“After we had been in the harbour (Batavia) for about an hour or so a German came aboard and introduced himself as Kolbe, 2d Officer of the war-bound merchantman Silesia. Nelson signed me to leave them alone, which I did. After they had conversed for about twenty minutes, Kolbe, Nelson, and myself went ashore together and motored down to Helfferich’s residence at Konigsplein W. 8. On the way we stopped at the American Consulate; Nelson went in alone. While waiting for him outside in the car I had a talk with Kolbe. He knew all about the Maverick and her mission. When I told him that I should like to interview the manager of Behn Meyers to deliver the letter given to me by Dinart at Hilo, Kolbe replied that Helfferich, the man we were on our way to, was the manager and I could make the letter over to him. Dinart had not mentioned Helfferich by name at the time of handing the letter to me. He asked me just to deliver it to Behn Meyers. When Nelson joined us again we proceeded to Helfferich’s place where I met for the first time the brothers Theodore and Emile Helfferich. Kolbe and I retired to another part of the house while Nelson and the brothers held a conversation for half an hour or so. After Nelson had done, he left with Kolbe, leaving me with the brothers. I spent about an hour with them. I gave Theodore Helfferich Dinart’s letter which he opened in my presence. It was a typewritten sheet in code. Helfferich said it would take him some time to decode it. The ‘weight’ inside the letter I have spoken of was what looked like a thin slab of lead enclosed in another cover. Helfferich opened this cover and on seeing that it was a thin slab, threw it aside without taking the trouble of examining it closely. I have no idea what it was for, but I imagine that in case it had to be suddenly thrown overboard the weight inside the cover would sink the letter at once. I told them all about our trip, and showed them the letters I had brought with me. Helfferich read the letter intended for Page, and remarked that the arrangements made at this end were substantially the same as those indicated in the letter. He said the signals were the same, and password was the same, and the code was the same. Emile spoke up and said that he had waited for the Maverick for three weeks in the Sunda Strait. They deeply regretted the failure of the Maverick in not bringing the arms and said that their arrangements on this side were excellent and they were only waiting the arrival of the cargo when they could have easily put their whole scheme through. They observed that ‘the people’ in India were all ready and prepared and had only been waiting for the arms to turn up. They did not discuss their own scheme with me. Theodore Helfferich expressed his disgust at the Maverick being thrust upon him and could not understand the object of her being sent to Batavia when she was not carrying the cargo, and when she could have as easily returned to America. It was then arranged that I should take up my lodging in a hotel ashore and in the meantime Helfferich would decipher the code letter. Things were to be left alone until he had read that.
“A couple of days after, I was rung up by Helfferich and I went and saw him at his place in the evening. He had deciphered the letter which had ‘originated’ from San Francisco. Helfferich said that the letter directed the abandonment of the Maverick, which was either to be sold or chartered to anybody or that she could be used for any regular purpose if Helfferich so desired. She was, if not sold, to be retained in this part of the world and on no account to be returned to America.”
So fizzled the German-Hindu gun-running expedition to India. The Maverick had arrived, with five “Persians” and no guns, at a Dutch port in the Indies—not India. The Hindus and the crew scattered to the winds; Starr-Hunt started to return to Los Angeles but was detained by the British authorities at Singapore, and ultimately appeared in the Federal court-room at San Francisco as the chief witness for the Government in its case against the German consul and his staff, the complacent Americans, and the Hindu conspirators. The Annie Larsen wandered up and down the Pacific Coast, and finally put in at Hoquiam, Wash., where she was promptly seized and her cargo of arms and ammunition locked up by the United States Government.
Von Brincken bore bitter testimony to the failure of the Maverick expedition, in the course of a “Report Concerning My Activities at the Imperial Consulate in San Francisco, California”—a report written November 10, 1916, and intended for the eyes of the German Foreign Office. He said:
“I complied with that instruction and met Ram Chandra and other leaders of the Hindu Nationalists, and there laid the foundation for the entire Hindu work which has since then been carried out here on the Pacific.... Up to the present date, I have fulfilled this assignment absolutely alone.... Mr. Von Schack has seen Ram Chandra only a few times during the entire period—while Consul-General Bopp saw the man only once. I had nothing to do with the ship-matters in connection with the Hindu affair. Therefore, I am not responsible for the failure of the ‘Maverick Expedition.’ I had only planned the point of landing at Karachi. Besides, through messengers, I had prepared the populace of the Punjab for the arrival of the Maverick.”
At the time of the Maverick enterprise, and after its failure, the Germans engineered a half dozen plots with the Hindus, looking toward revolution in India. Von Papen in New York directed a scheme for an incursion into north-western India through Afghanistan. The German Consul-General in Chicago shipped two German officers and two Hindu agitators to the Orient to train Hindu soldiers in upper Siam for an invasion of Burma. Wesendonck sent Har Dayal from Berlin to Constantinople to act as chairman of a committee of Mohammedans who were to incite the Mussulman population of India to revolt. Ram Chandra, at the instigation of Von Brincken, sent Hindu emissaries from San Francisco to organize revolutionary movements among the Indians in Manila, Tokyo, Shanghai—even in Seoul and Peking. Other emissaries, gathering men and money or transmitting messages, worked in Panama, in Switzerland, in the Sinai Peninsula, in Sweden—scarcely a country in the world but was touched by a filament of this spider’s web of German intrigue.
And, like gossamer, it all came to airy nothingness. A few dacoities [robberies accompanied by violence], a few vain attempts to suborn loyal native troops in India, were the net results of enormous labours, lengthy journeys, and huge expenditures of money.
By December, 1915, the German Government became impatient of this much ado about nothing. But it did not abandon hope. Zimmermann summoned a little, nervous, excitable Hindu from New York to Berlin. Dr. Chakravarty left America on a false passport, and in February, 1916, was appointed in Berlin to head the Indian intrigues in America. Zimmermann’s cable to Bernstorff, quoted in the first part of this article, notified the German authorities here of his appointment. By August, Dr. Chakravarty was in San Francisco, consulting with Ram Chandra and the Germans there.
Chakravarty and Ram Chandra had one thing in common—both knew the value of real-estate. Out of their joint operations in the insubstantial pursuit of Indian liberty, each emerged with some perfectly sound investments in mundane property, paid for with money subtracted from the German gold that passed through their hands for the “freeing of the oppressed.” Chakravarty put about forty thousand dollars into New York apartments, and Ram Chandra several thousands into residence and business property in San Francisco.
Ram Chandra’s real-estate ventures got him into trouble. They gave the needed opportunity to his rival for control of the Hindu organization in California. This rival was Bhagwan Singh, the poet and orator of the “Movement.” Late in 1916, he accused Ram Chandra of stealing Hindu funds. The directors of the Hindu Pacific Coast Association investigated the charge, and threw Ram Chandra out. Bhagwan Singh became president of the association and editor of the Ghadr. A few months later, when the United States entered the war, the whole crew was arrested, along with the German agents in San Francisco and Honolulu and with the Americans and German-Americans implicated in the Maverick enterprise.