The case of James J. F. Archibald, war correspondent, is another sample of the Germans’ fatal gift for trusting a weak link in an otherwise ingenious and complete chain. Their “cleverness” was the cleverness of the cocky boy who thinks he can outwit any one. The sad ending of Archibald’s career, the ignominious exposure of his character as a messenger for the Germans, was simplicity itself. And the revelations contained in the messages he carried were most discreditable to the honour and the wisdom of the plotters in the Teutonic embassies.
The story begins on July 29, 1914, six days after Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia and three days before the formal historical date of the opening of the war. On that day an enterprising American newspaper syndicate telegraphed Mr. Archibald as follows:
Please telegraph us your terms for going to the European war, so that we can size up the syndicate field. As soon as received will try for quick action.
The Wheeler Syndicate, Inc.
Archibald soon had his arrangements made, though his employers were ignorant of the reason for the surprising ease with which he obtained the highest possible entrée to the best possible points of observation within the German lines. It should be said at once that their attitude was perfectly correct and that the moment they discovered the true nature of his errand they discharged him by cable, on October 27th. But that comes later in the story.
Archibald was a man of true grandiose German style. Writing to the syndicate on September 4th he said:
You should not confound my efforts with more than five hundred correspondents of every description who have attempted to get to the English, French, and Belgian fronts, none of them with any official recognition and most of them without even a passport. At the hysterical beginning of the war, correspondents are very much in the way but every cartoonist, humorist, and amateur millionaire who wanted a little private excitement rushed to the front and embarrassed the armies in their mobilization and naturally they were not gladly received. I have been working quietly, just as I did in the Russian War when I was the first, and only, foreign correspondent to be accepted after four months’ waiting.
There is no necessity of coming into conflict with any censors if one knows military censorship as I do, for all they require is that you will not embarrass their present actual movements. There is not one single foreign correspondent with either the German or Austrian armies, and it will be a great achievement to get dispatches out from there and I am positive, with the papers that I now hold, that there will be no difficulty whatever. The difficulty is merely in establishing one’s responsibility with these armies, and my residence in Washington for the last ten years has been for that purpose alone.
This letter, signed by Haniel, the Councillor of the German Embassy in Washington, clears up the mystery of the advertisement printed in leading newspapers in all parts of the country on May 1, 1915, five days before the Lusitania was sunk.
The date on Haniel’s letter and the repetition of it on the copy of the advertisement as supplied by him, clears up the hitherto unexplained discrepancy between the date on the advertisement and the date of its publication.
Archibald was soon in Germany and began sending back cable dispatches to a syndicate of papers, the principal ones of which were the New York Times, Tribune, and World. His dispatches, however, were so blatantly pro-German and had so much more propaganda than news in them that these papers quickly became dissatisfied. For example, the Times cut out of one of his dispatches a large section of fulsome eulogy of the German Government. Imagine their astonishment the next morning to receive a telephone call from Captain Boy-Ed, the Naval Attaché of the German Embassy with offices in New York. Captain Boy-Ed demanded the reason for the omission of these paragraphs. The Times naturally demanded Captain Boy-Ed’s source of information that such paragraphs existed. It soon developed that Boy-Ed was receiving direct from Germany duplicates of all the material that Archibald was cabling for publication. As soon as the American newspapers understood this situation they declined to proceed further. In the same spirit and simultaneously the Wheeler Syndicate “fired” Mr. Archibald by cable and wrote him a stinging letter from which the following two paragraphs may be quoted:
Perhaps because of the nature of your stuff, at any rate, we have to face the veiled insinuation that you are in the pay of the German and Austrian Governments. In this connection, we have been told that the German and Austrian Ambassadors to this country have received in skeleton form the several wireless dispatches you sent to us addressed care the Times. We think you should know this, and also know that, with the nature of your dispatches such as they were, we dared not allow ourselves, by continuing the service, to be laid open to the charge that we were in the employ of the German and Austrian Governments. So we had to terminate the service.
We have instructed the Times not to accept any more wireless dispatches from you, and the wireless company has been notified that no dispatches will be accepted. We regret exceedingly the situation, but it is one that has arisen solely from the fact that you have sent over your personal pro-German opinions instead of the battlefront news you assured us that you would furnish us.
