The Web

CHAPTER VII
THE GERMAN SPY CASES

To gain any adequate idea of the amount of the activities which centered in New York would mean the following out of countless concealed threads leading all over the world and covering the United States like a net. We never knew until we were well into this war that, long before we dreamed of war, our country was infested by vast numbers of the paid spies of Germany; that these worked under a well-established, and now well-known, organization; that the highest German diplomatic representatives were a part of the system; that leading financial figures of New York were figures in it also, and that the whole intricate machine was differentiated like a great and well-ordered business undertaking. It was an elaborate organization for the betrayal of a country; and that organization, like the armed forces of Germany in the field, was beaten and broken only by the loyal men of America, resolved once more that a government of the people should not perish from the earth.

Let the scene shift from New York—whose defensive organization has been outlined—to the national judicial center at Washington, the seat of our intelligence system and of those courts of law which have in charge the national affairs. There, for many months, a few men have sat and watched pour into their offices such proofs of human perfidy and depravity as can never have been paralleled in the most Machiavellian days of the Dark Ages.

The daily press of the United States acted under a voluntary censorship during the war, even while it saw pass by such news as never before had it seen in America. Now and again something of this would break which obviously was public property and ought to be known—the notorious transactions of von Bernstorff, von Papen, Dr. Albert, Boy-Ed, Bolo; such crimes as the blowing up of the international bridge in Maine; the mysterious fires and explosions whose regularity attracted attention; the diplomatic revelations regarding Dumba and Dernburg and their colleagues, which finally resulted in the dismissal of the clique of high German officials whose creed had been one of diplomatic and personal dishonor.

The stories of German attempts to control several New York newspapers; their efforts to buy or subsidize some thirty other journals in all parts of the country; the well-known subsidizing of certain writers to spread propaganda in the press—all these things also necessarily got abroad to such an extent that the United States Government could not fail to take cognizance of it. At length, charges came out linking up a Washington daily with wealthy commercial interests of a supposedly pro-German nature, and a great deal of acrimonious comment appeared in all parts of the country. Washington resolved to investigate these charges. The process took the form, in the late fall of 1918, of the appointment of a sub-committee of the great Senate Judiciary Committee, which popularly was known as the Overman Committee.

The work of this committee, which summoned before it officers of the Attorney General’s establishment in New York, agents of the Bureau of Investigation in Washington, of Military and Naval Intelligence in Washington, and all the larger figures of the accused or suspected persons implicated in what now had become a wide-reaching national scandal, was continued over many weeks. The proceedings were made public regularly, and at last the readers of America began to get, at first hand, authentic ideas of what menace had been at our doors and inside our doors. It was before this Overman Committee that many of the great New York cases in which A. P. L. assisted passed to their final review.

Perhaps the most important single witness called before this Senate committee was Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice at Washington. Mr. Bielaski was on the stand for days at a time, and his testimony came as a distinct shock to those of us who heretofore had known little or nothing about the way in which our covert forces of espionage were combating those of Germany. It will not be needful to follow the records of the committee from day to day throughout the long period of its sittings, but some of the more important revelations made by Mr. Bielaski first may be brought to notice.

It was brought into the record, for publication later by the State Department, that there was a regular system of secret messages between Count von Bernstorff of the Imperial German Embassy at Washington, and the Berlin Foreign Office, by way of South America and Stockholm. All this time the Imperial German Ambassador was posing as a great friend of America, while in reality he was the chief of the German spy system in America—an example of all that a nobleman should not be.

It was shown by Mr. Bielaski that the German consul in Chicago, Reiswitz, suggested as long ago as 1915 that German interests ought to buy the Wright aeroplane factories in Dayton, Ohio, in an attempt to stop the shipment of aeroplanes to the Allies. Something stopped the shipment—let us suppose that it was not the efficiency of Germany so much as our own inefficiency, deplorable as that admission must be.

Nothing came of this attempt, nor of the attempt to control the Bridgeport Projectile Works, in any very conclusive and satisfactory fashion for Germany. A year later von Bernstorff begins to complain that German propaganda has not been producing much result. He cuts free from the German publication, “Fair Play,” and declares that he would be glad to be well quit of George Sylvester Viereck’s “Fatherland.” He asks his imperial government to give him $50,000 more, with which he would like to start a monthly magazine in the United States. This was the beginning of those general revelations which exposed alike the clumsiness of German diplomacy, and the endeavor of German espionage as against our own.

