany's diplomatic tactics in America.

The German Embassy in Washington, headquarters and clearing-
house of German intrigue in the world outside Mittel-
Europa, 1914-1917

The war, then, so far as the United States figured in Germany's plan, was economic and diplomatic. But it was also military. German representatives in the United States were bound by oath to coöperate to their utmost in all military enterprises within their reach. With a certain few notable exceptions, no such enterprises came within their reach, and if the reader anticipates from that fact a disappointing lack of violence in the narrative to follow, let him remember that "all's fair in war," and that every German activity in the United States, whether it was economic, diplomatic or military, was carried on with a certain Prussian thoroughness which was chiefly characterized by brutal violence.

We have come to believe that thoroughness is the first and last word in German organization. Any really thorough organization must be promptly convertible to new activities without loss of motion. If these new activities are unexpected, the change is more or less of an experiment, and its possibilities are not ominous. But truly dangerous is the organization which transfers suddenly to coping with the expected. Germany had expected war for forty years.

Her peace-time organization in America consisted of four executives: an ambassador, a fiscal agent, a military attaché, and a naval attaché. Its chief was the ambassador, comparable in his duties and privileges to the president of a corporation, the representative with full authority to negotiate with other organizations, and responsible to his board of directors—the foreign office in Berlin. Its treasurer was the fiscal agent. And its department heads were the military and naval attachés, each responsible in some degree to his superiors in matters of policy and finances, and answerable also to Berlin.

The functions of the chief were two-fold. Convincing evidence produced by the State Department has placed at his door the ultimate responsibility for executing Germany's commands not in the United States alone, but throughout all of the world excepting Middle Europe. Under his eyes passed Berlin's instructions to her envoys in both Americas, and through his hands passed their reports. He directed and delegated the administration of all German policy in the western world and the far east, and of course directed all strictly diplomatic enterprises afoot in the United States.

Germany could hardly have chosen an abler envoy than this latest of all the Bernstorffs, Johann, a statesman whose ancestors for generations had been Saxon diplomats. A glance at the man's countenance convinced one of his powers of concentration: the many lines of his face seemed to focus on a point between his eyebrows. And yet his expression was hardly grim. The modeling of his head was unusually strong, his features sensitive, with no trace of weakness. If there had been weakness about his mouth, it was concealed by the conventional ferocity of a Hohenzollern moustache, and yet those untruthful lips could part in an ingratiating smile which flashed ingenuous friendliness. His frame was tall and slender, his mannerisms suggested carefully bridled nervous activity. The entire appearance of the man may best be described by a much-abused term—he was "distinguished."

Count von Bernstorff, once his nation had declared war upon France and England, went to war with the United States. As ambassador, diplomatic courtesy gave him a scope of observation limited only by the dignity of his position. A seat in a special gallery in the Senate and House of Representatives was always ready for his occupancy; he could virtually command the attention of the White House; and senators, congressmen and office-holders from German-American districts respected him. Messengers kept him in constant touch with the line-up of Congress on important issues, and two hours later that line-up was known in the Foreign Office in Berlin. As head and front of the German spy system in America, he held cautiously aloof from all but the most instrumental acquaintances: men and women of prominent political and social influence who he knew were inclined, for good and sufficient reasons, to help him. One woman, whose bills he paid at a Fifth Avenue gown house, was the wife of a prominent broker and another woman of confessedly German affiliations who served him lived within a stone's throw of the Metropolitan Museum and its nearby phalanx of gilded dwellings (her husband's office was in a building at 11 Broadway, of which more anon); a third woman intimate lived in a comfortable apartment near Fifth Avenue—an apartment selected for her, though she was unaware of it, by secret agents of the United States. During the early days of the war the promise of social sponsorship which any embassy in Washington could extend proved bait for a number of ingénues of various ages, with ambition and mischief in their minds, and the gracious Ambassador played them smoothly and dexterously. Mostly they were not German women, for the German women of America were not so likely to be useful socially, nor as a type so astute as to qualify them for von Bernstorff's delicate work. To those whom he chose to see he was courteous, and superficially frank almost to the point of naïveté. The pressure of negotiation between Washington and Berlin became more and more exacting as the war progressed, yet he found time to command a campaign whose success would have resulted in disaster to the United States. That he was not blamed for the failure of that campaign when he returned to Germany in April, 1917, is evidenced by his prompt appointment to the court of Turkey, a difficult and important post, and in the case of Michaelis, a stepping-stone to the highest post in the Foreign Office.

Upon the shoulders of Dr. Heinrich Albert, privy counsellor and fiscal agent of the German Empire, fell the practical execution of German propaganda throughout America. He was the American agent of a government which has done more than any other to coöperate with business towards the extension of influence abroad, on the principle that "the flag follows the constitution." As such he had had his finger on the pulse of American trade, had catalogued exhaustively the economic resources of the country, and held in his debt, as his nation's treasurer in America, scores of bankers, manufacturers and traders to whom Germany had extended subsidy. As such also he was the paymaster of the Imperial secret diplomatic and consular agents.

You could find him almost any day until the break with Germany in a small office in the Hamburg-American Building (a beehive of secret agents) at No. 45 Broadway, New York. He was tall and slender, and wore the sombre frock coat of the European business man with real grace. His eyes were blue and clear, his face clean-shaven and faintly sabre-scarred, and his hair blond. He impressed one as an unusual young man in a highly responsible position. His greeting to visitors, of whom he had few, was punctilious, his bow low, and his manner altogether polite. He encouraged conversation rather than offered it. He had none of the "hard snap" of the energetic, outspoken, brusque American man of business. Dr. Albert was a smooth-running, well-turned cog in the great machine of Prussian militarism.

Upon him rested the task of spending between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 a week for German propaganda. He spent thirty million at least—and only Germany knows how much more—in secret agency work, also known by the uglier names of bribery, sedition and conspiracy. He admitted that he wasted a half million or more. He had a joint account with Bernstorff in the Chase National Bank, New York, which amounted at times to several millions. His resources gave weight to his utterances in the quiet office overlooking Broadway, or in the German Club in Central Park South, or in the consulates or hotels of Chicago and New Orleans and San Francisco, to which he made occasional trips to confer with German business men.

His colleagues held him in high esteem. His methods were quiet and successful, and his participation in the offences against America's peace might have passed unproven had he not been engaged in a too-absorbing conversation one day in August, 1915, upon a Sixth Avenue elevated train. He started up to leave the train at Fiftieth Street, and carelessly left his portfolio behind him—to the tender care of a United States Secret Service man. It contained documents revealing his complicity in enterprises the magnitude of which beggars the imagination. The publication of certain of those documents awoke the slumbering populace to a feeling of chagrin and anger almost equal to his own at the loss of his dossier. And yet he stayed on in America, and returned with the ambassadorial party to Germany only after the severance of diplomatic relations in 1917, credited with expert generalship on the economic sector of the American front.

Germany's military attaché to the United States was Captain Franz von Papen. His mission was the study of the United States army. In August, 1914, it may be assumed that he had absorbed most of the useful information of the United States army, which at that moment was no superhuman problem. In July of that year he was in Mexico, observing, among other matters, the effect of dynamite explosions on railways. He was quite familiar with Mexico. According to Admiral von Hintze he had organized a military unit in the lukewarm German colony in Mexico City, and he used one or more of the warring factions in the southern republic to test the efficacy of various means of warfare.

The rumble of a European war sent him scurrying northward. From Mexico on July 29 he wired Captain Boy-Ed—of whom more presently—in New York to

" ... arrange business for me too with Pavenstedt,"

which referred to the fact that Boy-Ed had just engaged office space in the offices of G. Amsinck & Company, New York, which was at that time a German house of which Adolph Pavenstedt was the president, but which has since been taken over by American interests. And he added:

"Then inform Lersner. The Russian attaché ordered back to Washington by telegraph. On outbreak of war have intermediaries locate by detective where Russian and French intelligence office."

The latter part of the message is open to two interpretations: that Boy-Ed was to have detectives locate the Russian and French secret service officers; or that Boy-Ed was to place German spies in those offices.

Captain von Papen reported to his ministry of war anent the railway explosions:

"I consider it out of the question that explosives prepared in this way would have to be reckoned with in a European war...."

a significant opinion, which he changed later.

What of the man himself? He was all that "German officer" suggested at that time to any one who had traveled in Germany. His military training had been exhaustive. Though he had not seen "active service," his life, from the early youth when he had been selected from his gymnasium fellows for secret service in Abteilung III of the great bureau, had been unusually active. He had traveled as a civilian over various countries, drawing maps, harking to the sentiment of the people, and checking from time to time the operations of resident German agents abroad. His disguises were thorough, as this incident will illustrate: In Hamburg, at the army riding school where von Papen was trained, young officers are taught the French style. Yet one fine morning in Central Park he stopped to chat with an acquaintance who had bought a mare. Von Papen admired the mount, promptly named its breed, and told in what counties in Ireland the best specimens of that breed could be found—information called up from a riding tour he had made over the length and breadth of Ireland. It is commonly said that horsemen trained in the French style cling to its mannerisms, but a cavalier revealing those mannerisms in Ireland, where the style is exclusively English, would have attracted undue attention. So he had disguised even his horsemanship!

Captain Franz von Papen

A man who moves constantly about among more or less unsuspecting peoples seeking their military weakness becomes intolerant. Tolerance is scarcely a German military trait, and in that respect Captain von Papen was consistently loyal to his own superior organization. "I always say to those idiotic Yankees they had better hold their tongues," he wrote to his wife in a letter which fell later into the hands of those same "bloedsinnige" Yankees. He was inordinately proud of his facility in operating unobserved, arrogant of his ability, and blunt in his criticism of his associates. He telegraphed Boy-Ed on one occasion to be more cautious. The gracious colleague replied, in a letter:

"Dear Papen: A secret agent who returned from Washington this evening made the following statement: 'The Washington people are very much excited about von Papen and are having a constant watch kept on him. They are in possession of a whole heap of incriminating evidence against him. They have no evidence against Count B. and Captain B-E (!).'"

And Boy-Ed, a trifle optimistically, perhaps, added:

"In this connection I would suggest with due diffidence that perhaps the first part of your telegram is worded rather too emphatically."

Von Papen was a man of war, a Prussian, the Feldmarschal of the Kaiser in America. In appearance he bespoke his vigor: he was well set up, rawboned, with a long nose, prominent ears, keen eyes and a strong lower jaw. He was energetic in speech and swift in formulating daring plans. In those first frantic weeks after the declaration of war he reached out in all directions to snap taut the strings that held his organization together—German reservists who had been peaceful farmers, shopkeepers or waiters, all over the United States, were mobilized for service, and paraded through Battery Park in New York shouting "Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles!" to the strains of the Austrian hymn, while they waited for Papen's orders from a building near by, and picked quarrels with a counter procession of Frenchmen screaming the immortal "Marseillaise." Up in his office sat the attaché, summoning, assigning, despatching his men on missions that were designed to terrorize America as the spiked helmets were terrorizing Belgium at that moment.

And he, too, failed. Although von Papen marshaled his consuls, his reservists, his thugs, his women, and his skilled agents, for a programme of violence the like of which America had never experienced, the military phase of the war was not destined for decision here, and there is again something ironical in the fact that the arrogance of Captain von Papen's outrages hastened the coming of war to America and the decline of Captain von Papen's style of warfare in America.