Nothing daunted by these rebuffs, Archibald continued his exploits as “war correspondent,” interspersing his labours at the front with voyages back to the United States, ostensibly to deliver lectures. The true character of his movements stands revealed in a letter Archibald received from Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, a few days before he embarked on the voyage from New York which was to be his last. This letter was written from Bernstorff’s summer home at Cedarhurst, Long Island, on the 19th of August, 1915, and reads as follows:
Dear Mr. Archibald:
I send you herewith the two letters of recommendation asked for and hope that they will be useful to you. I learn with pleasure that you wish once again to return to Germany and Austria as you have interceded for our concerns here so courageously and successfully.
With best compliments,
Yours very sincerely,
Bernstorff.
One of these letters was as follows:
The German Frontier Custom Authorities are requested to kindly give to the bearer of this letter, Mr James J. F. Archibald, from New York, who is going to Germany with photographic apparatus, etc., in order to collect material for lectures in the United States in the interests of Germany, all possible facilities compatible with regulations in the dispatching of his luggage.
Imperial Ambassador
Bernstorff.
The familiar story of what happened next is that Archibald carried some secret documents for Bernstorff and Dumba in a hollow cane. This could scarcely be, for the documents he carried were so numerous and some of them so bulky that the cane would need to have been a giant’s walking stick. In any event, the documents themselves are of more interest than their vehicle. They were taken from Archibald by the British authorities at Falmouth. The series can be best introduced by a letter from Ambassador Dumba to his chief, Baron Burian, Minister for Foreign Affairs in Vienna, which reads:
My Lord:
Yesterday evening Consul General von Nuber received the inclosed aide mémoire from the chief editor of the locally known paper, Szabodsog, after a previous conference with him and in pursuance of his proposals to arrange for strikes in the Bethlehem Schwab steel and munitions war factory, and also in the Middle West.
Dr. Archibald, who is well known to your lordship, leaves to-day at 12 o’clock on board the Rotterdam, for Berlin and Vienna. I take this rare and safe opportunity to warmly recommend the proposal to your lordship’s favourable consideration.
It is my impression that we can disorganize and hold up for months, if not entirely prevent, the manufacture of munitions in Bethlehem and the Middle West, which, in the opinion of the German military attaché, is of great importance and amply outweighs the expenditure of money involved.
But even if strikes do not come off, it is probable that we should extort, under the pressure of the crisis, more favourable conditions of labour for our poor, down-trodden fellow countrymen. In Bethlehem these white slaves are now working for twelve hours a day and seven days a week. All weak persons succumb and become consumptives.
So far as German workmen are found among the skilled hands, a means of leaving will be provided for them.
Besides this a private German registry office has been established, which provided employment for persons who have voluntarily given up their places, and is already working well. They will also join, and the widest support is assured me.
I beg your excellency to be so good as to inform me with reference to this letter by wireless telegraphy, replying whether you agree.
Dumba.
The consideration which “Doctor” Archibald received for his complacency in giving his friends Dumba and Bernstorff “this rare and safe opportunity” is indicated by his receipt of April 24, 1915, to the German Embassy in Washington for $5,000 for propaganda work.
Further light upon “the enclosed aide mémoire ... in pursuance of his proposals to arrange for strikes in the Bethlehem Schwab steel and munitions war factory,” is gained by the following quotations from the enclosure mentioned by Dumba in his letter to Burian. The enclosure was an outline of a scheme for fomenting strikes, submitted to Dumba by William Warm, the Editor of Szabodsog [in English, Freedom.]
In my opinion we must start a very strong agitation on this question in the Freedom (Szabodsog) a leading organ, with respect to the Bethlehem works and the conditions there. This can be done in two ways, and both must be utilized. In the first place, a regular daily section must be devoted to the conditions obtaining there and a campaign must be regularly conducted against those indescribably degrading conditions. The Freedom has already done something similar in the recent past, when the strike movement began at Bridgeport. It must naturally take the form of strong, deliberate, decided, and courageous action. Secondly, the writer of these lines would begin a labour novel in that newspaper much on the lines of Upton Sinclair’s celebrated story, and this might be published in other local Hungarian, Slovak, and German newspapers also. Here we arrive at the point that naturally we shall also require other newspapers. The American Magyar Nepszava (Word of the People) will undoubtedly be compelled willingly or unwillingly to follow the movement initiated by the Freedom (Szabodsog), for it will be pleasing to the entire Hungarian element in America, and an absolute patriotic act to which that open journal (the Nepszava) could not adopt a hostile attitude....
