Paul M. Hollister

“ If you could have gone with me through the space of the last two years and could have felt the subtle impact of intrigue and sedition, and have realized with me that those to whom you have intrusted authority are trustees not only of the power but also of the very spirit and purpose of the United States, you would realize with me the solemnity with which I look upon the sublime symbol of our unity and power. ”

“ Captain von Papen had not only full details of all points of military importance in the United States, but had made practical efforts to utilize [Pg 61] them. He knew where his reservists could be found in America. When the Government, shortly after the outbreak of war, forbade the recruiting of belligerents within its boundaries, and then refused to issue American passports for the protection of soldiers on the way to their commands, Captain von Papen planned to mobilize and employ a German army on American soil in no less pretentious an enterprise than a military invasion of the Dominion. ”

“ Manufacturers of explosives set to work at once to fill contracts of unheard-of size. They built new factories almost overnight, hired men broadcast, and sacrificed every other consideration to that of swift and voluminous output. Accidents were inevitable. Probably we shall never know what catastrophes were actually wrought by German sympathizers, for the very nature of the processes and the complete ruin which followed an explosion guarded the secret of guilt. ”

“ The Alliance, to quote Professor John William Scholl, of the University of Michigan, (in the New York Times of March 2, 1918) , "strives to awaken a sense of unity among the people of German origin in America; to 'centralize' their powers for the 'energetic defense of such justified wishes and interests' as are not contrary to the rights and duties of good citizens; to defend its class against 'nativistic encroachments'; to 'foster and assure good, friendly relations of America to the old German fatherland.' Such are its declared objects. ”

“ Count von Bernstorff knew that the shout raised in a far-off state by a few well-rehearsed pacifists, reinforced by a few newspaper comments, would carry loud and clear to Washington. Upon his shoulders rested the entire existence of the German plan, and he spent a highly active and trying thirty months in Washington in an attempt to avoid the inevitable diplomatic rupture.
The military problem quickly resolved itself into two enterprises: carrying war to the enemy, and giving aid and comfort to its own forces—in this case the German navy. ”

“ Just as the proximity of Mexico to the United States had for a number of years past carried with it the possibility, almost the certainty, of differences between the two countries, rising out of the temperamental differences of their peoples, so for a longer period had Ireland and England suffered for their contiguity. It is a truism to remark that the Irishman cherishes his national grievances, but that characteristic accounts for a further phase of German intrigue on American soil. Hatred of England sent many thousands of Irish to the United States in the past fifty [Pg 301] years. ”

“ So he impressed diplomatic Washington in 1911 as a polished cosmopolite. Polished he was, measured by the standards of diplomatic Washington, for rare was the young American of Boy-Ed's age who had his cultivation, his wide experience, and his brilliant charm. He was sought after by admiring mothers long before he was sought after by the Secret Service; he moved among the clubs of Washington and New York making intimates of men whose friendship [Pg 16] and confidence would serve the Fatherland, cloaking his real designs by frivolity and frequent attendances at social functions. ”

“ Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her Allies and Great Britain and her Allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that in accordance with formal notice given by the German Imperial Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain or any of her Allies are liable to destruction in these waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her Allies do so at their own risk. ”

“ Although every editor was on the lookout for any "war stuff" which was written with any apparent background of European politics, he found small market for his wares among the New York newspapers, and some of his speaking dates were cancelled. He proposed to publish, with one of his stories, a set of German military maps of Belgium, but to this von Papen wrote him on November 21: "I entirely agree with you in your opinion in regard to the maps—it is a two-edged sword," and he added: "One observes how very ill-informed the average American is." ”

“ Although his sojourn in New York covered a period which was the peak of the curve of German atrocities in the United States, Rintelen was a fifth wheel. No man came to America to accomplish more, and no man accomplished less. [Pg 152] No German agent had his boldness of project, and no German executive met a more ignominious fate. Whatever he touched with his golden wand turned to dross. He was hoodwinked here and there by his own agents, and frustrated by the vigilance of the Allied and the United States governments. ”

“ Audacious as they were in their use of American soil as the base for their plans, the German Embassy had certain obligations to the United States Government, which they felt must be observed. The unspeakable falsifying which is sometimes called expediency, sometimes diplomacy, required that official America must know nothing of the intentions of which the Embassy itself was fully conversant and approving. Further, a palliative must be supplied to the American people in advance. ”

“ Special agents of unrest, roll-turners, steel workers, soapbox orators, picnic organizers, were all to be insinuated into the plants to stir up the workmen. This editor had stirred them up a few weeks before at Bridgeport—the strike which Lamar claimed as his own accomplishment—and he presented to Baron Burian a really comprehensive plan for creating unrest through his well-subsidized foreign-language press. And in passing it on, Dr. Dumba stood sponsor for it.
The British government saw in the discovery of the letter and the cool impudence of it, a rare chance for propaganda in America. ”

“ When the war broke out, and scores of German merchantmen were confined to American ports by the omnipresence of the British fleet at sea, the wireless of the interned ships was added to the system. Thus in every port lay a source of information for the Embassy. The United States presently ordered the closing of all private wireless stations, and those amateurs who had been listening out of sheer curiosity to the air conversation cheerfully took down their antennae. Not so, however, a prominent woman in whose residence on Fifth Avenue lay concealed a powerful receiving apparatus. ”

“ The plan to raid Canadian ports—The first Welland Canal plot—Von Papen, von der Goltz and Tauscher—The project abandoned—Goltz's arrest—The Tauscher trial—Hidden arms—Louden's plan of invasion.
Underneath the even surface of American life seethed a German volcano, eating at the upper crust, occasionally cracking it, and not infrequently bursting a great gap. When an eruption occurred, America stopped work for a moment, stared in surprise, sometimes in horror, at the external phenomena, discussed them for a few days, then hurried back to work. ”