Reiswitz was declared by Mr. Bielaski to have advised the continuance of the “American Embargo Conference,” which was set on foot to create opposition to our shipment of munitions to the Allies. He signified that this ought to be used as an influence to swing German voters in presidential elections. Mr. Bielaski brought into the record the “Citizens’ Committee for Food Shipments,” which was supported by Dr. Edmund von Mach of Cambridge. It had been organized in the home of a prominent New York citizen.

There was brought in the record also the name of a newspaper correspondent—more is the pity for that—who had letters from Count von Bernstorff and Captain von Papen, military attache, declaring that this man was in the service of Germany and Austria. The syndicate employing this man, as is well known, cancelled his contract as soon as his real character and his pro-German attitude were revealed.

The record also declared that a former correspondent of the Cologne Gazette in Washington, notified by the State Department to leave this country, had been in close wireless communication with a German paper in Rotterdam.

All of these revelations began to implicate certain Americans prominent in business and in politics, so that at once the transaction by the Senate Committee became the biggest news of the time, one recrimination following another and one explanation another in rapid sequence. The Committee, none the less, ground on, and produced original papers which proved German methods beyond a doubt. Two code dispatches from von Bernstorff to the Berlin Foreign Office were put into the evidence, one of which was dated November 1, 1916, and stated: “Since the Lusitania case, we have strictly confined ourselves to such propaganda as cannot hurt us if it becomes known. The sole exception is perhaps the peace propaganda, which has cost the least amount, but which also has been the most successful.”

Again von Bernstorff states that it would not seem desirable for him to be held responsible for any articles in the subsidized newspaper, “when, as now, we are in a campaign of the bitterest character which is turning largely upon foreign policy.”

Mr. Reiswitz of Chicago was on hand with estimates for his excellent master at all times. In regard to the Embargo Conference, he wrote in the first year of the war: “It would require an estimated amount of $6,000 or $7,000. The contemplated continuation of the enterprise would, in accordance with my opinion, be favorable to the entire German vote, and would facilitate influencing German voters.” So we have at once the first indication of the truth that the great German population of America is to be handled for the particular purpose of advancing Germany’s interests, not only in America but all over the world.

Mr. Bielaski read into the record documents alleging that the American Press Association was contemplated as desirable for German control. A memorandum by Dr. Albert, financial expert, stated that he would obtain a thirty day option on the American Press Association for the price of $900,000, with an additional $100,000 for news service. The memorandum in full was introduced before the Committee.

Professor von Mach was stated by Mr. Bielaski to have been active in behalf of interned prisoners, largely by way of his press agent, whom he supplied with inspiration. Von Mach was later brought before the Committee to explain in person as best he might certain publications which he had put out in other form.

Mr. Bielaski stated that German interests advanced to the Bridgeport Projectile Company $3,400,000, and that these interests got back $1,000,000 of this money by selling a large part of the company’s product to Spain.

Mr. Bielaski mentioned a society known as the “American Truth Society,” organized in 1910 and reported to have been financed by the German government, to what extent was undetermined. One record of a transfer of $10,000 was shown.

Records which had been taken from the office of Wolf von Igel showed that scarcely a ship sailed for a neutral country which did not carry a German agent. There were at least two American newspaper men who had been bought outright by Germany. Blackmail was not above the consideration of some of these fellow-conspirators. Amounts of $1,000 to $5,000 had been paid to subsidize one paper which was dropped by the embassy. The owner then threatened the embassy that if he did not get any more money he might allow the paper to go into bankruptcy, and the ensuing publicity would show the subsidy. Dr. Albert was authorized to settle with this man to keep him quiet—he paid something over $3,000 in this instance. Continually there rose a loud wail from Dr. Albert and von Bernstorff, “Stung!”

There were some recriminations between journals in America as to the nature of the “news” sent in by American foreign correspondents located in Germany. It was sometimes offered in explanation of the pro-German attitude of certain of these correspondents that it was natural that a man resident in Germany should hear one side only of the case. Others, more especially after the Senate revelations, were disposed to think there might be other valuable considerations moving correspondents thereto. Indeed, names and dates and prices of perfectly good correspondents are now on record with the Overman Committee.

