America has been the great background of the European War. Though far removed from the trenches with the play of artillery and the heroic charges, this country has been the scene of an equally dramatic, though silent struggle—a battle not visible to the eye. It has been a conflict of wits, of statesman pitted against statesman, of secret agent striving to outdo his opponent of a belligerent nation; for in America, agents of Germany have been striving for a two-fold aim. They have sought to enmesh the United States in an international conspiracy and to use this country as the means of a rear attack on the Entente Allies.

And New York has been the centre of it all. In several of the huge office buildings that make the thoroughfares of the city seem like canyons, Germany had, and still has, the headquarters of a vast nerve-like system radiating throughout the country. The nerve coils are composed of thousands of secret agents located in every city and town. These men have worked under orders from Berlin in the execution of a series of campaigns designed to be of service to the Teutonic Allies. Against these men have been pitted agents of the American government, all aiming to detect the schemes and frustrate any plans for the violation of our neutrality laws.

A diplomat, famed for his finesse and grace of manner, was at a reception given to distinguished statesmen, talented business men and attractive women. The conversation was turned to the topic of spies. One woman wished to know if the diplomat had encountered any spies.

“Well,” remarked the diplomat, “I used to stop at the Hotel Grandeur, but Count ——” (mentioning the name of a diplomat of a nation with which his country was at war) “persisted in having my baggage searched every day. So I moved to the Hotel Excellency; but I found things no better there.”

“Didn’t you complain to the management?”

“Ah, no,” answered he gravely, “but every time the Count stops at the Hotel Elaborate, I have his baggage searched, too.”

Perhaps the diplomat was not serious, but in days when the destiny of nations was at stake, it was likely that he was speaking none too lightly of a game that had doubtless cost him many an hour of the keenest anxiety.

Of all the secret service systems, the German is the most elaborate and machine-like. It has been organized not merely to gather information, but to trample upon the laws of the United States, in order to hinder any project of the Entente Allies. Constructed in the hours of peace with the utmost care and foresight, it was easily expanded in the United States at the outbreak of the war into such a vast network that if a representative of the Allies suddenly retraced his steps or halted suddenly when around a corner, he was almost sure to bump the shins of a German spy. Germany, always methodical and thorough, possessing a genius for moulding a multitude of details into an effective whole, had prepared her secret service system with the same efficiency with which through scores of years she had equipped her military forces for battle; indeed, her secret service was a part of her military forces.

The system is based on the principle of “Lass die linke Hand nicht wissen was die rechte tut”—“let not the left hand know what the right is doing.” So thoroughly is this maxim followed that two German spies may be working side by side and not be aware of the fact. Though groups of Germans may engage in some activity with a thorough understanding of the aims of another, still the order of silence is rigorously enforced. The agents hand their information to a superior, who in turn transmits it to somebody higher up. One spy knows only the person or group of persons with whom he directly deals, sending information along devious and hidden routes up to the final assembling point.

Germany’s spy system has been the sword hand of her statesmen and her diplomats. When this war is over and the world learns of the moves, counter-moves, and Machiavellian methods of German diplomats, with their intrigues, secret understandings, and their daring attempts to force this country into dangerous situations, people will realize more clearly than to-day what a marvellous system has been behind many seemingly casual developments in this country. It will be shown how German agents have violated our laws in order to gain secret information for the benefit of Germany; how her secret agents have committed crimes in order to coerce diplomatic negotiations.

RAMIFICATIONS OF UNDERGROUND PLOTS

So perfectly organized and so responsive to the slightest suggestion from Berlin is the American branch of the Kaiser’s secret service that vast undertakings—some legitimate, many in violation of American laws—were carried out.

