The German Spy in America / The Secret Plotting of German Spies in the United States and the Inside Story of the Sinking of the Lusitania

by John Price Jones

A COSTLY FAILURE

From the viewpoint of picturesqueness, fantastic conceptions, recklessness, extravagance, and a remarkable mastery of detail, von Rintelen stands forth as the most extraordinary German agent sent to America. Boy-Ed and von Papen are now telling their friends in Berlin that their recall was due not to what they did but to what von Rintelen did and said.

The energetic nobleman had hoped to cause an absolute cessation of exports from this country to the Allies and to create a political situation where the United States would be powerless to make any protest on Germany’s submarine warfare. To bring these conditions about he had not hesitated to try to foment war between the United States and Mexico, to violate various American neutrality laws, to attack American institutions and American ideals with the aim of causing an industrial stagnation. Yet how little he actually accomplished!

His Mexican plans were a failure. His schemes to influence legislation came to naught. While a few strikes were started and quickly settled, the activity of the Germans proved hurtful to the working men. Von Rintelen did get a few supplies over to Germany; but many of his ships were seized by the English. His enterprises are said to have cost many millions of dollars, and the supplies which he shipped are about the only thing that Germany got out of his gigantic schemes. U. S. Attorney Marshall has a passport issued to Edward V. Gates which von Rintelen can have any time he wishes to come and get it. Should he ever step upon American shores, he will face charges which upon conviction furnish a total sentence of anywhere from fifty to sixty years. Never did Germany aim through one man to accomplish so much yet effect so little as through Franz von Rintelen, the Crown Prince’s friend.

CHAPTER VIII
THE STORY OF THE LUSITANIA

The Lusitania was, in the eyes of the German Admiralty, the symbol of Great Britain’s supremacy on the seas. The big, graceful vessel, unsurpassed in speed, had defied the German raiders that lurked in the Atlantic hoping to capture her and had eluded the submarines that tried to find her course. Time and time again, the Germans had planned and plotted to “get” the Lusitania, and every time the ocean greyhound had slipped away from them—every time save when the plot was developed on American territory.

To sink the Lusitania, the German Admiralty had argued, was to lower England’s prestige and to hoist the black eagle of the Hohenzollerns above the Union Jack. Her destruction, they fondly hoped, would strike terror to the hearts of the British, for it would prove the inability of the English navy to protect her merchantmen. It would prove to the world that von Tirpitz was on a fair way of carrying out his threat to isolate the British Isles and starve the British people into submission to Germany. It would be a last warning to neutrals to keep off the Allies’ merchantmen and would help stop the shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies from America. It would—as a certain royal personage boasted—shake the world’s foundations.

Gloating over their project and forgetting the rights of neutrals, the mad war lords did not think of the innocent persons on board, the men, the women and babies. The lives of these neutrals were as nothing compared with the shouts of triumph that would resound through Germany at the announcement of the torpedoing of the big British ship, symbol of sea power. The attitude was truly expressed by Captain von Papen, who on receiving news of the sinking of the Lusitania remarked: “Well, your General Sherman said it: ‘War is Hell.’”

So the war lords schemed and the plots which resulted in the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, bringing death to 113 American citizens, were developed and executed in America, through orders from Berlin.

The agents in America put their heads together in a room in the German Club, New York, or in a high-powered limousine tearing through the dark. These men, who had worked out the plot, on the night of the successful execution had assembled in a club and in high glee touched their glasses and shouted their devotion to the Kaiser. One boasted afterwards that he received an Iron Cross for his share in the work.

On the night of the tragedy, one of the conspirators remarked to a family where he was dining—a family whose son was on the Lusitania—when word came of the many deaths on the ship: “I did not think she would sink so quickly. I had two good men on board.”