CHAPTER XVI HINDU-GERMAN CONSPIRACIES
The Society for Advancement in India—"Gaekwar Scholarships"—Har Dyal and Gadhr—India in 1914—Papen's report—German and Hindu agents sent to the Orient—Gupta in Japan—The raid on von Igel's office—Chakravarty replaces Gupta—The Annie Larsen and Maverick filibuster—Von Igel's memoranda—Har Dyal in Berlin—A request for anarchist agents—Ram Chandra—Plots against the East and West Indies—Correspondence between Bernstorff and Berlin, 1916—Designs on China, Japan and Africa—Chakravarty arrested—The conspirators indicted.
As far back as 1907 a plot was hatched in the United States to promote sedition and unrest in British India. The chief agitators had the effrontery in the following year to make their headquarters in rooms in the New York Bar Association, and to issue from that address numerous circulars asking for money. The late John L. Cadwallader, of the distinguished law firm of Cadwallader, Wickersham and Taft, was then president of the Bar Association, and when he learned of the Hindu activities under the roof of the association he swiftly evicted the ringleaders. Their organization, chartered in November, 1907, was called The Society for the Advancement of India. One of its officers was a New York man to whom the British have since refused permission to visit India. Its members included several college professors.
The presence of several educators in the list may be accounted for by the fact that the society existed apparently for the purpose of supplying American college training to selected Hindu youths. Many of them were sent to the United States at the expense of the Gaekwar of Baroda, one of the richest and most influential of the Indian princes; the Gaekwar's own son was a student in Harvard College in the years 1908-1912. Considerable sums of money were solicited from worthy folk who believed that they were furthering the cause of enlightenment in India; others who sincerely believed that British rule was tyrannical gave frankly to the society to help an Indian nationalist movement for home rule; others contributed freely for the promotion of any and every anti-British propaganda in India. The source of the latter funds may be suggested by the understanding which long existed between the Society for the Advancement of India and the Clan-na-Gael, an understanding witnessed by the frequent quotation in the disaffected press of India of articles from the Gaelic-American. Another successful solicitor was a contemptible Swami, Vivekahanda, who discussed soul matters to New York's gullible-rich to his great profit until the police gathered him in for a very earthly and material offense. But the students were the best material for revolt, whether it was to be social or military, and we shall see presently how they were made use of.
The Gaekwar of Baroda came to America in the first decade of the new century and expressed freely at that time his dislike for the British. At the time of the Muzaffarpur bomb outrage, in which the wife and daughter of an English official were killed, the police found in the outskirts of Calcutta a Hindu who had been educated at an American college at the Gaekwar's expense and who was at that time conducting a school of instruction in the use of explosives and small arms; he even had considerable quantities of American arms and ammunition stored in his house. The youths who held "Gaekwar scholarships" in America were under the general oversight of a professor attached to the American Museum of Natural History, and the accumulation of evidence of the activities of the students finally caused his removal.
The Society established branches in Chicago, Denver, Seattle, and even in St. John, New Brunswick, and it thrived on the Pacific Coast. Within the purlieus of the University of California, there lived in 1913 one Har Dyal, a graduate of St. John's college at Oxford. Har Dyal in that year founded a publication called Gadhr, which being translated means "mutiny," its main edition published in Urdu, other editions published in other vernaculars, and appealing not only to Hindus, but to Sikhs and Moslems. The publication and the chief exponents of its thought formed the nucleus of a considerable system of anti-British activity.
Whatever was anti-British found a warm reception in Berlin. England, in August and September, 1914, was wrestling heroically with the problem of supplying men to the Continent before the German drive should reach the Channel. Her regulars went, and the training of that gallant "first hundred thousand" followed. She combed her colonies for troops, and having an appreciable force of well-trained native soldiers under arms in India, she brought them to France, and the chronicles of the war are already full of stories of the splendid fighting they did, and the annoyance they caused to the grey troops of Germany. From the German standpoint it was good strategy to incite discontent in India, both as tending to remove the Hindu and Sikh regiments from the fighting zone, and as distracting England's attention from the main issue by making her look to the preservation of one of her richest treasure lands; there was the further possibility, after the expected elimination of Russia, of German conquest of India, and a German trade route from the Baltic to the Bay of Bengal, through the Himalayan passes. Germany seized upon the opportunity. The Amir of Afghanistan had trained his army under Turkish officers, themselves instructed by Germany through the forces of Enver Pasha. The Afghans were told that the Kaiser was Mohammedan, and by the faith prepared to smite down the wicked unbeliever, England. The Amir himself spoiled Germany's designs among his people, however, for upon the outbreak of the war he pledged his neutrality to the British Government, and he kept his word.
A report found on the war correspondent Archibald and written by Captain von Papen to the Foreign Office in the summer of 1915, outlines the German version of the situation in India:
"That a grave unrest reigns at the present time throughout India is shown by the various following reports:
"Since October, 1914, there have been various local mutinies of Mohammedan native troops, one practically succeeding the other. From the last reports, it appears that the Hindu troops are going to join the mutineers.
