CHAPTER VII
CAPTAIN FRANZ VON RINTELEN, GERMAN ARCH-PLOTTER
But von Rintelen had still bigger projects afoot. While his precise, swiftly moving mind supervised the Mexican conspiracy, and carefully watched over shipments of supplies to the Fatherland, he was launching a series of concerted conspiracies designed to cut off this country almost entirely from Europe. His vivid imagination had led him to picture a Utopian fantasy wherein Americans who believed so absolutely in universal peace—despite the war raging abroad—that the labourers would refuse to make munitions of war, the farmers would decline to sell food to warring nations, and the Government would take over all the war factories. Von Rintelen, accordingly, determined to bring such a dream into real life, not for altruistic purposes, but to help Germany conquer the Allies.
He had made his plans before he left Germany, and he had sent ahead for information concerning Americans as his aids, who were skilled in finesse and underground work. He wanted men who, while men of brains, might be led by lust for gold or hatred of England to espouse the criminal schemes which he had originated. He sought leaders whose logic and oratory could sway the rank and file. The man of whom he had heard while in Berlin as a likely assistant was David Lamar, now serving a term of imprisonment for having impersonated a Congressman, whose craftiness and ingenious methods in using politicians in his stock operations had won him the title of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The two men were brought together.
One can see von Rintelen, enthusiastically speaking in millions of dollars, as he outlined his schemes to Lamar, his equal in grace of manner and deceit, and Lamar cloaking his avarice with smiles and sophistry.
BEFUDDLING THE PACIFISTS
Von Rintelen’s first step, as he outlined it to Lamar, was to use the horrors of the European War as an appeal for universal peace, and to enlist the labouring men and the farmers of America in raising their united voice against the exports of arms and ammunition. And thus a great labour peace propaganda was originated by a German whose patriotism had driven away his scruples, and an American who had gone money-mad. The details of the organization were set forth, and soon von Rintelen had a staff of workers at his command, though they all may not have known he was paying their salaries. His agents, in secret interviews with labour leaders, were soliciting their aid, flashing rolls of gold-tinted certificates. The men who guiltily handled the money which von Rintelen drew from the bank had only one complaint, namely, that the denominations of the bills were entirely too large.
Two of von Rintelen’s agents following Samuel Gompers, president of the National Federation of Labour, to Atlantic City one day, offered him $500,000 for his services in endorsing the peace propaganda and participating in the work. Mr. Gompers scorned the offer. Other big labour leaders, whose aid was solicited, began immediately to warn their associates against the anti-American activities of German agents.
By June, 1915, von Rintelen’s schemes were moving apace. A big advertising campaign had been started in the early spring with von Rintelen’s cash. Newspaper propaganda picturing the glories of universal peace began to appear.
By the aid of Lamar, who kept von Rintelen in the background, the German soon had many persons working and talking in the interest of universal peace. It has been stated that the services of Frank Buchanan, Representative in Congress and former labour leader, and of H. Robert Fowler, ex-Congressman, were obtained. Whether they were aware of von Rintelen and his motives is a question for a jury to answer, for they have been indicted in connection with the alleged activities of the Labour’s National Peace Council.
Within a short time, thousands of invitations were scattering throughout the country to labour leaders, small and large, and to heads of farmers’ granges, to attend the national convention of the peace propaganda at the expense of the organization. All railroad fares, hotel expenses and a liberal allowance for spending money were promised.
Under the fostering financial auspices of von Rintelen, who hovered conveniently near the New Willard Hotel, the members of a peace movement gathered in Washington, expenses paid. They adopted resolutions saying they desired “to promote peace.” The resolutions demanded the enactment of laws that would enable the Government to take over as exclusive government business the manufacture of all arms, instruments and munitions of war; demanded an immediate embargo upon shipments of war supplies to the belligerents; denounced the maintenance of military and naval forces, and called for a special session of Congress to promote “peace universal.” The executive board went immediately into executive session.
PAYING THE HIRELINGS
“How is this movement to be financed?” one of the newly-elected executive board asked another. He and one of the vice-presidents waited for an answer. They got none, he says, and the question was repeated by another. Then one of the officers answered:
“This thing is big enough, so that I do not care where the money comes from to finance it.”
Another member asked:
“What, after all, does this council want to do?”
“We want,” was the answer, “to stop the exportation of munitions to the Allies. Germany can manufacture all the munitions she wants.”
