Chapter 43 of 52 · 3992 words · ~20 min read

Part 43

German ambassador to the United States at the time the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed. One of his many acts of duplicity was the sending of a secret message to Germany asking for funds to be used to influence members of the United States Congress.]

“Upon the shoulders of Dr. Heinrich Albert, privy counselor 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.

[Illustration:

Dr. Dumba

Austrian Ambassador]

“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 somber frock coat of the European business man with real grace. His eyes were blue and clear, his face clean-shaven and faintly saber-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.

CORRUPTION FUND OF MILLIONS

“Upon him rested the task of spending between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 a week for German propaganda. He spent thirty millions at least in secret agency work, also known by the uglier names of bribery, sedition and conspiracy. He admitted that he wasted a half million.

“His methods were quiet and successful, and his participation in the offenses 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.

[Illustration:

Captain von Papen

German Military Attaché]

“Von Papen operated from New York after the outbreak of war. “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 über 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.

“... 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.

BOY-ED, A TURKISH HALF-BREED

“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.... 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.

“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 1911-14.)

“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.

[Illustration:

_Courtesy of Leslie’s Weekly._

A Deadly Torpedo Leaving the Tube of an American Destroyer

A Whitehead torpedo at the instant it leaves the tube. This tube is above the water line. Torpedo-boat destroyers carry both this kind of tubes and submerged ones. The torpedo, when fired from above the water, submerges itself to a depth determined by the adjustment of its horizontal steering gear, and thereafter runs its course at an even depth beneath the surface.]

GERMANY’S SECRET ARMY

“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.”

But long after the departure of the principals for their native land the enterprises they had inaugurated persisted.

Among the pre-war activities the German government made a contract with Dr. Karl Buenz, American head of the Hamburg-American Line, for the provisioning, during war, of German ships at sea, the contract being jealously guarded in the German Embassy at Washington. Merchant ships were to be used for the purpose. July 31, 1914, a cablegram from Berlin called on Dr. Buenz to begin filling his contract. The first ship to be loaded (with coal) was the _Berwind_, and the question arose as to who among the conspirators should apply for the clearance papers. Finally G. B. Kulenkampff, a banker and exporter, was directed to do so. He swore to a false manifest of the cargo and got the papers. The _Berwind_ carried food as well as coal for the provisioning of German warships to be found at secretly designated points, and her destination was not Buenos Ayres as the clearance papers declared, so the United States was unwittingly a party to German naval operations, on the third day of the war, by German mendacity. The _Berwind_ sailed for a little island known as Trinidad (not the British West Indian island) about 70° east of Brazil, and there her cargo was transferred to five German ships, one of which was the _Kap-Trafalgar_, presently sunk by the British auxiliary cruiser, the _Carmania_, which steamed into view while the _Trafalgar_, the _Berwind_ and one other of the vessels were still at Trinidad.

It is interesting to know that most of the ships chartered for this lawless purpose did not carry out the intention. The _Unita_ was one of them and we are told:

“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.’”

Under the Buenz contract twelve ships were either purchased or chartered at a total cost of $1,419,394, and it is said that of their shiploads of supplies less than $30,000 worth were ever transferred to German war vessels. Buenz, after much delay in the proceedings, was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta.

THE WIRELESS TREACHERIES

The Sayville Wireless Station on Long Island was for a long time a successfully controlled medium for the direction of spy and propaganda work in this country as well as for communication with wireless stations in Germany, in Central and South America, with wireless ships interned, etc., etc. To this and the other German-owned commercial plants in the United States Capt. Boy-Ed added amateur stations of more or less extended radius as auxiliaries. But owing to complaints of frequent interference with regular messages, 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 antennæ. 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.”

[Illustration:

German Spies in France

After living for ten years in France, they were discovered giving information to the Germans by telephone. They confessed and were shot.]

Later suspicions were aroused by the activities of the German wireless, but the German operators were not at once removed. The United States began taking down the seemingly meaningless jargon that came every morning from the Nauen Station near Berlin. It was two years later, however, that a key to the jumble was discovered and the code revealed. Two codes in fact were found.

