So Lieutenant Fay never qualified in active service as a destroying agent. Yet he was profligate in his intentions. He offered two men $500,000 if they could intrigue among the shippers in order that a ship laden with copper for England might wander from the path of convoy into German hands, and he even entertained the fantastic hope, with his chart and his motor-boat and his bombs, of stealing out of the harbor to the cordon of British cruisers who hung outside the three-mile limit and attaching his bombs to their rudders, that the German merchantmen might escape into the open sea.
On October 26 the Rio Lages caught fire at sea; fire broke out in the hold of the Euterpe on November 3; three days later there was fire aboard the Rochambeau at sea; the next day an explosion occurred aboard the Ancona. And so the list runs on:
Dec. 4—Tynningham, two fires on ship.
Dec. 24—Alston, dynamite found in cargo.
Dec. 26—Inchmoor, fire in hold.
1916
Jan. 19—Sygna, fire at sea.
Jan. 19—Ryndam, bomb explosion at sea.
Jan. 22—Rosebank, two bombs in cargo.
Feb. 16—Dalton, fire at sea.
Feb. 21—Tennyson, bomb explosion at sea.
Feb. 26—Livingston Court, fire in Gravesend Bay.
April saw the round-up of the group who had been working under the Hamburg-American captains, and although numerous fires occurred during May, 1916, in almost every case they were traced to natural accidents. The number mounted more slowly as the year advanced. With the entrance of America into the war, and the tightening of the police cordon along the waterfront, the chance of planting bombs was still further reduced, but waterfront fires kept recurring, and until the day of ultimate judgment in Berlin, when each of Germany's arsonists in America comes to claim his reward, none will know the total of loss at their hands. It was enormous in the damage it inflicted upon cargo, but it is improbable that it had any perceptible effect upon the whole export of shells for Flanders and France.
CHAPTER XII LABOR
David Lamar—Labor's National Peace Council—The embargo conference—The attempted longshoremen's strike—Dr. Dumba's recall.
Labor produced munitions. The hands of labor could be frightened away from work by explosions, their handiwork could be bombed on the railways, the wharves, the lighters, and the ships, but a surer method than either of those was the perversion of the hearts of labor. So thought Count von Bernstorff and Dr. Albert, who dealt in men. So thought Berlin—the General Staff sent this message to America: