PASSPORT FORGERIES
The passport bureau is a striking instance of Germany’s disregard of the rights and laws in a neutral country. With the sending of Great Britain’s ultimatum to Germany, the cable between Germany and the United States had been cut. The United States forbade the use of wireless for the transmission of messages in code to Germany, or the use of the cable for cipher dispatches to the warring countries. The Allies’ war vessels began at once to search all passenger ships for German citizens, taking them off and sending them to concentration camps. Meantime, von Papen, Boy-Ed and the other German officials realized the utmost necessity of transmitting to their respective home offices information concerning the developments in America. They knew also the vital necessity of sending back to Berlin, army and naval officers who had been selected and trained for special commissions in the event of war.
But they had been taught in their early days the value of fraudulent passports, and to these they turned at once. The Germans had at first no regular passport bureau for the aid of German reservists. Every German, left to his own resources, did the best he could under the circumstances. Carl A. Luederitz, German consul in Baltimore, has been indicted on a charge of conspiracy in connection with obtaining a fraudulent passport for Horst von der Goltz under the name of Bridgeman Taylor. The young German has confessed that with the aid of Herr Luederitz he applied for a passport and on August 31, 1914, obtained one bearing the signature of William J. Bryan, then Secretary of State. To get that document von der Goltz took an oath that he was born in San Francisco.
But this method was rather loose, and upon Captain von Papen devolved the necessity of establishing a regular system. The military attaché, always resourceful and daring, selected for the work Lieutenant Hans von Wedell. Von Wedell had been a newspaper reporter in New York, later a lawyer; but when he received orders from Captain von Papen, he gladly undertook the work in New York, bureaus being started in other cities. He opened an office in Bridge Street, New York, and began to send out emissaries to Germans in Hoboken, directing them to apply for passports. He sent others to the haunts of hoboes on the Bowery, to the cheap hotels, and other gathering places of the downs-and-outs, offering ten, fifteen and twenty dollars to men who would apply for passports. He spent much time at the Deutscher Verein, at the Elks clubhouse, where he would meet his agents, give them instructions and receive passports. His bills were paid by Captain von Papen, as revealed by the attaché’s cheques and counterfoils. These show that on November 24, 1914, von Papen paid him $500; that on December 5, he gave him $500 and then $300, the latter being for journey money; that he paid von Wedell’s bills at the Deutscher Verein, amounting in November, 1914, to $38.05. Meantime, he was using Mrs. von Wedell as a courier, sending her with messages to Germany. On December 22, 1914, he paid Mrs. von Wedell, by his own account, $800.