“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.”

It may be noted in passing that Captain Karl Grasshof of the cruiser _Geier_, that took refuge from the British by tying up in Honolulu harbor, gave high proof of the German nice sense of honor in respect of hospitality. He instituted a series of afternoon concerts by the ship’s band, that the music might drown out the noise of the wireless apparatus as he sent messages to raiders at sea or threw off false reports in English, the purpose of which was to make trouble between the United States and Japan. He said at one time that von Papen inspired this peculiar treachery, but afterwards denied it.

TO INVADE CANADA

On the military side, one of von Papen’s brilliant projects was to organize the German reservists in the United States into an army for the invasion of Canada. The plan was to transport men and guns by night from ports of the Great Lakes by means of powerful motor boats and attack defenseless lake cities, the object being to arouse such fear in the Canadians that they would keep their troops for home defense instead of sending them to the aid of England. This, however, was a project from which the craftier Bernstorff recoiled as smacking too much of open violence. Then von Papen proposed a scheme to blow up the Welland Canal as a terrorizing job. The plot was ascribed to “two Irishmen, prominent members of Irish associations, both of whom had fought in the Irish rebellion.”

The spy, Horst von der Goltz, was the active agent in the preliminary steps, such as recruiting men for the job, securing explosives, etc., Papen, in the name of Steffens, supplying the money and giving the necessary instructions. But after being carried forward almost to the point of action the Welland enterprise was, for some unknown reason, suddenly abandoned and the dynamite (three hundred pounds in suitcases), which had been taken to Niagara Falls, was left with an aviator, and Goltz, with his immediate associate, Constance Covani, a private detective, returned to New York. Von Papen was much provoked by the failure of his second plan to terrorize Canada. Goltz was sent on some commission to Germany in October, sailing on a forged passport, got safely to Berlin and, on his return trip in November, was arrested in England, spy fashion. After a protracted imprisonment, Goltz agreed to turn State’s evidence against his fellow conspirators. A number of arrests resulted, and the plots against Canada were fully revealed.

As more and more precise rules for the issue of passports were made by the government the difficulties of the conspirators in making direct communication with Berlin increased correspondingly. It devolved upon von Papen to provide for the supply of passports to meet the needs of couriers and others who could not get passports in their own names.

“The military attaché 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.”

MANUFACTURING PASSPORTS

The passports secured in this way by von Wedell and by his successor, Carl Ruroede, Sr., in the employ of Oelrichs & Co., were supplied to reservist officers whom the General Staff had ordered back to Berlin, and also to spies whom von Papen wished to send to England, France, Italy or Russia. Among the latter was Anton Kuepferle, who was captured in England, confessed and killed himself in Brixton jail.

[Illustration:

Anti-German Riots in Britain

The destruction of the _Lusitania_ by a German submarine caused anti-German riots in many parts of the world. These started in Liverpool when the bodies of dead members of the crew were brought to their homes there, and spread rapidly to other parts of the United Kingdom. The photograph shows the looting of a German’s residence in High Street, London.]

When it became obvious that passports must be serving the ends of persons other than those to whom they were issued the government demanded that each passport should have the photograph of the bearer. But this did not disconcert the conspirators, as _The German Secret Service in America_ tells us. It says: “The Germans 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 [Albert G. Adams, a United States Secret Service agent, who had insinuated himself into Ruroede’s confidence] 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.’

NABBED AT SEA

“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.

“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.”

An explicit letter from von Wedell to von Bernstorff dispelled any possibility of doubt that the German Ambassador was fully cognizant of the false passport frauds.

“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 did not put an end to the fraudulent passport conspiracy. Capt. Boy-Ed assumed the burden, and hired men to secure passports for him.”

But the increased vigilance and thoroughness of the British reduced this service to a negligible quantity before the entrance of the United States into the war squelched it entirely.

[Illustration:

From the Fighting Top of the Battleship _Wyoming_

The _Wyoming_ is 562 feet in length, of 26,000 tons displacement, and carries twelve 12-inch and twenty-one 5-inch guns.]