In the interest of successful action at Bethlehem and the Middle West, besides the Szabodsog, the Nepszava, the new daily paper of Pittsburg must be set in motion, and those of Bridgeport, Youngtown District, etc., also two Slovak papers. Under these circumstances, the first necessity is money. To Bethlehem must be sent as many reliable Hungarian and German workmen as I can lay my hands on who will join the factories and begin their work in secret among their fellow workmen. For this purpose, I have my men Turners in Steelwork. We must send an organizer, who in the interests of the Union will begin the business in his own way. We must also send so-called “soap-box” orators who will know, and so to start a useful agitation. We shall want money for popular meetings and possibly for organizing picnics. In general, the same applies to the Middle West. I am thinking of Pittsburg and Cleveland in the first instance, as to which I could give details only if I were to return and spend at least a few days there.
It is my opinion that for the special object of starting the Bethlehem business and for the Bethlehem and Western newspaper campaign, $15,000 to $20,000 must be able to be disposed of, but it is not possible to reckon how much will ultimately be required; when a beginning has been made it will be possible to see how things develop, and where and how much it is worth while to spend. The above-mentioned preliminary sum would suffice to partially satisfy the demands of the necessary newspapers and to a considerable extent those of the Bethlehem campaign.
These documents should be read in the light of their date, August 20, 1915, and of the fact that the United States was a neutral nation, still harbouring the representatives of the “friendly” German and Austro-Hungarian empires. They are conclusive enough, in themselves, of the pernicious activities of these Embassies, but they wall become doubly significant in a later article in this series when they are read in the light of the activities of “Labour’s National Peace Council.”
Another document which Dumba entrusted to Archibald was his report to Burian on the then recent publication in the New York World of the papers taken from a satchel left in an elevated train by Dr. Heinrich Albert, the financial adviser of the German Embassy in America and the paymaster for a great deal of its work in plots and propaganda. This dispatch of Dumba’s is worthy of reproduction in full. It is:
A map and a number of documents—typed but unfinished copies or statements of petitioners—were stolen from the financial adviser of the German Embassy here, obviously by the English Secret Service. These documents are now published in the current issue of the World, which has gone over to the English “Yingolager” (Jingo camp) as a great sensation, with cheap advertisement. The paper makes the most violent accusations against the German Embassy, mainly against Count Von Bernstorff, Military Attaché Captain Von Papen, and Geheimrat Albert, who are said to have conspired secretly against the safety of the United States, in that they have bought arms and munition factories, have concluded bogus contracts for delivery with France and Russia, have purchased large quantities of explosive materials, have incited strikes in the munition factories, have sought to corrupt the press, and have spread far-reaching agitation for the effecting of an embargo in the different American circles. The other important New York papers second the World, although with less violence, for, in their leading articles, by misrepresentation of the facts, they accuse Germany of all possible and impossible machinations—for instance, they, like the World, bring forward the assertion that the German Government wished to stop the supply of ammunition to the Allies, while itself secretly sending quantities over.
Count Von Bernstorff took the view that these calumnies were beneath reply, and by a happy inspiration, refused any explanation. He is in no way compromised. On the contrary, it appears from the published correspondence of various press agents that he vetoed the purchase of a press agency.
On the other hand, Geheimrat Albert published in the newspapers a very cleverly worded explanation, the tenor of which I venture to submit to Your Excellency in an enclosure. It is especially to the credit of the German Embassy that on July 15th last it informed the State Department officially that it found itself compelled to buy as many materials of war in this country as it possibly could, and to control their production, with the intention of preventing their being supplied to the enemy. These materials, it stated, were at any time at the disposal of the American Government at favourable prices, either as a whole or in parts, and of course this could only further the readiness of the United States for taking the field in war.
Here the absurd accusations of the conspiracy collapse. Also, with regard to the accusations as to the incitement of strikes, there is no proof of the empty statements made. Nevertheless, everything German here is slandered and run down with emphasis and consistency. An impartial individual can hardly escape the feeling of appreciation with which the far-reaching activity of Geheimrat Albert must inspire him. But there are very few impartial persons in New York.
