My Three Years in America

CHAPTER V

THE SO-CALLED GERMAN CONSPIRACIES

Immediately after the outbreak of war, our cruisers in foreign waters were cut off from their base of operations, and the German Reservists in North and South America were prevented from returning home owing to the British Command of the Sea. Measures to assist them were therefore taken by the German Nationals and German Americans in the United States, which although not in themselves aimed at the Union, certainly transgressed its laws. Moreover during the year 1915 and succeeding years, several deeds of violence against the enemies of Germany, or preparations for such deeds, were discovered, involving more or less serious offences against the laws of America. Both kinds of activity, comprised under the suggestive term "German Conspiracies" or "German Plots against American Neutrality," were skilfully used by our enemies to discredit us, and these agitations did considerable harm to the German cause, besides being a serious obstacle in the way of my policy.

Among the measures for assisting the German fleet may be mentioned, in the first place, the case of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, which has already been noticed. The New York branch, acting in accordance with the instructions of their head offices in Hamburg, dispatched about a dozen chartered vessels, laden with coal and provisions, to the squadron of German cruisers and auxiliary cruisers then on the high seas. This cargo was declared in the ships' clearing papers to be consigned to ports beyond the area of open sea where the German cruisers were known to be. When it came out later that the New York branch of the Hamburg-Amerika Line had made use of this device for coaling German men-of-war the chief officials were brought up on the charge of deliberately making false declarations in their clearing papers, and their chief, Dr. Bünz, a man of the highest character, with three of his subordinates, was condemned, in December, 1915, to eighteen months' imprisonment in the first instance.

The severity of the penalty thus inflicted on a man so universally respected, who had, during his long tenure of the office of Consul-General in Chicago and New York, gained the warm affection of many Americans, was regarded merely as a manifestation for the benefit of the outside world of the American Government's intention to preserve a strict neutrality. No one supposed that the aged Dr. Bünz would really have to undergo his sentence, and as a matter of fact he remained at liberty for some time even after America's declaration of war. In the summer of 1917 a violent press-campaign broke out against him, whereupon, despite his ill health he offered of his own accord to serve his sentence and was removed to the State prison at Atlanta, where he died in 1918. All honor to his memory!

Considering that his offence was nothing more than a technical violation of the letter of the American Customs regulations and was actuated by no base motive, nor by hostility to the United States, the punishment inflicted was excessively harsh. It was pleaded on his behalf in the speech for the defence that America during the war against Spain had acted in exactly the same way, when ships were dispatched from the neutral harbor of Hong Kong to coal Admiral Dewey's fleet before Manila and their cargo was declared as being scrap-iron consigned to Macao. An indication of the state of public opinion in the Eastern States of America at the end of 1915 may be found in the fact that the heavy sentence on this "German Conspirator" met with general approval apart from a few emphatic protests on the part of the German-American papers.

A number of German Reserve officers domiciled in America succeeded, despite the close watch maintained by England on the seas, in effecting their return to the Fatherland, thanks to a secret bureau in New York, organized by German-Americans, which provided them with false or forged American passports. This bureau was closed by the American police consequent on the discovery in January, 1915, of four German Reservists, with such papers in their possession, on board a Norwegian ship in New York harbor. The organizer had apparently fled from New York some time before, but finally fell into the hands of the British, and was drowned in a torpedoed transport. The Reservists were discharged on payment of heavy fines. One, however, was sentenced to three years' penal servitude. In estimating this affair, it must be remembered that according to the recognized conventions of international law, British men-of-war were not justified in making prisoners of individual unarmed Germans returning to their homes in neutral vessels. The American Government itself explicitly affirmed as much when a ship flying the Stars and Stripes was held up in mid-ocean for examination. As a rule, however, neutral Powers were too weak to stand up for their rights against British violations of international law, and so all Germans who were discovered by the British on their homeward voyage were made prisoners of war. Our countrymen, therefore, if they wished to do their duty by going to the defence of their Fatherland, were compelled, in face of this flagrant violation of the Law of Nations, to provide themselves with false passports. They had thus to choose between two conflicting duties, a dilemma all too common in life and one which the individual must solve according to his lights. The bearers of such false passports certainly risked heavy penalties, but shrank still more from incurring any suspicion of skulking or cowardice.

It would seem, moreover, that there is little to choose, from the moral point of view, between their "sailing under false flags," for the purpose of evading the British guardians of the sea, and the hoisting of neutral ensigns by British ships to escape from German submarines.