"The Afghan army is ready to attack India. The army holds the position on one side of the Utak (?) River. The British army is reported to hold the other side of the said river. The three bridges connecting both sides have been blown up by the British.
"In the garrison located on the Kathiawar Peninsula Indian mutineers stormed the arsenal. Railroads and wireless station have been destroyed. The Sikh troops have been removed from Beluchistan; only English, Mohammedans and Hindu troops remain there.
"The Twenty-third Cavalry Regiment at Lahore revolted, the police station and Town House were stormed. The Indian troops in Somaliland in Labakoran are trying to effect a junction with the Senussi. All Burma is ready to revolt.
"In Calcutta unrest (is reported) with street fighting. In Lahore a bank was robbed; every week at least two Englishmen killed; in the northwestern district many Englishmen killed; munitions and other material taken, railroads destroyed; a relief train was repulsed.
"Everywhere great unrest. In Benares a bank has been stormed.
"Revolts in Chitral very serious, barracks and Government buildings destroyed. The Hurti Mardin Brigade, under Gen. Sir E. Wood, has been ordered there. Deputy Commissioner of Lahore wounded through a bomb in the Anakali Bazaar.
"Mohammedan squadron of the cavalry regiment in Nowschera deserted over Chang, southwest Peshawar. Soldiers threw bombs against the family of the Maharajah of Mysore. One child and two servants killed, his wife mortally wounded.
"In Ceylon a state of war has been declared."
In February, 1915, Jodh Singh, a former student of engineering in the United States, was in Rio de Janeiro. He was directed by a fellow Hindu to call upon the German Consul, and the latter gave him $300 and instructions to proceed to the German consul in Genoa, Italy, for orders. Thence he was forwarded to Berlin, where he attended the meetings of the newly formed Indian Revolutionary Society and absorbed many ideas for procedure in America. Supplied with more German money he came to New York and was joined by Heramba Lal Gupta, a Hindu who had been a student at Columbia, and Albert H. Wehde, an art collector. The three went to Chicago, and Singh called at once upon Gustav Jacobsen, the real estate dealer who will be recalled in the Kaltschmidt bomb plots in Detroit. Jacobsen assembled a group of German sympathizers which included Baron Kurt von Reiswitz, the consul, George Paul Boehm (mentioned in instructions to von Papen to attack the Canadian Pacific Railway) and one Sterneck. At the conference Jodh Singh, Boehm, Sterneck and Gupta were detailed to go to the far East: Singh to Siam, to recruit Hindus for revolutionary service; Gupta to China and Japan to secure arms; Boehm to the Himalayas, to attack the exploring party of Dr. Frederick A. Cook, the notorious, to impersonate Dr. Cook, and thus travel about the hills spreading sedition. Wehde, with $20,000 of von Reiswitz's money, Boehm and Sterneck sailed for Manila, and apparently escaped thence to Java, to meet two officers from the Emden, for the three are at this writing fugitives from justice; Jodh Singh was arrested in Bangkok and turned over to the British authorities.
In the diary of Captain Grasshof of the German cruiser Geier, interned in Honolulu, appears the following entry, establishing Wehde's call in Hawaii, and the complicity of the Consulate there in his plans:
"At the Consulate I met Mr. A. Wehde from Chicago, who is on way to Orient on business.
"One of the Hindoos sent over by Knorr (naval attaché of German Embassy at Tokio) left for Shanghai on the 6th. In Hongkong there are 500 Hindoos, 200 officers and volunteers, besides one torpedo boat and two Japanese cruisers.
"K-17 (A. V. Kircheisen) was almost captured in Kobe. The first officer of the China warned him and he immediately got on board again as soon as possible. K-17 informed me that the Japs have sold back to the Russians all the old guns taken from the latter during the Russo-Japanese war."
Reiswitz in June added $20,000 more to the fund for revolution in India. Gupta, to whom von Papen had paid $16,000 in New York, went on to Japan with Dhirendra Sarkar, a fellow conspirator.
The presence of the two plotters in Japan became known to the authorities and soon thereafter to the public. They were shadowed everywhere, and a complete record was kept of their activities; the newspapers discussed them, and it was common property that they gave a banquet on the night of November 9, 1915, to ten other Hindus, to toast a plot for revolution in India. On November 28 they were ordered by the chief of police to leave Japan before December 2, which was tantamount to a delivery into the hands of the British, as the only two steamers available were leaving for Shanghai and Hong Kong, both ports well supplied with British officers. On the afternoon of December 1 the two plotters escaped in an automobile to the residence of a prominent pro-Chinese politician (a friend of Sun Yat Sen) and were concealed there, between false walls, until May, 1916, when they stowed away on a ship bound for Honolulu. Sarkar returned to India, Gupta to America. When the round-up came, in 1917, Jacobsen, Wehde and Boehm were each convicted of violation of section 13 of the Federal Penal Code, and sentenced to serve five years in prison and pay $13,000 fines; Gupta's sentence was three years, his fine $200.