The Kaiser's naval attaché at Washington was Karl Boy-Ed, the child of a German mother and a Turkish father, who had elected a naval career and shown a degree of aptitude for his work which qualified him presently for the post of chief lieutenant to von Tirpitz. He was one of the six young officers who were admitted to the chief councils of the German navy, as training for high executive posts. In the capacity of news chief of the Imperial navy, Boy-Ed carried on two highly successful press campaigns to influence the public on the eve of requests for heavy naval appropriations, the second, in 1910, calling for 400,000,000 marks. He spread broadcast through cleverly contrived pamphlets and through articles placed in the subsidized press, a national resentment against British naval dominion. His duties took him all over the world as naval observer, and he may be credited more than casually with weaving the plan-fabric of marine supremacy with which Germany proposed in due time to envelop the world.

So he impressed diplomatic Washington in 1911 as a polished cosmopolite. Polished he was, measured by the standards of diplomatic Washington, for rare was the young American of Boy-Ed's age who had his cultivation, his wide experience, and his brilliant charm. He was sought after by admiring mothers long before he was sought after by the Secret Service; he moved among the clubs of Washington and New York making intimates of men whose friendship and confidence would serve the Fatherland, cloaking his real designs by frivolity and frequent attendances at social functions. His peace-time duties had been to study the American navy; to familiarize himself with its ship power and personnel, with its plans for expansion, its theories of strategy, its means of supply, and finally, with the coast defenses of the country. He had learned his lesson, and furnished Berlin with clear reports. On those reports, together with those of his colleagues in other countries, hinged Germany's readiness to enter war, for it would have been folly to attempt a war of domination with America an unknown, uncatalogued naval power. (It will be well to recall that the submarine is an American invention, and that Germany's greatest submarine development took place in the years 1911-1914.)

Captain Karl Boy-Ed (on the right)

And then, suddenly, he dropped the cloak. The Turk in him stood at attention while the German in him gave him sharp orders—commands to be carried out with Oriental adroitness and Prussian finish. Then those who had said lightly that "Boy-Ed knows more about our navy than Annapolis itself" began to realize that they had spoken an alarming truth. His war duties were manifold. Like von Papen, he had his corps of reservists, his secret agents, his silent forces everywhere ready for active coöperation in carrying out the naval enterprises Germany should see fit to undertake in Western waters.

America learned gradually of the machinations of the four executives, Bernstorff, Albert, Papen and Boy-Ed. America had not long to wait for evidences of their activity, but it was a long time before the processes of investigation revealed their source. It was inevitable that they could not work undiscovered for long, and they seem to have realized that they must do the utmost damage at top speed. Their own trails were covered for a time by the obscure identities of their subordinates. The law jumps to no conclusions. Their own persons were protected by diplomatic courtesy. It required more than two years of tedious search for orthodox legal evidence to arraign these men publicly in their guilt, and when that evidence had finally been obtained, and Germany's protest of innocence had been deflated, it was not these men who suffered, but their country, and the price she paid was war with America.

A hundred or more of their subordinates have been convicted of various criminal offenses and sent to prison. Still more were promptly interned in prison camps at the outbreak of war in 1917. The secret army included all types, from bankers to longshoremen. Many of them were conspicuous figures in American public life, and of these no small part were allowed to remain at large under certain restrictions—and under surveillance. Germany's army in the United States was powerful in numbers; the fact that so many agents were working destruction probably hastened their discovery; the loyalty of many so-called German-Americans was always questionable. The public mind, confused as it had never been before by the news of war, was groping about for sound fundamentals, and was being tantalized with false principles by the politicians. Meanwhile Count von Bernstorff was watching Congress and the President, Dr. Albert was busy in great schemes, Captain von Papen was commanding an active army of spies, and Captain Boy-Ed was engaged in a bitter fight with the British navy.

CHAPTER II THE CONSPIRATORS' TASK

The terrain—Lower New York—The consulates—The economic problem of supplying Germany and checking supplies to the Allies—The diplomatic problem of keeping America's friendship—The military problem in Canada, Mexico, India, etc.—Germany's denial.

The playwright selects from the affairs of a group of people a few characters and incidents, and works them together into a three-hour plot. He may include no matter which is not relevant to the development of his story, and although in the hands of the artist the play seems to pierce clearly into the characters of the persons involved, in reality he is constructing a framework, whose angles are only the more prominent salients of character and episode. The stage limits him, whether his story takes place in the kitchen or on the battlefield.

The drama of German spy operations in America is of baffling proportions. Its curtain rose long before the war; its early episodes were grave enough to have caused, any one of them, a nine-days' wonder in the press, its climax was rather a huge accumulation of intolerable disasters than a single outstanding incident, and its dénouement continued long after America's declaration of war. In the previous chapter we have accepted our limitations and introduced only the four chief characters of the play. It is necessary, in describing the motives for their enterprises, to appreciate the problems which their scene of operations presented.

The world was their workshop. Plots hatched in Berlin and developed in Washington and New York bore fruit from Sweden to India, from Canada to Chili. The economic importance of the United States in the war needs no further proof than its vast area, its miles of seacoast, its volume of export and import, and its producing power. As a diplomatic problem it offered, among other things, a public opinion of a hundred million people of parti-colored temperament, played upon by a force of some 40,000 publications. As a military factor, the United States possessed a strong fleet, owned the only Atlantic-Pacific waterway, was bounded on the south by Mexico and the coveted Gulf, and on the north by one of Germany's enemies. There was hardly a developed section of the nation which did not require prompt and radical German attention, or one which did not receive it in proportion to its industrial development. Washington, as the governmental capital, and New York as the real capital became at once the headquarters of German operations in the western world.

Count von Bernstorff directed all enterprises from the Imperial Embassy in Washington, and from the Ritz-Carlton in New York. An ambassador was once asked by an ingenuous woman at a New York dinner whether he often ran counter of European spies. "Oh, yes," he replied. "I used to stop at the ——, but my baggage was searched by German agents so often that I moved to the ——. But there it was just as bad." "Didn't you complain to the management?"—the lady wanted particulars. "No," the diplomat answered naturally, "for you see every time Bernstorff stops at the —— I have his baggage searched, too!"

The strands of intrigue focussed from every corner of America upon the lower tip of Manhattan. In a tall building at 11 Broadway, which towers over Bowling Green and confronts the New York Custom House, Captain Boy-Ed had his office. A long stone's throw to the northward stood the Hamburg-American building; there Dr. Albert carried on much of his business. Captain von Papen had offices on the twenty-fifth floor of No. 60 Wall Street. If we regard 11 Broadway as the tip of a triangle, with Wall Street and Broadway forming its right angle and 60 Wall Street as its other extremity, we find that its imaginary hypotenuse travels through the building of J. P. Morgan & Company, chief bankers for the Allies; through the New York Stock Exchange, where the so-called "Christmas leak" turned a pretty penny for certain German sympathizers in 1916; through the home of the Standard Oil Companies, as well as through several great structures of less strategic importance. There is more than mere coincidence in this geometrical freak—Germany held her stethoscope as close as possible to the heart of American business. Fortunately, however, the offices of Chief William J. Flynn—until January, 1918, head of the United States Secret Service—were in the Custom House near by.

After business hours these men met their subordinates at various rendezvous in the city; the hotels were convenient, the Manhattan was frequently appointed, and the Deutscher Verein at 112 Central Park South was the liveliest ganglion of all the nerve centers of a system of communication which tapped every section of the great community.

William J. Flynn, chief of the United States Secret Service
until 1918, who led the hunt of the German spy

In the lesser cities the German consulate served as the nucleus for the organization. That in San Francisco is conspicuous for its activity, for it prosecuted its own warfare on the entire Pacific coast. Wherever it was necessary German sympathizers furnished accommodations for offices and storage room. Headquarters of every character dotted the country from salons to saloons, from skyscrapers to cellars, each an active control in the manipulation of Germany's almost innumerable enterprises.

Those enterprises may be best outlined perhaps, by recalling the three phases of warfare which Germany had to pursue. America had shipped foodstuffs and raw materials in enormous quantities for many years to Germany. Dr. Albert must see to it that she continue to do so. The Imperial funds were at his disposal. He had already the requisite contact with American business. But let him also exert his utmost influence upon America to stop supplying the Allies. If he could do it alone, so much the better; if not, he was at liberty to call upon the military and naval attachés. But in any case "food and arms for Germany and none for the Allies" was the economic war-cry.

American supplies must be purchased for Germany and shipped through the European neutral nations, running the blockade. If capital proved obstinate and the Allies covered the market, it would be well to remember that labor produced supplies; labor must therefore be prevented from producing or shipping to the Allies. If labor refused to be interfered with, the cargoes should be destroyed.

His enormous task would depend, of course, very much upon the turn of affairs diplomatic. The State Department must be kept amicable. The Glad Hand was to be extended to official America, while the Mailed Fist thrashed about in official America's constituencies. Thus also with Congress, through influential lobbying or the pressure of constituents. Count von Bernstorff knew that the shout raised in a far-off state by a few well-rehearsed pacifists, reinforced by a few newspaper comments, would carry loud and clear to Washington. Upon his shoulders rested the entire existence of the German plan, and he spent a highly active and trying thirty months in Washington in an attempt to avoid the inevitable diplomatic rupture.

The military problem quickly resolved itself into two enterprises: carrying war to the enemy, and giving aid and comfort to its own forces—in this case the German navy. As the war progressed, and the opportunity for strictly military operations became less likely, the two Captains occupied their time in injecting a quite military flavor into the enterprises Bernstorff and Albert had on foot. As a strategic measure Mexico must divert America's attention from Europe and remove to the border her available forces. Meanwhile, German reservists must be supplied to their home regiments. Failing that they must be mobilized for service against Germany's nearest enemy here—Canada. German raiders at sea must be supplied. German communication with her military forces abroad must be maintained uninterrupted.

Long after the departure of the principals for their native land the enterprises persisted. It may be well here to extend to the secret agents of the United States the tribute which is their due. To Chief Flynn, of the United States Secret Service of the Treasury Department, to A. Bruce Bielaski, head of the special agents of the Department of Justice, to W. M. Offley, former Superintendent of the New York Bureau of Special Agents, to Roger B. Wood, Assistant United States District Attorney, to his successor, John C. Knox, (now a Federal judge), to Raymond B. Sarfaty, Mr. Wood's assistant who developed the Rintelen case, to former Police Commissioner Arthur Woods of New York, his deputy, Guy Scull, his police captain, Thomas J. Tunney, and to the men who worked obscurely and tirelessly with them to avert disasters whose fiendish intention shook the faith if not the courage of a nation. Those men found Germany out in time.

Inspector Thomas J. Tunney of the New York Police Depart-
ment, head of the "Bomb Squad" and foremost in
apprehending many important German agents

Germany was fluent in her denials. When the President in his message to Congress in December, 1915, bitterly attacked Germans and German-Americans for their activities in America, accusing the latter of treason, the German government authorized a statement to the Berlin correspondent of the New York Sun on December 19, 1915, to the effect that it

"naturally has never knowingly accepted the support of any person, group of persons, society or organization seeking to promote the cause of Germany in the United States by illegal acts, by counsels of violence, by contravention of law, or by any means whatever that could offend the American people in the pride of their own authority. If it should be alleged that improper acts have been committed by representatives of the German Government they could be easily dealt with. To any complaints upon proof as may be submitted by the American Government suitable response will be duly made.... Apparently the enemies of Germany have succeeded in creating the impression that the German Government is in some way, morally or otherwise, responsible for what Mr. Wilson has characterized as anti-American activities, comprehending attacks upon property in violation of the rules which the American Government has seen fit to impose upon the course of neutral trade. This the German Government absolutely denies. It cannot specifically repudiate acts committed by individuals over whom it has no control, and of whose movements it is neither officially nor unofficially informed."

