It was stated that this particular Government clerk was known to be a socialist; was corresponding with Emma Goldman. Other charges were made against him, not redounding to the credit of his moral character. He was rated as being a man slovenly in his looks and “with no moral and mental stamina.” In short, the field was pretty good for the purposes of German espionage. Pages could be written covering the activities of this particular emissary. She was one of a certain type who will work anywhere for money. During the Red Cross drives in Washington, she was suspected by some of the operatives who were working for the United States Shipping Board. It was discovered that she was working in that department, also, as a welfare worker “under very mysterious circumstances.” She was cared for.
There was a certain gentleman by the name of Dr. Frederick August von Strensch, who was arrested by the Department of Justice on testimony furnished by operatives. The worthy doctor might have been regarded as practically innocent—all he planned was the invasion of Canada and Mexico by German reservists located in the United States. This man had long made America his home. He was arrested on a presidential warrant. Along with him, there was arrested a certain dazzling stage celebrity represented to have been a countess in her more private life in Europe. A mass of correspondence was taken with these people, revealing the fact that 150,000 German reservists were to be sent to Canada, about the same number into Mexico. Definite plans were mentioned referring to the assemblage of 25,000 men on the Canadian border. This one plot alone, if mentioned here in detail, would give all the data necessary for a sensational thriller in detective fiction. But it is not fiction. This sort of work actually went on within our country. Not only in this instance, but in many others, a deliberate and extremely dangerous attempt was made to embroil us with other countries.
When the merchant submarine “Deutschland” arrived in this country on its celebrated voyage, a part of its cargo consisted of thirty-three thousand pounds of tungsten, scarce in this country, but of value in making certain high grades of steel. After considerable sleuthing on the part of operatives, this tungsten was traced to a concern ostensibly American, but really owned altogether by Germans. The way in which the identity of these steel manufacturers was concealed is proof of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the master criminal minds of the world. As showing the thoroughness with which Germany works, one of the accused stated that when he came out of Germany to confer with his associates, the German censors destroyed all his papers, examined all his clothing, and stripped him and washed him with a solution of alcohol to eradicate any message which he might have painted on his skin! They were not above a suspicion on their own part. The Alien Property Custodian took over, as a result of these investigations, the Becker Steel Company, whose plant was located at Charleston, W. Va. The details of this case are extremely voluminous.
The passport frauds have long been “old stuff” in the American journals, and need be no more than referred to here. At the time German reservists were needed in the Old Country (there were more than a thousand very useful officers here who were much needed in the German army), the question of passports came up. These men could not get U. S. passports, so a general system of forged passports was set on foot in which the highest diplomatic officials of Germany in America did not scorn to take a hand. It was their idea of honorable service, one supposes. Certainly, von Bernstorff—whom we kept in this country long after he should have been kicked out—employed a go-between who arranged and carried on a very considerable traffic in foreign passports. The ordinary price was about twenty dollars,—small business, truly, for an ambassador, but von Bernstorff, von Papen, von Weddell, von Igel and others worked together in this thing until the Department of Justice men got too hot upon their trail. A long and intricate story hangs upon this. It is enough to say that the frauds were unearthed and the lower and middle class operatives in the frauds were put away. Von Weddell, the most important of these conspirators, took ship for Norway. However, the ship on which he sailed was sunk by a German U-boat,—tragic justice in at least one instance.
Another of the well known German enterprises against England and her Indian empire was brought to light in the so-called Hindu Plot—also very well known through newspaper publication. It came to a focus in a trial in San Francisco, in which one Hindu leader shot another and was himself shot the next instant in the court room by a deputy marshal in attendance—a fact which perhaps lingers in the public memory even in these exciting days. The Hindu plot, reduced to its simple and banal lowest common denominator, consisted in a more or less useless intrigue with certain more or less uninfluential citizens of Hindu birth. One phase of the activities was the purchase with German money in New York of several hundred thousand rifles and several million cartridges, which were to be shipped in a vessel from the Pacific Coast to meet a certain other vessel far out in the Pacific for transfer of the cargo. That cargo was to be delivered where it would do the most good to any Hindu gentleman disposed to rise against the British authority. It is a long and rather dull story—how everything miscarried for our friends the Germans and the Hindus. The rifles never were delivered; the conspirators were brought to trial; the conspiracy was ended. And at the end, in a court room, and because he himself had a weapon in his hand, we got one Hindu Hun at least.
As a mere trifle, it may be mentioned that Joseph W——, an Austrian subject, was arraigned in the Enemy Alien Bureau at New York, charged with having in his possession a United States navy code book. W—— was said to be a “collector of stamps.” He had in his possession a map of South America, and a list of warships of the Brazilian navy. He had also certain sheets of paper carrying mysterious characters made up of letters and dashes. He said he had been a piano player and was taking music lessons by mail.
Lt. Christian S—— was before the Enemy Alien Bureau at the same time. He was once six years in the German army as an officer of the Uhlans. One day S—— called on United States Marshal McCarthy and asked him to help him get a job. He returned to find out if the marshal had found a place for him, and when the marshal said he had not, the German showed anger and remarked: “This is what makes us disloyal!” Marshal McCarthy arrested S—— and arraigned him before Perry Armstrong, assistant chief of the Enemy Alien Bureau. In answer to questions, S—— said he did not approve of German-Americans, that he approved of the sinking of the Lusitania and endorsed what the Germans had done in Belgium. He was committed to Ludlow Street jail pending further investigation.
Last May there was arrested in New York one Gustave B. K——, of whom it was said: “Not only is he an officer of the German army and an intimate friend and adviser of von Bernstorff, von Papen, and Boy-Ed, but he is also a confidant, it is said, of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince. Though he has lived in the United States twenty years, he is still a German subject and is said to have paid out large sums of German money on Boy-Ed’s account, having had as much as $750,000 for that purpose in one New York bank at one time.”
It is enough! Further details would be revolting. Enough has been shown to develop some idea of the tremendous centralization of these international spy activities on the eastern seaboard of America. It was with these that the cities of New York and Washington had the most to do.