THE “LUSITANIA” GOES DOWN
Then the Lusitania was torpedoed. Americans who were connected with von Rintelen’s schemes to ship supplies to Denmark and to buy the Krags, became alarmed over the prospect of war with Germany. They cut off negotiations with him and fearing possible government investigations, they began to talk. Part of the activities of a mysterious German of the name of Meyer and Hansen reached both the Government officials and newspapers. A reporter on the New York Tribune who got a “tip” of the real facts and who hunted for von Rintelen, frightened the German agents from the office of the E. V. Gibbon Company. Steinberg skipped back to Germany disguised as a woman carrying a trunk full of reports showing the necessity of concerted action to prevent the Allies from getting American war materials.
Von Rintelen slipped away to an office in the Woolworth Building. On disclosing something of his schemes to men there, he was quickly ordered out. He moved to the offices, in the Liberty Tower, of Andrew M. Meloy, who had gone to Germany hoping to interest the German authorities in a scheme having the same purpose as von Rintelen’s. In Meloy’s office he posed as E. V. Gates—still retaining the initials of E. V. G. So effective was von Rintelen’s “getaway,” that he was reported to have gone abroad as a secretary. Those newspaper stories again gave von Rintelen cause to chuckle over his cleverness and his elusiveness, and encouraged him to still more reckless projects. He was reporting meantime to Berlin by means of apparently innocuous commercial messages sent by wireless, and also by cablegrams via England and Holland.
Von Rintelen, always scheming to prevent arms and ammunition from going to the Allies, reached into Mexico to use that country as another angle from which to harass the United States. He planned—and this project was a part of his vast campaign—to embroil Mexico and this country in war, or to cause such a jumble of revolutions within the Mexican borders that the United States would be compelled to intervene. He pictured this country in war with Mexico, a mobilization of the regular army and the militia, an assembling of the American fleet. That would require a large part of the output of the munition factories. The horses that were being shipped to the Allies, the arms, the clothing for soldiers, the shoes and the hundreds of other things which American factories were busily turning out, would be required for a large American army moving south of the Rio Grande.
STIRRING UP MEXICO
He seized, therefore, upon President Wilson’s opposition to General Huerta, and he planned to start a revolution in Mexico with the aim of returning Huerta to power and thus placing the United States in a position where it would be compelled to go into Mexico and restore order. The United States would not be in a position then to dictate terms for the settlement of the Lusitania controversy, would seize the war supplies going to the Allies, and, incidentally, would be hampered for the remainder of the European war.
Ensconced in Meloy’s office, von Rintelen had as his daily associate a man of his own age and of much the same appearance, tall, slender, splendidly dressed, namely, a Mexican of German ancestry and a banker of Parral. These two, who had known each other for years, met in New York. The banker was versed in Mexican affairs, and the young German-Mexican knew some of von Rintelen’s plans which had been set in operation before the latter’s arrival in America.
German agents had been sent to Barcelona, Spain, to confer with General Victoriano Huerta, former dictator of Mexico, and dazzle him with the prospect of returning to power. Von Rintelen appreciated keenly the fact that Huerta in Mexico virtually meant a declaration of war by the United States, and, therefore, he wanted to put him there.
Having coaxed the old warrior to the United States, von Rintelen got Boy-Ed and von Papen to map out Huerta’s plans. The two attachés, with von Rintelen standing, invisible, far in the background and pulling the strings, had many secret conferences in New York hotels, overheard by Federal agents. They developed the plans for Huerta’s dash into Mexico, and the uprising of Mexicans to support him. Von Rintelen, Boy-Ed and von Papen made trips along the Mexican border, arranged for the mobilization of Mexicans, for the storing of supplies and ammunition and for furnishing funds. Von Rintelen deposited in Cuban banks and in banks in Mexico City more than $800,000 for Huerta’s use. When the aged general, stealing away from New York, reached Texas, he was nipped, while attempting to jump the international border.
While the Huertista faction was amply financed, it was only one of seven groups, five of which were in Mexico, to which von Rintelen passed out money. Striving to stir up trouble and still more trouble for the United States, he poured gold upon gold into Mexico, hoping that President Wilson, nervous and harassed, would raise a big army for a march.