The magician, who invented the wireless, enabled the German General War Staff to move to New York. The splash and splutter of electricity over oceans and continents virtually transported Germany’s leading statesmen, tacticians, and scientists at will to hold sessions in Manhattan on matters arising in America and bearing on the battle-front in the many theatres of actual warfare. For instance, how many people know that the secretary to one of the generals on the Western Line was a brother to one of the most notorious woman plotters in America? Germany had foreseen the possibilities of the wireless in war and had developed secret methods of sending code messages by radiogram, when apparently only ordinary messages were being transmitted, and she had also, some way or other, got possession of the code ciphers of other nations. Every night messages have been sent out from Germany, apparently blindly, addressed to no one and have been picked up by hidden receiving stations in America and other countries.

While Germany calls her spy system “a bureau of intelligence,” its purpose is confined not merely to the gathering of information, but to the carrying out of any campaign that will be harmful to her enemies. In the United States, Germans—reservists, army officers, representatives of the German Government—have been indicted for crimes against Federal laws. These violations were committed without doubt in a self-sacrificing spirit with the aim of helping the Fatherland. Germans, or German influences, have been behind schemes in violation of neutrality laws and restraint of trade. They have attempted arson, bribery, forgery, engaged in military enterprises, caused explosions in ships and factories, resulting in many deaths, and have set fires in ships and factories.

They have participated in plots against Canada, Ireland and India, all developed in the United States under the supervision of the German representatives of Berlin, though often ostensibly carried out by anarchist tools. The activities of the German agents, multitudinous in detail and variety, all have been designed to hinder the Allies in their prosecution of the war, to cause a breach between the Allies and the United States, to embroil this country in a war and to accomplish other secret aims of the General War Staff. In all the propaganda, German secret agents and official representatives of the German Government have not only worked with utter disregard to American laws, but have endeavoured to place the United States in a position of being secretly unneutral.

But the German Government has officially denied that she ordered any of her subjects to undertake any act in violation of American laws. Shortly after President Wilson in his message to Congress bitterly attacked the activities of Germans and German-Americans in America, accusing the latter of treason, the German Government authorized the statement that it:

“Naturally has never knowingly accepted the support of any person, group of persons, society or organization seeking to promote the cause of Germany in the United States by illegal acts, by counsels of violence, by contravention of law, or by any means whatever that could offend the American people in the pride of their own authority. If it should be alleged that improper acts have been committed by representatives of the German Government they could be easily dealt with. To any complaints upon proof as may be submitted by the American Government suitable response will be duly made.... Apparently the enemies of Germany have succeeded in creating the impression that the German Government is in some way, morally or otherwise, responsible for what Mr. Wilson has characterized as anti-American activities, comprehending attacks upon property in violation of the rules which the American Government has seen fit to impose upon the course of neutral trade. This the German Government absolutely denies. It cannot specifically repudiate acts committed by individuals over whom it has no control, and of whose movements and intentions it is neither officially or unofficially informed.”^[1]

To this official disavowal of German propaganda in America, there are two answers that stand out with dramatic force. First, the extent to which the subjects of Germany are expected to go in war time is shown by excerpts from Germany’s War Book of instructions to officers, which says in part:

“Bribery of the enemy’s subjects with the object of obtaining military advantages, acceptances of offers of treachery, reception of deserters, utilization of the discontented elements in the population, support of the pretenders and the like are permissible; indeed, international law is in no way opposed to the exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, robbery and the like) to the prejudice of the enemy. Considerations of chivalry, generosity and honour may denounce in such cases a hasty and unsparing exploitation of such advantages as indecent and dishonourable, but law, which is less touchy, allows it. The ugly and inherently immoral aspect of such methods cannot affect the recognition of their lawfulness. The necessary aims of war give the belligerent the right and imposes upon him, according to circumstances, the duty not to let slip the important, it may be decisive, advantages to be gained by such means.”^[2]

Secondly, since Germany sent out that semi-official proclamation from Berlin concerning propagandists, many steps have been taken by the American Government, both administrative and judicial. Captains von Papen and Boy-Ed, military and naval attachés respectively, have been dismissed from this country for “improper activities in military and naval affairs.”

There was no favouritism in the German secret service. Every German, high or low, was open to assignment, disagreeable and dishonourable, in getting information, and to orders to commit crimes—for Germany stops at no crime—that may be necessary to circumvent the enemy.

