Dr. Constantin Dumba, Austrian ambassador to the United
States, recalled after the disclosures of the correspon-
dence captured on the war correspondent, Archibald
James F. J. Archibald, an American correspondent who had seen most of the wars of recent years, and who wanted to see more, set sail from New York on August 21, 1915, for Amsterdam, with his wife, his campaign clothes, and a portfolio. At Falmouth, England, the usual search party came aboard, and inspected the papers in the portfolio. Archibald proved to be an unofficial despatch-bearer, upon whom his German and Austrian acquaintances in the United States placed great reliance—such men as Papen, Bernstorff, and Dr. Constantine Dumba sent reports to their governments in his care.
On September 5 the New York World burst forth with the text of one of the letters—one from Dr. Dumba, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador at Washington, to his chief in the foreign office at Vienna, Baron Burian. It is worth reproducing here intact:
"New York, August 20."
"Your Excellency:
"Yesterday evening Consul-General von Nuber received the enclosed aide memoire from the chief editor of the local influential paper Szabadsag, after a previous conversation with me in pursuance of his verbal proposals to arrange for strikes at Bethlehem in Schwab's steel and munitions factory and also in the middle West.
"Archibald, who is well known to your Excellency, leaves today at 12 o'clock on board the Rotterdam for Berlin and Vienna. I take this rare and safe opportunity of warmly recommending these proposals to your Excellency's favorable consideration. It is my impression that we can disorganize and hold up for months, if not entirely prevent, the manufacture of munitions in Bethlehem and the middle West, which, in the opinion of the German military attaché, is of great importance and amply outweighs the comparatively small expenditure of money involved.
"But even if strikes do not occur it is probable that we should extort under pressure more favorable conditions of labor for our poor downtrodden fellow countrymen in Bethlehem. These white slaves are now working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. All weak persons succumb and become consumptive. So far as German workmen are found among the skilled hands means of leaving will be provided immediately for them.
"Besides this, a private German registry office has been established which provides employment for persons who voluntarily have given up their places. It already is working well. We shall also join in and the widest support is assured us.
"I beg your Excellency to be so good as to inform me with reference to this letter by wireless. Reply whether you agree. I remain, with great haste and respect,
"Dumba."
The aide memoire, written by the editor of a Hungarian weekly, proposed to create unrest by a campaign in foreign language newspapers circulated free to labor, muck-raking labor conditions in Bethlehem, Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Bridgeport, where there were great numbers of foreign workmen, Hungarians, Austrians, and Germans. This was to be supplemented by a "horror novel" similar to the bloody effort of Upton Sinclair to describe the Chicago stockyards. Special agents of unrest, roll-turners, steel workers, soapbox orators, picnic organizers, were all to be insinuated into the plants to stir up the workmen. This editor had stirred them up a few weeks before at Bridgeport—the strike which Lamar claimed as his own accomplishment—and he presented to Baron Burian a really comprehensive plan for creating unrest through his well-subsidized foreign-language press. And in passing it on, Dr. Dumba stood sponsor for it.
The British government saw in the discovery of the letter and the cool impudence of it, a rare chance for propaganda in America. So, as has been said, the World published the story, and at once the wrath of the truly American people justified President Wilson in doing what he and Secretary Lansing had already determined to do—to send Dr. Dumba home. Perhaps Dumba's reference to the "self-willed temperament of the President" in another note found on Archibald had something to do with the haste with which the Ambassador's recall was demanded; it followed on the heels of the publication of the letter:
"By reason of the admitted purpose and intent of Mr. Dumba to conspire to cripple legitimate industries of the United States and to interrupt their legitimate trade, and by reason of the flagrant violation of diplomatic propriety in employing an American citizen protected by an American passport as a secret bearer of official despatches through the lines of the enemy of Austria-Hungary, the President directs us to inform your Excellency that Mr. Dumba is no longer acceptable to the Government of the United States as the Ambassador of his Imperial Majesty at Washington."
So went Dumba.