RAMIFICATIONS OF UNDERGROUND PLOTS
So perfectly organized and so responsive to the slightest suggestion from Berlin is the American branch of the Kaiser’s secret service that vast undertakings—some legitimate, many in violation of American laws—were carried out.
The magician, who invented the wireless, enabled the German General War Staff to move to New York. The splash and splutter of electricity over oceans and continents virtually transported Germany’s leading statesmen, tacticians, and scientists at will to hold sessions in Manhattan on matters arising in America and bearing on the battle-front in the many theatres of actual warfare. For instance, how many people know that the secretary to one of the generals on the Western Line was a brother to one of the most notorious woman plotters in America? Germany had foreseen the possibilities of the wireless in war and had developed secret methods of sending code messages by radiogram, when apparently only ordinary messages were being transmitted, and she had also, some way or other, got possession of the code ciphers of other nations. Every night messages have been sent out from Germany, apparently blindly, addressed to no one and have been picked up by hidden receiving stations in America and other countries.
While Germany calls her spy system “a bureau of intelligence,” its purpose is confined not merely to the gathering of information, but to the carrying out of any campaign that will be harmful to her enemies. In the United States, Germans—reservists, army officers, representatives of the German Government—have been indicted for crimes against Federal laws. These violations were committed without doubt in a self-sacrificing spirit with the aim of helping the Fatherland. Germans, or German influences, have been behind schemes in violation of neutrality laws and restraint of trade. They have attempted arson, bribery, forgery, engaged in military enterprises, caused explosions in ships and factories, resulting in many deaths, and have set fires in ships and factories.
They have participated in plots against Canada, Ireland and India, all developed in the United States under the supervision of the German representatives of Berlin, though often ostensibly carried out by anarchist tools. The activities of the German agents, multitudinous in detail and variety, all have been designed to hinder the Allies in their prosecution of the war, to cause a breach between the Allies and the United States, to embroil this country in a war and to accomplish other secret aims of the General War Staff. In all the propaganda, German secret agents and official representatives of the German Government have not only worked with utter disregard to American laws, but have endeavoured to place the United States in a position of being secretly unneutral.
But the German Government has officially denied that she ordered any of her subjects to undertake any act in violation of American laws. Shortly after President Wilson in his message to Congress bitterly attacked the activities of Germans and German-Americans in America, accusing the latter of treason, the German Government authorized the statement that it:
“Naturally has never knowingly accepted the support of any person, group of persons, society or organization seeking to promote the cause of Germany in the United States by illegal acts, by counsels of violence, by contravention of law, or by any means whatever that could offend the American people in the pride of their own authority. If it should be alleged that improper acts have been committed by representatives of the German Government they could be easily dealt with. To any complaints upon proof as may be submitted by the American Government suitable response will be duly made.... Apparently the enemies of Germany have succeeded in creating the impression that the German Government is in some way, morally or otherwise, responsible for what Mr. Wilson has characterized as anti-American activities, comprehending attacks upon property in violation of the rules which the American Government has seen fit to impose upon the course of neutral trade. This the German Government absolutely denies. It cannot specifically repudiate acts committed by individuals over whom it has no control, and of whose movements and intentions it is neither officially or unofficially informed.”[[1]]
[1]. Berlin despatch in the New York Sun, Dec. 19, 1915.
To this official disavowal of German propaganda in America, there are two answers that stand out with dramatic force. First, the extent to which the subjects of Germany are expected to go in war time is shown by excerpts from Germany’s War Book of instructions to officers, which says in part:
“Bribery of the enemy’s subjects with the object of obtaining military advantages, acceptances of offers of treachery, reception of deserters, utilization of the discontented elements in the population, support of the pretenders and the like are permissible; indeed, international law is in no way opposed to the exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, robbery and the like) to the prejudice of the enemy. Considerations of chivalry, generosity and honour may denounce in such cases a hasty and unsparing exploitation of such advantages as indecent and dishonourable, but law, which is less touchy, allows it. The ugly and inherently immoral aspect of such methods cannot affect the recognition of their lawfulness. The necessary aims of war give the belligerent the right and imposes upon him, according to circumstances, the duty not to let slip the important, it may be decisive, advantages to be gained by such means.”[[2]]
[2]. The War Book of the German General Staff, translated by J. H. Morgan, M.A., pp. 113–114.
Secondly, since Germany sent out that semi-official proclamation from Berlin concerning propagandists, many steps have been taken by the American Government, both administrative and judicial. Captains von Papen and Boy-Ed, military and naval attachés respectively, have been dismissed from this country for “improper activities in military and naval affairs.”
There was no favouritism in the German secret service. Every German, high or low, was open to assignment, disagreeable and dishonourable, in getting information, and to orders to commit crimes—for Germany stops at no crime—that may be necessary to circumvent the enemy.
Captain von Papen showed his feeling keenly one night at a dinner of a few men where the wine flowed freely.
“My God, I would give everything in the world,” he exclaimed, “to be in the trenches where I could do the work of a gentleman.” In his work, there was no public reward for work well performed according to the war code. That man’s sentiments were echoed by von Rintelen, who, when among friends, fairly shook with emotion at the thought of the work in which he was engaged.
“How loathsome I feel,” he said. “How this dirty work sticks to me! When this war ends, I shall take a bath in carbolic acid.”