The scene shifts for a moment from the Orient to the Occident, and the twenty-fifth floor of the building at 60 Wall Street, New York, on the morning of April 19, 1916. There von Papen had had his office; there when he was sent home in December, 1915, he had left in charge a sharp-eyed youth named Wolf von Igel as his successor. Von Igel, at eleven o'clock, was surveying the result of several hours' work in sorting and arranging neat stacks of official papers for shipment to the German Embassy at Washington, for he had got word that trouble was brewing, and that the documents would be safer there. An attendant entered. "A man wants to see you, Herr von Igel," he announced. "He won't tell his business, except that he says it is important."
Von Igel was gruffly directing the attendant to make the stranger specify his mission when the door burst open, and in dashed Joseph A. Baker, of the Department of Justice, and Federal Agents Storck, Underhill and Grgurevich.
"I have a warrant for your arrest!" shouted Baker. Von Igel jumped for the doors of the safe, which stood open. Baker sprang simultaneously for von Igel, and the two went to the floor in battle. The German was overpowered, and the attendant cowed by a flash of revolvers.
"This means war!" yelled von Igel. "This is part of the German Embassy and you've no right here."
"You're under arrest," said Baker.
"You shoot and there'll be war," said von Igel, and made another frantic attempt to close the safe doors. A second skirmish ended in von Igel's removal to a cell, while the agents took charge of the documents. The collection was a rare catch. It contained evidence which supplied the missing links in numerous chains of suspected German guilt, and the matter was at once placed in the safe keeping of the Government.
One letter was dated Berlin, February 4, 1916, and addressed to the German Embassy in Washington. It reads:
"In future all Indian affairs are to be exclusively handled by the committee to be formed by Dr. Chakravarty. Dhirendra Sarkar, and Heramba Lal Gupta, which latter person has meantime been expelled from Japan," ...
(Gupta was at that moment between the walls of the Japanese politician's house.)
... "thus cease to be independent representatives of the Indian Independence Committee existing here.
"(Signed) Zimmermann."
The Embassy on March 21, 1916, wrote von Igel as follows:
"The Imperial German Consul at Manila writes me:
"'Unfortunately the captured Hindus include Gupta, who last was active at Tokio. The following have also been captured: John Mohammed Aptoler, Rulerhammete, Sharmasler, No-Mar, C. Bandysi, Rassanala. Apparently the English are thoroughly informed of all individual movements and the whereabouts at various times of the Hindu revolutionists.'
"Please inform Chakravarty."
The name "Chakravarty" occurring in these two memoranda makes it necessary here to turn back the calendar to 1915, in order to outline another conspicuous Hindu-German activity. Not only were the East Indian students and sympathetic educators in America prolific in their verbal advocacy of revolt in India, but with German assistance they attempted at least one clearly defined bit of filibustering, which if it had been successful would have supplied the would-be mutineers in the Land of Hind with the arms they so longed to employ against the British.
The reader will recall the mention of a large quantity of weapons and cartridges which Captain Hans Tauscher had stored in a building in 200 West Houston Street, New York, and which he said he had purchased for "speculation." The speculation was apparently the project of Indian mutiny, which in the eyes of the Indian Nationalist party was to equal in grandeur the infamous mutiny of 1857. For those arms were shipped to San Diego, California, secretly loaded aboard the steamer Annie Larsen, and moved to sea. The plan provided for their transshipment off the island of Socorro to the hold of the steamship Maverick, which was to carry them to India. The two ships failed to effect a rendezvous, and after some wandering the Annie Larsen put in at Hoquiam, Washington, where the cargo was at once seized by the authorities. The Maverick sailed to San Diego, Hilo, Johnson Island, and finally to Batavia.
Count von Bernstorff had sufficient courage, on July 2, to inform the Secretary of State "confidentially that the arms and ammunition ... had been purchased by my government months ago through the Krupp agency in New York for shipment to German East Africa." On July 22, he wrote again, asking that the arms be returned as the property of the German Government, and offering to give the Department of Justice "such further information on the subject as I may have" if they cared to push an examination of the cargo. On October 5 he threw all responsibility for the movements of the Maverick upon Captain Fred Jebsen, her skipper—by this time a fugitive from justice—and stating "the German Government did not make the shipment, and knows nothing of the details of how they were shipped"—which was a rather shabby way of discrediting his subordinates.
