Part 27

Early in 1918 Mr. D. Chauncey Brewer, of Boston, president of the North American Civic League for Immigrants, was appointed by the Secretary of War to take the situation in hand. Under his direction a corps of field agents commenced operations both in the camps and cantonments and in the large cities and industrial centres, collecting information about the non-English-speaking men taken by the draft. These agents, who were carefully picked men of foreign extraction and generally linguists of ability, observed the general and special influences affecting the foreign-born groups and investigated propaganda, suspects, complaints regarding draft evasion, draft boards, soldiers’ allotments, insurance, and the like. They reported on conditions existing in the camps from information contained in soldiers’ letters, for many men who were prevented by their lack of knowledge of English or other reasons from complaining to their military superiors, would recite their troubles in their letters to the folks at home. These agents accounted in various ways for their presence in the camps, most of them announcing that they were working for the Associated Charities or for the North American Civic League for Immigrants. They established connections with leaders of the foreign colonies in the larger cities as well as with the poor. The foreign-language press, its editors and its influence, good or bad, also demanded their attention. They reported loyal citizens of integrity and ability who were later induced by means of correspondence to volunteer for this kind of service and who could keep Military Intelligence informed on conditions in their respective cities when the agent had finished his work or found it advisable to withdraw. Thus was built up a large volunteer organization composed of loyal citizens of foreign birth or extraction, who kept the Intelligence Division advised of conditions among their respective groups or races, and to whom the division could apply for assistance or information in individual cases or localities. These volunteer assistants included men in all lines of business and in all professions. The Boards of Health of cities having large foreign-speaking populations vouched for loyal foreign-speaking doctors who, because of the peculiarly confidential relations they enjoyed with their patients, were able to obtain information of great value to the section. The same was true of clergymen of many denominations. The editors of foreign-language newspapers frequently rendered highly effective co-operation, and correspondence was started with a dozen or more school superintendents in the larger cities with a view to enlisting the aid of the high-school boys in promoting the morale of the foreign-speaking colonies.

Reports received from Camp Gordon in April, 1918, indicated serious trouble with the unnaturalized Russians and Poles, and, in some instances, with the Italians, all of whom were perfectly willing to fight for the lands from which they came but not for this one. Camp Gordon was a replacement camp, and as such had become a dumping-ground for divisions having men that they wished to get rid of, a large proportion of whom were foreigners. Of the 1,500 men of all nationalities who were transferred to this camp by the 82d Division on the ground of suspected disloyalty, nearly 1,000 did not speak English. In order to remedy this dangerous condition, a memorandum was drawn up by M I 3 and was adopted by the War Department. This memorandum recommended that foreign-speaking draftees not having sufficient knowledge of English to understand the commands be segregated by nationalities in companies, both the commissioned and non-commissioned officers of which should be of the same nationality as their men, or should at least be familiar with their language, habits, and psychology. In support of the plan the words of Napoleon were quoted:

“If I had enough humpbacks in the Army to make a regiment, enough Negroes to make a battalion, enough dumb men to make a company, I would so organize them. No stimulus is more potent than the pride of men who have a common bond either of race, nationality, color, or even affliction. Men thus put together want to show the rest of the Army their extreme capability.”