To this statement there is one outstanding answer. It is an excerpt from the German book of instructions for officers:

"Bribery of the enemy's subjects with the object of obtaining military advantages, acceptances of offers of treachery, reception of deserters, utilization of the discontented elements in the population, support of the pretenders and the like are permissible; indeed international law is in no way opposed to the exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, robbery and the like) to the prejudice of the enemy. Considerations of chivalry, generosity and honor may denounce in such cases a hasty and unsparing exploitation of such advantages as indecent and dishonorable, but law, which is less touchy, allows it. The ugly and inherently immoral aspect of such methods cannot affect the recognition of their lawfulness. The necessary aim of war gives the belligerent the right and imposes upon him, according to circumstances, the duty not to let slip the important, it may be decisive, advantages to be gained by such means."

("The War Book of the German General Staff," translated by J. H. Morgan, M.A., pp. 113-114.)

CHAPTER III THE RAIDERS AT SEA

The outbreak of war—Mobilization of reservists—The Hamburg-American contract—The Berwind—The Marina Quezada—The Sacramento—Naval battles.

A fanatic student in the streets of Sarajevo, Bosnia, threw a bomb at a visiting dignitary, and the world went to war. That occurred on the sunny forenoon of June 28, 1914. The assassin was chased by the police, the newspaper men, and the photographers, who reached him almost simultaneously, and presently the world knew that the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, of Austria, was the victim, and that a plain frightened fellow, struggling in the shadow of a doorway, was his assailant.

Austria's resentment of the crime mounted during July and boiled over in the ultimatum of July 23. Five days later, with Germany's permission, Austria declared war on Servia. By this time continental tempers had been aroused, and the Central Empires knew that "Der Tag" had come. Austria, Russia, Germany, England, France and Belgium entered the lists within a fortnight.

By mid-July Germany had warned her agents in other lands of the imminence of war and a quiet mobilization had begun of the more important reservists in America. Captain von Papen, after dispatching his telegram from Mexico via El Paso to Captain Boy-Ed, hurried to Washington, arriving there on August 3. He began to weld together into a vast band the scientists, experts, secret agents and German army-reservists, who were under German military oaths, and were prepared to gather information or to execute a military enterprise "zu Befehl!" How rapidly he assembled his staff is shown in testimony given on the witness stand by "Horst von der Goltz," alias Bridgeman Taylor, alias Major Wachendorf, a German spy who had been a major in a Mexican army until July.

A German consul in El Paso had sounded out Goltz's willingness to return to German service. "A few days later, the 3rd of August, 1914, license was given by my commanding officer to separate myself from the service of my brigade for the term of six months. I left directly for El Paso, Texas, where I was told by Mr. Kueck, German Consul at Chihuahua, Mexico, who stayed there, to put myself at the disposition of Captain von Papen." This was two days before the final declaration of war.

All German and Austro-Hungarian consulates received orders to coördinate their own staffs for war service. Germany herself supplied the American front with men by wireless commands to all parts of the world. Captain Hans Tauscher, who enjoyed the double distinction of being agent in America for the Krupps and husband of a noted operatic singer, Mme. Johanna Gadski, chanced to be in Berlin when war broke out, reported for duty and was at once detailed to return to the United States and report to von Papen, as Wilhelmstrasse saw the usefulness of an ordnance expert in intimate touch with our Ordnance Department and our explosives plants. Two German officers detailed to topographical duty, who had spent years mapping Japan, and were engaged in the same work in British Columbia, jumped the border to the United States, taking with them their families, their information and their fine surveying and photographic instruments, and in the blocking out of the country which the wise men in the East were performing, were assigned to the White Mountains. Railroads and ships to the Atlantic seaboard bore every day new groups of reserve officers from the Orient and South America to New York for sailing orders.

They found von Papen already there. He established a consultation headquarters at once with Boy-Ed in a room which they rented in the offices of G. Amsinck & Co., at 6 Hanover Street. From that time forward, New York was to be his base of operations, and it was at that moment especially convenient to von Bernstorff's summer establishment at Newport.

The naval situation at once became active. In the western and southern Atlantic a scattered fleet of German cruisers was still at large. The British set out eagerly to the chase. Security lay in southern waters, and the German craft dodged back and forth through the Straits of Magellan. From time to time the quarry was forced by the remoteness of supply to show himself, and a battle followed; in the intervals, the Germans lay perdu, dashing into port for supplies and out again to concealment, or wandering over seldom traveled ocean tracks to meet coal and provision ships sent out from America.

Captain Boy-Ed received from Berlin constant advices of the movements of his vessels. On July 31, Dr. Karl Buenz, the American head of the Hamburg-American Line, had a cable from Berlin which he read and then forwarded to the Embassy in Washington for safekeeping. Until 1912 Buenz had had no steamship experience, having been successively a judge in Germany, a consul in Chicago and New York, and minister to Mexico. When at the age of 70 he was appointed Hamburg-American agent, one of the first matters which came to his attention was the consummation of a contract between the Admiralty Division of the German government and the steamship line, which provided for the provisioning, during war, of German ships at sea, using America as a base. This contract was jealously guarded by the Embassy.

Dr. Karl Buenz, managing director of the
Hamburg-American Line

The cablegram of July 31 called on Dr. Buenz to carry out this contract. There was consultation at once with Boy-Ed for the location of the vessels to be supplied, merchant ships were chartered or purchased, then loaded, and despatched. The first to leave New York harbor was the Berwind. There was hesitancy among the conspirators as to who should apply for her clearance papers—documents of which Dr. Buenz protested he knew nothing. They finally told G. B. Kulenkampff, a banker and exporter, that the Berwind was loaded with coal, and directed him to get the clearance papers. He swore to a false manifest of her cargo and got them. The Berwind carried coal to be sure—but she also carried food for German warships, and she was not bound for Buenos Aires, as her clearance papers stated. Thus the United States, by innocently issuing false papers, made herself, on the third day of the war, a party to German naval operations.

The steamship Lorenzo dropped down the harbor, ostensibly for Buenos Aires, on the following day, August 6, cleared by a false manifest, and bearing coal and food for German sailors. On these ships, and on the Thor (from Newport News for Fray Bentos, Uruguay), on the Heine (from Philadelphia on August 6 for La Guayra), on the J. S. Mowinckel and the Nepos (out of Philadelphia for Monrovia) and others Boy-Ed and Buenz had placed supercargoes bearing secret instructions. These men had authority to give navigating orders to the captains once they were outside the three-mile limit—orders to keep a rendezvous with German battleships by wireless somewhere in the Atlantic wastes.

The Berwind approached the island of Trinidad and Herr Poeppinghaus, who was her supercargo, directed the captain to lie to. Five German ships, the Kap Trafalgar, Pontus, Elinor Woerman, Santa Lucia and Eber, approached and the transfer of supplies started. It was interrupted by the British converted cruiser Carmania. She engaged in a brisk two-hour duel with the Kap Trafalgar which ended only when the latter sank into the tropical ocean. The Berwind meanwhile put the horizon between herself and the Carmania.

Few of the chartered ships carried out their intentions, although their adventures were various. Hear the story of the Unita: Her skipper was Eno Olsen, a Canadian citizen born in Norway. Urhitzler, the German spy placed aboard, made the mistake of assuming that Olsen was friendly to Germany. He gave him his "orders," and the skipper balked. "'Nothing doing,' I told the supercargo," Captain Olsen testified later, with a Norwegian twist to his pronunciation. "She's booked to Cadiz, and to Cadiz she goes! So the supercargo offered me $500 to change my course. 'Nothing doing—nothing doing for a million dollars,' I told him. The third day out he offered me $10,000. Nothing doing. So," announced Captain Olsen with finality, "I sailed the Unita to Cadiz and after we got there I sold the cargo and looked up the British consul."

One picturesque incident of the provisioning enterprise was the piratical cruise of the good ship Gladstone, rechristened, with a German benediction, Marina Quezada. Under the name of Gladstone, the ship had flown the Norwegian flag on a route between Canada and Australia, but shortly after the outbreak of war she put into Newport News. Simultaneously a sea captain, Hans Suhren, a sturdy German formerly of the Pacific coast, appeared in New York, called upon Captain Boy-Ed, who took kindly interest in him, and then departed for Newport News. Here he assumed charge of the Marina Quezada.

"I paid $280,000 in cash for her," he told First Officer Bentzen. After hiring a crew, he hurried back to New York, where he received messages in care of "Nordmann, Room 801, 11 Broadway, N. Y. C."—Captain Boy-Ed's office. Captain Boy-Ed had already told him to erect a wireless plant on his ship—the equipment having been shipped to the Marina Quezada—and to hire a wireless operator. He then handed Suhren a German naval code book, a chart with routes drawn, and sailing instructions for the South Seas, there to await German cruisers. Food supplies, ordered for the steamer Unita (which at that time had been unable to sail) were wasting on the piers at Newport News and Captain Boy-Ed ordered them put in the Marina Quezada. Two cases of revolvers also were sent to the boat.

Again Suhren went back to the ship and kept his wireless operators busy and speeded up the loading of the cargo, which was under the supervision of an employee of the North German Lloyd. Needing more money before sailing in December, 1914, he drew a draft for $1,000 on the Hamburg-American Line, wiring Adolf Hachmeister, the purchasing agent, to communicate with "Room 801, 11 Broadway."

Then trouble arose over the ship's registry. Though Suhren insisted that he owned her, a corporation in New York whose stockholders were Costa Ricans were laying claim to ownership, for they had christened her and had secured provisional registration from the Costa Rican minister in Washington. Permanent registry, however, required application at Port Limon, Costa Rica. So hauling down the Norwegian ensign that had fluttered over the ship as the Gladstone, Captain Suhren ran up the Costa Rican emblem. He had obtained false clearance papers stating his destination as Valparaiso. They were based upon a false manifest, and he sailed for Port Limon. The Costa Rican authorities declined to give Suhren permanent papers, and he found himself master of a ship without a flag, and in such status not permitted under international law to leave port. He waited for a heavy storm and darkness, then quietly slipping his anchor, he sped out into the high seas, a pirate. Off Pernambuco he ran up the Norwegian flag, put into port and got into such difficulties with the authorities that his ship and he were interned. His supplies never reached the raiders and Boy-Ed learned of another fiasco.

The Lorenzo, Thor and Heine were seized at sea. The Bangor was captured in the Straits of Magellan. Out of twelve shiploads of supplies, only some $20,000 worth were ever transshipped to German war vessels. This involved a considerable loss, as the following statement of expenditures for those vessels made by the Hamburg-American Line will show:

Where did the money come from? The Hamburg-American Line, under the ante-bellum contract, placed at Captain Boy-Ed's disposal three payments of $500,000 each from the Deutsches Bank, Berlin; the Deutsches Bank forwarded through Wessells, Kulenkampff & Co., credit for $750,000 more. "I followed the instructions of Captain Boy-Ed," Kulenkampff testified. "He instructed me at different times to pay over certain amounts either to banks or firms. I transferred $350,000 to the Wells-Fargo Nevada National Bank in San Francisco, $150,000 to the North German Lloyd, then $63,000 to the North German Lloyd. The balance of $160,000 I placed to the credit of the Deutsches Bank with Gontard & Co., successors to my former firm. That was reduced to about $57,000 by payments drawn at Captain Boy-Ed's request to the order of the Hamburg-American Line."

The North German Lloyd was serving as the Captain's Pacific operative, which accounts for the transfer of the funds to the West. (The same line, through its Baltimore agent, Paul Hilken, was also coöperating at this time, but not to an extent which brought the busy Hilken into prominence as did his later connection with the merchant submarine, Deutschland.) Following the course of the funds, federal agents eventually uncovered the operations of Germans on the Pacific coast, and secured the arrest and convictions of no less personages than the consular staff in San Francisco.