Von Rintelen’s deposit in the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company meantime was growing smaller by jumps of $100,000. It was drawn by cheques payable to cash, placed in another bank, quickly withdrawn, and on one occasion the money in bills was taken to the headquarters of a peace organization in a suit-case. Bank accounts of von Rintelen’s peace propagandists began to jump.
The executive board was busy. One of the first moves was a statement filed with Secretary of State Lansing alleging that nine ships in various American ports were taking on cargoes of ammunition in violation of the neutrality laws. That charge, undoubtedly prepared with von Rintelen’s aid upon information gathered by German spies, showed an accurate knowledge of the merchantmen loading with supplies for the Allies. There was, however, no violation of law, because the vessels were officered and manned by ordinary seamen who had no connection with the Allied governments.
The second step was the preparation of a complaint charging as a violation of law the issuance of Federal Reserve notes by national banks on the ground that the New York banks had lent money to the Allies which was being used in payment for war supplies, and that some of those banks had rediscounted notes with the Federal Reserve Bank. Here again was displayed a remarkably detailed knowledge of the business of the Federal Reserve Banks. This charge also fell flat.
A third move was against Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York. Resolutions were adopted accusing him of exceeding his authority in having granted clearance papers to the steamship Lusitania when that vessel was ladened with munitions, and authorizing an action to be started against him. No suit, however, was begun. In this connection, it may be mentioned that one member of the peace committee was attorney for a woman of Chicago, who, months afterwards, started suit for $40,000 against Collector Malone and Captain Turner, of the Lusitania, on the ground that the ship illegally carried explosives.
CONSPIRACY GROWS BOLDER
These public acts mentioned above, however, are stated by the Federal Government to have been merely a cloak, covering a more extensive conspiracy financed by von Rintelen. By a series of strikes in munition factories, humming with the Allies’ war orders; on railroads carrying the articles to the seaboard, and on steamships, von Rintelen, it is alleged, sought to cut off commerce among the United States and the Allied countries. Von Rintelen and several others are accused in the Federal indictment of doing six different acts in a conspiracy in restraint of foreign commerce. They are charged with conspiring to use “solicitation, persuasion and exhortation” to influence the workers to go on strike or to quit work, to bribe officers of labour unions to get the men to strike, and “by divers other means and methods not specifically determined upon by the defendants, but to be decided as the occasion arose.”
Von Rintelen was busy now jumping from town to town, sending orders under one name, then another, and paying out money. There took place in June and July, 1915, many strikes which, the national labour leaders of the respective trades said, were absolutely unauthorized by the national bodies. The German agent was delighted to read in the newspapers of strikes at the Standard Oil plant in Bayonne, N. J.; of strikes at the Remington Arms Company in Bridgeport, Conn., and in the General Electric Plant in Schenectady, N. Y. His agents would approach him gleefully with the newspapers containing these accounts, and immediately would receive another bundle of bills with the exhortation, “That is fine. Go out and start some more.”
Another projected strike in connection with which Germans were mentioned in correspondence, but in which von Rintelen is not named, is presented here because it fits in the general scheme of the German plotting. That is the conspiracy on part of moneyed representatives of Germany in May and June, 1915, to start a strike simultaneously among the 23,000 ‘longshoremen on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Such a walkout would absolutely have paralysed American shipping, completely stopped the movement of explosives to the Allies at a most critical moment. A leader of the big ‘Longshoremen’s Union told Chief William J. Flynn, of the United States Secret Service, that $1,035,000, or $45 for every man, was offered to keep the men out on strike for four weeks. After the sinking of the Lusitania, the man who approached the ‘longshoremen wrote under the name of “Mike Foley,” asking if an “S.” (strike) was to be called, that because of the “L. (Lusitania) affair,” his people were not going to do anything at present, and because the “Big Man” (who preceded von Rintelen) was going away. It will be recalled that after the sinking of the Lusitania, Dernburg was dismissed from the country because of his comments concerning the attitude of Germany towards submarine warfare.
CRIMINALS SET TO WORK
While von Rintelen was reaching out in so many directions in his frantic endeavour to build a barrier between the United States and the Entente Powers, he did not hesitate to resort to criminals. Keeping his quick eyes on the progress of the peace propaganda, he had schemes which, while distinctly separated from that organization, were designed to work in harmony with the developments in the strike propaganda. Von Rintelen planned by aid of reservists and crooks to take other measures in munition factories to stop, delay, injure the production of materials destined for the Allies’ battle fronts.