The Bielaski testimony was strengthened by that of Major Humes and Captain Lester of Military Intelligence. Incidentally, the attempts of Germany to embroil us with Mexico were shown. Very interesting testimony was brought out from Carl Heinen, an interned German, formerly a member of the Embassy staff, and a former consul general at Mexico City. Major Humes of M. I. D. put in the record the relations of Felix A. Somerfeld, an alien enemy who was an alleged Villa agent in New York, showing that in eight months Villa had received nearly $400,000 worth of rifle cartridges from Somerfeld, who was closely associated with the German agents, Carl Rintelen and Friedrick Stallforth, a prominent German banker in Mexico. The drafts on certain trust companies were produced as part of the evidence.

Heinen’s deposition was subscribed to by F. A. Borgermeister, Dr. Albert’s confidential secretary, before he was interned at Fort Oglethorpe. This disclosed the disposition of $33,770,000 that passed through German hands. This money was obtained in loans from New York banks, or through the American agents of banks in Germany.

Secretary of War Baker had commanded Captain Lester of Military Intelligence to make public some of the secrets of this division which heretofore had been reposing in the silence of the tomb. Captain Lester testified to the confession of a former German officer, who admitted having been sent here as a propagandist. This man told the federal officials that in June, before the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated, the German government was plotting the war. Captain Lester quoted this man as saying that in the middle of June, 1914, Bethmann-Holweg sent out inquiries to various scientists, professors and other intellectual persons to learn whether they were ready for foreign service in the event of war. There were one hundred and thirty of these who were told to be ready for instant call to service in North and South America, Japan and China, as directors of propaganda. They met in the Foreign Office in Berlin, July 10, 1914, and three weeks later sailed from Copenhagen for New York under charge of Dr. Heinrich F. Albert. In order not to arouse suspicion, most of them traveled steerage.

Captain Lester, after a long day of testimony, referred to the “Golden Book”—a book in which German-Americans wrote their names after they had contributed to a German War Relief fund. This book was to have been presented to the Kaiserin. The purpose of this book, in the belief of Captain Lester, was to get certain prominent German-Americans signed up as loyal to the fatherland, without letting them know they were doing it.

Captain Lester, in later testimony before the Overman Committee, said that of the one hundred and thirty trained and educated German propagandists sent out nearly a month before the war started, thirty-one landed in the United States two weeks after hostilities had started in Europe. They became the starting point of an organization comprising between 200,000 and 300,000 volunteers, in large part German-Americans, who were secret spies in this country and who reported regularly to German consuls and agents in widely scattered centers of the German spy system in the United States.

It may cause a certain horror and revulsion in the hearts of the American public when they realize that a quarter of a million secret German agents were working here in America all the time against us—just about as many as existed of loyal Americans under the unseen banner of the American Protective League. The American public now can begin to understand something of the bitter battle which was fought between these two secret organizations—the quarter million German spies who lived here, and the quarter million loyal American citizens who made this their home and this their country.

Captain Lester showed that the group sent to America had definite instructions. One was to deal with commercial matters, another with political, and a third leader was to take up the South American and Mexican relations. General headquarters in New York were at 1123 Broadway, arrangements having been made for these quarters in advance. The Hamburg-American Company, whose status toward us in the war is now notorious, took charge of the first work of the German Press Bureau. The original artist in this labor was replaced by a newspaper man, whose salary from Germany was later discovered to have been $15,000. A former major of the United States, once a newspaper man, was declared to have been hired at $40 a week to report to these German headquarters any confidential interviews he might have with Washington officials.

The Lutheran church propaganda was brought definitely before the Overman Committee. Dr. Albert and Dr. Fuhr had this form of propaganda in charge. Captain Lester said that there are about six thousand Lutheran congregations in the United States, with a membership of nearly 3,000,000, and that the propaganda was directed through pastors who had been born in Germany, or were alien enemies, or were of German parentage. There were over one thousand two hundred individual cases investigated. Readers of these pages will recall a few instances of the work of the American Protective League in looking into these many instances of disloyalty. Captain Lester said: “We have found in localities that the word had gone down the line to groups of clergymen that they were to preach sermons in favor of Germany, and that this had been done. I investigated a case in New York where the clergyman admitted to me he had received instructions to preach such a sermon. From August, 1914, to April, 1917, in hundreds of Lutheran churches, the continuous preaching was in favor and hope of German victory.”

It transpired that British Military Intelligence had in possession a great mass of documents taken by General Allenby in the capture of Nazareth. These were found among the effects of that Major Franz von Papen who once had been military attache in Washington, and whose name has become more or less familiar through some of the disclosures regarding von Bernstorff and his activities.