It developed later that the arms were purchased—sixteen carloads of them—by Henry Muck, Tauscher's manager, for $300,000, made payable by von Papen through G. Amsinck & Co. to Tauscher. A part of the shipment was sent to San Diego; the balance was to have gone to India via Java and China, but never left on account of the protests of the British Consul. Instead, a number of machine guns and 1,500,000 rounds of ammunition were sold to a San Francisco broker who was acting as agent for Adolphi Stahl, financial agent in the United States for the Republic of Guatemala. When Zimmermann cabled to von Bernstorff on April 30, 1916 (through Count von Luxburg in Buenos Aires), "Please wire whether von Igel's report on March 27, Journal A, No. 257, has been seized, and warn Chakravarty," he had grave concern over the betrayal of German influences in the Hindu conspiracies. This was fully justified when a correspondence notebook of von Igel's disclosed, among other entries, the following transactions:
August 12, 1915—Captain Herman Othmer inclosed documents about the Annie Larsen and von Igel forwarded charter to Consul at San Francisco.
September 2—The embassy forwarded papers from San Francisco about the Annie Larsen and von Igel returned them.
September 7—The embassy sent a telegram from San Francisco about the Maverick.
September 9—The consulate, San Francisco, sent a letter for information and von Igel replied with a telegram about Maverick repairs.
September 9, 1915—The Embassy sent a letter from the consulate at San Francisco about shipment and von Igel replied to embassy that the proposals were impracticable.
October 1—The embassy sent a cipher message to Berlin about the Maverick.
October 9—The Consulate, San Francisco, sent a letter about the Maverick negotiations.
October 20, 1915—Von Igel received a report about a shipment of arms from Manila.
January 27, 1916—The embassy forwarded copies of telegrams to San Francisco in the matter of the Maverick.
August 28—The Consulate, Manila, sent a cipher letter about the transport of arms.
November 8, 1915—AAA 100 sent a report from or concerning Ispahan arms.
The peaceful Har Dyal, Oxford graduate, lecturer at Leland Stanford, denizen of the University of California, and editor of Gadhr, had laid down the following rules for the guidance of members of the group of revolutionaries which he headed: each candidate for membership must undergo a six months' probationary period before his admission; any member who exposed the secrets of the organization should suffer death; members wishing to marry could do so without any ceremony, as they were above the law. Under such amiable rules of conduct he accumulated a number of followers of the faith, and more swarmed to the tinkle of German money. In August, 1914, the "first expeditionary force" of revolutionists set sail for India in the Korea. A few months later, Har Dyal left for Berlin, where he organized the Indian Revolutionary Society, leaving Ram Chandra as his successor to edit Gadhr in Berkeley.
The avowed object of this society was to establish a Republican government in India with the help of Germany. They held regular meetings attended by German officials and civilians who knew India, among them former teachers in India. At these meetings the Germans were advised as to the line of conduct to be adopted. The deliberations were of a secret nature. Har Dyal and Chattopadhay had considerable influence with the German Government and were the only two Indians privileged to take part in the deliberations of the German Foreign Office.
Besides these societies there were in Berlin two other associations known as the Persian and Turkish societies. The object of the first named was to free Persia from European influences in general, and create ill feeling against the British in particular, and to assist the natives to form a republic. The object of the Turkish society was practically the same. They established an Oriental translating bureau which translated German news and other literature selected by the Indian Revolutionary Society into various Oriental languages and distributed the translations among the Hindu prisoners of war.
Har Dyal continued in close touch with American affairs. On October 20 and 26, 1915, he wrote to Alexander Berkman, a notorious anarchist imprisoned in 1918 for violation of the draft law, urging Berkman to send to Germany through Holland comrades who would be valuable in Indian propaganda, and asking for letters of introduction "from Emma or yourself" (Emma Goldman) to important anarchists in Europe; these communications are unimportant except as they betray the Prussian policy of making an ally of anarchy, although anarchy as a social factor is the force from which Germany has most to fear. "Perhaps you can find them," wrote Dyal, "in New York or at Paterson. They should be real fighters, I. W. W.'s or anarchists. Our Indian party will make all the necessary arrangements."
Ram Chandra went on with the work until he was stopped by the Foreign Office. He printed anti-Britannic pamphlets quoting Bryan for circulation in India; he printed and delivered to Lieutenant von Brincken at the German Consulate in San Francisco some 5,000 leaflets, which were to be shipped to Germany and dropped by the Boche aviators over the Hindu lines in France: the handbills read, "Do not fight with the Germans. They are our friends. Lay down your arms and run to the Germans." Chandra and his crew supplied the Maverick with quantities of literature, but most of it was burned when the Hindu agents aboard feared that there were British warships near Socorro Island. In the same group were G. B. Lal and Taraknath Das, two former students at the University of California, the latter a protégé of a German professor there himself engaged in propaganda work.
Throughout the fall of 1915 the Hindus in America awaited word of Gupta's success in Japan. They heard nothing but news of his disappearance. Accordingly in December, Dr. Chakravarty, a frail little Hindu of light chocolate complexion, sailed from Hoboken for Germany, traveling as a Persian merchant, on a false passport. He made a good impression on the Foreign Office, as may be judged by the following letter, dated January 21, 1916, addressed to L. Sachse, Rotterdam:
"Dr. Chakravarty will return to the United States and form a working committee of only five members, one of whom should be himself and another, Ram Chandra. In addition to sending more Indians home the new American committee will undertake the following:
"1—An agent will be sent to the West India islands, where there are nearly 100,000 Indians, and will organize the sending home of as many as possible.