The steamship Sacramento left San Francisco with a water-line cargo of supplies. A firm of customs brokers in San Francisco was given a fund of $46,000 by the German consulate to purchase supplies for her; a fictitious steamship company was organized to satisfy the customs officials; on September 23 an additional $100,000 was paid by the Germans for her cargo; a false valuation was placed on her cargo, and she was cleared on October 3. Two days later Benno Klocke and Gustav Traub, members of the crew, broke the wireless seals and got into communication with the Dresden. Klocke usurped the position of master of the vessel, and steered her to a rendezvous on November 8 with the Scharnhorst, off Masafueros Island, in the South Pacific; six days later she provisioned and coaled the German steamship Baden. She reached Valparaiso empty. Captain Anderson said he could not help the fact that her supplies were swung outboard and into the Scharnhorst and Dresden.

Captain Fred Jebsen, who was a lieutenant in the German Naval Reserve, took out a cargo of coal, properly bonded in his ship, the Mazatlan, for Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico. Off the mouth of Magdalena Bay the Mazatlan met the Leipzig, a German cruiser, and the cargo of coal was transferred to the battleship. One of Jebsen's men, who had signed on as a cook, was an expert wireless operator, and he went to the Leipzig with three cases of "preserved fruits"—wireless apparatus forwarded by German agents in California. Jebsen, after an attempt to smuggle arms into India, which will be discussed later, made his way to Germany in disguise, and was reported to have been drowned in a submarine. The Nurnberg and Leipzig lay off San Francisco for days in August, the former finally entering the Golden Gate for the amount of coal allowed her under international law. The Olson and Mahoney, a steam schooner, was laden with supplies for the German vessels and prepared to sail, but after a considerable controversy with the customs officials, was unloaded.

Perhaps the most bizarre attempt to spirit supplies to the Imperial navy was that in which the little barkentine Retriever figured as heroine. Wide publicity was given the announcement that she was to be sailed out to sea and used as the locale of a motion picture drama. The Government found out, however, that her hull was well down with coal, which did not seem vital to the scenario, and she was not permitted to leave port.

The major portion of Germany's naval strength lay corked in the Kiel Canal, where, except for a few indecisive sorties, Germany's visible fleet was destined to remain for more than three years. At the outbreak of war, the Emden, Dresden, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Nurnberg were at large in the southern oceans. On November 1 the German cruisers met the British Monmouth, Good Hope, Glasgow and Otranto off Coronel, the Chilean coast. The Monmouth and Good Hope were struck a mortal blow and sunk. The Glasgow and Otranto barely escaped. In a battle off the Falkland Islands on December 7, as the German army was being thrown back from Ypres, the Scharnhorst, Leipzig, Gneisenau and Nurnberg were sunk by a reinforced British fleet. (Walter Peters, one of the crew of the Leipzig, floated about for six hours after the engagement, was picked up, made his way to Mexico, and for more than three years was employed by a German vice-consul in Mexico in espionage in the United States. Peters was arrested as a dangerous enemy alien in Crockett, California, in April, 1918.) The Dresden and Karlsruhe escaped, and the former hid for two months in the fjords of the Straits of Magellan. On February 26, 1915, an American tourist vessel, the Kroonland, passed east through the Straits and into Punta Arenas harbor, while out of the harbor sneaked the little Glasgow, westward bound. The Dresden, after the American had passed, had run for the open Pacific; the Glasgow, hot on her trail, engaged her off the Chilean coast five days later and sank her, leaving only the Emden and Karlsruhe at large. The Karlsruhe disappeared.

The last lone member of the pack was hunted over the seas for months, and finally was beached, but long before her activities became public the necessity for supplying the German ships expired, from the simple elimination of German ships to supply. Captain Boy-Ed's first enterprise had been frustrated by the British navy and he turned to other and more sinister occupations. Buenz, Koetter and Hachmeister were sentenced to eighteen months in Atlanta, and Poeppinghaus to a year and a day—terms which they did not begin to serve until 1918.[1]

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Dr Buenz' case is an enlightening example of the use made by German agents in America of the law's delays. He was sentenced in December, 1915, for an offence committed in September, 1914. He at once appealed his case to the higher courts, going freely about meanwhile on bail furnished by the Hamburg American Line. In March, 1918, the Supreme Court of the United States, to which his case had finally been pressed, denied his appeal. His attorneys at once placed before President Wilson, through Attorney-General Gregory, a request for a respite, or commutation of his sentence, which the President, on April 23, 1918, denied. Buenz pleaded the frailty of his 79 years—which had not prevented him from keeping his social engagements while his appeal was pending.

CHAPTER IV THE WIRELESS SYSTEM

The German Embassy a clearing house—Sayville—Germany's knowledge of U. S. wireless—Subsidized electrical companies—Aid to the raiders—The Emden—The Geier—Charles E. Apgar—The German code.

The coördination of a nation's fighting forces depends upon that nation's system of communication. In no previous war in the world's history has a general staff known more of the enemy's plans. We look back almost patronizingly across a century to the semaphore which transmitted Napoleon's orders from Paris to the Rhine in three hours; we can scarcely realize that if the report of a scout had ever got through to General Hooker, warning him that a suspicious wagon train had been actually sighted a few miles away, Stonewall Jackson's flanking march at Chancellorsville would have been checked in its first stages. In this greatest of all wars a British battery silences a German gun within two minutes after the allied airman has "spotted" the Boche. The air is "Any Man's Land." What lies beyond the hill is no longer the great hazard, for the wireless is flashing.

If the Allied general staffs had been provided with X-ray field-glasses, and had trained those glasses on a certain brownstone house in Massachusetts Avenue, between Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets, in Washington, they would have been interested in the perfection of the German system of communication. They would have observed the secretarial force of the Imperial Embassy opening and sorting letters from confederates throughout the country, many so phrased as to be quite harmless, others apparently meaningless. The Embassy served as a clearing-house for all German and Allied air messages.

Long before the war broke out the German government had seen the military necessity for a complete wireless system. Subsidies were secretly granted to the largest of the German electrical manufacturers to establish stations all over the globe. Companies were formed in America, ostensibly financed with American funds, but on plans submitted to German capitalists and through them to the German Foreign Office for approval. Thus was the Sayville station erected. As early as 1909 a German captain, Otto von Fossberg, had been sent to America to select a site on Long Island for the station. "The German government is backing the scheme," he told a friend, although the venture was publicly supposed to be under the auspices of the "Atlantic Communication Company," in which certain prominent German-Americans held stock and office. In 1911 an expert, Fritz von der Woude, paid Sayville a visit long enough to install the apparatus; he came under strict injunctions not to let his mission become generally known.

Boy-Ed watched the progress of the Sayville station with close interest and considerable authority, and his familiarity with wireless threw him into frequent and cordial relationship with the United States naval wireless men and the Department of Commerce. On one occasion the Department requested a confidential report from a radio inspector of the progress made by foreign interests in wireless; the report prepared went to Germany before it came to the hands of the United States government. Again: the German government was informed in 1914 by Boy-Ed in Washington that the United States intended to erect a wireless station at a certain point in the Philippines; full details, as the Navy Department had developed them, were forwarded, and the German government immediately directed a large electrical manufacturer in Berlin to bid for the work. The site the United States had selected was not altogether satisfactory to Germany, for some reason, so the German government added this delicious touch: a confidential map of the Philippines was turned over to the electrical house, with orders to submit a plan for the construction of the American station on a site which had been chosen by the German General War Staff!

The Providence Journal claims to have discovered an interesting German document—probably genuine—which reveals the scope of the Teutonic wireless project. It was a chart, bearing a rectangle labeled in German with the title of the German Foreign Office. From this "trunk" radiated three "branches," each bearing a name, and each terminating in the words. "Telefunken Co." The first branch was labeled "Gesellschaft für Drahtlose Telegraphie, Berlin"; the second, "Siemens & Halske, Siemens-Schuckert-Werke, Berlin"; the third, "Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, Berlin."

From each branch grew still further subdivisions, labeled with the names of electrical firms or agents all over the world, and all subject to the direction of the German government. These names follow:

From No. 1: Atlantic Communication Co. (Sayville), New York; Australasian Wireless Co., Ltd., Sydney (Australia); Telefunken East Asiatic Wireless Telegraph Co., Ltd., Shanghai; Maintz & Co. (of Amsterdam, Holland), Batavia (Java); Germann & Co. (of Hamburg), Manila; B. Grimm & Co., Bangkok; Paetzold & Eppinger, Havana; Spiegelthal, La Guayra; Kruger & Co., Guayaquil; Brahm & Co., Lima; E. Quicke, Montevideo; R. Schulbach, Thiemer & Co. (of Hamburg), Central America; Sesto Sesti, Rome; A. D. Zacharion & Cie., Athens; J. K. Dimitrijievic, Belgrade.

From No. 2: Siemens Bros. & Co., Ltd., London; Siemens & Halske, Vienna; Siemens & Halske, Petrograd; Siemens & Halske (K. G. Frank), New York; Siemens-Schuckert-Werke, Sofia; Siemens-Schuckert-Werke, Constantinople; Siemens-Schuckert-Werke (Dansk Aktsielskab), Copenhagen; Siemens-Schuckert-Werke (Denki Kabushiki Kaishe), Tokio; Siemens-Schuckert-Werke (Companhia Brazileira de Electricidade), Rio de Janeiro; Siemens-Schuckert, Ltd., Buenos Ayres; Siemens-Schuckert, Ltd., Valparaiso.

From No. 3: A. E. G. Union Electrique, Brussels; Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, Basel; A. E. G. Elecktriska Aktiebolaget, Stockholm; A. E. G. Electricitats Aktieselskabet, Christiania; A. E. G. Thomson-Houston Iberica, Madrid; A. E. G. Compania Mexicana, Mexico; A. E. G. Electrical Company of South Africa, Johannesburg.

The German manufacturers evinced a keen interest in the project of a wireless plant in Nicaragua, laying special stress on the point that "permanent stations in this neighborhood" would be valuable "if the Panama Canal is fortified." From Sayville station the German plan projected powerful wireless plants in Mexico, at Para, Brazil; at Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana; at Cartagena, Colombia, and at Lima, Peru. A point in which Captain H. Retzmann, the German naval attaché in 1911, was at one time interested was whether signals could be sent to the German fleet in the English Channel from America without England's interference. German naval wireless experts supervised the construction, and although the stations were nominally civilian-manned, and purely commercial, in reality the operators were often men of unusual scientific intellect, whose talents were sadly underpaid if they received no more than operators' salaries.

Gradually and quietly, Germany year by year spread her system of wireless communication over Central and South America, preparing her machinery for war. Over her staff of operators and mechanics she appointed an expert in the full confidence of the Embassy at Washington, and in close contact with Captain Boy-Ed. To the system of German-owned commercial plants in the United States he added amateur stations of more or less restricted radius, as auxiliary apparatus.

When the war broke out, and scores of German merchantmen were confined to American ports by the omnipresence of the British fleet at sea, the wireless of the interned ships was added to the system. Thus in every port lay a source of information for the Embassy. The United States presently ordered the closing of all private wireless stations, and those amateurs who had been listening out of sheer curiosity to the air conversation cheerfully took down their antennae. Not so, however, a prominent woman in whose residence on Fifth Avenue lay concealed a powerful receiving apparatus. Nor did the interned ships obey the order: apparatus apparently removed was often rigged in the shelter of a funnel, and operated by current supplied from an apparently innocent source. And the secret service discovered stations also in the residences of wealthy Hoboken Germans, and in a German-American "mansion" in Hartford, Connecticut.

