While von Rintelen, after his strenuous days in America, was resting comfortably in a luxurious prison camp at Donington Hall, England, the American authorities were busily delving into his record. Mr. Sarfaty presented witness after witness and thousands of documents to the Federal Grand Jury. Von Rintelen and Meloy were indicted, first, for the fraudulent passport conspiracy; and Meloy finally made a confession to the Government authorities. Von Rintelen’s agent, called before the Grand Jury and refusing to answer, was adjudged in contempt of court and spent a night in the Tombs prison. Another agent, summoned before the Grand Jury and asked about his dealings with von Rintelen, refused to answer on the ground that it might tend to degrade and incriminate him, but he afterwards was arrested on a firebomb charge.
Von Rintelen was indicted on the charge of forgery on the passport application, and upon that as a basis, application was made to the English authorities for his extradition. After months of investigation, indictments finally were filed against von Rintelen, Lamar, and his associates on a charge of conspiring to restrain foreign trade.
The moment a United States District-Attorney, equipped with a mass of documentary evidence, telegrams, letters, minutes of secret meetings, and the statements of hundreds of witnesses, laid facts before the Grand Jury who brought an indictment against a Congressman, the House of Representatives, without waiting for the trial of the defendant, immediately ordered an inquiry which in substance amounted to a fishing expedition by the sub-committee to ascertain just what evidence Mr. Marshall and Mr. Sarfaty had dug up against one of their members. Congress did not take any action, and finally, after a spectacular play, decided to let the matter drop.
A COSTLY FAILURE
From the viewpoint of picturesqueness, fantastic conceptions, recklessness, extravagance, and a remarkable mastery of detail, von Rintelen stands forth as the most extraordinary German agent sent to America. Boy-Ed and von Papen are now telling their friends in Berlin that their recall was due not to what they did but to what von Rintelen did and said.
The energetic nobleman had hoped to cause an absolute cessation of exports from this country to the Allies and to create a political situation where the United States would be powerless to make any protest on Germany’s submarine warfare. To bring these conditions about he had not hesitated to try to foment war between the United States and Mexico, to violate various American neutrality laws, to attack American institutions and American ideals with the aim of causing an industrial stagnation. Yet how little he actually accomplished!
His Mexican plans were a failure. His schemes to influence legislation came to naught. While a few strikes were started and quickly settled, the activity of the Germans proved hurtful to the working men. Von Rintelen did get a few supplies over to Germany; but many of his ships were seized by the English. His enterprises are said to have cost many millions of dollars, and the supplies which he shipped are about the only thing that Germany got out of his gigantic schemes. U. S. Attorney Marshall has a passport issued to Edward V. Gates which von Rintelen can have any time he wishes to come and get it. Should he ever step upon American shores, he will face charges which upon conviction furnish a total sentence of anywhere from fifty to sixty years. Never did Germany aim through one man to accomplish so much yet effect so little as through Franz von Rintelen, the Crown Prince’s friend.
CHAPTER VIII
THE STORY OF THE LUSITANIA
The Lusitania was, in the eyes of the German Admiralty, the symbol of Great Britain’s supremacy on the seas. The big, graceful vessel, unsurpassed in speed, had defied the German raiders that lurked in the Atlantic hoping to capture her and had eluded the submarines that tried to find her course. Time and time again, the Germans had planned and plotted to “get” the Lusitania, and every time the ocean greyhound had slipped away from them—every time save when the plot was developed on American territory.
To sink the Lusitania, the German Admiralty had argued, was to lower England’s prestige and to hoist the black eagle of the Hohenzollerns above the Union Jack. Her destruction, they fondly hoped, would strike terror to the hearts of the British, for it would prove the inability of the English navy to protect her merchantmen. It would prove to the world that von Tirpitz was on a fair way of carrying out his threat to isolate the British Isles and starve the British people into submission to Germany. It would be a last warning to neutrals to keep off the Allies’ merchantmen and would help stop the shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies from America. It would—as a certain royal personage boasted—shake the world’s foundations.