"They have not yet been approached by us and there are no such difficulties in the way of their going to India as are encountered by our countrymen from the United States.
"2—An agent will be sent to British Guiana with the same object.
"3—A very reliable man will be sent to Java and Sumatra.
"4—It is proposed to have pamphlets printed and circulated in and from America. The literature will be printed secretly and propaganda will be carried on with great vigor.
"5—An effort will be made to carry out the plan of the secret Oriental mission to Japan. Dr. Chakravarty is in a position to get letters of introduction to important persons in Japan, as well as a safe-conduct for himself and other members of mission."
After conferring with Dyal, Zimmermann, and Under-secretary Wesendonk of the Foreign Office, he was given money and sent back to the United States, arriving in February, 1916. He at once sent H. A. Chen to China to purchase arms and ship them to India. He then reported to Wolf von Igel, who paid him $40,000 for the purchase of a house in 120th Street and one in 17th Street. There he held forth for more than a year, working in conjunction with von Igel, and the latter with the Embassy in Washington. His activities may be indicated, and the complicity of the German Government again established, in the following communications:
From von Igel to von Bernstorff
"New York, April 7, 1916—A report has been received here that Dr. Chakravarty was taken Monday, the 3d of April, to the Providence Hospital with concussion of the brain in consequence of an automobile accident. His convalescence is making good progress. A certain Ernest J. Euphrat has been here and he came from the Foreign Office and had orders with respect to the India propaganda. He could not identify himself, but made a very good impression. He told us Herr von Wesendonk told him to say that Ram Chandra's activity in San Francisco was not satisfactory. This person should for the time being suspend his propaganda activities."
"In re No. 303: Euphrat was sent by me to India in October of last year, and is so far as known here reliable. He was, indeed, recommended at the time by Marcus Braun. Please intimate to him cautiously that he should not speak too much about his orders he received in Berlin. San Francisco is being informed."
"For Prince Hatzfeld."
From New York to von Bernstorff
"New York, April 15, 1916—Mr. E. J. Euphrat has asked that the inclosed documents be forwarded to his excellency in a safe way. He asks for a reply as quickly as possible, because if he does not receive the desired allowance he will have to change the plans for his journey.
"(Signed) K. N. St."
To H. Eisenhuth, Copenhagen, from New York, and unsigned
"May 2, 1916. We have also organized a Pan-Asiatic League, so that some of our members can travel without arousing any suspicion. Also everything has been arranged for the 'mission to Japan.' Please let me know when your men can come, so that we can approach the party more definitely. I had talks with one of the directors of the Yamato Shimbun of Tokio and Chinvai Dempo of Kyoto. It would not be necessary to buy off these papers, as they understand it is to mutual interest. But they ask for certain considerations to help their financial status. They are also decided to attack Anglo-Japanese treaty as antagonistic to national interest. To carry on work it will be necessary to place at the disposal of the committee here $25,000."
Cablegram from Zimmermann, Berlin, to van Bernstorff, via von Luxburg, Buenos Aires
"To Bernstorff, May 19, 1916: Berlin telegraphs No. 28 of May 19. Answer to telegram 23. Your excellency is empowered to give the Indians $20,000. No. 29 of May 19 in continuation of telegram No. 16. Please, in making direct payments to Tarak Nath Das, avoid receipts. Das will receipt own payment through a third party as Edward Schuster.
"(Signed) Zimmermann."
Zimmermann to Peking, transmitted by Luxburg, to Bernstorff for Peking legation
"The confidential agent of the Nationalists here, the Indian, Tarak Nath Das, an American Citizen, is leaving for Peking by the Siberian Railway. Please give him up to 10,000 marks. Das will arrange the rest.
"Zimmermann."
"Ambassador at Washington: Please advise Chakravarty.
"Luxburg."
From Bernstorff, mailed at Mt. Vernon, N. Y., to Z. N. G. Olifiers, a German agent in Amsterdam
"June 16, 1916—Referring to my letter A275 of June 8, Chakravarty reports: Organization has been almost completed, and many of our old members are active and free. Only they are afraid if arms are not available soon there may be premature uprising in Madras and the Punjab as well as in Bengal. The work in Japan is going unusually well, more than our expectations."
From Berlin to Chakravarty
"July 13, 1916—In organizing work in the United States and outside, remember our primary object is to produce revolutions at home during this war. Trinidad, British Guiana and East Africa, including Zanzibar, should be particularly tapped for men.