These papers, added to those taken by our own Intelligence officers from prominent Germans this side the water, go to build up the tremendous and tragic story of a nation’s shame. Germany had a widely spread and elaborate plan to ruin this country. She failed. The proofs of her failure are now before the public, and they run very wide. They do not leave us feeling any too comfortable or any too sure regarding our own country. It is not pleasant to have listed, as part with the German records, those of our great newspapers which, in the German belief, might be classed as “neutral or favorable to Germany.” It is not pleasant to see the names of newspaper men once held honorable and loyal, but now condemned to have had the itching palm and to have received German gold. There is nothing pleasant about the whole sordid, abominable story, nothing clean, nothing satisfying, nothing honorable. But it shows that when we had this sort of work to do, we did it thoroughly and accomplished the mission on which our men were sent out.

Some of the most sensational testimony was that brought out by Alfred L. Becker, Deputy Attorney General of New York, who had in charge a great many of the big espionage and treason investigations in that city, which was the American home and headquarters of the German spy army.

Mr. Becker told of his own investigations, at the instance of the French Government, in the case of Bolo Pacha. The latter was executed as a French traitor, but was shown to have gotten Germany money in this country to the extent of $1,683,000. As is well known, Bolo had raised this money to purchase the Paris Journal. This paper, however, did not change its loyalty to France, so there was a loud wail on the part of Germany’s head spies that they had been swindled once more.

Mr. Becker produced many British secret service documents showing the elaborate governmental arrangements in Berlin to establish and maintain spy systems, both before and after the war. These documents listed, as agents, journalists, college professors, bankers, business men, consular attaches, and others of all ranks. Mr. Becker showed that a former German reservist, later an auditor of accounts in New York City, was told as early as 1909 that he would be valuable in case of war as a German propagandist in the United States. It was intended to get a good system of distribution of German “kultur” established in America. Then there could at once be put before American readers such stories as that systematic attempt made in 1917 to advance the idea that Germany was on the verge of revolt and that the Kaiser soon would be overthrown. The German censor was back of the dissemination of these reports, it being maintained to paralyze the prosecution of the war in this country, where we had the pleasant theory that the German Kaiser and the German people were not at one as to the war.

Mr. Becker also went into many transactions of Ambassador von Bernstorff, showing him to have been quite willing to buy the Paris Journal with German money if need be. He placed in the record correspondence which showed that when Dr. Dernburg left Germany for the United States in August, 1914, the German government deposited 25,000,000 marks with M. M. Warburg & Company of Hamburg, which Mr. Becker stated was for propaganda purposes in the United States. Dr. Dernburg brought to this country a power of attorney from the Imperial Secretary of the Treasury, which gave him the distribution of the fund. Of this fund, $400,000 was turned over to Dr. Albert, head of German finances in New York, by Dr. Dernburg.

Mr. Becker gave a long list of banks which had participated in the sale of German bonds in this country, these banks being located in the principal cities of the east and west. He named as well the chain of banks in which the German government opened accounts for certain purposes. He showed the credentials brought from the German chancellor by Dr. Dernburg to large financial institutions in New York, which were made repositories of German funds. The letter to one such banking firm in New York, from Warburg & Company of Hamburg, establishing the German credit of 25,000,000 marks, was made a part of the record, also the power of attorney enclosed by Dr. Dernburg to the New York repository.

Mr. Becker mentioned the underwriting of German bonds by a New York concern to a total amount of $9,908,000. The proceeds were deposited with a trust company in New York to the order of the Imperial German Government, and were checked out by von Bernstorff and Albert for deposit in the chain of banks above referred to. It was the intention to make these banking institutions favorable to the German ideas, and unfavorable to the American bond sales. An initial deposit was made with the Equitable Trust Company of $3,350,000; the Columbia Trust Company had an initial deposit of $750,000; the Chase National Bank was alleged to have had an initial deposit of $125,000. As the proceeds of the German war loan notes accumulated, the deposits in certain of these New York financial institutions were increased. In order to avoid any legal complications, the German government opened a blind account so that Dr. Albert could go on with his operations without any fear of detection by anyone desiring to bring legal action against him. These figures will give the reader some idea of the extent of the German finances. All this money—and many times the amounts above mentioned—was spent for the one and only purpose of German propaganda and spy work in the United States.

