STOPPING SHIPMENTS FROM AMERICA
This search for information of military value and these plans for acquiring monopolies on certain ingredients for high explosives, carried on during the winter and spring of 1914–15, were but preliminary to a much more extensive campaign in which, as will be shown later on, Dr. C. T. Dumba, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, assisted by von Papen and Boy-Ed, worked with the idea, first, of controlling the arms and ammunition factories in this country, and next, of preventing the shipment of such products from America.
Naturally, during the winter and spring, Captain von Papen, Captain Boy-Ed, Dr. Albert and Count von Bernstorff, all along various lines, had been struggling to help the Fatherland, each eagerly hoping for success and some preferment extended by the Kaiser as a reward for tasks well performed.
Attacks were planned upon the Canadian Pacific Railway in the east, the Welland Canal, the St. Clair tunnel, running under the Detroit River from Port Huron, Michigan, to Sarnia, Ontario, and tunnels of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the Selkirk mountains. It is also stated in indictments handed down by a Federal Grand Jury in San Francisco that the conspirators in the West planned also to blow up trains carrying munitions of war, horses, arms and the like, and also to attack trains carrying soldiers. By a study on the map of the points thus mentioned it will be observed that these enterprises were planned with the utmost care to break into sections of the Canadian transcontinental railway system and to paralyse it absolutely. It can be seen at a glance that such plots, if carried out, would have prevented soldiers and munitions of war from travelling East to ship for the Western front, or from going West to cross the Pacific, thence through Siberia to the Eastern front. To this land scheme was added the additional plots of destroying docks by incendiarism, ships by explosions and fire. Furthermore, agents on land under the direction of other men were studying the munition factories in the western part of the United States preparatory to causing explosions and fires.
For the execution of these campaigns against munition industries and railroads in the West and North-west, Captain von Papen had special lieutenants. The persons who have been convicted in San Francisco on the charge of conspiring to blow up railroads and to wreck the transcontinental railway system in Canada are: Franz Bopp, German consul in San Francisco; Baron Eckhart H. von Schack, German vice-consul; Lieutenant Wilhelm von Brincken, attaché of German consulate; Charles C. Crowley, detective for German consul; and Mrs. Margaret W. Cornell, secretary to Crowley. They were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment each.
The question may justly be asked: “Why is it asserted that von Papen was behind and directed all these enterprises?” The Federal authorities have established a connection between von Papen’s headquarters in 60, Wall Street, and the German Consulate in San Francisco, whence, according to United States District-Attorney Preston of that city, ramifications led out to the different angles of the conspiracy in the West. So strong is the evidence that the San Francisco officials have accused the defendants of using the mails to incite murder, arson and assassination. It is stated that the defendants planned to destroy munition works at Aenta, Indiana, at Ishpeming, Michigan, and at Gary and other places in the West. Among the evidence is one letter among several which has to do with the question of the price which would be paid for the destruction of a powder plant at Pinole, California, and in it reference was made to “P.” The letter follows:
“Dear S.,—Your last letter with clipping to-day, and note what you have to say. I have taken it up with them and ‘B.’ (which the Federal officials say stands for Franz Bopp, German Consul) is awaiting decision of ‘P.’ in New York, so cannot advise you yet, and will do so as soon as I get word from you. You might size up the situation in the meantime.”
While this and other letters show, in the opinion of the Government officials, that von Papen was concerned with the defendants mentioned in the western indictment, still other facts have been gathered against von Papen. He has been traced from Washington and New York to a number of points in the United States, his visits coinciding with remarkable closeness to the time that meetings of the alleged conspirators were being held. Captain von Papen sauntered from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York one afternoon about 3.30, down Madison Avenue to 42nd Street, where he wavered for a moment as if deciding whether he would turn over for a jaunt on Fifth Avenue or drop into the Grand Central Station to buy a magazine.
After a moment he walked slowly into the station, glancing casually at his watch, and moving just before the gate closed toward the entrance to the track where stood the Twentieth Century Limited, was soon safely on board. The next day he was observed in Chicago, where he announced that he was on his way to Yellowstone National Park—and he disappeared. For several weeks he was lost to the sight of the zealous agents who were hunting him; but one day he was observed sauntering through the lobby of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco. In the course of his absence, he is said to have swung down along the Mexican border, where he caught up with Captain Boy-Ed, conferred with a number of secret agents from Mexico, with spies scattered throughout the country, and then hurried up to San Francisco, where he was busy before the agents of the Department of Justice picked him up again.