The operators of these stations made their reports regularly through various channels to the Embassy. There the messages were sorted, and it is safe to say that Count von Bernstorff was cognizant of the position of every ship on the oceans. He was in possession of both the French and British secret admiralty codes. In the light of that fact, the manœuvres of the British and German fleets in the South Atlantic and Pacific became simply a game of chess, Germany following every move of the British fleet under Admiral Cradock, knowing the identity of his ships, their gun-power, and their speed. When she located the Good Hope, Monmouth, Glasgow and Otranto off Coronel, Berlin, through von Bernstorff, gave Admiral von Spee the word to strike, with the results which we have observed: the sinking of the Monmouth and Good Hope, and the crippling of the Glasgow and Otranto.

Throughout August, September and October, 1914, the system operated perfectly. Bernstorff and Boy-Ed were confronted with the problem of keeping the German fleet alive as long as possible, and inflicting as much damage as possible on enemy shipping. Allied merchantmen left port almost with impunity, and were gathered in by German raiders who had been informed from Washington of the location of their prey. But the defeat off Chile apparently was conclusive proof to England that Germany knew her naval code, and the events of November and December indicate that England changed her code.

It was while engaged in escort duty to the first transport fleet of the Australian Expeditionary Force that the Australian cruiser Sydney received wireless signals from Cocos Island shrieking that the Emden was near by. The Emden, having been deprived for some time of news of enemy ships, had gone there to destroy the wireless station, having in the past three months sunk some $12,500,000 of British shipping. Even while the island's distress signals were crashing out, the Emden had her own wireless busy in an effort to drown the call for help, or "jam" the air. On the following morning, November 9, the Sydney came up with the enemy. A sharp action followed. The Sydney's gunfire was accurate enough to cause the death of 7 officers and 108 men; her own losses were 4 killed and 12 wounded; the Emden fled, ran aground on North Keeling Island, one of the Cocos group, and ultimately became a total wreck.

In the same month the cruiser Geier fled the approach of the British and found refuge in Honolulu harbor. Her commander, Captain Karl Grasshof, made the mistake of keeping a diary. That document, which later fell into the hands of the Navy Intelligence Service, revealed a complete disrespect for the hospitality which the American government afforded the refugees. The Geier's band used to strike up for an afternoon concert, and under cover of the music, the wireless apparatus sent out messages to raiders at sea or messages in English so phrased as to start rumors of trouble between Japan and the United States. The Geier was the source of a rumor to the effect that Japanese troops had landed in Mexico; the Geier gave what circulation she could to a report that Germans in the United States were planning an invasion of Canada and was ably assisted in this effort by George Rodiek, German consul at Honolulu; the Geier caught all trans-Pacific wireless messages, and intercepted numerous United States government despatches. Captain Grasshof also spread a report quoting an American submarine commander as saying he would "like to do something to those Japs outside" (referring to the Japanese Pacific patrol) provided he (the American commander) and the German could reach an agreement. This report Grasshof attributed to von Papen, and later retracted, admitting that it was a lie. Grasshof's courier to the consulate in San Francisco was A. V. Kircheisen, a quartermaster on the liner China, a German secret service agent bearing the number K-17. Kircheisen frequently used the China's wireless to send German messages.

On December 8 occurred the engagement off the Falklands, which resulted in the defeat of the German fleet. The Karlsruhe within a short time gave up her aimless wanderings and disappeared. In February the Glasgow avenged herself on the Dresden, and the Prinz Eitel Friedrich and the Kronprinz Wilhelm fled into the security of Hampton Roads for the duration of war.

The United States' suspicions had been aroused by the activity of the German wireless plants, but the arm of the law did not remove at once the German operators at certain commercial stations. They were the men who despatched communications to Berlin and to the raiders. Interspersed in commercial messages they sprinkled code phrases, words, numbers, a meaningless and innocent jargon. The daily press bulletin issued to all ships at sea was an especially adaptable vehicle for this practice, as any traveler who has been forced to glean his news from one of these bulletins will readily appreciate. There were Americans shrewd enough, however, to become exceedingly suspicious of this superficially careless sending, and their suspicions were confirmed through the invention of another shrewd American, Charles E. Apgar. He combined the principles of the phonograph and the wireless in such a way as to record on a wax disc the dots and dashes of the message, precisely as it came through the receiver. The records could be studied and analyzed at leisure. And the United States government has studied them.

At three o'clock every morning, the great wireless station at Nauen, near Berlin, uttered a hash of language into the ether. It was apparently not directed to any one in particular, nor did it contain any known coherence. Unless the operator in America wore a DeForest audian detector, which picks up waves from a great distance, he could not have heard it, and certainly during the early part of the war he paid no attention to it. The United States decided, however, that it might be well to eavesdrop, and so for over two years every utterance from Nauen was transcribed and filed away, or run off on the phonograph, in the hope that repetition might reveal the code. Until the code was discovered elsewhere, the phonographic records told no tales, but then the State Department found that it had a priceless library of Prussian impudence.

The diplomatic code was a dictionary, its pages designated by serial letters, its words by serial numbers. Thus the message

"12-B-15-C-7"

signified the twelfth and fifteenth words on the second page, and the seventh word on the third page. This particular dictionary was one of a rare edition.

To complement the diplomatic code the Deutches Bank, the German Foreign Office, and their commercial representatives, Hugo Schmidt and Dr. Albert, had agreed upon an arbitrary code which proved one of the most difficult which the American authorities have ever had to decipher. Solution would have been impossible without some of the straight English or German confirmations which followed by mail, but as most of these documents were lost or destroyed, the deciphering had to be done by astute construction of testimony taken from Schmidt as late as the fall of 1917. He had made the work doubly difficult by burning the cipher key and most of his important papers in the furnace of the German Club.

Simple phrases, such as might readily pass any censor without arousing suspicion, passed frequently through Sayville station. The message "Expect father to-morrow" meant "The political situation between America and Germany grows worse. It is imperative that you take care of your New York affairs." "Depot" meant "Securities"; "Depot Pritchard" meant "Securities to be held in Germany"; "Depot Cooper" meant "Securities to be forwarded to some neutral country in Europe." Schmidt himself had the following aliases: "John Maley," "Roy Woolen," "Sidney Pickford," "George Brewster," "175 Congress Street, Brooklyn," "James Frasier," or "Andrew Brodie." Dr. Albert was mentioned as "John Herbinsen," "Howard Ackley," "Leonard Hadden," or "Donald Yerkes." James W. Gerard, the American ambassador at Berlin, was "Wilbur McDonald"; America was "Fremessi" or "Alfred Lipton." To throw any suspicion off the scent, the phrase "Hughes recovered" was translatable simply as "agreed," whereas "Percy died" meant "disagreed." Amounts of money were to be multiplied by one thousand.

This cipher code, so far as it had any system at all, showed a skilful choice of arbitrary proper names, than which there is nothing less suggestive or significant when the name is backed up by no known or discoverable personality. These names met two requirements: they carefully avoided any names of personages, and they sounded English or American. Following is a table of the commoner symbols used:

The chief significance of the discovery of the two codes is their conclusive proof that while von Bernstorff was protesting to the American government that he could not get messages through to Berlin, nor replies from the foreign office, he was actually in daily, if not hourly, communication with his superiors. Messages were sent out by his confidential operators under the very eyes of the American naval censors. After the break of diplomatic relations with Berlin, in February, 1917, the authorities set to work decoding the messages, and the State Department from time to time issued for publication certain of the more brutal proofs of Germany's violation of American neutrality. The ambassador and his Washington establishment had served for two years and a half as the "central exchange" of German affairs in the western world. After his departure communication from German spies here was handicapped only by the time required to forward information to Mexico; from that point to Berlin air conversation continued uninterrupted.

CHAPTER V MILITARY VIOLENCE

The plan to raid Canadian ports—The first Welland Canal plot—Von Papen, von der Goltz and Tauscher—The project abandoned—Goltz's arrest—The Tauscher trial—Hidden arms—Louden's plan of invasion.

Underneath the even surface of American life seethed a German volcano, eating at the upper crust, occasionally cracking it, and not infrequently bursting a great gap. When an eruption occurred, America stopped work for a moment, stared in surprise, sometimes in horror, at the external phenomena, discussed them for a few days, then hurried back to work. More often than not it saw nothing sinister even in the phenomena.

Less than ten hours from German headquarters in New York lay Canada, one of the richest possessions of Germany's bitter enemy England. Captain von Papen had not only full details of all points of military importance in the United States, but had made practical efforts to utilize them. He knew where his reservists could be found in America. When the Government, shortly after the outbreak of war, forbade the recruiting of belligerents within its boundaries, and then refused to issue American passports for the protection of soldiers on the way to their commands, Captain von Papen planned to mobilize and employ a German army on American soil in no less pretentious an enterprise than a military invasion of the Dominion.

The first plan was attributed to a loyal German named Schumacher, whose ambiguous address was "Eden Bower Farm, Oregon." He outlined in detail to von Papen the feasibility of obtaining a number of powerful motor-boats, to be manned by German-American crews, and loaded with German-American rifles and machine guns. From the ports on the shores of the Great Lakes he considered it practicable to journey under cover of darkness to positions which would command the waterfronts of Toronto, Sarnia, Windsor and Kingston, Ontario, find the cities defenseless, and precipitate upon them a fair storm of bullets. A few Canadian lives might be lost, which did not matter; an enormous hue and cry would be raised to keep the Canadian troops at home to guard the back door.

Von Papen entertained the plan seriously, and submitted it to Count von Bernstorff, who for obvious diplomatic reasons did not care to sponsor open violence when its proponent's references were unreliable, its actual reward was at best doubtful, and when subtle violence was equally practicable. Von Papen then produced an alternative project.

Cutting through the promontory which separates Lake Erie from the western end of Lake Ontario runs the Welland Canal, through which all shipping must pass to avoid Niagara Falls. This waterway is one of Canada's dearest properties, and is no mean artery of supply from the great grain country of the Northwest.

Its economic importance, however, was secondary in the German mind to the psychological effect upon Canada which a dynamite calamity to the Canal would certainly cause. The first expeditionary force of Canadian troops was training frantically at Valcartier, Quebec. They must be kept at home. Whether or not the idea originated with Captain von Papen is of little consequence (it may be safely assumed that Berlin had long had plans for such an enterprise); the fact is that it devolved upon him as military commander to crystallize thought in action. The plot is ascribed to "two Irishmen, prominent members of Irish associations, who had both fought during the Irish rebellion," and was to include destruction of the main railway junctions and the grain elevators in the vicinity of Toronto.

The picturesque renegade German spy commonly known as Horst von der Goltz is responsible for the generally accepted version of incidents which followed his first interview with von Papen on August 22 at the German Consulate in New York. He was sent to Baltimore under the assumed name of Bridgeman H. Taylor, with a letter to the German Consul there, Karl Luederitz, calling for whatever coöperation Goltz might need. He was to recruit accomplices from the crew of a German ship then lying at the North German Lloyd docks in the Patapsco River. With a man whom he had hired in New York, Charles Tucker, alias "Tuchhaendler," he visited the ship and selected his men. He then returned to New York, where Papen placed three more men at his disposal, one of them being A. A. Fritzen, of Brooklyn, a discharged purser on a Russian liner; another Frederick Busse, an "importer," with offices in the World Building, New York; and the third man Constantine Covani, a private detective, of New York. After a few days the sailors from Baltimore reported for duty, but were sent back, as Goltz noticed that his movements were being watched.

