CONSPIRACIES ON LAND AND SEA
One indictment against the five defendants, phrased in legal terms, is vivid and forcible though barren of details. It accuses the German representatives and their hirelings of plotting to blow up railway tunnels, railroads, railroad trains, and bridges, already mentioned. Over this vast system of transportation, the indictment explains, supplies were being shipped westward for transportation on the ships Talthybius and Hazel Dollar. The defendants, it is stated, hired Smith to help them gain information about the sailings and the cargoes of ships leaving Tacoma bound for Vladivostok; that after Smith went to Tacoma, Crowley sent him money. Crowley and Smith came to New York, where they had conference with Germans who were in touch with von Papen. They next went to Detroit, where they were working out plans for the blowing up of the tunnel when they were arrested. Smith, who was working on the shipping and the tunnel end of the scheme, confessed, while van Koolbergen also has made a statement to the authorities which is of great interest, showing the workings of the defendants.
“On different occasions in his room,” says van Koolbergen, “von Brincken showed me maps and information about Canada, and pointed out to me where he wanted the act to be done. This was to be between Revelstoke and Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and I was to get $3,000 in case of a successful blowing up of a military train, or bridge, or tunnel.
“There are many tunnels and bridges there, and military trains pass every three or four days; he also knew when a cargo of dynamite would pass. He then informed me how I could get hold of dynamite, and explained to me that on the other side of the river on which the Canadian Pacific ran (I believe it was the Fraser River) the Canadian Northern Railway was in course of construction, and they had at intervals powder and dynamite magazines and that it would be very easy to steal some of the dynamite.”
Several ships were blown up on the Pacific; others were disabled under circumstances that suggested conspiracies. There were schemes also to destroy docks on the Pacific coast. In view of these plots, it is striking to observe in von Papen’s cheque counterfoils this entry: “May 11, 1915, German Consulate, Seattle (for Schulenberg), $500.” An explosion in Seattle Harbour occurred on May 30, 1915.
Another excerpt from the counterfoil is dated February 2nd, 1915, recording the payment of $1,300 to the Seattle, Washington, German Consulate marked “C. Angelegenheit,” a very vague word for “affair.” He also paid to A. Kalschmidt, of Detroit, who is accused by the Canadian authorities of plotting to blow up armouries and factories in Canada, $1,000 on March 27, 1915, and $1,976 on July 10, 1915.
While this enterprise was being mapped out in the West, a second project against the Welland Canal was in the making in New York. Paul Koenig, the intermediary between von Papen and reservists and others, had charge, it is alleged, of selecting assistants who would carry dynamite, fuses, and other equipment to the Canadian waterway. Koenig selected as his assistants Richard Emil Leyendecker, retailer of art woods, a naturalized German-American, Fred Metzler, Koenig’s stenographer, George Fuchs, a German, who after a quarrel with Koenig turned State’s evidence; as also did Metzler, and one or two other men. The party went to Buffalo and to Niagara Falls, being trailed all the time by agents under direction by William M. Offley, chief of the Federal investigators of New York.