Herr von Rintelen, having dropped the guise of E. V. Gasche, immediately began to play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll, visiting the Yacht Club, and calling upon wealthy friends, proved a more charming, more delightful von Rintelen than ever, meeting influential business men who were selling supplies to the Allies. He was presented to society matrons and débutantes, whom, by flattery and subtlety, he sought to use to further his purposes. To these, he was Herr von Rintelen in America on an important financial mission. But occasionally, he made wild boasts of plans. As a typical Mr. Hyde he sought information from von Bernstorff, von Papen, Boy-Ed, about the production of war supplies. Astounded by what he learned from them and corroborated from other sources, he began to realize how utterly he had misjudged America’s potential resources and what a blunder he had made in his statement to the General War Staff.
Within a brief time von Rintelen realized, with a vividness that chilled him, the capacity of America to hand war materials to the Allies and her rapidly increasing facilities to turn out still more ammunition and bullets. The facts which he obtained struck him with triple force because of the knowledge he had about the war moves. It is upon a basis of the supplies of munitions in the Allied countries, particularly Russia, as von Rintelen knew them, that his acts are best judged and upon this basis only can sane motives be assigned to the rash projects which he launched.
He understood these three striking facts thoroughly: (1) that the German drive on Paris had failed because in two months the Germans had used up ammunition they confidently expected to last a half a year; (2) that the English and French in the west could not take up the offensive because ammunition was not being turned out fast enough; and (3) that the Russian drive on Germany and Austria would soon fail for lack of arms and bullets.
In the winter and spring of 1915 the Russians had made a drive into Galicia and Austria, hurling the Austrians and Germans back. In May they had advanced victoriously through the first range of the Carpathian mountains. Meantime the German General Staff, as von Rintelen knew, was preparing for a big offensive against the Russians. The War Staff knew of Russia’s limited capacity to produce arms and ammunition, knew that during the winter with the port of Archangel closed by ice, her only source for new supplies lay in the single-track Siberian railway, bringing material from Japan. He realized that by spring the Russian resources would well nigh be exhausted, and that with the beginning of the projected Austro-German offensive the crucial necessity lay in shutting off supplies from Russia. He knew that England and France could not help her, and, therefore, the American source must be cut off absolutely. But spring had already come, ships were sailing for Archangel laden with American explosives, shells and cartridges.
A PLOTTER AT WORK
Von Rintelen, startled by his mistaken estimate of American industrial preparedness, and frantically determined that Russia’s supplies must be crippled, that the cargoes going to France and England must be held back, began mapping out his gigantic enterprises. These conditions were the big compelling motive; for von Rintelen’s reputation was at stake. The work for which he had been so carefully trained was bound to fail unless he acted quickly. Desperate measures were necessary. With that situation in view he exchanged many wireless communications with his superiors in Berlin—messages that looked like harmless expressions between his wife and himself in which the names of Americans who had been in Berlin were used both as code words and as means to impress upon the American censor their genuineness. He obtained as a result still greater authority than he had received on the eve of his departure from Germany.
In his quick fashion, he often boasted, and there is foundation for part of what he said, that he had been sent to America by the General Staff, backed by $50,000,000 to $100,000,000; that he was an agent plenipotentiary and extraordinary, ready to take any measure on land and sea to stop the making of munitions, and to halt their transportation at the factory or at the seaboard.
He mapped out a campaign, remarkable for detail, scope, recklessness and utter disregard of American laws. These plots proved von Rintelen, or the German General Staff, a master of thoroughness and ingenuity, for he took into consideration the psychology, the customs, habits, and reported weaknesses of Americans.
His schemes in brief were (1) the purchase of war materials for Germany as a means of inflating prices; (2) the fomenting of war between the United States and Mexico as a means of compelling the American Government to seize all available war munitions; (3) a campaign of publicity and the arousing of public sentiment to bring about an embargo on arms shipments; (4) strikes in American industries; and (5) a series of acts of violence against factories and munition-carrying vessels.
Von Rintelen rapidly mobilized his forces of money and men. He went first to the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company, where he was known by his right name and where he arranged his finances. Money was transferred from Berlin through the usual German channels—large corporations with German affiliations—and placed to his credit in various banking institutions. He deposited large amounts in the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company and large amounts, totalling millions, in other banks. He next rented an office on the eighth floor of the same building that housed the trust company and had a telephone running to it through the switchboard of the banking institution. He registered with the county clerk as the E. V. Gibbon Company, a purchaser of supplies, signing his name to the document as “Francis von Rintelen.”