The work at Camp Gordon was put in charge of an officer of Military Intelligence, who had had considerable experience in social-service work among the foreign-speaking soldiers at Camps Grant and Custer. Upon his arrival at Camp Gordon he found that those soldiers (most of them foreigners) who had been left behind when troops were sent overseas had been placed in the 5th and 10th Training Battalions of the Depot Brigade. Forty-one nationalities were represented in this group of foreigners, classified as Allied Aliens, Neutral Aliens, and Enemy Aliens, 80 per cent of them being Italians, Slavs, and Russian Jews. The officer immediately initiated a study of each nationality and of each individual, the process of personally interviewing each man, 976 in all, occupying two weeks. Thousands of questions and complaints were answered and explanations made to the men in their native tongue, every man being recorded and classified according to his nationality, loyalty, intellect, citizenship, and military fitness. This done, two companies were formed, one composed of Slavs—the majority of them Poles—and the other of Italians. Three officers of Polish extraction and one of Russian were procured for the Slav company and two of Italian extraction for the Italian company. The first week of training and lectures on discipline resulted in an amazing impetus of spirit and enthusiasm. Between the Slavs and the Italians arose the keenest competition for proficiency in drill. So startling was the change that the battalion commander and the American officers in charge of the two companies passed rapidly from discouragement and pessimism to extreme enthusiasm. An elaborate plan was worked out for giving the men a working knowledge of English and a series of lectures were given in their own tongues, thus acquainting them with the requirements necessary for service overseas. Special religious services were arranged for the Italians and the Slavs, their spiritual needs being ministered to by priests of their own faiths. The camp diet was modified in order to give them food which was racially acceptable. Social entertainments were planned, so that prominent citizens of Atlanta could meet the foreign-speaking soldiers and make them feel that they were as dear to the country whose uniform they were wearing as though they were American-born. The immediate result of this interesting experiment was the conversion of potentially dangerous malcontents into loyal, enthusiastic, and efficient soldiers. Furthermore, the reaction upon the families of the soldiers and upon the colonies from which they came was highly gratifying, for their letters from the men, filled with their suddenly awakened enthusiasm for army life and with glowing accounts of the kindness and consideration which were being shown them, did much to counteract any latent disloyalty among the foreign-speaking population. To each new group of foreigners who entered the battalion the question was put: “How many of you men are willing to go abroad and fight?” In most cases the affirmative responses were pitifully few. In fact, the Slavs practically all refused to put on identification tags, asserting that should they be sent abroad they would be as willing to help the Germans as the Allies. But when, after a few weeks’ stay in the battalion, the question, “How many of you men are willing to go abroad and fight?” was again put to them, the response was as remarkable as it was thrilling, for practically the whole battalion stepped forward as one man. Properly treated, the metal had fused at last. They were all Americans now.

So successful did the experiment prove at Camp Gordon that a few months later the same officer was ordered to introduce his plan at Camp Devens, where there were approximately 6,000 men who did not have sufficient knowledge of English to be effectively trained. In three days he, with proper assistance, personally examined upward of 2,000 men, and on the fourth day divided them into four companies, Company No. 1 consisting of 250 Slavs (three-fourths of them Poles), Company No. 2 of 230 Italians, Company No. 3 of 200 Greeks and Albanians, and Company No. 4 of the same number of Armenians and Syrians. A number of non-commissioned officers who could speak the necessary languages were transferred from the depot brigade and assigned to assist in the training of the new companies. The results obtained were beyond all expectations. The spirit and enthusiasm of the men advanced by leaps and bounds. They entered into competitive drills as enthusiastically as though they were schoolboys playing a game. The guard-house, which, until the introduction of the plan, had always been full of foreign-speaking soldiers, suddenly became deserted. From being the worst organization at the camp, the “Foreign Legion,” as it was called, became the model battalion.

The plan, followed both at Camp Devens and Camp Gordon, of providing the foreign-speaking organization with foreign-speaking non-commissioned officers of unquestioned loyalty served an additional purpose in that it provided the Intelligence Division with new and valuable sources of information, for the non-commissioned officers, being familiar with the language, customs, and modes of thought of their men, could easily detect any undercurrent of disaffection or disloyalty. Their common speech would at once establish a bond of sympathy that would be likely to disarm the suspicions of an enemy agent or sympathizer. Moreover, the speech and characteristics of peoples living in close proximity to each other, though divided by an international frontier, are usually so nearly identical that no one can distinguish between them save a person who himself comes from that region. Only a man who had himself lived on the Russo-German frontier, for example, would be able to say with certainty whether a certain soldier came from Russian, Austrian, or German Poland; from Galicia or Lithuania; from Transylvania, Besserabia, or the Ukraine. An incident which occurred at one of the camps illustrates this principle as applied to the Oriental races. A civilian agent of the Military Intelligence Division, who was an Armenian, noticed that a soldier who claimed to be a Syrian refused to eat pork. Being perfectly familiar with both Turkish and Syrian customs, and knowing that the Turks, who are Mohammedans, are forbidden to eat pork, while the Syrians, who are Christians, are not, the operative sharply questioned the pretended Syrian, who at length confessed that he was a Turk, and, consequently, an enemy alien. Such a slight indication would have passed unnoticed save by one familiar with Oriental customs, and a dangerous enemy agent might thus have escaped detection.

