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Title: Fighting Germany's Spies

Author: French Strother

Release date: June 11, 2018 [eBook #57307]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by deaurider, John Campbell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIGHTING GERMANY'S SPIES ***

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL THOMAS W. GREGORY
Who directed the nation-wide work of arresting and prosecuting German plotters and of interning dangerous enemy aliens

FIGHTING
GERMANY’S SPIES

By
FRENCH STROTHER

Illustrated

Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY PAGE & COMPANY
1918

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

FOREWORD

“Fighting Germany’s Spies” is published to bring home to the public in a detailed and convincing manner the character of the German activities in the United States. By courtesy of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice the facts and documents of this narrative have been verified.

		PAGE
Foreword		v
Introduction		xi

CHAPTER
I.	The inside story of the passport frauds and the first glimpse of Werner Horn	3
II.	The inside story of Werner Horn and the first glimpse of the ship bombs	37
III.	Robert Fay and the ship bombs	60
IV.	The inside story of the Captain of the Eitel Friedrich	83
V.	James J. F. Archibald and his pro-German activities	92
VI.	A tale told in telegrams	109
VII.	German codes and ciphers	134
VIII.	The Tiger of Berlin meets the Wolf of Wall Street	158
IX.	The American Protective League	192
X.	The German-Hindu conspiracy	223
XI.	Dr. Scheele, chemical spy	258

LIST OF HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS

Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory	Frontispiece

FACING PAGE
German agents who dealt in fraudulent passports	16
The official German plotters at Washington	32
Captain Thierichens and scenes on the Eitel Friedrich	88
“When the water gets to the boilers”	112
Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski	152
Rintelen and his confederates	184
Officers of the American Protective League	200
LINE CUTS IN THE TEXT
	PAGE
A German attaché reminds Bernstorff of Wedell	6
The successful use of a fraudulent passport	18
Von Papen and Albert appear as unneutral plotters	28, 29
The card “of the guileless stranger from Tokyo”	31
Von Papen becomes accessory to a crime	33
Two of Ruroede’s visitors’ credentials	34
Horn’s application for a furlough	39
Werner Horn’s plan of escape	41
Werner Horn’s commission in the German army	48, 49
Werner Horn’s confession	56, 57
The Lusitania warning	94, 95
Code message transmitting money to Sir Roger Casement	137
A letter from John Devoy, an Irish-American, exposing his hand in a plot with the Germans	140
Extracts from a German code expert’s blotter	147
Bolo’s handwriting	148
A tale told in cablegrams	150, 151
The Cohalan-Irish Revolution message	154, 155

INTRODUCTION

Espionage has always been to Americans one of the hateful relics of an outworn political system of Europe from which America was fortunately free. We lived in an atmosphere not tainted with dynastic ambitions or internal oppression. We had no secret agents spying and plotting in other countries and were slow to suspect other countries of doing such things here.

The war, however, disillusioned us. We found our soil to be infested with representatives of an unscrupulous Power which did not hesitate to violate our hospitality and break its most sacred pledges in using this country as a base for unneutral plots against France and Great Britain. We soon learned that these plots were directed against us as well. They were only another manifestation of the spirit which led to the open hostility of Germany which forced us into war.

For a time we were at a great disadvantage in meeting the situation. We had no secret police; we had no laws adequate to deal with these novel offenses.

The Department of Justice met the situation, so far as it could under existing law, by a great enlargement of its Bureau of Investigation, and by the creation of a legal division devoted entirely to problems arising out of the war. Congress substantially supplied the deficiency in the laws by the passage of appropriate statutes. Under the powers obtained in these two directions the Department proceeded vigorously to the suppression of sedition, the internment of enemy aliens, and the prosecution of German agents. Its success is, I feel, attested by the absence of disorder in this country under war-time conditions. Open German activities have long since ceased here and the more subtle operations have been driven so far under cover as to be ineffective. In this work the Department of Justice has had the efficient and loyal aid of private citizens, who have responded generously to a patriotic impulse, through the agency of the American Protective League and similar organizations.

Mr. Strother’s narrative covers some of the more outstanding cases of the period when German plotting was at its height. The failure of these plots and the retribution visited upon the evil-doers are evidences, not merely of governmental efficiency, but of that of old, age-old, substantive laws of morality, which Germany as a nation has undertaken to flout—as we now know, in vain—both here and elsewhere.

T. W. Gregory
Attorney-General.

Washington, D. C.
August 14, 1918.

FIGHTING GERMANY’S SPIES

Fighting Germany's Spies

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