The Bielaski testimony was strengthened by that of Major Humes and Captain Lester of Military Intelligence. Incidentally, the attempts of Germany to embroil us with Mexico were shown. Very interesting testimony was brought out from Carl Heinen, an interned German, formerly a member of the Embassy staff, and a former consul general at Mexico City. Major Humes of M. I. D. put in the record the relations of Felix A. Somerfeld, an alien enemy who was an alleged Villa agent in New York, showing that in eight months Villa had received nearly $400,000 worth of rifle cartridges from Somerfeld, who was closely associated with the German agents, Carl Rintelen and Friedrick Stallforth, a prominent German banker in Mexico. The drafts on certain trust companies were produced as part of the evidence.
Heinen’s deposition was subscribed to by F. A. Borgermeister, Dr. Albert’s confidential secretary, before he was interned at Fort Oglethorpe. This disclosed the disposition of $33,770,000 that passed through German hands. This money was obtained in loans from New York banks, or through the American agents of banks in Germany.
Secretary of War Baker had commanded Captain Lester of Military Intelligence to make public some of the secrets of this division which heretofore had been reposing in the silence of the tomb. Captain Lester testified to the confession of a former German officer, who admitted having been sent here as a propagandist. This man told the federal officials that in June, before the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated, the German government was plotting the war. Captain Lester quoted this man as saying that in the middle of June, 1914, Bethmann-Holweg sent out inquiries to various scientists, professors and other intellectual persons to learn whether they were ready for foreign service in the event of war. There were one hundred and thirty of these who were told to be ready for instant call to service in North and South America, Japan and China, as directors of propaganda. They met in the Foreign Office in Berlin, July 10, 1914, and three weeks later sailed from Copenhagen for New York under charge of Dr. Heinrich F. Albert. In order not to arouse suspicion, most of them traveled steerage.
Captain Lester, after a long day of testimony, referred to the “Golden Book”—a book in which German-Americans wrote their names after they had contributed to a German War Relief fund. This book was to have been presented to the Kaiserin. The purpose of this book, in the belief of Captain Lester, was to get certain prominent German-Americans signed up as loyal to the fatherland, without letting them know they were doing it.
Captain Lester, in later testimony before the Overman Committee, said that of the one hundred and thirty trained and educated German propagandists sent out nearly a month before the war started, thirty-one landed in the United States two weeks after hostilities had started in Europe. They became the starting point of an organization comprising between 200,000 and 300,000 volunteers, in large part German-Americans, who were secret spies in this country and who reported regularly to German consuls and agents in widely scattered centers of the German spy system in the United States.
It may cause a certain horror and revulsion in the hearts of the American public when they realize that a quarter of a million secret German agents were working here in America all the time against us—just about as many as existed of loyal Americans under the unseen banner of the American Protective League. The American public now can begin to understand something of the bitter battle which was fought between these two secret organizations—the quarter million German spies who lived here, and the quarter million loyal American citizens who made this their home and this their country.
Captain Lester showed that the group sent to America had definite instructions. One was to deal with commercial matters, another with political, and a third leader was to take up the South American and Mexican relations. General headquarters in New York were at 1123 Broadway, arrangements having been made for these quarters in advance. The Hamburg-American Company, whose status toward us in the war is now notorious, took charge of the first work of the German Press Bureau. The original artist in this labor was replaced by a newspaper man, whose salary from Germany was later discovered to have been $15,000. A former major of the United States, once a newspaper man, was declared to have been hired at $40 a week to report to these German headquarters any confidential interviews he might have with Washington officials.
The Lutheran church propaganda was brought definitely before the Overman Committee. Dr. Albert and Dr. Fuhr had this form of propaganda in charge. Captain Lester said that there are about six thousand Lutheran congregations in the United States, with a membership of nearly 3,000,000, and that the propaganda was directed through pastors who had been born in Germany, or were alien enemies, or were of German parentage. There were over one thousand two hundred individual cases investigated. Readers of these pages will recall a few instances of the work of the American Protective League in looking into these many instances of disloyalty. Captain Lester said: “We have found in localities that the word had gone down the line to groups of clergymen that they were to preach sermons in favor of Germany, and that this had been done. I investigated a case in New York where the clergyman admitted to me he had received instructions to preach such a sermon. From August, 1914, to April, 1917, in hundreds of Lutheran churches, the continuous preaching was in favor and hope of German victory.”
It transpired that British Military Intelligence had in possession a great mass of documents taken by General Allenby in the capture of Nazareth. These were found among the effects of that Major Franz von Papen who once had been military attache in Washington, and whose name has become more or less familiar through some of the disclosures regarding von Bernstorff and his activities.
These papers, added to those taken by our own Intelligence officers from prominent Germans this side the water, go to build up the tremendous and tragic story of a nation’s shame. Germany had a widely spread and elaborate plan to ruin this country. She failed. The proofs of her failure are now before the public, and they run very wide. They do not leave us feeling any too comfortable or any too sure regarding our own country. It is not pleasant to have listed, as part with the German records, those of our great newspapers which, in the German belief, might be classed as “neutral or favorable to Germany.” It is not pleasant to see the names of newspaper men once held honorable and loyal, but now condemned to have had the itching palm and to have received German gold. There is nothing pleasant about the whole sordid, abominable story, nothing clean, nothing satisfying, nothing honorable. But it shows that when we had this sort of work to do, we did it thoroughly and accomplished the mission on which our men were sent out.