There can, at all events, be no question of a "German conspiracy" in these cases of forged passports as I had officially announced on behalf of the German Government, that under the circumstances no one who remained in America would, on his arrival in Germany, be punished for not answering the call to the Colors. I can repudiate in the most express terms any personal responsibility for the activities of the above-mentioned secret bureau in New York, although attempts have been made to connect my name with it on the sole ground of a letter, said to have been written to me by von Wedell before his departure, which was, as a matter of fact, first made known to me by its publication in the Press. It is true that this gentleman, a New York barrister before the war, was a personal acquaintance of mine; he had, however, immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, hastened back to Germany to join his own regiment, and later returned secretly to America, presumably under orders from his superiors, only to disappear again with equal secrecy after a short stay. I had never even heard the name of Rueroede before his arrest, but in view of his denial that any personal profit accrued to him from his services in providing his fellow-countrymen with documents for the purpose of facilitating their escape from British vigilance, I much regret the severity of the penalty inflicted on him.

If the cases of the Hamburg-Amerika Line and the falsification of the passports damaged the German cause in America, this was still more true of the acts of violence planned or carried out by Germans or German-Americans against individuals known to be hostile to our cause. The few authentic cases of this sort of thing were, as every impartial person must recognize, engineered by a few patriotic but foolish hotheads; the more sober and responsible German elements in the United States were certainly no party to them.

To the list of these outrages, the enemies of Germany deliberately added others which probably had no foundation in fact. Thus, for every accident which occurred in any American munition factory – and many accidents were bound to happen in the new works which had sprung up like mushrooms all over the land, and were staffed with absolutely untrained personnel – "German agents" were regularly held responsible, and the anti-German Press, particularly the Providence Journal, announced these accidents as "a clear manifestation of the notorious German system of frightfulness." Worse still, these papers instilled into their readers the firm conviction that these crimes were an essential part of German propaganda, and in their cartoons represented the German, more particularly the German-American, as a bearded anarchist with a bomb ready in his hand.

I myself was frequently libelled in this manner by the "Yellow Press," and represented both by pen and pencil as the ringleader and instigator of the so-called "conspiracies"; this accusation, at first tentative, later grew increasingly clear and unmistakable. The campaign of calumny in which even the more respectable Press took its share, was, however, directed more particularly against the Military Attaché, Captain von Papen, and the Naval Attaché, Captain Boy-Ed, whose names were openly coupled with some of the crimes which came before the American Courts of Justice. Both these officers finally fell victims to this agitation, and had to be recalled from America in December, 1915, in accordance with a request from the United States Government. At the same time, in the annual Presidential message to Congress, statutory measures were laid down against Americans implicated in these conspiracies, or, as the phrase ran, against all those "contriving schemes for the destruction of the independence, and implicated in plots against the neutrality, of the Government." Not until the declaration of war against Germany, on April 2nd, 1917, did President Wilson venture openly to accuse the official German representatives in America of complicity in these designs, in the following words: "It is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States." Since then my own name has been mentioned as the supreme head of the German "Conspiracy" in America, in the innumerable propaganda pamphlets with which the official "Committee of Public Information" has flooded America and Europe. And I have been openly accused of having instigated and furthered, or at the very least been privy to, all manner of criminal activities. In interviews with American journalists I have more than once refuted these calumnies, which can be supported by no evidence, and were solely intended to arouse popular feeling against Germany; but I must now refer again to the more definite of these accusations.

It must be left to the impartial historian of the future to establish the full truth concerning the German conspiracies in the United States; any evidence given under the influence of the passions arising out of the war can, of course, possess only a limited value. It is obvious from the proceedings concerning the constitution of the Senate Committee that much of the evidence was prejudiced and unreliable, probably because it was based solely on information given by Germans or former Germans, whose identities were kept strictly secret, and who told deliberate lies, either because, like Judas, they had received a reward for their treachery, or because, having severed all ties with their old country, they wished to secure their footing in the new.

In any case I myself was never a partner to any proceedings which contravened the laws of the United States. I never instigated such proceedings, nor did I consciously afford their authors assistance, whether financially or otherwise. I was in no single instance privy to any illegal acts, or to any preparations for such acts. Indeed, as a rule I heard of them first through the papers, and even then scarcely believed in the very existence of most of the conspiracies for which I was afterwards held accountable. I shall hardly be blamed for this by anyone who remembered the number of projects which we were all duly accused of entertaining, such as the various alleged plans for the invasion of Canada with a force recruited from the German-American rifle clubs, and many another wild-cat scheme attributed to us in the first months of the war.

Such offences against the laws of America as were actually committed were certainly reprobated by none more sincerely than by myself, if only because nothing could be imagined more certain to militate against my policy, as I have here described it, than these outrages and the popular indignation aroused by them. I fully realized that these individual acts, in defiance of the law of the land and the resulting spread of Germanophobia, were bound to damage me in the eyes of the United States Government and public opinion. It is thus obviously absurd to accuse me of being responsible in any way for the acts in question, seeing that any such instigation, or even approval on my part, would have involved the utter ruin of my own policy!