To M I 4 was intrusted the extremely important work of counter-espionage among the civilian population. It investigated the activities of the enemy in propaganda, in sabotage, and in the establishment of communications with the home country; it investigated such of his trade activities and financial transactions as might impede our successful prosecution of the war; it discovered enemy influences among political, racial, and religious groups and in labor organizations, and it watched persons throughout the nation who, though not associated with the enemy, were nevertheless engaged in pacifist, revolutionary, and similar activities which were likely to interfere with our military operations. The section operated through many agencies. As a branch of the War Department, it employed intelligence officers serving with troops in the various camps and cantonments, who furnished the section with much valuable information relative to civilian activities which reacted upon the army. Similar information was furnished by the departmental intelligence officers, stationed at the headquarters of the several geographical departments of the army, and by the military attachés in foreign countries. The Department of Justice, the State Department, and the Office of Naval Intelligence also actively co-operated with the section. By the establishment of a system of counter-espionage in foreign countries the section succeeded in frustrating many of the German plans at their source and in counteracting enemy propaganda which, had it gone unchecked, might have had the gravest results. The German method of organized propaganda was well illustrated by the operations of the Chilean-German League, which was founded in October, 1916, by Chileans of German descent, its membership including commercial agents, priests, professors, physicians, merchants, and school-teachers. In a circular dated Valparaiso, October 24, 1917, and marked “Confidential,” the management of the local branch of the league at Valparaiso announced a meeting to be held jointly with the representatives of all German societies of the city for the purpose of founding a propaganda committee. The necessity for starting a propaganda on a large scale was pointed out, and the main object of the league, that of urging the maintenance of neutrality by the Chilean Government, was described in detail. The importance to the Allies of the German ships in Chilean waters was also emphasized, the circular saying, in part: “... if we succeed in postponing the rupture of relations by this propaganda only for weeks, we have aided Germany and her allies to the extent of millions, harming the Allies at the same time by millions.” Though the league succeeded in preventing Chile from joining the Allies, the vigilance and energy displayed by the agents of our counter-espionage service in that country practically nullified the effects of the league’s propaganda in South America.

From the beginning of the war until its end the American public was constantly thrilled by the sensational and usually highly circumstantial accounts which appeared in the press, particularly the Sunday supplements, of the operations of German secret agents in the United States. Every one, I suppose, has heard, in some one of its many versions, the story of the German spy who was shot in the telephone-booth of a New York hotel by a Secret Service operative while giving a confederate information relative to the sailing of American transports. Though I have heard that story related, with minutest detail, in clubs, over dinner-tables, and in the smoking-compartments of Pullmans, I never heard any one ask the quite obvious questions as to why it was necessary for the operative to shoot the spy instead of taking him alive, or how the confederate proposed to transmit the information to Germany. One picturesque version of the story laid the scene in a crowded New York Subway train, the Secret Service man having his automatic in his pocket and firing through the cloth of his coat. Then there was the equally sensational story of the Hoboken family in whose employ was a German spy disguised as a maid of all work. One day she mysteriously disappeared, and a few hours after her disappearance Secret Service agents called at the house and searched the belongings she had left behind her. Their search was rewarded by discovering, under a false bottom in her trunk, a complete set of the plans of the defenses of New York harbor. Variations of that tale placed its locale in Stamford, Conn., in Chittenango, N. Y., in Newton Centre, Mass., in Key West, and in Los Angeles, while the papers discovered in the mysterious trunk ranged all the way from drawings of coast-defense guns to a copy of the German Naval Code. The same hysteria which led the public to accept these ridiculous concoctions at their face value, and to beg for more, caused them to suspect all sorts of well-known persons of being engaged in espionage activities—the general commanding a certain American division, a famous woman aviator, a still more famous prima donna, a Jewish banker noted for his philanthropies, the chancellor of a great university, and even the secretary to the President having been discovered—so the rumors had it—to be German spies. At one period of the war, indeed, it was popularly reported that spies were executed every morning at daybreak on Governor’s Island. Now I dislike to destroy illusions and to spoil perfectly good stories, but the dictates of truth compel me to assert that not a single spy was executed on Governor’s Island or anywhere else in the United States, though it is my personal opinion that a few such executions would have brought to an abrupt end the series of fires, explosions, strikes, and other cases of sabotage for which the agents of the Wilhelmstrasse were responsible. For stating this opinion, quite early in the war, at a dinner in Boston at which I was a speaker, I received a mild reprimand from the Adjutant-General of the Army. On the occasion in question I remarked, if I remember rightly, that I was convinced that the most effective method of dealing with spies was not to intern them but to inter them. And I am still of the same opinion.