Major Humes took Dr. Edmund von Mach over the jumps in his cross-examination before the Overman Committee. Von Mach came in for a gruelling by Senator Nelson and others of the Committee when he attempted to speak in justification of German practices in war. He did his best to carry water on both shoulders, but had a very unhappy quarter of an hour. He was followed and preceded on the stand by certain literary gentlemen, college professors and others, who undertook to explain to the Committee utterances they had made in print or elsewhere which were charged to show disloyalty to the interests of the United States. It is impossible to give in any sort of detail the vast extension of the testimony before this Committee, or to mention the many widely extended forms of the German activities that ran in this country during the war. Perhaps we may summarize the German attitude, as well as in any other way, by citing the opinion of that delectable gentleman, the Count von Bernstorff, ambassador of the Imperial German Government at Washington, in his communication to the Foreign Office in Berlin, in explanation of his activities in the United States:

By way of general summary, it may be said that a well-defined organization long existed in our country, districted with the usual German exactness. German Naval Intelligence had charge of destruction of our shipping, naval sabotage, etc. Boy-Ed, naval attache at Washington, was to have handled this. The notorious Rintelen, who seemed to have operated independently in New York, confined his activities rather to the making of bombs to be concealed on ships, to the incitement of strikes, munition embargoes, etc. Dr. Scheele, one of the three most prominent spies in America, was relied on to devise means of burning ships at sea. His method of bomb manufacture is spoken of later.

What is equivalent to our Military Intelligence Department in Germany, in turn took up the question of sabotage in our ammunition works, and of getting contraband stuff into Germany. Scheele, who was taken in custody by the United States, declared that this country was divided into military districts, and that supplies of arms and ammunition were gotten together. He even declared at one time that he knew of 200,000 Mauser rifles stored in a German club in New York City. He was taken there by Government officials and located the place where the rifles probably had been stored, although they had in the meantime been removed.

Von Papen, military attache at Washington, had much the same work for the army that Boy-Ed had taken on for the navy. He often appears in the revelations of the German spy system, as in the plot against the Welland Canal, and the Vanceboro bridge, for which Werner Horn was arrested. Von Papen had the charge of the Bridgeport Projectile Company, which was intended to disorganize our manufacture of munitions. He had some sort of charge of Scheele, the German chemist spy, who is, perhaps, the best known example now remaining on American soil of the German espionage system.

Special commissions to spread disease germs were sent to this country, as perhaps A. P. L. reading will have indicated. A good deal of this work failed because so many of the German spies were interned early in the war, and there has been no good opportunity since to replace these men properly, the war having traveled too fast when once America was in it.

But what, perhaps, has shocked and horrified Americans more than anything else (and it cannot be too often iterated) was the knowledge that long before this war Germany had a vast system of spies all through America. This system of international spies was originated almost a generation ago by the Prussian War Office. There were supposed to have been about 30,000 spies in France before this war was declared. England also was well sown with such persons in every rank of life. We had our share.

Dr. Scheele told the Department of Justice when he was taken in charge that for twenty-one years before the outbreak of the European war he had been stationed in Brooklyn as a representative of the German government. His “honorarium,” as he called it, was $125 a month. He had been a German major, yet owned a drug store in Brooklyn. A couple of months before war was declared by Germany, he was told to get rid of his drug store—that is to say, to mobilize in America for the German purposes in the coming war. He said the drug store was doing very well. Others of these fixed spies got salaries about like that of Scheele, a retainer of $1,000 nominal salary being more frequent. In charge of all these lesser regular spies, who had been absorbed in the American citizenship, were the consuls and the high diplomatic officials of the Imperial German Government in our country. It would be a very great deal to hope that this system has been actually extirpated. That it did exist is true without any doubt or question.

Any A. P. L. man whose work was identified with the larger eastern cities will note many points of contact of the A. P. L. with D. J. and M. I. D. in the testimony brought before the Overman Committee. It is, of course, not too much to say that A. P. L. was at the foundation of much of that testimony itself. Many of the facts above brought out are of record in the A. P. L. files.

In yet another line of Government work, the League has been very useful—that of coöperating with Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer, Custodian of Alien Property, whose statements, made elsewhere than in the committee, constitute a rather valuable extension of the committee’s information.