Another accusation against my conduct while in America is that I at all events connived at the commission of crimes under the direction of officers attached to the Embassy of which I was in charge, or of other German Secret Service agents. The evidence for this consists of certain cipher telegrams from the military authorities in Germany, addressed to the Embassy in Washington; these were decoded in England and said to contain instructions for outrages to be committed in Canadian territory. I cannot say if these messages were genuine or no. Military cipher telegrams, formally addressed to the military attaché, were frequently received at the Embassy, but were always sent forward at once by the registry to Captain von Papen's office in New York, as a matter of routine, and without being referred to me in any way. Von Papen certainly never told me a word about any instructions from his superiors that he should endeavor to foment disorders as alleged. For the present, then, I consider that there is insufficient evidence for his having received any such orders; but in all these matters I can, of course, speak only for myself, military matters being entirely out of my province. Soon after von Papen's recall I entered a protest against the sending of a successor, as there was no longer any useful purpose to be served by the employment of a Military Attaché, whose presence would only serve as a pretext for a renewed hostile agitation against us.

Whether the illegal acts of the Secret Agents sent to the United States by the military authorities were committed in accordance with their orders or on their own initiative I had no means of knowing at the time, nor have I been able to discover since my return home. I may observe, however, that I more than once urgently requested the Foreign Office to use all their influence against the dispatch of Secret Service men to America. Moreover, I had published in the Press a notice, couched in strong terms and signed by myself, warning all Germans domiciled in the United States not to involve themselves in any illegal activities under any circumstances whatever. And I think I am justified in saying that twelve months before the severance of diplomatic relations, I had made a clean sweep of all "conspiracies" and extorted a promise that no more "agents" should be sent over from Germany. On my arrival home, I was held by some to have been at fault for not having put down the movement earlier; to which my reply must be that as a matter of fact it was the cases of Rintelen and Fay that first earned us the reputation of "conspirators"; all the rest came to light later, and were in great measure connected with their machinations. I took steps, as soon as I heard of these two affairs, to avoid any repetition of them, in which effort I was successful.

The following throws some light on the attitude of the United States Government towards me in the matter of the "conspiracies." When in November, 1915, the Press campaign had reached the height of its violence, I forwarded a Note to Mr. Lansing, the Secretary of State, protesting strongly against the unjustifiable attacks aimed at myself and my colleagues of the Embassy and requesting that some effort should be made to suppress them, as follows:

"Washington, Nov. 16, 1915.

"The continuance of the baseless attacks on myself and the colleagues of my Embassy in the columns of the Providence Journal impels me to ask whether your Excellency cannot see your way to make it clear that these attacks are not countenanced by the American Government. Such slanders against the representatives of a friendly Power who have a right to claim the protection and hospitality of the United States authorities would be incomprehensible, were it not a matter of common knowledge that the Providence Journal is a 'hyphenated' Anglo-American paper. To borrow the phrase of the United States President, this journal is obviously a greater friend of other countries than its own.

"For the last fifteen months I and all my colleagues have had, if I may say so, a whole army of American private detectives on our track. Day and night they have pursued us in the service of our enemies. Yet, although official German documents have been stolen, no one has yet succeeded in producing a single proof of illegal activities on the part of anyone of us.

"I should esteem it a great favor if your Excellency could see your way to secure this Embassy against a repetition of these baseless attacks, which have as their sole foundation the pre-supposition of conspiracies which have no existence in fact."

I never received any reply to this letter, but a short time after Mr. Lansing while informing me that the American Government felt itself compelled to ask for the recall of Captains Boy-Ed and von Papen, as being no longer acceptable to them (this affair I propose to refer to again in another place), stated in the most explicit terms that I was in no way implicated in the matter. The fact that the American Government, even after the departure of the two attachés, maintained the same intimate relations with me throughout the fourteen months which elapsed before its diplomatic representatives were recalled from Germany, proves that this was no empty compliment but was meant in all sincerity.

I feel myself compelled to insist on these facts, in view of the efforts subsequently made to represent me as the originator or leader of the famous "conspiracies," which were later immeasurably exaggerated by American propaganda. This propaganda has poisoned the mind of the average American citizen to such an extent that he firmly believes the German Embassy to have been a nest of anarchists, who even during the period of his country's neutrality "waged war" in the most dastardly manner against her.

And yet these stories of so-called conspiracies, with their legions of conspirators, and resulting lengthy lists of German outrages in America, will not bear serious examination.

