William Foxley = Foreign Office
Charles Gledhill = Count Bernstorff
Fred Hooven = Guaranty Trust Company (New York)
$500 = $500,000
and to all other figures add three ciphers to arrive at the real amount. For example, one of these messages read: “Paid Charles Gledhill five hundred dollars through Fred Hooven.” This meant: “Paid Count Bernstorff five hundred thousand dollars through Guaranty Trust Company.”
BOLO’S HANDWRITING
A letter written in New York to his bankers in transactions for the purchase of the Paris Journal, with German money, the crime for which he was shot
The story of these messages is briefly this: Marie Paul Bolo started life as a barber, became an adventurer and, in the service of the Khedive of Egypt, received the title of Pasha for a financial service which he rendered him. Returning to France as Bolo Pasha, he married two wealthy women and lived in grand style on their money. He became an intimate of Charles Humbert, another adventurer, who achieved political power by questionable methods and became a member of the French Senate. In the meantime, the Khedive had been deposed by the British on account of his pro-Turkish (and hence pro-German) activities after the Great War began. Abbas Hilmi joined the colony of ex-rulers in Switzerland, and there became a part of the German system of intrigue. He received money from the Germans and, after he had deducted his “squeeze” (which sometimes amounted to half the total), he paid over the rest to Bolo, to be used by Bolo, Humbert, and ex-Premier Caillaux in an effort to restore Caillaux to power and then to further the propaganda for an early and hence inconclusive peace.