Fighting Germany's Spies

by French Strother

An American traitor in Berlin gave Rintelen his cue for operations in America. This man’s name is known, and will one day be written alongside Benedict Arnold’s, but to disclose it now would interfere with more practical efforts for his mortal punishment. Part of that punishment he is already enduring—he is still in Germany. This traitor told Rintelen that the most useful man in America for his purpose was David Lamar, of New York. Rintelen fixed that name in his memory, and left Berlin.

His first barrier was the old, old barrier to German conquest, the British blockade. Rintelen ran that under cover of the Swiss passport, under the name of Gasché.

Arrived in New York on April 3d, Rintelen lost no time in getting acquainted with Lamar. He disclosed to him his mission to this country and the money he had to execute it. The Tiger of Berlin met the Wolf of Wall Street.

And how the Wolf’s eyes must have glistened, for he was at the leanest of the hungry days which regularly followed seasons of opulence in the ups and downs which varied the career of this extraordinary man. For Lamar was, and is, an extraordinary man. Endowed by nature with a fascinating personality and with a brilliant mind, which he had enriched by study, a man capable of great things, he was possessed by that strange perversity which often afflicts men of exceptional cleverness—he would rather make one dollar by adroit crookedness than a million by unexciting honesty. Perhaps his origin affected his character—he declined, on the witness stand, to give his true name and parentage on the ground that to do so would bring disgrace upon persons still living. He entered Wall Street as a young man from nowhere, and at first gave promise of a brilliant and honourable career. He early made his mark in finance. He was employed by J. P. Morgan & Company and other great banking concerns, and in those days of his legitimate activities amassed a large fortune. But this was dissipated in gambling on the stock market, and then Lamar gravitated to the gutter. For years it was a by-word on the Street that if you wanted a clever man to do a crooked job, David Lamar was the man you were looking for. He had the brains to do it right, he had the presence to “get away with it,” and he would do anything for money.

These traits had got him into trouble shortly before Rintelen met him. When the Pujo Committee of Congress was investigating the “money trust” several years ago, some crooked brokers in Wall Street wanted some inside information that was going to affect the price of certain stocks in which they were interested. They could not get this information by legitimate means, and so they adopted Lamarian means. Lamar knew that a member of Congress was entitled to ask for this information. Mr. Mitchell Palmer was a Member of Congress. Lamar had one of his devious inspirations. He called up a banker’s office, got the man there who knew what Lamar wanted to know, declared that he was Mr. Palmer, and demanded the information—and got it. Lamar repeated the exploit several times. But once too often. He was detected, arrested and tried, convicted, and on December 3, 1914, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for the crime of impersonating an officer of the Government. He appealed the case on the ground that a Representative in Congress was not “an officer of the Government.” When Rintelen met him the following April, Lamar was out on bail pending the decision on this appeal.

Lamar was then in desperate straits. Bad luck had followed him in the Street for two years, and had crowned his misfortunes with this expensive trial and threatened imprisonment. He owed money everywhere for personal expenses; the merchants with whom he traded had stopped his credit; he had descended to borrowing from his friends in sums as small as two dollars at a time. Then he met Rintelen, who was on fire with a passion that blinded him to consequences and who flourished before the eyes of the famished Wolf a half million dollars of real money. Here was manna fallen from heaven.

“Could Lamar help Rintelen!” With his most convincing eloquence, Lamar assured him that he could. Never had Rintelen been better advised, so Lamar declared to him, than when his friend in Berlin had given him his name. For he had friends in Washington, he whispered, men powerful in the Government. And friends among the labouring people, the men whose hands made those munitions Rintelen had come to stop, and whose hands might be paralyzed by the clever use of brains and money. Lamar would supply the brains: Rintelen would supply the money. The Wolf saw good hunting ahead.

Lamar laid before Rintelen a scheme. They would capitalize the American passion for peace: they would capitalize in particular the labouring man’s aversion to war. A section of opinion among labouring men held that wars were instigated by capitalists for gain, and were fought by labouring men who gave their lives to make good the selfish ambitions of the rich. And one of the American people’s deepest convictions was that war was an odious moral crime; and that universal peace was attainable by the pursuit of moral ideals.

Lamar declared, then, that by working through his friends in labour, he could organize the workers of America so that they would refuse to work on the implements of destruction of “capitalistic” war. And that, by working through his friends in the Government, he could create a national sentiment that would force Congress to place an embargo on munitions. But these things would cost money. Lamar never forgot money.