"We wired your name to Francis E. M. Hussain, Bachelor of Arts, Barr. at Law, Port of Spain, Trinidad. Through messenger communicate full programme desired in Trinidad to him, and mention the name 'Binniechatto.' He can be trusted. If, after some secret work, you think revolution can be organized in island itself, then we may try to smuggle arms, and our men will seize Government and set up independent Hindustani Republic. Do not let such plan be carried out if our prospects for work at home are likely to be ruined."
A report from Chakravarty, written July 26, 1916
"I am going to Vancouver next week to see Bhai Balwant Singh and Nano Singh Sihra, who have asked me to go there to arrange definite plan of action for group of workers there, and then to San Francisco to induce Ram Chandra to plan our committee here, and to include him and his nominees in the said committee, so that our work does not suffer in the East by placing enemies on their guard and right track by his thoughtless, enthusiastic writings.... Gupta is back in New York and has seen me, but has not submitted any report. We need $15,000 more for the next six months to carry out the new plan and to continue the previous work undertaken."
From von Bernstorff, at Rye, N. Y., to Olifiers, transmitting Chakravarty's report
"August 5, 1916—Our organization has been well perfected in the West Indies and Houssain has been approached. We have also enlisted the sympathy of the Gongoles party, a strong fighting body of colored people, who have ramifications all over Central America, including British Guiana and Guatemala. Arms can be easily smuggled there and if we can get some of the German officers in this country to go there and lead them there is every possibility that we can hold quite a while. But the question is—ask the Foreign Secretary whether it is desirable, for it might simply create a sensation and nothing more. As soon as we hold there the Governmental power the island would be isolated by the British navy, and the attitude of the United States is uncertain, and we may be compelled to surrender sooner or later; but if it serves any purpose either as a blind or otherwise, and after due consideration of its advantages and disadvantages, wire at once the authorities here to give us a few officers, as we need them badly, and other help necessary to carry out the plan, and it can be done without much difficulty. I believe if a sensation is desired something also can be done in London, at least should be tried. If we can get a few men from the Pacific Coast we can send them easily as a crew with a Dutch passport.
"We are sending arms in small quantities through Chinese coolies over the border in Burmah, but in big quantities we do not find possibility. However, we are on the lookout. We have been trying our best with a Japanese firm who have a business affiliation in Calcutta, whether they will undertake to transmit some arms through their goods.
"To complete the chain we are sending Mr. Chandra to London as a medical student in the university, and he will send men and other informations to you via Switzerland. We are also sending a few Chinese students to China to help us in the work, and if you want it can also be arranged they give you a personal report through Russia and Sweden.
"We need $15,000 more, as I return from the Pacific Coast, to carry out these plans, excepting that of Trinidad operations, which, if you approve, wire at once the military agent here to arrange to buy and ship arms to us, before the enemy can be on guard."
To H. Eisenhuth, Copenhagen, in cipher
"September 5, 1916—Arms can no more be safely sent to India through Pacific, except through Japanese merchandise or through China merchants, shipped to Chinese ports and then to our border. Responsible men are willing to take the risk and they are willing to send their confidential agents to Turaulleur."
Chakravarty to Berlin, Foreign Office
"September 5, 1916—Li Yuan Hung is now President of China. He was formerly the southern revolutionary leader. W. T. Wang was then his private secretary. He is now in America and starting for China. He says Li Yuan Hung is in sympathy with the Indian revolution and would like English power weakened. Some of the prominent people are quite eager to help India directly, and Germany indirectly, without exposing themselves to any great risk, on three conditions:
"The first—Germany to make a secret treaty with China, that in case China is attacked by any power or powers, Germany will give her military aid. It will be obligatory for five years after the discontinuance of the present war and there will be an understanding that China shall get one-tenth of all arms and ammunition she will receive for and deliver to the Indian revolutionaries and the Indian border.
"In return, China shall prohibit the delivery of arms and ammunition in the name of the Chinese Government and from China through private sailing boats and by coolies to any nearby point or any border place as directed. She will help Indian revolutionaries as she can, secretly and in accord with her own safety.
"But this is to be regarded as a feeler through a third party, and, if it is acceptable to the German Government, then they will send one of their trusted representatives to Berlin to discuss the details and plan of operations, and if it is settled, then negotiations should take place officially and papers signed through the embassies in Berlin and Peking. They want to know the attitude of the German Foreign Office as soon as possible so that they can set the ball rolling for necessary arrangements."
Von Bernstorff to Zimmermann
"October 13, 1916—Chakravarty's reply is not sent; too long. Require at end of October a further $15,000. According to news which has arrived here Okechi has not received the $2000 and in the meantime left Copenhagen. Please withhold payment until Polish National Committee provides therefor.
"Bernstorff."