Papen sent Goltz to Captain Tauscher's office at 320 Broadway for explosives. On September 5, Captain Tauscher ordered 300 pounds of 60 per cent. dynamite to be delivered by the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company to Mr. Bridgeman Taylor. In a motor-boat Goltz applied at a du Pont barge near Black Tom Island and the Statue of Liberty and took away his three hundred pounds of dynamite in suitcases. The little craft made its way up the river to 146th Street. The conspirators then carried their burden to the German Club in Central Park South and later in a taxicab to Goltz's home, where it was stored with a supply of revolvers and electrical apparatus for exploding the charges.

Passport given to Horst von der Goltz under the
alias of Bridgeman H. Taylor

A passport for facile entrance into Canada had been applied for by one of Luederitz's henchmen in Baltimore in the name of "Bridgeman Taylor," and had been forwarded in care of Karl W. Buck, who lived at 843 West End Avenue, New York. With this guerdon of American protection Goltz set out for Buffalo about September 10—the last day of the Battle of the Marne—Busse and Fritzen carrying the dynamite and apparatus, and Covani, as Goltz naïvely related, "attending to me." He found rooms at 198 Delaware Avenue, in the heart of Buffalo. He learned of the terrain for the enterprise from a German of mysterious occupation, who had lived in Buffalo for several years. Within a few days Goltz and his companions moved on to Niagara Falls—a move made easier by an exchange of telegraphic communications between Papen and himself. It is only necessary to quote, from the British Secret Service report to Parliament, those messages which Goltz received from the attaché, or "Steffens," as Papen chose to sign himself:

New York, N. Y. Sept. 15, 14

Mr. Taylor, 198 Delaware Ave. Buffalo

Sent money today. Consult lawyer John Ryan six hundred thirteen Mutual Life Building Buffalo not later than seventeenth.

Steffens, 112 Central Park South
12.45 p.

New York, N. Y. Sept. 16-14

Mr. Taylor, 198 Delaware Avenue, Bflo.

Ryan got money and instructions.

Steffens,
1.14 p.

Goltz and Covani "consulted" Mr. Ryan, who had received $200 on September 16 from Papen through Knauth, Nachod & Kuhne.

Then Goltz claimed that he made two aeroplane flights over Niagara Falls, and "reconnoitered the ground." Something went wrong, for after a week arrived the following telegrams:

New York, N. Y. Sept. 24-14.

John T. Ryan, 613 Mutual Life Bldg. Buffalo.

Please instruct Taylor cannot do anything more for him.

Steffens.
12:51 p.

New York, N. Y. Sept. 26-14.

Mr. Taylor, care Western Union, Niagara Falls, N. Y.

Do what you think best. Did you receive dollars two hundred

Ryan
9.45 A.

These messages are open to several constructions. They do not contradict Goltz's claim that he "learned that the first contingent of Canadian troops had left the camp." They could indicate that his chief was not fully satisfied with his technique. Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the telegrams is their presence in a safe-deposit vault in Holland when Goltz was captured months later. It may be assumed that if (as he maintained) he was being watched constantly in Buffalo by the United States Secret Service, one of the first things he would have done is to destroy any messages received. We leave the reader to decide—after he has traced Goltz's history a step or two further.

Whatever the occasion, the Welland enterprise was dismissed; the dynamite was left with an aviator in Niagara Falls; Fritzen and Busse were discharged from service, and Covani and Goltz left for New York. In a letter dated December 7, from Buffalo, poor Busse wrote to Edmund Pavenstedt, at 45 William Street, New York, pleading that he had been left without any money in Niagara Falls; that he had written to von Papen and had been compelled to wait two weeks before he got $20. His expenses had accumulated during the fortnight, he could not find work, he even had sold his overcoat, and he begged Pavenstedt to send him money to come back to New York. "My friend Fritzen," he added, "was sent back some weeks ago by a gentleman in the German-American Alliance.... I would appreciate anything you can do for me, especially since I enlisted in such a task ... Von Papen signs himself Stevens."

The military attaché was frankly disgusted at the failure of the undertaking. Goltz claims to have explained everything satisfactorily, and to have been given presently a new commission—that of returning to Germany for further instructions from Abteilung III of the General Staff, the intelligence department of the Empire.

On October 8 Goltz sailed for Europe, armed with his false passport, and a letter of introduction to the German Consul-General in Genoa. He reached Berlin safely, received his orders, returned to England, and was arrested on November 13. The public was not informed of his arrest, yet in Busse's letter from Buffalo of December 7, he mentioned Goltz's capture in London. News traveled fast in German channels.

Examination of his papers resulted in a protracted imprisonment, which daily grew more painful, and finally Goltz agreed to turn state's evidence against his former confrères. It was not until March 31, 1916, that Captain Tauscher was interrupted at his office by the arrival of agents of the Department of Justice, who placed him under arrest. He was held in $25,000 bail on a charge of having furthered a plot to blow up the Welland Canal.

Meanwhile Goltz's confession had implicated him in something more than a casual acquaintance with the plot; stubs in the check-book of Captain von Papen established payment made by the latter to Tauscher of $31.13, which happened to be the exact total of two bills from the du Pont Company to Captain Tauscher for dynamite and hemp fuses delivered on September 5 and 13 to "Bridgeman Taylor." Prior to the trial in June and July, 1916, Tauscher offered to plead guilty for a promise of the maximum fine without imprisonment, but his offer was rejected by the United States attorneys. A letter was introduced as testimony to his good character from General Crozier, the then head of the Ordnance Department at Washington. Goltz made an unimpressive witness, and Captain Tauscher, protesting his innocence as a mere intermediary in the affair, was acquitted of the charge.

Of the smaller fry Fritzen was arrested in Los Angeles in March, 1917. He stated then to officers that he had made trips to Cuba after the outbreak of war in 1914, had traveled over southern United States in two attempts to reach Mexico City, and had finally found employment on a ranch. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Tucker and Busse were witnesses at the Tauscher trial and were treated leniently. Covani turned from his previous occupation as hunter to that of quarry, and was not apprehended.

Information gathered by the Federal authorities and produced in court proved that Captain von Papen and reservist German army officers in the country planned a second mobilization of German reservists to attack Canadian points. That the project was seriously considered for a time is evidenced by a note in the diary found on the commander of the Geier, in Honolulu, in which he said that the German consul in Honolulu, George Rodiek, had had orders from the San Francisco consulate to circulate a report to that effect. Hundreds of thousands of rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition that were to be available for German reservists were stored in New York, Chicago and other cities on the border. Many a German-American brewery concealed in the shadows of its storehouses crates of arms and ammunition. Tauscher stored in 200 West Houston Street, New York, on June 21, 1915, 2,000 45-calibre Colt revolvers, 10 Colt automatic guns, 7,000 Springfield rifles, 3,000,000 revolver cartridges and 2,500,000 rifle cartridges. When the New York police questioned him about this arsenal, he said he had purchased them in job lots, for speculation. As a matter of fact they had been intended for use in India, but had been diverted on the Pacific coast and returned to New York.

A bolder version of the plot of invasion came from Max Lynar Louden, known to the Federal authorities as "Count Louden." He was a man of nondescript reputation, who had secret communications with the Germans in the early part of the war. He confessed that he was party to a scheme for the quick mobilization and equipment of a full army of German reservists. Louden was consistently annoying to the Secret Service in that he refused openly to violate the neutrality laws, but the moment the authorities learned of the fact that he was supposed to have two or three wives they made an investigation which resulted in his imprisonment. His story, if not altogether reliable, is interesting.

Through German-American interests, the plans were made in 1914, he said, and a fund of $16,000,000 was subscribed to carry out the details. Secret meetings were held in New York, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and other large cities, and at these meetings it was agreed that a force of 150,000 reservists was available to seize and hold the Welland Canal, strategic points and munitions centers.

"We had it arranged," said Louden, "to send our men from large cities following announcements of feasts and conventions, and I think we could have obtained enough to carry out our plans had it not been for my arrest on the charge of bigamy. The troops were to have been divided into four divisions, with six sections. The first two divisions were to have assembled at Silvercreek, Mich. The first was to have seized the Welland Canal. The second was to have taken Wind Mill Point, Ontario. The third was to go from Wilson, N. Y., to Port Hope. The fourth was to proceed from Watertown, N. Y., to Kingston, Ontario. The fifth was to assemble near Detroit and land near Windsor. The sixth section was to leave Cornwall and take possession of Ottawa.

"It had been planned to buy or charter eighty-four excursion and small boats to use in getting into Canada. All of the equipment was to have been put aboard the boats, and when quarters for 120,000 men had been found it would have been easy to continue the expedition. The German government was cognizant of the plan and maps, etc., were to have been furnished by the German government. A representative of the British Ambassador offered $20,000 for our plans."

But none of the first German-American expeditionary forces left for their destinations. Their project was innocently foiled by Amelia Wendt, Rose O'Brien and Nella Florence Allendorf. These ladies were Louden's wives.

CHAPTER VI PAUL KOENIG

Justice and Metzler—Koenig's personality—von Papen's checks—The "little black book"—Telephone codes—Shadowing—Koenig's agents—His betrayal.

In a narrative which attempts so far as possible to proceed chronologically, it becomes necessary at this point to introduce Paul Koenig. For, on September 15, 1914, he sent an Irishman, named Edmund Justice, who had been a dock watchman, and one Frederick Metzler to Quebec for information of the number of Canadian troops in training. On September 18 Koenig left New York and met Metzler in Portland, Maine. He received his report, and on September 25 was in Burlington, Vt., where he conferred with Justice, and learned that the two spies had inspected the fortifications in Quebec, and had visited the training camps long enough to estimate the number and condition of the men. (Their information Koenig reported at once to von Papen, and it is possible that it dictated Papen's recall of Goltz from Buffalo the next day.)

Who was Paul Koenig? His underlings knew him as "P. K.," and called him the "bull-headed Westphalian" behind his back. He had a dozen aliases, among them Wegenkamp, Wagener, Kelly, Winter, Perkins, Stemler, Rectorberg, Boehm, Kennedy, James, Smith, Murphy, and W. T. Munday.

He was a product of the "Kaiser's Own"—the Hamburg-American Line. He had been a detective in the service of the Atlas Line, a subsidiary of the Hamburg-American, and for some years before the war was superintendent of the latter company's police. In that capacity he bossed a dozen men, watching the company's laborers and investigating any complaints made to the line. His work threw him into constant contact with sailors, tug-skippers, wharf-rats, longshoremen, and dive-keepers of the lowest type, and there was little of the criminal life of the waterfront that he had not seen.

He had arms like an ape, and the bodily strength of one. His expression suggested craft, ferocity, and brutality. Altogether his powerful frame and lurid vocabulary made him a figure to avoid or respect. Waterfront society did both—and hated him as well.

Paul Koenig, the Hamburg-American employe, who supplied
and directed agents of German violence in America

Von Papen saw in Koenig's little police force the nucleus of just such an organization as he needed. The Line put Koenig at the attaché's disposal in August, 1914, and straightway von Papen connected certain channels of information with Koenig's own system. He supplied reservists for special investigations and crimes, and presently Koenig became in effect the foreman of a large part of Germany's secret service in the East. As his activities broadened, he was called upon to execute commissions for Bernstorff, Albert, Dr. Dumba, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, and Dr. Alexander von Nuber, the Austrian consul in New York, as well as for the attachés themselves. He acted as their guard on occasion, served as their confidential messenger, and made himself generally useful in investigation work.