Captain von Papen showed his feeling keenly one night at a dinner of a few men where the wine flowed freely.

“My God, I would give everything in the world,” he exclaimed, “to be in the trenches where I could do the work of a gentleman.” In his work, there was no public reward for work well performed according to the war code. That man’s sentiments were echoed by von Rintelen, who, when among friends, fairly shook with emotion at the thought of the work in which he was engaged.

“How loathsome I feel,” he said. “How this dirty work sticks to me! When this war ends, I shall take a bath in carbolic acid.”

THREE EXECUTIVES IN THE UNITED STATES

Over all the thousands of reservists, trained agents, and other spies were the men in charge of the centres of information to whom they made their report; and the three or four chief lieutenants in charge of the various and distinct line of activities into which these matters of war, finance and commerce automatically were divided. There were practically, outside of the Chief Spy, three important executives in this country, supervising respectively the commercial, military and naval lines of information and activity. Each one of these men was surrounded by a group of experts who had charge of a sub-division of the work. All had their legal advisers, their bankers, and every sort of an expert that their special work required. Upon them fell the task of sifting and analysing the mass of facts gathered by the spies and making reports to Berlin. Upon each one of them also fell the duty of carrying out any orders that might come from the General War Staff in Germany.

First and foremost of the three lieutenants was Dr. Heinrich F. Albert, Privy Councillor to the German Embassy in America and Fiscal Agent of the German Empire. He directed the gathering of a huge mass of information of value to Germany concerning the financial, industrial and commercial activities of this country, and was the chief instrument through whom money reached the army of spies. Though he was the director of many activities, nothing criminal, it must be asserted in justice to him, has been traced to him.

The military agent was Captain Franz von Papen, the attaché of the German Embassy. His work was confined specifically to the procuring of information that would be of aid to the Imperial German army and to the military tasks that might be peculiarly helpful to the army.

The naval expert was Captain Karl Boy-Ed, another attaché of the German Embassy. He had under him experts who made a speciality of various lines of naval matters, fortifications, coast defences and explosives.

The headquarters of the entire system were and are yet in New York. Dr. Albert had his offices in the Hamburg-American Steamship Company’s building, and he utilized at times a good part of the Hamburg-American Company’s staff—a concern in which the Kaiser himself owns a large percentage of the stock. In the same building was the office of Paul Koenig, the business manager of part of Germany’s spy system in America, though nominally the Superintendent of Police for the Hamburg-American line. Captain Boy-Ed had his headquarters in Room 801 of 11, Broadway, and Captain von Papen had his on the twenty-fifth floor of 60, Wall Street.

This narrative seeks to show as definitely as possible the work of these three agents of Germany in America and of others co-operating with them. It sets forth the enterprises that they plotted and the ramifications of their organization. It reveals how countless agents, unaware that they were parts of a vast system and often innocent of any intentional wrongdoing, acted their parts. It shows how that part of the machinery engaged in legitimate propaganda was linked at places with the machinery executing illegal acts.

While the conspiracy has been manipulated, the American Government has been very active. To the skill of the United States secret service, headed by Chief William J. Flynn, always alert and apparently unruffled in the most trying crises, and to A. Bruce Bielaski, head of the special agents of the Department of Justice, and William M. Offley, Superintendent of the New York Bureau of the special agents, has fallen the task of seeing that the representatives of the different countries followed the American maxim, “Play fair; play according to the rules of international law and the laws of this country.” Upon Police Commissioner Woods, his deputy, Guy Scull, of New York, and his enthusiastic and clever aid, Police Captain Thomas J. Tunney, has devolved also the hazardous and difficult task of combating the schemes of those spies. Those men, by courageous and skilful detective work have unearthed and foiled some of the most daring bomb plots of the Germans.

To Messrs. Flynn and Bielaski, at times, have come secrets of intrigue and conspiracy that must have made them, even as it has the President, almost tremble with the import of impending events that had to be forestalled.