To Olifiers, Amsterdam, postmarked Washington
"November 21, 1916—Rabindranath Tagore has come at our suggestion and saw Count Okuma, Baron Shimpei Goto, Masaburo Suzuki, Marquis Yamanouchi, Count Terauchi and others; Terauchi is favorable and others are sympathetic. Rash Behari Bose is still there to see whether they can be persuaded to do something positive for our cause. S. Sekunna and G. Marsushita are doing their best. Yamatashimbun is strongly advocating our cause. D. Pal has not come. Benoy Sarkar is still in China. Lala is willing to go, but this passage could not be arranged. As soon as Tilak arrives he will be approached. Bapat is still free and writes that he has been trying his best, but for want of arms they have not been able to do anything. Received a note from Abdul Kadir and Shamshar Singh from Termes-Buchare that they are proceeding on slowly to their destination. Barkatullah is in Kabul; well received, lacks funds. Mintironakaono is here. Isam Uhiroi is in Pekin. Tarak has safely reached there. Our publication work is going on well. We have brought out seven pamphlets and one in the press. We are waiting for definite instructions as to the work in Trinidad and Damrara.
"Wu Ting Fang has been now made the Foreign Minister. He has always been sympathetic with our cause. But the influence of Sun Yat Sen still persists in opposing us in that direction."
Zimmermann to Bernstorff
"December 20, 1916—According to Chakravarty, the Indians were paid up to September 30 $30,000. Total credit for Indians, $65,000.
"Zimmermann."
Zimmermann to Bernstorff
"January 4, 1917—very secret. The Japanese, Hideo Nakao, is traveling to America with important instructions from the Indian Committee. He is to deal exclusively with Chakravarty. Please, after consultation with Chakravarty, inform Imperial Minister at Peking and the Imperial Consulate at Shanghai that they are to send in Nakao's reports regularly. I advise giving Nakao in installments up to fifty thousand dollars in all for the execution of his plans in America and Eastern Asia. Decision as to the utility of the separate payments is left to your excellency and the Imperial Legation at Peking. Despatch follows.
"(Signed) Zimmermann."
On March 7, 1917, Guy Scull, deputy police commissioner in New York, with eight detectives, called at 364 West 120th Street, found Dr. Chakravarty clad in a loin cloth, and arrested him on a charge of setting afoot a military enterprise against the Emperor of India. With Sekunna, a German who had been writing tracts for him, he was later transferred to San Francisco to stand trial. The typewriter in the 120th Street house, whose characteristics—all typewriters are as individual and as identifiable as finger-prints—had betrayed the conspirators, lay idle for many months, but as late as March 18, 1918, a Hindu, Sailandra Nath Ghose, who had collaborated with Taraknath Das in writing a propaganda work called "The Isolation of Japan in world politics," was arrested there in company with a German woman, Agnes Smedley. The two were accused of violating the espionage act by representing themselves to be diplomatic agents of the Indian Nationalist Party, and of having sent an appeal for aid in the establishment of a democratic federated republic in India to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, to Leon Trotzky in Russia, and to the Governments of Panama, Paraguay, Chile and other neutral nations.
In the course of the years 1916 and 1917 the Government built up an unusually exhaustive and troublesome case for nearly one hundred defendants, including the personnel of the San Francisco consulate, the German consul at Honolulu (who had supplied the Maverick in Hilo Harbor[5]), a large group of Hindu students, a smaller group of war brokers, and numerous lesser intermediaries. Their trial was one of the most cumbersome and interesting cases ever heard in an American court. It began on November 19, 1917, in San Francisco, with Judge Van Fleet on the bench. Witness after witness recited his story of adventure, each stranger than the last, and all stranger than fiction. Lieutenant von Brincken, one of the San Francisco consulate, pleaded guilty within a few weeks; his sentence was long deferred by the prosecution on account, presumably, of evidence which he supplied the Government. George Rodiek, the German consul in Honolulu, followed suit and was fined heavily; Jodh Singh turned state's evidence and presently his mind became diseased and he was committed to an asylum; the procedure was interrupted from time to time with wrangles among the defendants, and on one occasion Franz Bopp, the San Francisco consul, shouted to one of his fellows, "You are spoiling the whole case!" When the Government, through United States Attorney Preston, introduced evidence from the Department of State, the Hindus attempted to subpœna Secretary Lansing; when Bryan's pacifist tracts were introduced the defendants sought Bryan. On April 18, 1918, Chakravarty confessed, to the irritation of the other defendants. The climax in melodrama occurred on the afternoon of April 23, 1918, when, with the case all but concluded, Ram Singh shot and killed Ram Chandra in the courtroom. A moment later Ram Singh lay dead, his neck broken by a bullet fired over the heads of the attorneys by United States Marshal Holohan. That afternoon Judge Van Fleet delivered his charge to the jury; that night a verdict of guilty was returned against twenty-nine of the thirty-two defendants who had not been dismissed as the trial proceeded.