“ During the last 7 months Fair Play has, in its editorial policy, treated all belligerents justly and thereby rendered great services to the millions of foreign born citizens in this country, especially to those of German and Austro-Hungarian origin. Fair Play has fought for the rights of the latter and for truth, always maintaining an American attitude and showing true American spirit. ”

“ The economic, diplomatic and military aspects of secret warfare in America—Germany's peace-time organization—von Bernstorff, the diplomat—Albert, the economist—von Papen and Boy-Ed, the men of war.
When, in the summer of 1914, the loaded dice fell for war, Germany began a campaign overseas as thoughtfully forecasted as that first headlong flood which rolled to the Marne. World-domination was the Prussian objective. It is quite natural that the United States, whose influence affected a large part of the world, should have received swift attention from Berlin. ”

“ An inflammatory publication known as Bull, published by O'Leary, and not barred from the mails until September, 1917, went broadcast over the United States, inciting bitterness against England, and found a greedy circle of readers in the German-American population. John Devoy, a Sinn Feiner of standing in America, fanned the flame with a newspaper known as the Gaelic American, published in New York, and it is this American-printed sheet which furnished the Irish revolutionists with material for a part of the plot which they were preparing for fruition in the year 1916. ”

“ It is no mere metaphor to say that during 1915 and 1916 the smoke of German explosions in factories in the United States was spreading across the sun, casting the deepening shadow of war over America. There was dynamite found in the coal tender of a munitions train on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Callery Junction, Pa., on December 10, 1915, the day on which enormous quantities of wheat were destroyed by fire in grain elevators at Erie. A few hours [Pg 127] earlier a two-million-dollar explosion had occurred at the Hopewell plant of the du Pont works. ”

“ 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 [Pg 27] the German Government absolutely denies. It cannot specifically repudiate acts committed by individuals over whom it has no control, and of whose movements it is neither officially nor unofficially informed. ”

“ During the early days of the war the promise of social sponsorship which any embassy in Washington could extend proved bait for a number of ingénues of various ages, with ambition and mischief in their minds, and the gracious Ambassador played them smoothly and dexterously. Mostly they were not German women, for the German women of America were not so likely to be useful socially, nor as [Pg 7] a type so astute as to qualify them for von Bernstorff's delicate work. ”

“ America learned gradually of the machinations of the four executives, Bernstorff, Albert, Papen and Boy-Ed. America had not long to wait for evidences of their activity, but it was a long time before the processes of investigation revealed their source. It was inevitable that they could not work undiscovered for long, and they seem to have realized that they must do the utmost damage at top speed. Their own trails were covered for a time by the obscure identities of their subordinates. The law jumps to no conclusions. ”

“ Any really thorough organization must be promptly convertible to new activities without loss of motion. If these new activities are unexpected, the change is more or less of an experiment, and its possibilities are not ominous. But truly dangerous is the organization which transfers suddenly to coping with the expected. Germany had expected war for forty years.
[Pg 4]
Her peace-time organization in America consisted of four executives: an ambassador, a fiscal agent, a military attaché, and a naval attaché. ”

“ The entire appearance of the man may best be described by a much-abused term—he was "distinguished."
Count von Bernstorff, once his nation had declared war upon France and England, went to war with the United States. As ambassador, diplomatic courtesy gave him a scope of observation limited only by the dignity of his position. A seat in a special gallery in the Senate and House of Representatives was always ready for his occupancy; he could virtually command the attention of the White House; and senators, congressmen and office-holders from German-American districts respected him. ”

“ One by one, first in Brooklyn, then in San Francisco, then elsewhere, its tentacles sloughed away.
A word for the pacifists. One pacifist constitutes a quorum in any society. There were in America at the outbreak of war one hundred million people who disliked war. As the injustices of Germany multiplied, the patriotic war-haters became militarists, and there sprang up little groups of malcontents who resented, usually by German consent, any tendency on the part of the Government to avenge the insult to its independence. ”

“ Our levity is pointed not at the Central American temperament and political instability, but rather towards the grotesquely serious objective of the German plotters. If their military forces had been Prussian shock troops they would certainly have succeeded. The use of a Mexican gunboat to transport German officers with an airplane and wireless apparatus from Mexico to Salvador exposed the plan. President Cabrera of Guatemala had a small but effective force of thirty thousand men, and a well-equipped artillery, armed—and he was prepared for attack from either frontier. ”

“ Von Igel was gruffly directing the attendant to make the stranger specify his mission when the door burst open, and in dashed Joseph A. Baker, of the Department of Justice, and Federal Agents Storck, Underhill and Grgurevich.
"I have a warrant for your arrest!" shouted Baker. Von Igel jumped for the doors of the safe, which stood open. Baker sprang simultaneously for von Igel, and the two went to the floor in battle. The German was overpowered, and the attendant cowed by a flash of revolvers.
"This means war!" yelled von Igel. "This is part of the German Embassy and you've no right here." ”

“ All existing societies of Germans are called upon as 'organized representatives of Deutschtum' to make it a point of honor to form a national alliance, to foster formation of new societies in all States of the Union, so that the whole mass of Germans in America can be used as a unit for political action. ”

“ As head and front of the German spy system in America, he held cautiously aloof from all but the most instrumental acquaintances: men and women of prominent political and social influence who he knew were inclined, for good and sufficient reasons, to help him. One woman, whose bills he paid at a Fifth Avenue gown house, was the wife of a prominent broker and another woman of confessedly German affiliations who served him lived within a stone's throw of the Metropolitan Museum and its nearby phalanx of gilded dwellings (her husband's office was in a building at 11 Broadway, of which more anon) ”