During my encounters at this time with the Entente, I entirely lost any respect I may previously have felt for their moral character, which was reputed to be so high. I came then to realize that we could expect nothing better from them in the hour of our defeat, than a Peace of Versailles, which would make of no account all their earlier loftier professions. We, in Washington, were therefore, in duty bound, to strain every nerve to avert such a catastrophe to our country. Unfortunately the activities of the agents dispatched from home invariably deranged our plans in a most unfortunate manner, and, while affording our foes the desired opportunities for damaging our cause, achieved nothing of advantage in compensation. The English Secret Police, and all the detective agencies of the United States which were in their pay, were always at our heels, endeavoring to establish some collusion on the part of the German Embassy in these isolated cases of sabotage. However, all this subterranean plotting and counter-plotting was but so much lost labor. It was the decision on the policy of continuing or not continuing the submarine campaign which finally turned the scale.
At the beginning of August one of these agents managed to steal a portfolio of documents from Councillor Albert while he was traveling on the New York elevated railway, and its contents were published in the World from the 15th of August onwards. We always thought the perpetrator of this theft was an Entente agent, but it now appears from Senator Frelinghuysen's evidence before the Senate Committee of Enquiry on 13th July, 1919, that the guilty individual was really a member of the American Secret Police. It would certainly have been an unheard-of thing for an American agent to have robbed a member of the diplomatic corps and sold the proceeds of his deed to the Press. Probably what really happened was that the man was in the pay of the Entente. The investigations at the Senate Committee disclosed a number of cases of corruption and theft which the agents of the Entente did not scruple to use in their efforts to compromise and discredit the German Embassy; so this supposition is in itself by no means improbable. The affair was merely a storm in a tea-cup; the papers as published afforded no evidence of any action either illegal or dishonorable; otherwise the American Government would certainly have demanded the recall of Albert as they did later in other cases. The Press manufactured a considerable sensation out of the contents of the portfolio, but generally speaking the efforts of the Entente in this affair proved completely without effect.
The Entente agents, however, were more successful in their next attack, to which the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador fell a victim. Dumba had already in the winter of 1914-15 recommended to me the American war correspondent James Archibald, who had been at the Austro-Hungarian Front, as having German sympathies. Thereupon I also recommended this gentleman in Berlin, where he was granted all facilities. In the Summer of 1915 Archibald returned to America, to lecture on his experiences. As he was anti-Entente, these lectures brought us financial profit, and therefore we paid Archibald's traveling expenses. At the beginning of September, 1915, he went once more to Europe, and dined on the eve of his departure with Dumba and myself on the roof-garden of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York. By this means our personal connection with Archibald was openly recognized. The Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, confiding in his character and his American nationality, gave him certain political reports which were not even in cipher, to take to Vienna. Archibald had also offered to take papers to Berlin for me. I, however, declined with thanks, as I scented danger, and I would have warned Dumba also, if I had known that he intended to entrust dispatches to Archibald. The English seized the latter in Kirkwall and took away all his papers.
Since then I have never set eyes on Archibald, and I could not help suspecting that there was something uncanny about the case. By arresting Archibald the English undoubtedly thought they would compromise me. I cannot prove that there was anything wrong with Archibald, but in all the circumstances he could easily have destroyed the papers, had he wished to do so. In the meanwhile a report was found among the dispatches of the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador transmitting to his Government a memorandum from the Hungarian journalist, Warm. In this note Warm recommended propaganda to induce a strike among the Hungarian workers in arms and munitions factories, and demanded money for this object.
The statement of Dumba's report that the Ambassador had shown the suggestion to Captain von Papen, who had thought it very valuable, was very compromising for us.
The German Military Attaché was therefore placed in an awkward position; the letter contained several other blazing indiscretions. Thus, for instance, in one paper Dumba described President Wilson as self-willed, and von Papen in a letter to his wife spoke of the "imbecile Yankees."
As I previously mentioned, the position of the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador was much shaken by the Dumba-Bryan episode. His defence, that he had only forwarded the note of an Hungarian journalist, without identifying himself with it, was not favorably received by the American Government. A few days later his passport was presented to him; at the same time the Entente granted him a safe conduct.
Previous to his departure from New York similar scenes took place to those which followed the sinking of the Lusitania.
The Hotel St. Regis, in which the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador lived, was surrounded day and night by innumerable reporters.
When I called on him there to take leave of him, I had to make use of a back entrance to the hotel in order to avoid numerous impertinent questions. Dumba himself was followed at every step by reporters, who among other things often chased him for hours on end in motor-cars.