On March 7, 1917, Guy Scull, deputy police commissioner in New York, with eight detectives, called at 364 West 120th Street, found Dr. Chakravarty clad in a loin cloth, and arrested him on a charge of setting afoot a military enterprise against the Emperor of India. With Sekunna, a German who had been writing tracts for him, he was later transferred to San Francisco to stand trial. The typewriter in the 120th Street house, whose characteristics—all typewriters are as individual and as identifiable as finger-prints—had betrayed the conspirators, lay idle for many months, but as late as March 18, 1918, a Hindu, Sailandra Nath Ghose, who had collaborated with Taraknath Das in writing a propaganda work called "The Isolation of Japan in world politics," was arrested there in company with a German woman, Agnes Smedley. The two were accused of violating the espionage act by representing themselves to be diplomatic agents of the Indian Nationalist Party, and of having sent an appeal for aid in the establishment of a democratic federated republic in India to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, to Leon Trotzky in Russia, and to the Governments of Panama, Paraguay, Chile and other neutral nations.
In the course of the years 1916 and 1917 the Government built up an unusually exhaustive and troublesome case for nearly one hundred defendants, including the personnel of the San Francisco consulate, the German consul at Honolulu (who had supplied the Maverick in Hilo Harbor[5]), a large group of Hindu students, a smaller group of war brokers, and numerous lesser intermediaries. Their trial was one of the most cumbersome and interesting cases ever heard in an American court. It began on November 19, 1917, in San Francisco, with Judge Van Fleet on the bench. Witness after witness recited his story of adventure, each stranger than the last, and all stranger than fiction. Lieutenant von Brincken, one of the San Francisco consulate, pleaded guilty within a few weeks; his sentence was long deferred by the prosecution on account, presumably, of evidence which he supplied the Government. George Rodiek, the German consul in Honolulu, followed suit and was fined heavily; Jodh Singh turned state's evidence and presently his mind became diseased and he was committed to an asylum; the procedure was interrupted from time to time with wrangles among the defendants, and on one occasion Franz Bopp, the San Francisco consul, shouted to one of his fellows, "You are spoiling the whole case!" When the Government, through United States Attorney Preston, introduced evidence from the Department of State, the Hindus attempted to subpœna Secretary Lansing; when Bryan's pacifist tracts were introduced the defendants sought Bryan. On April 18, 1918, Chakravarty confessed, to the irritation of the other defendants. The climax in melodrama occurred on the afternoon of April 23, 1918, when, with the case all but concluded, Ram Singh shot and killed Ram Chandra in the courtroom. A moment later Ram Singh lay dead, his neck broken by a bullet fired over the heads of the attorneys by United States Marshal Holohan. That afternoon Judge Van Fleet delivered his charge to the jury; that night a verdict of guilty was returned against twenty-nine of the thirty-two defendants who had not been dismissed as the trial proceeded.
Judge Van Fleet, on April 30, 1918, pronounced the following sentences:
Franz Bopp, German consul in San Francisco, two years in the penitentiary and $10,000 fine; F. H. von Schack, vice-consul, the same punishment; Lieutenant von Brincken, military attaché of the consulate, two years' imprisonment without fine; Walter Sauerbeck, lieutenant commander in the German navy, an officer of the Geier interned in Honolulu, one year's imprisonment and $2,000 fine; Charles Lattendorf, von Brincken's secretary, one year in jail; Edwin Deinat, master of the German ship Holsatia, interned in Honolulu, a term of ten months in jail and a fine of $1,500; Heinrich Felbo, master of the German ship Ahlers, interned in Hilo, Hawaii, six months in jail and a fine of $1,000. These men may be described as the loyal German group.
Robert Capelle, agent in San Francisco of the North German Lloyd line, fifteen months' imprisonment and a fine of $7,500; Harry J. Hart, a San Francisco shipping man, six months in jail and a fine of $5,000; Joseph Bley of the firm of C. D. Bunker & Co., customs brokers, fifteen months in prison and a fine of $5,000; Moritz Stack von Goltzheim, a real estate and insurance broker, six months in jail and $1,000 fine; Louis T. Hengstler, an admiralty lawyer and professor in the University of California and in Hastings Law College, a fine of $5,000; Bernard Manning, a real estate, insurance and employment agent in San Diego, nine months in jail and a fine of $1,000; and J. Clyde Hizar, a former city attorney in Coronado and assistant paymaster in the United States Navy, one year's imprisonment and a fine of $5,000. These gentlemen constituted the so-called "shipping group" which was intimately concerned with the affairs of the Annie Larsen and the Maverick.
Dr. Chakravarty, who had been delegated by no less a personage than Zimmermann of Berlin to handle all Indian intrigue in America, received a crushing sentence of sixty days in jail and a fine of $5,000. Bhagwan Singh, the "poet of the revolution," was sentenced to eighteen months in the penitentiary; Taraknath Das, the author and lecturer, to twenty-two months' imprisonment; Gobind Behari Lal, the University of California student, to ten months in jail. The smaller fry of the University of California-Ghadr group were disposed of as follows: Nandekar to three months in jail, Ghoda Ram to eleven months, Sarkar, who had been in Japan with Gupta, to four months, Munshi Ram (of the Ghadr staff) to sixty days, Imam Din to four months, Nerajan Das to six months, Singh Hindi to nine months, Santokh Singh to twenty-one months in the penitentiary, Gopalm Singh to one year and a day, and Nidhan Singh to four months.
Dr. Chakravarty (on the right), the accredited agent of Ger-
many in the Hindu-German intrigues in America. With
him is Ernest Sekunna, also a German agent,
arrested with Chakravarty
Those defendants who remained had not been allowed at large on bail, thanks to the vigilance of Preston. Yet in spite of all precautions, the proceedings frequently threatened to get out of control. The United States had been at war for a year; the Federal Court was trying both alien enemies of military status and alien enemies who had engaged in and stood convicted of conspiracy, as well as conspirators against the rule of Britain in India who had revolution quite definitely in mind. Great Britain, for six months before the trial began, had been our ally and, in spirit at least, a traitor to Great Britain was a traitor to the United States. In spirit, but not in the letter of the law: the worst punishment which any existing statutes could impose on any single defendant found wholly and completely guilty of the charge was two years' imprisonment and a fine of $10,000. For such conviction, and for such punishment of the United States' military enemies, the prosecution clambered about through the tangle of civil procedure; we had been six months at war and laws had not been supplied to facilitate the swift justice due such enemies, nor have laws been supplied as this is written. More than eighty "court days" were consumed, the shorthand reporting alone cost more than $35,000. A court commissioner released four important witnesses "for want of evidence." (One of them was indicted in New York and the commissioner was himself dismissed.) Gupta, arrested in New York, was released on bail and swiftly fled across the Mexican border to continue his propaganda. Trying as the case was to all who were concerned in it, expeditiously as it was handled by the authorities, and informative as it proved to be, it was monumental in its confession that civil courts cannot act with the warning vigor and speed made necessary by war conditions.