“Oh, what foul work!”
CHAPTER IX
DR. HEINRICH F. ALBERT, GERMANY’S BAGMAN AND BLOCKADE RUNNER
“And tell him that the struggle on the American front is sometimes very hard.”—Dr. Albert.
To outwit John Bull on the high seas by running his blockade is a big task. To compete against the combined commercial generals of England, Russia, France and Italy in seeking trade in the Americas is a still larger undertaking. But for one man to attempt both, while incidentally keeping watch on the industrial growth of the United States and being a big factor in Germany’s spy system, seems like a pigmy grappling with a Hercules. The qualities requisite for the man who would accept such a battle are diplomatic finesse of the highest degree, strength compared to one of America’s kings of industry, a vast economic knowledge, the shrewdness of a Yankee and the cleverness of the Kaiser’s ablest strategist. Yet the responsibilities of such a manifold enterprise, romantic in its infinite details and its vastness, were assumed by one German.
You could find him almost any day until the break with Germany in a small office in the Hamburg-American Building, the Kaiser’s beehive of secret agents, at No. 45, Broadway, New York. He was a tall, slender man, wonderfully supple-looking in spite of the conventional frock coat and the dignified dress of a European business man. His clear, blue eyes, his smooth face, thoughtful and refined, his blonde hair, and his regular features suggested a man of thirty-eight, or even younger, though you would look for a middle-aged or older man as selected for a position requiring so many nice decisions. When you entered his room—and few persons gained admission—he would rise and bow low and most courteously. He spoke in a soft, melodious voice, was deliberate in the choice of his words and encouraged conversation rather than made it. He was the quintessence of politeness, a marked contrast to the clear-cut, energetic, brusque, American business man—a smooth polished cog in the steel machinery of Prussian militarism.
Yet this man was the centre of Germany’s business activities in America. Upon him has rested the task of spending between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 a week for the German Government in the purchase of supplies and in propaganda. His expenditure in furthering the cause has cost him thirty millions of dollars outside the vast amounts spent in the purchase of supplies, and he admits he wasted a half million or more dollars.
He was Dr. Heinrich F. Albert, privy councillor to the German Embassy and fiscal agent in America for the German Government. He was the source of the funds used by the representatives of Germany, her secret diplomatic and consular agents. He was the channel through whom money flowed from the Imperial exchequer—unwittingly it may have been on his part—to men who, in the interest of Germany, have violated American laws.
His job was a big one because this war has demanded the help of industry, as no other previous war. Just as it has resolved itself into an enormous race between the industries of the combating nations in turning out shells and arms, so Geheimrath Albert’s duties became all the more multitudinous, really a part of the great conflict itself.
Dr. Albert had just as important work as his colleagues, the military and naval attachés, but in a different field. With industrial preparedness of greater importance in this than in any other war it is natural that the commercial attaché and his staff of agents should prove a most important asset to Germany’s secret service in America. Geheimrath Albert’s duties in the economic field have been bound inextricably with the aims of the Fatherland’s secret service. While directing and financing the collection of data for use in the preparation of reports to the home government, he has also worked side by side with the other representatives of his Government.