The guilt-stained check-book of the military attaché contained these entries:

March 29, 1915. Paul Koenig (Secret Service Bill) $509.11

April 18, Paul Koenig (Secret Service Bill) $90.94

May 11, Paul Koenig (Secret Service) $66.71

July 16, Paul Koenig (Compensation for F. J. Busse) $150.00

August 4, Paul Koenig (5 bills secret service) $118.92

Those entries represent only the payments made Koenig by check for special work done for von Papen. Koenig received his wages from the Line. When he performed work for any one else he rendered a special bill. This necessitated his itemizing his expenditures, and this Germanly thorough and thoroughly German system of petty accounting enabled our secret service later to trace his activities with considerable success. Koenig and von Papen used to haggle over his bills—on one occasion the attaché felt he was being overcharged, and accordingly deducted a half-dollar from the total.

"P. K." also had an incriminating book—a carefully prepared notebook of his spies and of persons in New York, Boston and other cities who were useful in furnishing him information. In another book he kept a complete record of the purpose and cost of assignments on which he sent his men. He listed in its pages the names of several hundred persons—army reservists, German-Americans and Americans, clerks, scientists and city and Federal employees—showing that his district was large and that his range for getting information and for supervising other pro-German propaganda was broad. For his own direct staff he worked out a system of numbers and initials to be used in communication. The numbers he changed at regular intervals and a system of progression was devised by which each agent would know when his number changed. He provided them with suitable aliases. These men had alternative codes for writing letters and for telephone communication to be changed automatically by certain fixed dates.

Always alert for spies upon himself, Koenig suspected that his telephone wire was tapped and that his orders were being overheard. So he instructed his men in various code words. If he told an agent to meet him "at 5 o'clock at South Ferry" he meant: "Meet me at 7 o'clock at Forty-second Street and Broadway." His suspicions were well-grounded, for his wire was tapped, and Koenig led the men who were spying on him an unhappy dance.

For example: he would receive a call on the telephone and would direct his agent, at the other end of the wire, to meet him in fifteen minutes at Pabst's, Harlem. It is practically impossible to make the journey from Koenig's office in the Hamburg-American Building to 125th Street in a quarter of an hour. After a time his watchers learned that "Pabst's, Harlem" meant Borough Hall, Brooklyn.

He never went out in the daytime without one or two of his agents trailing him to see whether he was being shadowed. He used to turn a corner suddenly and stand still so that an American detective following came unexpectedly face to face with him and betrayed his identity. Koenig would laugh heartily and pass on. Thus he came to know many agents of the Department of Justice and many New York detectives. When he started out at night he usually had three of his own men follow him and by a prearranged system of signals inform him if any strangers were following him.

The task of keeping watch of Koenig's movements required astute guessing and tireless work on the part of the New York police. So elusive did he become that it was necessary for Captain Tunney to evolve a new system of shadowing him in order to keep him in sight without betraying that he was under surveillance. One detective, accordingly, would be stationed several blocks away and would start out ahead of Koenig. The "front shadow" was signaled by his confederates in the rear whenever Koenig turned a corner, so that the man in front might dart down a cross-street and manœuvre to keep ahead of him. If Koenig boarded a street car the man ahead would hail the car several blocks beyond, thus avoiding suspicion. In more than one instance detectives in the rear, guessing that he was about to take a car, would board it several blocks before it got abreast of Koenig. His alertness kept Detectives Barnitz, Coy, Terra, and Corell on edge for months.

It was impossible to overhear direct conversation between Koenig and any man to whom he was giving instructions. Some of his workers he never permitted to meet him at all, but when he kept a rendezvous it was in the open, in the parks in broad daylight, or in a moving-picture theatre, or in the Pennsylvania Station, or the Grand Central Terminal. There he could make sure that nobody was eavesdropping. If he met an agent in the open for the first time he gave him some such command at this:

"Be at Third Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street at 2:30 to-morrow afternoon beside a public telephone booth there. When the telephone rings answer it."

The man would obey. On the minute the telephone would ring and the man would lift the receiver. A strange voice told him to do certain things—either a definite assignment, or instructions to be at a similar place on the following day to receive a message. Or he might be told to meet another man, who would give him money and further orders. The voice at the other end of the wire spoke from a public telephone booth and was thus reasonably sure that the wire was not tapped.

And Koenig trusted no man. He never sent an agent out on a job without detailing another man to shadow that man and report back to him in full the operations of the agent and of any persons whom he might deal with. He was brutally severe in his insistence that his men do exactly what he told them without using their own initiative.

Koenig had spies on every big steamship pier. He had eavesdroppers in hotels, and on busy telephone switchboards. He employed porters, window-cleaners, bank clerks, corporation employees and even a member of the Police Department.

This last, listed in his book as "Special Agent A. S.," was Otto F. Mottola, a detective in the warrant squad. The notebook revealed Mottola as "Antonio Marino," an alias later changed to Antonio Salvatore. Evidence was produced at Mottola's trial at Police Headquarters that Koenig paid him for investigating a passenger who sailed on the Bergensfjord; that he often called up Mottola, asked questions, and received answers which Koenig's stenographer took down in shorthand. Through him Koenig sought to keep closely informed of developments at Police Headquarters in the inquiry being made by the police into the activities of the Germans. Mottola was dismissed from the force because of false statements made to his superiors when they questioned him about Koenig.

Koenig's very caution was the cause of his undoing. The detectives who shadowed him learned that he "never employed the same man more than once," which meant simply that he was careful to place no subordinate in a position where blackmail and exposure might be too easy. To this fact they added another trifling observation; they noticed that as time went on he was seen less in the company of one George Fuchs, a relative with whom he had been intimate early in the war. They cultivated the young man's acquaintance to the extent that he finally burst out with a recitation of his grievances against Koenig, and betrayed him to the authorities.

"P. K." was defiant always. "They did get Dr. Albert's portfolio," he said one day, "but they won't get mine. I won't carry one."

CHAPTER VII FALSE PASSPORTS

Hans von Wedell's bureau—The traffic in false passports—Carl Ruroede—Methods of forgery—Adams' coup—Von Wedell's letter to von Bernstorff—Stegler—Lody—Berlin counterfeits American passports—Von Breechow.

Throughout August, 1914, it was comparatively easy for Germans in America who wished to respond to the call of the Fatherland to leave American shores. A number of circumstances tended swiftly to make it more hazardous. The British were in no mind to permit an influx of reservists to Germany while they could blockade Germany. The cordon tightened, and soon every merchant ship was stopped at sea by a British patrol and searched for German suspects. German spies here took refuge in the protection afforded by an American passport. False passports were issued by the State Department in considerable quantities during the early weeks of war—issued unwittingly, of course, for the applicant in most cases underwent no more than the customary peace-time examination.

We have already seen that von der Goltz easily secured a passport. The details of his application were these: Karl A. Luederitz, the German consul at Baltimore, detailed one of his men to supply Goltz with a lawyer and an application blank (then known as Form 375). The lawyer was Frederick F. Schneider, of 2 East German Street, Baltimore. On that application Goltz swore that his name was Bridgeman H. Taylor, his birthplace San Francisco, his citizenship American, his residence New York City, and his occupation that of export broker. Charles Tucker served as witness to these fantastic sentiments. Two days later (August 31) the State Department issued passport number 40308 in the name of Taylor, and William Jennings Bryan signed the precious document.

It was not necessary at that time to state the countries which the applicant intended to visit. Within a few weeks, however, that information was required on the passport.

Each additional precaution taken by the Government placed a new obstacle in the way of unlimited supply of passports. The Goltz method was easy enough, but it soon became impossible to employ it. The necessity for sending news through to Berlin by courier was increasingly urgent and it devolved upon Captain von Papen to systematize the supply of passports. The military attaché in November selected Lieutenant Hans von Wedell, who had already made a trip as courier to Berlin for his friend, Count von Bernstorff. Von Wedell was married to a German baroness. He had been a newspaper reporter in New York, and later a lawyer. He opened an office in Bridge Street, New York, and began to send out emissaries to sailors on interned German liners, and to their friends in Hoboken, directing them to apply for passports. He sent others to the haunts of tramps on the lower East Side, to the Mills Hotel, and other gathering places of the down-and-outs, offering ten, fifteen or twenty dollars to men who would apply for and deliver passports. And he bought them! He spent much time at the Deutscher Verein, and at the Elks' Club in 43rd Street where he often met his agents to give instructions and receive passports. His bills were paid by Captain von Papen, as revealed by the attaché's checks and check stubs; on November 24, 1914, a payment in his favor of $500; on December 5, $500 more and then $300, the latter being for "journey money." Von Wedell's bills at the Deutscher Verein in November, 1914, came to $38.05, according to another counterfoil. The Captain in the meantime employed Frau von Wedell as courier, sending her with messages to Germany. On December 22, 1914, he paid the baroness, according to his check-book, $800.

Hans von Wedell and his wife. He was an important member
of the false-passport bureau and she a messenger
from von Papen to Germany

The passports secured by von Wedell, and by his successor, Carl Ruroede, Sr., a clerk in Oelrichs & Co., whom he engaged, were supplied by the dozens to officers whom the General Staff had ordered back to Berlin. Not only American passports, but Mexican, Swiss, Swedish, Norwegian and all South American varieties were seized eagerly by reservists bound for the front. Germans and Austrians, who had been captured in Russia, sent to Siberia as prisoners of war, escaped and making their way by caravan through China, had embarked on vessels bound for America. Arriving in New York they shipped for neutral European countries. Among them was an Austrian officer, an expert aeroplane observer whose feet were frozen and amputated in Siberia, but who escaped to this country. He was ordered home because of his extreme value in observation, and after his flight three-fourths of the way round the world, the British took him off a ship at Falmouth to spend the remainder of the war in a prison camp.

Captain von Papen used the bureau frequently for passports for spies whom he wished to send to England, France, Italy or Russia. Anton Kuepferle and von Breechow were two such agents. Both were captured in England with false passports in their possession. Both confessed, and the former killed himself in Brixton Jail.

Von Wedell and Ruroede grew reckless and boastful. Two hangers-on at the Mills Hotel called upon one of the writers of this volume one day and told him of von Wedell's practices, related how they had blackmailed him out of $50, gave his private telephone numbers and set forth his haunts. When this and other information reached the Department of Justice, Albert G. Adams, a clever agent, insinuated himself into Ruroede's confidence, and offered to secure passports for him for $50 each. Posing as a pro-German, he pried into the inner ring of the passport-buyers, and was informed by Ruroede just how the stock of passports needed replenishing.

Though in the early days of the war it had not been necessary for the applicant to give more than a general description of himself, the cry of "German spies!" in the Allied countries became so insistent that the Government added the requirement of a photograph of the bearer. The Germans, however, found it a simple matter to give a general description of a man's eyes, color of hair, and age to fit the person who was actually to use the document; then forwarded the picture of the applicant to be affixed. The applicant receiving the passport, would sell it at once. Even though the official seal was stamped on the photograph the Germans were not dismayed.

Adams rushed into Ruroede's office one day waving a sheaf of five passports issued to him by the Government. Adams was ostensibly proud of his work, Ruroede openly delighted.

"I knew I could get these passports easily," he boasted to Adams. "Why, if Lieutenant von Wedell had kept on here he never could have done this. He always was getting into a muddle."

"But how can you use these passports with these pictures on them?" asked the agent.

"Oh, that's easy," answered Ruroede. "Come in the back room. I'll show you." And Ruroede, before the observant eyes of the Department of Justice, patted one of the passports with a damp cloth, then with adhesive paste fastened a photograph of another man over the original bearing the imprint of the United States seal.

"We wet the photograph," said Ruroede, "and then we affix the picture of the man who is to use it. The new photograph also is dampened, but when it is fastened to the passport there still remains a sort of vacuum in spots between the new picture and the old because of ridges made by the seal. So we turn the passport upside down, place it on a soft ground—say a silk handkerchief—and then we take a paper-cutter with a dull point, and just trace the letters on the seal. The result is that the new photograph dries exactly as if it had been stamped by Uncle Sam. You can't tell the difference."