Reference was made before the committee to the Bridgeport Projectile Company. Mr. Palmer some time ago announced that he had taken over 19,900 of the 20,000 shares of the capital stock of that concern, and that there had been reported to him other property of approximate value of $500,000 held by it for and in behalf of Germany.

In a statement accredited to him, Mr. Palmer again bared the efforts of that malodorous quartet, Count von Bernstorff, Dr. Albert, Dr. Dernburg and Captain von Papen. It was the obvious intent of these to use the Bridgeport Projectile Company to prevent the manufacture and shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies. The taking over of the stock of the Bridgeport Projectile Company, and the report by the company of the property owned by the German government, with the disclosures incident thereto, followed many months of persistent investigation.

It was planned to have this corporation buy up all the available supplies of powder, antimony, hydraulic presses, and other supplies and materials essential to the manufacture of munitions. The plan also involved the negotiation of contracts with the allied Governments to supply them with materials of war, apparently in good faith but in reality with no intention of fulfilling them. The ultimate expenditure of approximately $10,000,000 for this purpose was contemplated.

In a cable from London printed in the American press on the morning of January 15, 1919, a statement was given from a German newspaper quoting Dr. Dernburg, the German propagandist who was expelled from America some years ago. Now Dr. Dernburg comes out in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse and states that Germany is depending upon “a certain drawing together of Germany and the United States.” He believes that nothing should be done which will “give foundation for a lasting alienation of the two peoples.” He finds the Allies in victory somewhat difficult in their terms, so that Germans turn their eyes and expectations toward America, “and feel sure that their expectations will not come to grief.” He goes on to say that Germany needs raw materials for the revival of her industries, needs credit, and also a market. He looks to America for all these, and says: “A fear of German competition does not exist in America in the same degree as in France and England. The hatred against the German people does not exist since the dynasty has been overthrown, and it is quite possible that America will transfer English and French debts to Germany in order to give her money, for America seeks not destruction but justice. Our two countries will be brought together, and as rivalry is out of the question, this coöperation will take a more tolerable form than in the case of our neighbors.” He goes on to say: “A careful economic policy, I think, will secure Germans sympathy, thereby providing economic help for our German industries, now in collapse, and possibly awaken stirring echoes in two million Americans of German origin.... America will have other interests in Germany allied with her by interest and by service rendered to Germany; so taking all these points of view together, one may well consider that the earliest possible reconciliation between Germany and America will be good for the future of the world and will be welcomed by the German people.”

The human mind with difficulty can conceive of anything indicative of more brazen effrontery than the foregoing. That is the statement to-day of one of the arch-traitors planted in this country by Germany. No doubt, it may awaken a “stirring echo” at least in the hearts of the quarter million of German spies who worked with Dernburg here.

The great danger to America is her unsuspiciousness. Having lived half a century cheek by jowl with these men, although in ignorance of their real quality, we are expected to go on living with them on the same terms that existed before the war. Great Britain, sterner than we, definitely has announced her intention of deporting German aliens—she intends to take no chances. What the French will do is a foregone conclusion. German “kultur” is begging at the doorsteps of the world.

Mr. Palmer, custodian of alien enemy property, can complete the story. For instance, there was loose talk around New York in the early days of the war that under one tennis court in New Jersey there was a gun emplacement from which New York could be bombarded. It was said that a German-owned factory building had a gun emplacement built into its floor with the same amiable intention. Custodian Palmer points out that there really was a concrete pier in the port of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, with a concealed base suitable for heavy gun mounts. That pier now belongs to the United States Government. Before the war it was the property of a steamship company organized by wealthy Germans, of whom Emperor William was one. Its office was in the headquarters of the German spies in New York. After the United States went to war, the pier was sold to a Dane to cover the ownership. The Dane could not meet his note when it came due, and Mr. Palmer confiscated the pier immediately as German property.

Mr. Palmer stated, long before the Overman Committee began its testimony, that Germany, years before she started this war, had undertaken to plant on American soil a great industrial and commercial army. She believed she could keep America out of the conflict, for she had her organization in every state of the Union. It reached across the Pacific to Hawaii and the Philippines and up to Alaska; in the Atlantic it was found in Porto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Panama. Industry after industry was built up, totaling probably two billion dollars in money value, and billions more in potential political value.

“Germany had spies in the German-owned industries of Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York and the West,” says Mr. Palmer. “She fought the war when we were neutral on American soil by agents sent here for that purpose.”