Irrefutable evidence on the subject can be found in the official report of the Senate Committee of Inquiry into the activities of German propaganda, which has already been mentioned more than once. After the depositions of Mr. Bruce Bielaski on this subject had gone on for two days, Senator Nelson, being tired of this dry recital – he had already expressed the opinion that most of the evidence given so far was too academic – asked this officer of the Department of Justice for a report on the German attempts "to foment strikes and cause explosions in munition factories" which he apparently considered to be an integral part of German propaganda. Mr. Bielaski then referred to the "more important cases of offences against the law, which had been fathered by the German Government." He prefaced his statement with the remark that the list he was about to give was complete in every way; twenty-four cases were dealt with, and the names of the incriminated individuals given, as reproduced below:

1. Falsification of passports (von Wedell, Rueroede).

2. Destruction of a bridge in Canada (Horn).

3. Falsification of passports (Stegler, Madden, Cook).

4. Falsification of passports (Lüderitz).

5. Attempted destruction of a canal in Canada (von der Goltz, Tauscher, Fritzen).

6. Falsification of passports (Sanders, Wunmerburg, and two accomplices).

7. Supplying of coal, etc., to German men-of-war at sea (Bunz, Koeter, Hofmeister, Poppinghaus).

8. Attempt to bring about a revolution in India (Bopp, von Schack, von Brinken, Ram Chandra, and twenty-five accomplices).

9. Attempt to blow up a railway tunnel in Canada (Bopp and three accomplices).

10. Attempted destruction of munition factories and railway bridges in Canada (Kaltschmidt, and five accomplices).

11. Plot to destroy Allied munition ships by infernal machines (Fay, Scholtz, Dächer and three accomplices).

12. Plot to destroy Allied munition ships by incendiary bombs (Scheele, von Kleist, Wolpart, Bode).

13. Attempt to foment strikes in factories engaged in the making of war materials (Rintelen, Lamar, Martin).

14. Attempt to foment strikes among the dockers (no convictions).

15. Sending of spies to Canada (König).

16. Perjury in the matter of the arming of the Lusitania (Stahl).

17. Attempt to smuggle rubber to Germany (Jaeger and five accomplices).

18. Attempt to smuggle ashore chronometer of an interned German ship (Thierichens).

19. Attempt to smuggle nickel to Germany (Olsen and two accomplices).

20. Attempt to smuggle rubber to Germany (Newmann and accomplices).

21. Sinking of a German ship at the entrance of an American harbor (Captain and crew of the Liebenfels).

22. Attempt to smuggle rubber to Germany (Soloman and accomplices).

23. Falsification of passports (Rintelen and Meloy).

24. Plan to destroy Allied army horses by means of bacteria (Sternberg).

The above is the substance of the evidence given by Bielaski. I have no wish to extenuate, in the slightest degree, the few serious offences against common law included in this list, but I imagine that the unprejudiced reader will not fail to observe that Mr. Bielaski found it necessary to rake up everything possible in order to be able to present the Committee with a respectable catalogue of crimes instigated by the German Government in the United States. Apparently his only object was to produce a list of imposing length, and for this purpose he included in it cases in which it would be difficult for even the most suspicious mind to discover the hand of the German Government. Moreover even he himself did not venture directly to assert the complicity of the representatives of the German Empire in any single one of these offences. In reply to Senator Overman, who asked if Captains von Papen and Boy-Ed were held to be implicated in all these illegal acts, Mr. Bielaski gave the following evasive answer: "The most important, and most serious of these illegal acts, were, generally speaking, inspired, financed and conducted by one or other of the accredited representatives of Germany." Officials or agents in the service of Germany were, however, mentioned by name as leaders or accomplices only in the first fourteen and the two last cases, and I may be allowed to emphasize the fact that by the admission of Mr. Bielaski himself, my own name was coupled only with the agitation for a revolution in India, which was supposed to be a part of Germany's designs. Even if we take Mr. Bielaski's unconfirmed evidence as being reliable, the total number of individuals convicted on these charges in the American Courts of Justice amounts only to sixty-seven, of whom apparently only sixteen were German nationals; and their offences fall under the following heads: the case of the Hamburg-Amerika Line and the five cases of falsification of passports already mentioned: the so-called Indian plot: one case of successful and three of attempted sabotage in Canada: and finally the cases numbered ten to fourteen and twenty-four in Bielaski's list of the illegal acts planned by the agents Rintelen, Fay and Sternberg.

I propose to go into the details of these cases later. What I am now concerned to establish is that the list in question is from one point of view more interesting for what it omits than for what it includes.

In the first place one may notice the absence of the accusation previously made against us more than once, that we had plotted to embroil the United States in war with Mexico and Japan; from the fact that Mr. Bielaski made no mention of this in his evidence before the Senate Committee it must be supposed that these ridiculous stories with which American public opinion had been at one time so assiduously spoon-fed were finally exploded.