LIES AND DECEIT
German secret agents began to manufacture evidence to support the Kaiser’s contentions. Here a hireling of Boy-Ed looms as an obedient servant of the naval attaché, whether he knew all the facts or not. It was Koenig, who, using the alias of Stemler, obtained from Gustave Stahl an affidavit to the effect that he had seen four fifteen-centimetre guns on the decks of the Lusitania before she left port on her ill-fated voyage. There were three other supporting affidavits. All these documents were handed to Boy-Ed on June 1, 1915, and the following day were in the hands of von Bernstorff, who turned them over to the State Department in Washington.
It required but little work on the part of Federal agents to establish the untruth of Stahl’s affidavit. Stahl, a German reservist, appeared before the Federal Grand Jury, where he again repeated his lies. He was indicted for perjury and upon a plea of guilty was sent to the Federal prison at Atlanta.
It was Koenig who had hidden Stahl away after the latter had made his affidavit, and it was Koenig who, at the command of the Federal authorities, produced him.
So here again Germany’s efforts to deceive and to justify her piratical act came to naught, and left her even more damned before the world. Time came within a few days for President Wilson to reject forcibly the flimsy defence made by Germany, but before that note was drafted, the United States authorities by a thorough investigation of Sayville, and a scrutiny of the German naval officers employed there, discovered that the fake code message that drove the Lusitania to her grave in the sea had been flashed out from neutral territory; that the conspiracy had been developed in America, though the details were not obtainable at that time as they are presented here.
President Wilson was determined to demand absolute safety for Americans at sea. Though Bryan resigned, Mr. Wilson sent a note, asserting that the Lusitania was not armed, and had not carried cargo in violation either of American or international law. The action of Bryan weakened the position of America in demanding a cessation of Germany’s submarine warfare. It gave encouragement to Austria, after Germany had promised to obey international law, to try a series of similar evasions. It gave impetus to Germany’s plans to make a settlement of the submarine controversy and to try to divide Congress on the issue.
The loss to America was 113 lives and a great amount of prestige; to Germany, a tremendous amount of sympathy. But through it all stand out the pictures of secret agents, boasters, schemers and reckless adventurers, one of whom, having aided in the sinking of the Lusitania and the drowning of hundreds of her passengers and crew, had still the audacity to dine on the evening of this ghastly triumph at the home of an American victim. One agent high in international affairs, overcome by the force of the tragedy done in answer to the Kaiser’s bidding, had still enough decency left to remark:
“Oh, what foul work!”
CHAPTER IX
DR. HEINRICH F. ALBERT, GERMANY’S BAGMAN AND BLOCKADE RUNNER
“And tell him that the struggle on the American front is sometimes very hard.”—Dr. Albert.
To outwit John Bull on the high seas by running his blockade is a big task. To compete against the combined commercial generals of England, Russia, France and Italy in seeking trade in the Americas is a still larger undertaking. But for one man to attempt both, while incidentally keeping watch on the industrial growth of the United States and being a big factor in Germany’s spy system, seems like a pigmy grappling with a Hercules. The qualities requisite for the man who would accept such a battle are diplomatic finesse of the highest degree, strength compared to one of America’s kings of industry, a vast economic knowledge, the shrewdness of a Yankee and the cleverness of the Kaiser’s ablest strategist. Yet the responsibilities of such a manifold enterprise, romantic in its infinite details and its vastness, were assumed by one German.
You could find him almost any day until the break with Germany in a small office in the Hamburg-American Building, the Kaiser’s beehive of secret agents, at No. 45, Broadway, New York. He was a tall, slender man, wonderfully supple-looking in spite of the conventional frock coat and the dignified dress of a European business man. His clear, blue eyes, his smooth face, thoughtful and refined, his blonde hair, and his regular features suggested a man of thirty-eight, or even younger, though you would look for a middle-aged or older man as selected for a position requiring so many nice decisions. When you entered his room—and few persons gained admission—he would rise and bow low and most courteously. He spoke in a soft, melodious voice, was deliberate in the choice of his words and encouraged conversation rather than made it. He was the quintessence of politeness, a marked contrast to the clear-cut, energetic, brusque, American business man—a smooth polished cog in the steel machinery of Prussian militarism.
Yet this man was the centre of Germany’s business activities in America. Upon him has rested the task of spending between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 a week for the German Government in the purchase of supplies and in propaganda. His expenditure in furthering the cause has cost him thirty millions of dollars outside the vast amounts spent in the purchase of supplies, and he admits he wasted a half million or more dollars.
He was Dr. Heinrich F. Albert, privy councillor to the German Embassy and fiscal agent in America for the German Government. He was the source of the funds used by the representatives of Germany, her secret diplomatic and consular agents. He was the channel through whom money flowed from the Imperial exchequer—unwittingly it may have been on his part—to men who, in the interest of Germany, have violated American laws.
His job was a big one because this war has demanded the help of industry, as no other previous war. Just as it has resolved itself into an enormous race between the industries of the combating nations in turning out shells and arms, so Geheimrath Albert’s duties became all the more multitudinous, really a part of the great conflict itself.
Dr. Albert had just as important work as his colleagues, the military and naval attachés, but in a different field. With industrial preparedness of greater importance in this than in any other war it is natural that the commercial attaché and his staff of agents should prove a most important asset to Germany’s secret service in America. Geheimrath Albert’s duties in the economic field have been bound inextricably with the aims of the Fatherland’s secret service. While directing and financing the collection of data for use in the preparation of reports to the home government, he has also worked side by side with the other representatives of his Government.