Though Germany had a number of secret agents operating in the United States—though not nearly as many as was generally supposed—the only one of them who measured up to the popular conception of a spy was a woman known as Madame de Victorica. In certain respects she came very near to meeting the specifications for an international adventuress as laid down in the mystery stories of Messrs. Chambers and Oppenheim. The results she obtained were, however, distinctly disappointing—at least from the Wilhelmstrasse point of view. Her father was the Prussian general to whom Marshal Bazaine handed his sword at the surrender of Metz; her mother was a Prussian countess; her sister was married to a Prussian nobleman, and her brother was a Jesuit priest serving as a chaplain in the Austrian Army. Madame de Victorica has had three husbands—all South Americans. Two died within a few months after marrying the handsome adventuress; the third was divorced. According to her confession, Madame de Victorica was trained in espionage work at the Naval Intelligence Bureau in Berlin and was sent to the United States by the authorities of the Wilhelmstrasse for the purposes of obtaining military and naval information, to foment labor troubles, to tamper with the Roman Catholic clergy, and to lay the plans for a rebellion in Ireland more successful than the abortive one of 1916. She memorized a code before leaving Berlin. The secret ink in which her letters were written was given her at the Chemical Institute and was carried in two silk mufflers, the ink being obtained by saturating them in cold water and wringing them. Writing in this ink could be developed with iodine tablets, manufactured by a well-known firm of London chemists, dissolved in vinegar. Other messages were transmitted by means of pin-pricking certain letters in newspapers. Madame de Victorica was unquestionably a woman of considerable intelligence and social position; she had had some experience as a journalist, and was apparently credited by the Germans with quickness of wit and resourcefulness as an organizer. This reputation she only partly justified, however, for she talked indiscreetly on the steamer while coming over, wasted time and money after her arrival in New York in buying elaborate gowns, and was an inveterate user of drugs. As the result of converging lines of inquiry pursued by Military Intelligence and the Department of Justice, she was arrested, together with several of her confederates, in August, 1918. There you have a thumb-nail sketch, as it were, of the most dangerous German agent in America. She can thank her lucky stars that the Wilhelmstrasse sent her to the United States instead of to France or England, for had she been caught in either of those countries her career would have ended not between stone walls but between a stone wall and a firing-party.

It is easy enough to understand, if not to sympathize, with the reasons which led Madame de Victorica to come to the United States in the capacity of a German spy, for she was, after all, German to the core, her relatives for generations before her having held high positions under the Prussian crown. But it is not easy, indeed it is almost impossible, for a loyal American to understand how men who were born and educated in the United States and who had a long line of American ancestors behind them, could sell their honor and their loyalty for German gold. It is, however, a curious and regrettable fact that certain persons whose disloyalty was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt were purely American, so far as their birth and parentage were concerned, their only connections with Germany being financial ones. Of these I have particularly in mind three men, all, if I am not mistaken, possessing university educations, who were journalists and correspondents of considerable standing until the discovery of their pro-German activities blasted their reputations and plunged them into oblivion. One of them—a correspondent who had seen service in several wars—was caught in the act of carrying messages from the Austrian Ambassador in Washington to Berlin. He was arrested by British intelligence officers and returned to the United States. His passport was taken from him, and those who were once his friends now pass him by without speaking. Another of these gentry succeeded, in spite of his German sympathies and affiliations, in obtaining admission to a training-camp, being given a commission and sent to France. But, as the result of representations made by the Intelligence Division, which was thoroughly familiar with his career, he was brought back to the United States, subjected to an official interrogation, confessed, and, though he made desperate efforts to have the President accept his resignation, was dismissed from the army “for the good of the service.” The third of this precious trio went to Germany as a correspondent, at once constituted himself a champion of everything German, savagely attacked the land of his birth, and, upon the fall of the Kaiser, fled to Sweden, where, so far as I am aware, he is still living in exile, a real “Man Without a Country.”

The great organization built up by Von Papen and his fellows for purposes of sabotage made it imperative, upon the entry of the United States into the war, that a system should immediately be devised for the protection of those plants and workers engaged in the manufacture of munitions. With the declaration of war the United States became, almost overnight, the greatest manufacturer of war materials in the world. In every city in the land factories producing the tools of the fighter’s trade were running night and day, and other factories, hundreds of them, began to spring up as though at the wave of a magician’s wand. The nation was a-hum with feverish industry from ocean to ocean. But of what avail was this tremendous wave of manufacturing activity, of what use the expenditure of billions in the erection and operation of plants and factories, unless those plants and factories were afforded protection against fire and the acts of enemy agents? To fill this need there was organized, in July, 1917, the Plant Protection Section of the Military Intelligence Division.