CONTEMPT FOR DEMOCRACY
Confident that he was eluding the watchful eye of the United States authorities with more skill than his associates, he sent a telegram one day to Captain Boy-Ed, warning him to be more careful. Whereupon the latter, smiling cheerfully to himself, wrote this letter: “Dear Papen: A secret agent who returned from Washington this evening, made the following statement: ‘The Washington people are very much excited about von Papen and are having a constant watch kept on him. They are in possession of a whole heap of incriminating evidence against him. They have no evidence against Count B. and Captain B.-E. (!)’” Boy-Ed, a little too optimistically, added: “In this connection I would suggest with due diffidence that perhaps the first part of your telegram is worded rather too emphatically.”
Wrapped in that sense of contempt the military attaché began immediately upon the outbreak of war, even as he had planned before it, to make the United States “the hinterland” of the European battlefield. In the Embassy at Washington, the German consulate in New York, the Hamburg-American Building, an office in 60, Wall Street—which he secretly leased—and on board German merchantmen tied up in New York Harbour, he gathered about him German officials and German reservists, outlining plots in violation of American law, all designed to injure the Allies and help the cause of Germany. In those conferences, his arrogant disregard of America and his determination overruled the hesitating dissenters. His was the Prussian spirit of aggression. In those gatherings, he was both the dominating and the domineering factor: tall and broad-shouldered, with a commanding attitude, energetic in speech, and lightning-like in the development of bold plans. He has the strong forehead, the long, firm nose, and the heavy underjaw of a commander, but the large ears that denote recklessness and eyes blue and hard as steel.