The torpedoing of the Arabic, in the event of its having been done without warning, or its having caused American passengers to lose their lives, will do more than any newspaper accusations to prejudice Germany in the public opinion of the United States.
The Imperial and Royal Ambassador,
(Signed) C. Dumba.
Archibald carried numerous other papers—for the Germans as well as for the Austrians. The most interesting of these was a report from Franz von Papen, military attaché of the German Embassy upon the same World exposure. The following are extracts from this dispatch:
Military Report
The “Sensational Revelations” of the New York World
On July 31 important papers were abstracted from Herr Geheimrat Dr. Albert in the elevated railway, apparently by an individual in the employ of the English Secret Service. These papers were sold to the World and formed the basis of the revelations (Enclosure 1) which gave to the New York press, friendly to the Allies, a welcome opportunity to make a fresh outburst against the Imperial Government and the Imperial representatives in this country....
Apart from political results the consequences of the publications for us show themselves in connection with business.
Bridgeport Projectile Co.
The report of June 30 of the Treasurer of this Company which I forwarded to the Royal Ministry of War on July 13, J. No. 1888, was among the stolen papers.
The declaration, published in the papers, of the President of the Ætna Explosive Co. that he intended to throw up powder contracts with the Bridgeport Projectile Co. is of course only newspaper gossip and was already much weakened yesterday through a fresh explanation by the firm (Enclosure V).
In connection also with the delivery of presses, I do not believe that the manufacturers will place difficulties in our way because the careful drawing up of the contract excludes all attack on the Projectile Co. under the well-known Sherman Law, and the claim that the manufacturers had supposed the deliveries to be intended for the Allies—in other words, that the contracts had been obtained by us under false representations—offers a legal basis too weak to enable the persons who undertake delivery to risk the expense and results of a lawsuit.
The only actual damage consists in that the Russian and English committee have at once broken off their negotiations with the Bridgeport Projectile Co. and that thus our plans to cut off, by the acceptance and nondelivery of a shrapnel contract, other firms here from the possibility of beginning the furnishing of war material have come to nothing.
The purchase of phenol by Dr. Schweitzer of the Edison Co., which has at the same time been disclosed, is disposed of by the explanation published to the effect that this phenol is only to be worked up into medicine.
Most of all have our efforts for the purchase of liquid chlorine been interfered with, since the tying up through middlemen of the Castner Chemical Company, which is friendly to England, appears now to be out of the question.
I shall use the means placed at my disposal (information of Herr Grothen) for the purpose of arriving at an agreement with the Electro Bleaching Company. The published negotiations for the acquisition of the Wright’s patent is without importance, since on our behalf a judicial decision against the Curtiss Company so far as one can see, would not have been obtained.
Part of the significance of Von Papen’s dispatch is his reference to the Bridgeport Projectile Company. Other documents in the possession of the United States Government demonstrate completely the ownership of this corporation by the Teutonic Allies. Hans Tauscher, the agent of Krupps and other German munition factories in this country, was in the habit of reporting direct to the War Ministry in Berlin as if he were its representative in this country—as indeed he was though not ostensibly so. Among other papers in the hands of the Government is a letter from the President of the Bridgeport Projectile Company, informing him that the company is being reorganized and that hereafter Mr. Tauscher will hold as trustee only 60 per cent. of the capital stock. Naturally Tauscher was not acting as trustee for anybody but his employers.
Another document, of little importance, is a letter Von Papen wrote to his wife and sent by Archibald. But two parts of it are interesting. After speaking again of the World, exposure he, says:
The answer of Albert I am sending you herewith so you can see how we defend ourselves. The document we drew up together yesterday.
But the bright spot for the Americans whose hospitality he was abusing lies in this:
How splendid in the East! I always say to these idiotic Yankees that they should shut their mouths and better still be full of admiration for all that heroism. My friends from the Army are in this respect quite different.
Papen’s “friends from the Army” have, with a good many of “these idiotic Yankees,” organized an army and are looking for Captain Franz again, this time over the top in France, with the determination to settle the question with his government on the battlefield.