On April 29, 1915, the Cressington caught fire at sea. Three days later, in the hold of the Kirk Oswald, a sailor found a bomb tucked away in a hiding place where its later explosion would have started a serious fire. So it came about that when the four lesser conspirators of the fire-bomb plot had served their six months' sentences, they were at once rearrested on the specific charge of having actually planted that bomb in the Kirk Oswald. The burly dock captains, Bode and Wolpert, who had blustered their innocence in the previous trial, and had succeeded in securing heavy bail from the Hamburg-American Line pending separate trials for themselves, were nipped this time with evidence which let none slip through. Rintelen was haled from his cell to answer to his part in the Kirk Oswald affair, and the jury, in January, 1918, declared the nine plotters "guilty as charged" and Judge Howe sentenced them to long terms in prison. Rintelen, alone of the group, as they sat in court, had an air of anything but wretched fanatic querulousness. He followed the proceedings closely, and once took the trial into his own hands in a flash of temper when the State kept referring to the loss of the Lusitania. It went hard with the nobleman to be herded into a common American court with a riff-raff of hireling crooks and treated with impartial justice. In Germany it never could have happened!
If those trials had occurred in May, 1915, the history of the transport of arms and shells would not have been marred by such entries as these:
May 8—Bankdale; two bombs found in cargo.
May 13—Samland; afire at sea.
May 21—Anglo-Saxon; bomb found aboard.
June 2—Strathway; afire at sea.
July 4—Minnehaha; bomb exploded at sea. (The magnetos.)
July 13—Touraine; afire at sea.
July 14—Lord Downshire; afire.
July 20—Knutford; afire in hold.
July 24—Craigside; five fires in hold.
July 27—Arabic; two bombs found aboard.
Aug. 9—Asuncion de Larriñaga; afire at sea.
Aug. 13—Williston; bombs in cargo.
Aug. 27—Lighter Dixie; fire while loading.
On August 31 the White Star liner Arabic, nineteen hours out of Liverpool was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank in eleven minutes, taking 39 lives, of which two were American. Germany, on September 9, declared that the U-boat commander attacked the Arabic without warning, contrary to his instructions, but only after he was convinced that the liner was trying to ram him; the Imperial Government expressed regret for the loss of American lives, but disclaimed any liability for indemnity, and suggested arbitration. On October 5, however, the government in Berlin had changed its tune to the extent of issuing a note expressing regret for having sunk the ship, disavowing the act of the submarine commander, and assuring the United States that new orders to submarines were so strict that a recurrence of any such action was "considered out of the question." If the cargoes could be fired at sea, no submarine issue need be raised. And so fires and bombs continued to be discovered on ships just as consistently as before. The log, resumed, runs thus:
Sept. 1—Rotterdam; fire at sea.
Sept. 7—Santa Anna; fire at sea.
Sept. 29—San Guglielmo; dynamite found on pier.
Now von Rintelen's handiwork was revealed in the adventures of Robert Fay, or "Fae," as he was known in the Fatherland. In spite of the imaginative quality of the enterprise, and the additional guilt which it heaped upon the executives of the spy system, it was not successful. There were vibrant moments, though, when only the mobilization of police from two states and special agents from the Secret Service and Department of Justice averted what would have developed into a profitable method of destroying ships.
Lieutenant Robert Fay was born in Cologne, where he lived until 1902. In that year he migrated to Canada, where he worked on a farm, and later to Chicago, where he was employed as a bookkeeper until 1905. He then returned to Germany for his military service, and went to work again in Cologne, in the office of Thomas Cook & Sons. After a period in a Mannheim machine shop he went home and devoted himself to certain mechanical inventions, and was at work upon them when he was called out for war service on August 1, 1914.
His regiment went into the trenches, and the lieutenant had some success in dynamiting a French position. Conniving with a superior officer, he deserted his command, and was sent to America by a German reputed to be the head of the secret service, one Jonnersen. Jonnersen gave Fay 20,000 marks for expenses in carrying out a plan to stop shipments of munitions from America, and Fay arrived in New York April 23, 1915, on the Rotterdam.
Dr. Herbert Kienzle, a clock-maker, of 309 West 86th Street, had written to his father in Germany bitterly assailing the United States for shipping munitions, and enclosed in his letters information of certain American firms, such as Browne & Sharp, of Providence, and the Chalmers Motor Car Company, of Detroit, who were reputed to be manufacturing them. These letters had been turned over to Jonnersen, who showed them to Fay as suggestions. Upon his arrival in New York, then, Fay called on Kienzle, who, though he was friendly enough, was reluctant to know of the details Fay had planned. Dr. Kienzle introduced Fay to von Papen, and later to Max Breitung, from whom he purchased a quantity of potassium chlorate.
The deserter found his brother-in-law, Walter Scholz, working as a gardener on an estate near Waterford, Connecticut, and brought him to New York on a salary of $25 a week. The two crossed the Hudson to Weehawken, N. J., and set to work to make bombs. Fay had a theory that a bomb might be attached to the rudder of a ship, and so set as to explode when the rudder, swinging to port, wound a ratchet inside the device which would release a hammer upon a percussion cap. Their plan was to have the parts manufactured at machine shops, assemble and fill them themselves, and then steal up the waterfront in the small hours and attach the infernal machines to outward bound vessels. Fay even counted on disarming the police boats before setting out.