St. Andrew’s Bay, not far from Pensacola, Florida, is a very fine harbor, the nearest American harbor, indeed, to the Panama canal. Mr. Palmer shows that this was wholly controlled by Germans, who were organized in the form of a lumber company and who had purchased thousands of acres of timber nearby. The wealthy owner of the German property never saw it. A concealed fort had been constructed there, and right of way on the shore had been purchased. Not even the Government of the United States could have obtained a terminal on St. Andrew’s Bay unless it did business with the owner in Berlin. Such being the case, Custodian Palmer did not buy it at all—he simply took it in and added it to his list of more than two billion dollars’ worth of German-owned property taken over since the war began.

There were German spies in our chemical works, metal industries, textile concerns, and in every line of our commerce. They had a fund, mentioned at different times in the Overman Committee testimony, which was somewhere between thirty millions and sixty millions of dollars—all of it to be used in propaganda, subsidizing, subornation and destruction.

There were three or four German firms in America which had much to do with the German declaration of war. They were instrumental in piling up the gigantic quantities of American metals, to prepare that country for its onslaught in 1914. There were great stocks of copper accumulated in America to be sold to Germany after the close of the war. The actual ownership of these things was so very carefully concealed by a masquerading interchangeable personnel that it required months of investigation to get at the real facts and to discover that the real owner was Germany itself. In taking over these metal businesses, Alien Property Custodian Palmer broke the German control of the metal industry of America. It has been intended to wipe out these industries so completely that they cannot get a start again.

The New York Times of November 3, 1918, printed a quarter-page story in regard to some of these revelations which should be made not only a part of the record of the Senate Committee but of the records of America itself:

Here is an A. P. L. case which is recommended to the attention of those who write short stories of a detective nature: It has to do with a beautiful adventuress, who among other things was known as a countess. Let us not give the real name. We will call her Mrs. Jeannette Sickles, alias Countess De Galli, alias Mrs. Dalbert, alias Rose La Foine, alias Jeannette McDaniels, alias Miss Ellen Hyde, alias Jeannette La Foine—we need not give more of her names. The records of this case show that she was entangled with an employe of the Adjutant General’s office, a night clerk, whose duties were to sort the mail. This clerk under examination admitted that he knew this lady, admitted that he had become very fond of her—was, indeed, in love with her; said she had kissed him and given him divers manifestations of her affection; said he had met her often at hotels in the presence of others; said she came to him for advice about certain unfair treatment which she thought the Department of Justice had given her; said he was going to marry the lady if he had a chance, as he had found her a very congenial woman. The writer of fiction can easily fill out the details. The adventuress was intelligent, beautiful and accomplished. She was working close to many of our Government secrets; it would be her fault if she did not learn a great many things about this country and its government.

It was stated that this particular Government clerk was known to be a socialist; was corresponding with Emma Goldman. Other charges were made against him, not redounding to the credit of his moral character. He was rated as being a man slovenly in his looks and “with no moral and mental stamina.” In short, the field was pretty good for the purposes of German espionage. Pages could be written covering the activities of this particular emissary. She was one of a certain type who will work anywhere for money. During the Red Cross drives in Washington, she was suspected by some of the operatives who were working for the United States Shipping Board. It was discovered that she was working in that department, also, as a welfare worker “under very mysterious circumstances.” She was cared for.

There was a certain gentleman by the name of Dr. Frederick August von Strensch, who was arrested by the Department of Justice on testimony furnished by operatives. The worthy doctor might have been regarded as practically innocent—all he planned was the invasion of Canada and Mexico by German reservists located in the United States. This man had long made America his home. He was arrested on a presidential warrant. Along with him, there was arrested a certain dazzling stage celebrity represented to have been a countess in her more private life in Europe. A mass of correspondence was taken with these people, revealing the fact that 150,000 German reservists were to be sent to Canada, about the same number into Mexico. Definite plans were mentioned referring to the assemblage of 25,000 men on the Canadian border. This one plot alone, if mentioned here in detail, would give all the data necessary for a sensational thriller in detective fiction. But it is not fiction. This sort of work actually went on within our country. Not only in this instance, but in many others, a deliberate and extremely dangerous attempt was made to embroil us with other countries.