Adams never knew until long afterward that when he met Ruroede by appointment in Bowling Green, another German atop 11 Broadway was scrutinizing him through field-glasses, and examining every one who paused nearby, who might arouse suspicion of Adams' ingenuous part in the transaction.

Through Adams' efforts Ruroede and four Germans, one of them an officer in the German reserves, were arrested on January 2, on the Scandinavian-American liner Bergensfjord outward bound to Bergen, Norway. They had passports issued through Adams at Ruroede's request under the American names of Howard Paul Wright, Herbert S. Wilson, Peter Hanson and Stanley F. Martin. Their real names were Arthur Sachse, who worked in Pelham Heights, N.Y., and who was returning to become a lieutenant in the German Army; Walter Miller, August R. Meyer and Herman Wegener, who had come to New York from Chile, on their way to the Fatherland.

On the day when Ruroede, his assistant, and the four men for whom he obtained passports were arrested, Joseph A. Baker, assistant superintendent of the Federal agents in New York, took possession of the office at 11 Bridge Street. As he was sorting papers and making a general investigation, a German walked in bearing a card of introduction from von Papen, introducing himself as Wolfram von Knorr, a German officer who up to the outbreak of the war had been naval attaché in Tokio. The officer desired a passport. Baker, after a conversation in which von Knorr revealed von Papen's connection with the passport bureau, told him to return the next day. When the German read the next morning's newspapers he changed his lodging-place and his name.

Von Wedell himself was a passenger on the Bergensfjord, but when he was lined up with the other passengers, the Federal agents, who did not have a description of him, missed him and left the vessel. He was later (January 11) taken off the ship by the British, however, and transferred to another vessel for removal to a prison camp. She struck a German mine and sank, and Von Wedell is supposed to have drowned.

A few days before he sailed, he wrote a letter to von Bernstorff which fixes beyond question the responsibility for his false passport activities. The letter, dated from Nyack, where he was hiding, on December 26, 1914, follows:

"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 prematurely 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 travelers through Gibraltar; in which I succeeded. Mr. Ruroede will testify to you that without my suitable 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 unfortunately 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 application 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 undertaking 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 departure, 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 commission, 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 sometimes 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 accomplished my task.

"With expressions of the most exquisite consideration, I am, your Excellency,

"Very respectfully,
"(Signed) Hans Adam von Wedell."

Ruroede was sentenced to three years in Atlanta prison. The four reservists, pleading guilty, protested they had taken the passports out of patriotism and were fined $200 each.

The arrest of Ruroede exposed the New York bureau, and made it necessary for the Germans to shift their base of operations, but it did not put an end to the fraudulent passport conspiracies. Captain Boy-Ed assumed the burden, and hired men to secure passports for him. One of these men was Richard Peter Stegler, a Prussian, 33 years old, who had served in the German Navy and afterward came to this country to start on his life work. Before the war he had applied for his first citizenship papers but his name had not been removed from the German naval reserve list.

"After the war started," Stegler said, "I received orders to return home. I was told that everything was in readiness for me. I was assigned to the naval station at Cuxhaven. My uniform, my cap, my boots and my locker would be all set aside for me, and I was told just where to go and what to do. But I could not get back at that time and I kept on with my work."

He became instead a member of the German secret service in New York. "There is not a ship that leaves the harbor, not a cargo that is loaded or unloaded, but that some member of this secret organization watches and reports every detail," he said. "All this information is transmitted in code to the German Government." In January, 1915, if not earlier, Stegler was sent by the German Consulate to Boy-Ed's office, where he received instructions to get a passport and make arrangements to go to England as a spy. Boy-Ed paid him $178, which the attaché admitted. Stegler immediately got in touch with Gustave Cook and Richard Madden, of Hoboken, and made use of Madden's birth certificate and citizenship in obtaining a passport from the American Government. Stegler paid $100 for the document. Stegler pleaded guilty to the charge and served 60 days in jail; Madden and Cook were convicted of conspiracy in connection with the project, and were sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment.

"I was told to make the voyage to England on the Lusitania," continued Stegler. "My instructions were as follows: 'Stop at Liverpool, examine the Mersey River, obtain the names, exact locations and all possible information concerning warships around Liverpool, ascertain the amount of munitions of war being unloaded on the Liverpool docks from the United States, ascertain their ultimate destination, and obtain a detailed list of all the ships in the harbor.'

"I was to make constant, though guarded inquiries, of the location of the dreadnought squadron which the Germans in New York understand was anchored somewhere near St. George's Channel. I was to appear as an American citizen soliciting trade. Captain Boy-Ed advised me to get letters of introduction to business firms. He made arrangements so that I received such letters and in one letter were enclosed some rare stamps which were to be a proof to certain persons in England that I was working for the Germans.

"After having studied at Liverpool I was to go to London and make an investigation of the Thames and its shipping. From there I was to proceed to Holland and work my way to the German border. While my passport did not include Germany, I was to give the captain of the nearest regiment a secret number which would indicate to him that I was a reservist on spy duty. By that means I was to hurry to Eisendal, head of the secret service in Berlin."

Stegler did not make the trip because his wife learned of the enterprise and begged him not to go. He too had run afoul of the vigilant Adams, and was placed under arrest in February, 1915, shortly after he decided to stay at home. In his possession were all the letters and telegrams exchanged between him and Boy-Ed, and one telegram from "Winkler," Captain Boy-Ed's servant.

Stegler also said that he had been told by Dr. Karl A. Fuehr, one of Dr. Albert's assistants, that Boy-Ed previously had sent to England Karl Hans Lody, the German who in November, 1915, was put to death as a spy in the Tower of London. Lody had been in the navy, had served on the Kaiser's yacht and then had come to this country and worked as an agent for the Hamburg-American Line, going from one city to another. Shortly after the war started Lody had gone on the mission of espionage which cost him his life.

Captain Boy-Ed authorized the commander of the German cruiser Geier, interned in Honolulu, to get his men back to Germany as best he could, by providing them with false passports. Still another of Boy-Ed's protégés was a naval reservist, August Meier, who shipped as a hand on the freighter Evelyn with a cargo of horses for Bermuda. On the voyage practically all of the horses were poisoned. Meier, however, was arrested by the Federal authorities on the charge of using the name of a dead man in order to get an American passport. In supplying passports and in handling spies, Captain Boy-Ed was more subtle than his colleague, von Papen. Nevertheless the Government officials succeeded in getting a clear outline of his activities. The exposure of Boy-Ed's connection with Stegler made it necessary for the German Government to change its system once more.

The Wilhelmstrasse had a bureau of its own. Reservists from America reported in Berlin for duty in Belgium and France, and their passports ceased to be useful, to them. The intelligence department commandeered the documents for agents whom they wished to send back to America. Tiny flakes of paper were torn from the body of the passport and from the seal, in order that counterfeiters might match them up. On January 14, 1915, an American named Reginald Rowland obtained a passport from the State Department for safe-conduct on a business trip to Germany. While it was being examined at the frontier every detail of the document was closely noted by the Germans. Some months later Captain Schnitzer, chief of the German secret service in Antwerp, had occasion to send a spy to England. He chose von Breechow, a German whom von Papen had forwarded from New York, and who had his first naturalization papers from the United States. To Breechow he gave a facsimile of Rowland's passport identical with the original in every superficial respect except that the spy's photograph had been substituted for the original, and the age of the bearer set down as 31—ten years older than Rowland.

Von Breechow passed the English officials at Rotterdam and at Tilbury. He soon fell under suspicion, however, and his passport was taken away. When the British learned that the real Rowland was at home in New Jersey, and in possession of his own passport, they sent for it, and compared the two. Breechow's revealed a false watermark, stamped on in clear grease, which made the paper translucent, but which was soluble in benzine. The stamp, ordinarily used to countersign both the photograph and the paper in a certain way, had been applied in a different position. With those exceptions, and the suspicious Teutonic twist to a "d" in the word "dark," the counterfeit was regular.

The Rosenthal case was the first to bring to light the false passport activities in Berlin. Rosenthal, posing as an agent for gas mantles, traveled in England successfully as a spy under an emergency passport issued by the American Embassy in Berlin. Captain Prieger, the chief of a section in the intelligence department of the General Staff, asked Rosenthal to make a second trip. The spy demurred, doubting whether his passport might be accepted a second time. The Captain turned to a safe, extracted a handful of false American passports, and said: "I can fit you out with a passport in any name you wish." Rosenthal decided to employ his own. He was arrested and imprisoned in England.

As the State Department increased its vigilance the evil began to expire. It was further stifled by concerted multiplication by the Allies of the examinations which the stranger had to undergo. But during its course it made personal communication between Berlin and lower Broadway almost casual.

CHAPTER VIII INCENDIARISM

Increased munitions production—The opening explosions—Orders from Berlin—Von Papen and Seattle—July, 1915—The Van Koolbergen affair—The autumn of 1915—The Pinole explosion.

A bomb is an easy object to manufacture. Take a section of lead pipe from six to ten inches long, and solder into it a partition of thin metal, which divides the tube into two compartments. Place a high explosive in one compartment and seal it carefully (the entire operation requires a gentle touch) and in the other end pour a strong acid; cap it, and seal it. If you have chosen the proper metal for the partition, and acid of a strength to eat slowly through it to the explosive, you have produced a bomb of a type which German destroying agents were fond of using in America from the earliest days of their operation.

When the first panic of war had passed, the Allied nations took account of stock and sent their purchasing agents to America for war materials. Manufacturers of explosives set to work at once to fill contracts of unheard-of size. They built new factories almost overnight, hired men broadcast, and sacrificed every other consideration to that of swift and voluminous output. Accidents were inevitable. Probably we shall never know what catastrophes were actually wrought by German sympathizers, for the very nature of the processes and the complete ruin which followed an explosion guarded the secret of guilt. No doubt carelessness was largely to blame for the earlier explosions, but instead of diminishing as the new hands became more skillful, and as greater vigilance was employed everywhere, the number of disasters increased. The word "disaster" is used advisedly. Powder, guncotton, trinitrotoluol (or TNT, as it is better known), benzol (one of the chief substances used in the manufacture of TNT) and dynamite were being produced in great volume for the Allies in American plants within a comparatively short time—all powerful explosives even in minute quantity.

At sea the German navy was losing control daily. It therefore behooved the German forces in America to stop the production of munitions at its source. It may be well, for the force which such presentation carries, to recount very briefly the major accidents which occurred in America in the first few months after August, 1914.

On August 30 one powder mill of the du Pont Powder company (strictly speaking the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company) at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, blew up. In September a guncotton explosion in the Wright Chemical Works caused the death of three people, and a large property damage. In October the factory of the Pain Fireworks Display Company was destroyed, and several people were killed. In the same month the fireworks factory of Detwiller and Street in Jersey City suffered an explosion and the loss of four lives. These explosions were the opening guns.

Throughout August and September most of these accidents may be attributed to the inexperience and confusion which followed greatly increased production in the powder mills. But a circular dated November 18, issued by German Naval Headquarters to all naval agents throughout the world, ordered mobilized all "agents who are overseas and all destroying agents in ports where vessels carrying war material are loaded in England, France, Canada, the United States and Russia."

Followed these orders:

"It is indispensable by the intermediary of the third person having no relation with the official representatives of Germany to recruit progressively agents to organize explosions on ships sailing to enemy countries in order to cause delays and confusion in the loading, the departure and the unloading of these ships. With this end in view we particularly recommend to your attention the deckhands, among whom are to be found a great many anarchists and escaped criminals. The necessary sums for buying and hiring persons charged with executing the projects will be put at your disposal on your demand."