He sent trained German reservists to get employment in factories with orders to collect information and do what they could to cause trouble. Resorting again to the well-developed system of German secret agents in New York, under new aliases, he got in touch with organized bands of criminals in New York, and, the authorities say, hired them to start depredations on the ships being loaded with supplies for the Allies in New York harbour. To von Rintelen or some other person associated with him is attributed the origin of a plot for widespread attacks by thieves on cargoes being lightered from railroad piers to merchantmen. These thefts of sugar, automobile tyres and magnetos have amounted to millions of dollars. For instance, one of the sugar thieves stealing bags of sugar from a lighter said to a comrade:
“Take some more bags. The ship won’t ever reach the other side, anyway, and nobody will know.”
To the persons who doubt these varied, reckless and extensive activities of von Rintelen, it may be suggested that von Rintelen asserted frequently to his associates that he had come to America to take every step, including peaceful or violent measures, to stop the shipment of munitions.
The doubter must not overlook the supervision which von Rintelen exercised over the manufacturer of fire bombs which German reservists are accused of hiding on the Allies’ merchantmen, and the fact that von Rintelen’s aid visited a bomb man in his Hoboken laboratory frequently; that on one occasion he scored him roughly because the fire bombs were not proving effective. Furthermore, Fay, after his arrest, and long before the indictment of the bomb plotters, told Captain Tunney of a wealthy German, then a prisoner of war in England, who had paid $10,000 to a Hoboken chemist to make fire bombs.
Though von Rintelen, during the months of June and July, was exuberant over the reports—most of them false—which were carried to him concerning the progress of peace, the strikes and other schemes, and though he was kept drawing money from the bank until the $800,000 in the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company was reduced to $40,000, he began to have doubts about Lamar and about the effectiveness of the latter’s management of some of the projects. He knew that Lamar and his associates were planning for a second rousing meeting in Washington, but, becoming suspicious, he suddenly cut off the money. He had received estimates of activities that required more money. After deliberation he finally decided to slip away to Berlin, get away from Lamar entirely and after making a report to the War Office return to America to broaden his scope of work.
All told, von Rintelen had failed to perceive any falling off in the exports to the Allies. They were, in fact, rapidly increasing, and von Rintelen’s schemes thus far had proved ineffective, though he still was optimistic that eventually he would have all his forces working in unison and thus accomplish his aims.
He did not go to Washington when a second peace convention was in session, and the word had slipped out to some of the workers that von Rintelen was about to sail. Still, the meeting with the members claiming a representation of 8,000,000 voters, was more denunciatory and enthusiastic over its aims, than ever. There were attacks on President Wilson and demands for an embargo on war munitions. There was an intense pro-German feeling.
Differences, meantime, began to arise among the members of the executive board. One of the vice-presidents resigned just before the second session convened, saying emphatically that the financing of the organization was under suspicion. Another quietly quit, not making the fact public until weeks afterwards. Lamar flitted away to a magnificent country home which he had bought in Pittsfield, Mass. There was no money left. The propaganda died.
EXIT VON RINTELEN
Von Rintelen was on the high seas. He had left $40,000 in the bank in charge of his friends, and some of the plotters tried to get that on the strength of a promise to stop the Anglo-French bond sale of $500,000,000. Before sailing he had applied for a passport as an American citizen named Edward V. Gates, of Millersville, Pennsylvania. But whisperings concerning von Rintelen’s activities had reached the White House from society folk who had heard von Rintelen’s rash talk and who knew of some of the unscrupulous things he had attempted. The State Department ordered an investigation and finally sent his passport on to New York the day before the sailing of the Noordam, in care of Federal agents; but von Rintelen did not claim it. Though he had bought a ticket on the boat under the name of Gates, and had obtained drafts payable on that name, he did not occupy the Gates cabin but at the last minute engaged passage under the name of Emil V. Gasche, a Swiss citizen.
On board ship, he set to work preparing for the close scrutiny of British naval officers when the ship neared Falmouth. He handed over many of his documents to Andrew D. Meloy, his travelling companion, and Meloy’s secretary. He dictated a long document about financial conditions of Mexican railways purporting to be the report of himself as commissioner for a group of English bondholders. He sought to make it appear that he had been sent to the United States as a representative of the bondholders’ committee of Mexican railways. When the British officers came on board and searched him, von Rintelen put up a skilful bluff, but finally surrendered as a prisoner of war. Meloy, who had aided von Rintelen in his application for the American passport, was sent back to this country by the British authorities.
A VALUABLE PRISONER
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.