When the merchant submarine “Deutschland” arrived in this country on its celebrated voyage, a part of its cargo consisted of thirty-three thousand pounds of tungsten, scarce in this country, but of value in making certain high grades of steel. After considerable sleuthing on the part of operatives, this tungsten was traced to a concern ostensibly American, but really owned altogether by Germans. The way in which the identity of these steel manufacturers was concealed is proof of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the master criminal minds of the world. As showing the thoroughness with which Germany works, one of the accused stated that when he came out of Germany to confer with his associates, the German censors destroyed all his papers, examined all his clothing, and stripped him and washed him with a solution of alcohol to eradicate any message which he might have painted on his skin! They were not above a suspicion on their own part. The Alien Property Custodian took over, as a result of these investigations, the Becker Steel Company, whose plant was located at Charleston, W. Va. The details of this case are extremely voluminous.

The passport frauds have long been “old stuff” in the American journals, and need be no more than referred to here. At the time German reservists were needed in the Old Country (there were more than a thousand very useful officers here who were much needed in the German army), the question of passports came up. These men could not get U. S. passports, so a general system of forged passports was set on foot in which the highest diplomatic officials of Germany in America did not scorn to take a hand. It was their idea of honorable service, one supposes. Certainly, von Bernstorff—whom we kept in this country long after he should have been kicked out—employed a go-between who arranged and carried on a very considerable traffic in foreign passports. The ordinary price was about twenty dollars,—small business, truly, for an ambassador, but von Bernstorff, von Papen, von Weddell, von Igel and others worked together in this thing until the Department of Justice men got too hot upon their trail. A long and intricate story hangs upon this. It is enough to say that the frauds were unearthed and the lower and middle class operatives in the frauds were put away. Von Weddell, the most important of these conspirators, took ship for Norway. However, the ship on which he sailed was sunk by a German U-boat,—tragic justice in at least one instance.

Another of the well known German enterprises against England and her Indian empire was brought to light in the so-called Hindu Plot—also very well known through newspaper publication. It came to a focus in a trial in San Francisco, in which one Hindu leader shot another and was himself shot the next instant in the court room by a deputy marshal in attendance—a fact which perhaps lingers in the public memory even in these exciting days. The Hindu plot, reduced to its simple and banal lowest common denominator, consisted in a more or less useless intrigue with certain more or less uninfluential citizens of Hindu birth. One phase of the activities was the purchase with German money in New York of several hundred thousand rifles and several million cartridges, which were to be shipped in a vessel from the Pacific Coast to meet a certain other vessel far out in the Pacific for transfer of the cargo. That cargo was to be delivered where it would do the most good to any Hindu gentleman disposed to rise against the British authority. It is a long and rather dull story—how everything miscarried for our friends the Germans and the Hindus. The rifles never were delivered; the conspirators were brought to trial; the conspiracy was ended. And at the end, in a court room, and because he himself had a weapon in his hand, we got one Hindu Hun at least.

As a mere trifle, it may be mentioned that Joseph W——, an Austrian subject, was arraigned in the Enemy Alien Bureau at New York, charged with having in his possession a United States navy code book. W—— was said to be a “collector of stamps.” He had in his possession a map of South America, and a list of warships of the Brazilian navy. He had also certain sheets of paper carrying mysterious characters made up of letters and dashes. He said he had been a piano player and was taking music lessons by mail.

Lt. Christian S—— was before the Enemy Alien Bureau at the same time. He was once six years in the German army as an officer of the Uhlans. One day S—— called on United States Marshal McCarthy and asked him to help him get a job. He returned to find out if the marshal had found a place for him, and when the marshal said he had not, the German showed anger and remarked: “This is what makes us disloyal!” Marshal McCarthy arrested S—— and arraigned him before Perry Armstrong, assistant chief of the Enemy Alien Bureau. In answer to questions, S—— said he did not approve of German-Americans, that he approved of the sinking of the Lusitania and endorsed what the Germans had done in Belgium. He was committed to Ludlow Street jail pending further investigation.

Last May there was arrested in New York one Gustave B. K——, of whom it was said: “Not only is he an officer of the German army and an intimate friend and adviser of von Bernstorff, von Papen, and Boy-Ed, but he is also a confidant, it is said, of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince. Though he has lived in the United States twenty years, he is still a German subject and is said to have paid out large sums of German money on Boy-Ed’s account, having had as much as $750,000 for that purpose in one New York bank at one time.”

It is enough! Further details would be revolting. Enough has been shown to develop some idea of the tremendous centralization of these international spy activities on the eastern seaboard of America. It was with these that the cities of New York and Washington had the most to do.