Judge Van Fleet, on April 30, 1918, pronounced the following sentences:
Franz Bopp, German consul in San Francisco, two years in the penitentiary and $10,000 fine; F. H. von Schack, vice-consul, the same punishment; Lieutenant von Brincken, military attaché of the consulate, two years' imprisonment without fine; Walter Sauerbeck, lieutenant commander in the German navy, an officer of the Geier interned in Honolulu, one year's imprisonment and $2,000 fine; Charles Lattendorf, von Brincken's secretary, one year in jail; Edwin Deinat, master of the German ship Holsatia, interned in Honolulu, a term of ten months in jail and a fine of $1,500; Heinrich Felbo, master of the German ship Ahlers, interned in Hilo, Hawaii, six months in jail and a fine of $1,000. These men may be described as the loyal German group.
Robert Capelle, agent in San Francisco of the North German Lloyd line, fifteen months' imprisonment and a fine of $7,500; Harry J. Hart, a San Francisco shipping man, six months in jail and a fine of $5,000; Joseph Bley of the firm of C. D. Bunker & Co., customs brokers, fifteen months in prison and a fine of $5,000; Moritz Stack von Goltzheim, a real estate and insurance broker, six months in jail and $1,000 fine; Louis T. Hengstler, an admiralty lawyer and professor in the University of California and in Hastings Law College, a fine of $5,000; Bernard Manning, a real estate, insurance and employment agent in San Diego, nine months in jail and a fine of $1,000; and J. Clyde Hizar, a former city attorney in Coronado and assistant paymaster in the United States Navy, one year's imprisonment and a fine of $5,000. These gentlemen constituted the so-called "shipping group" which was intimately concerned with the affairs of the Annie Larsen and the Maverick.
Dr. Chakravarty, who had been delegated by no less a personage than Zimmermann of Berlin to handle all Indian intrigue in America, received a crushing sentence of sixty days in jail and a fine of $5,000. Bhagwan Singh, the "poet of the revolution," was sentenced to eighteen months in the penitentiary; Taraknath Das, the author and lecturer, to twenty-two months' imprisonment; Gobind Behari Lal, the University of California student, to ten months in jail. The smaller fry of the University of California-Ghadr group were disposed of as follows: Nandekar to three months in jail, Ghoda Ram to eleven months, Sarkar, who had been in Japan with Gupta, to four months, Munshi Ram (of the Ghadr staff) to sixty days, Imam Din to four months, Nerajan Das to six months, Singh Hindi to nine months, Santokh Singh to twenty-one months in the penitentiary, Gopalm Singh to one year and a day, and Nidhan Singh to four months.
Dr. Chakravarty (on the right), the accredited agent of Ger-
many in the Hindu-German intrigues in America. With
him is Ernest Sekunna, also a German agent,
arrested with Chakravarty
Those defendants who remained had not been allowed at large on bail, thanks to the vigilance of Preston. Yet in spite of all precautions, the proceedings frequently threatened to get out of control. The United States had been at war for a year; the Federal Court was trying both alien enemies of military status and alien enemies who had engaged in and stood convicted of conspiracy, as well as conspirators against the rule of Britain in India who had revolution quite definitely in mind. Great Britain, for six months before the trial began, had been our ally and, in spirit at least, a traitor to Great Britain was a traitor to the United States. In spirit, but not in the letter of the law: the worst punishment which any existing statutes could impose on any single defendant found wholly and completely guilty of the charge was two years' imprisonment and a fine of $10,000. For such conviction, and for such punishment of the United States' military enemies, the prosecution clambered about through the tangle of civil procedure; we had been six months at war and laws had not been supplied to facilitate the swift justice due such enemies, nor have laws been supplied as this is written. More than eighty "court days" were consumed, the shorthand reporting alone cost more than $35,000. A court commissioner released four important witnesses "for want of evidence." (One of them was indicted in New York and the commissioner was himself dismissed.) Gupta, arrested in New York, was released on bail and swiftly fled across the Mexican border to continue his propaganda. Trying as the case was to all who were concerned in it, expeditiously as it was handled by the authorities, and informative as it proved to be, it was monumental in its confession that civil courts cannot act with the warning vigor and speed made necessary by war conditions.
The evidence introduced pointed clearly to the conclusion that the German-Hindu plot, complex as it is to us as critics, was unfruitful even to Berlin. Perhaps its very breadth made it awkward to manage. Nearly four years of war passed, and there was no mutiny in India. The stewards of the Indian domain knew anxious moments, but they found some solace in the realization that half way around the world, in the United States, there was a pair of eyes to watch every pair of mischievous hands, and that the conspiracy directed against the Orient could not take effect while those eyes were open.
It requires no special gift of prophecy to predict that secret conspiracies will continue unless those eyes are more vigilant than ever. The United States Attorney announced as the conspirators were being sentenced that he felt that the court might well instruct their dark associates to "cut out their propaganda," and that their Gahdr presses were even then turning out "barrels and bales of seditious literature." To this Judge Van Fleet gravely responded:
"The people are going to take the law into their own hands, as much as we regret it. The citizens of this country are going to suppress manifestations hostile to our allies."