THE GERMAN SPY IN AMERICA.•
Tee facts relating to the activities of German spies in America were obtained by Mr. Price Jones as a reporter on the New York Sun, when he devoted a year to no other work. " They were derived by a painstaking investigation, and where fiat statements • TM amuse Spy in Amnia. by Jahn Price Rasa Leaden : Hutchinson tad Co Da !nal
are made they are based an knowledge obtained by the author
from various authorities and from the examination of documents some of which have never been published." Espionage, in that it is practised by all Governments, is in one sense legal ; and in regard to this more legitimate side of Germany's spy system Mr. Price Jones gives many striking facts, revealing that " of all the secret service systems, the German is the most elaborate and machine- like." Germany, however, was not satisfied to restrict her agents to the legal side. Her Secret Service was 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. The headquarters of the system wore in Now York, and on the outbreak of war " there were practically, outside of the Chief Spy, throe important executives in this country, supervising respectively the commercial, military, and naval lines of informa- tion and activity."
Controlling the commercial executive was Dr. Heinrich F. Albert, Privy Councillor to the Gorman Embassy in America and Fiscal Agent of the German Empire. The Military Agent was the now notorious Captain Franz von Papen, the Attache of the German Embassy. The naval expert was Captain Karl Boy-Ed. Mr. Price Jones deals with each of those agents and his special activities separately, and of each of them also he gives a short biography and draws a vivid little pen-picture. Upon Dr. Albert, as Com- mercial Agent, " fell the task of spending between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 dollars a week for the German Government in the purchase of supplies and in propaganda.. . . Ho was the channel through whom money flowed from the Imperial Exchequer—unwittingly it may have been on his part—to men who, in the interest of Ger- many, have violated American laws." While on the question of finance Mr. Price Jones gives ua an insight into how Germans in America used the Stock Market :- " Witen it appeared that the Kaiser would not yield to demands made by the President, the prices of stocks went down and Germans bought stocks cheaply. After they loaded up a liberal supply. word would come that Germany was yielding and the stock market would become buoyant, time allowing the German group to sell hundreds of thousands of shares on a substantial profit. There is absolutely no doubt Mot as a result of every crisis the German Govern- ment realized millions of dollars in the market."
Dr. Albert was associated with Captain von Papen and Captain Boy-Ed in plots for the prevention of the shipment of war supplies to the Allies. He aimed at arousing sentiment in America against the export of arms and ammunition, and a letter from one of Iris agents states that the co-operation of a United States Senator, a Congressman, and other Americans had been obtained in the project. To Dr. Albert was also given the task of " working " the Press in favour of Germany. in a sense, most of Dr. Albert's work may be said to have been of the legitimate order, for " no participation in any illegal or criminal acts has been charged against him," and he might have remained under cover had it not been for the activity of American Secret, Service agents, and for a certain little feet which proves that even a Gorman Fiscal Agent has his weak moments. Dr. Albert fell asleep one day when in an Elevated train, and his doseier, containing a mass or wonderfully illuminating documents, was taken by detectives !
When Captain von Paper: was recalled the State Department stated that it was because of his " improper activities in military and naval affairs " " A brief summary of Captain von Papen's activities shows that he violated the courtesies extended to him as a diplomatic agent in secretly sending code messages ley couriers ; that ho handed out money for fraudulent passports ; that he schemed in military enterprises against Canada ; that he plotted with Ambassador Dumba to start strikes in American factories ; that he plotted in connection with other criminal activities in this country, such as blowing up factories ; that he was a promoter of seditious enterprises ; and that he and his associates schemed to start war between the United States and Mexico."
In addition to seditious activities in Canada and Mexico, " one of the enterprises which Captain von Papas, acting under orders from Berlin, supervised in the United States was a revolt against British rule in India." "There has been for years a sort of understanding between pro-Gorman Irish and certain members of an American society interested in India. In this organization, prior to the war, were men who were plotting a revolution in India, who were in touch with German agents and who received German money." We all know of Germany's activities in Ireland. " German funds were poured into Irish hands in America.... Plans also were worked out with the aid of Germane in America to ship arms and supplies to the Irish rebels." Further, there also have been vague reports of dramatic schemes in America to arm the Arabs in Northern Africa and start an uprising against British rule. There have been signs of dramatic plottings to stir up trouble in Afghanistan and in Egypt. Tt is a fact that various attempts have been made tp ship rifles and cartridges from the United States to South America, and than from South America to Africa. Some of these have proved successful. In other oases the shipments have been stopped."
Part of the work of Captain Karl Boy-Ed, half Turkish, half German, and one of Admiral vote Tirpitz'smost brilliant young meth
was to supervise the provisioning. of German Isidore in the Atlantic and Pacific. One device—which seems to us strikingly lacking in Teutonic subtlety—employed in San Francisco Bay to outwit the Government officers watching for violations of the neutrality laws was to fill a ship with coal, and then announce that she would be used for an expedition on the high seas to take cinema pictures of a stirring sea drama ! Captain Boy-Ed was also associated with Captain von Papen in the forgery of passports and in fomenting war in Mexico, and for his many services he received from the Kaiser on returning home " the decoration of the Order of the Red Eagle, third class, with sword." For " those services," says Mr. Price Jones, he would undoubtedly, " except for the immunity granted him as a member of a diplomat's official family, be facing prison in the United States with Dr. Karl Buena and other officials of the Kaiser's own steamship line" —the Hamburg America.
But above and beyond all the revelations of German intrigue and scheming, legal and illegal, stands the tragic story of the Lusitania.' The German Admiralty argued that to sink the ' Lusitania ' "was to lower England's prestige and to hoist the Black Eagle of the Hohenzollerns above the Union Jack ":— " Her destruction, they fondly hoped, would strike terror to the hearts of the British, for it would prove the inability of the English navy to protect her merehantmen. It would prove to the world that von Tirpitz was on a fair way of carrying out his threat to isolate the British Isles and °terve the British people into sub- mission to Germany. It would be a last warning to neutrals to keep off the Allies' merchantmen and would help stop the shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies from America. It would— as a certain royal personage Masted—shake the world's founda- tions."
The destruction of the ship was therefore decided upon, and the whole scheme was developed and executed in America under orders from Berlin. Spies had made numerous trips in her, studied her course, her convoy through the danger zone, and the precautions taken against a submarine attack. Their reports showed that it was practically impossible to have the ' '-boats stationed along every half-mile of the British coast. The simplest plan therefore was to send the Lusitania.' on a course where the ' U '-boats would be in waiting and could torpedo her. Berlin, according to Mr. Price Jones, counting almost to the hour when the ship would near the British Isles, prepared false instructions, which were sent to New York and put into British code. When Captain Turner wired home for directions, the reply of the British Admiralty was taken by the German wireless operators and the false message substituted. This false message directed him to proceed to a point ten miles south of Old Head of Kinsale. The true message would have sent him to a point some seventy or eighty miles south of Old Head of Kinsale. There he would have met his convoy. The whole business of substituting the messages was carded out at Sayville, Long Ieland, and woe therefore in direct violation of neutrality laws. Mr. Jones refers to the tre- mendous effect of the crime in America. " Before the horrors of this war optimistic Americana firmly believed the world was a civilised place. It was only after the destruction of the 'Lusitania ' that many neutral Americans could credit the atrocity stories of Belgium."
Colonel Roosevelt in a letter to Mr. Jones, published as an Intro- duction, writes of the book : "I wish to say, with all emphasis and heartiness, that you are doing this country a great service in pub- lishing it. Our people need to know certain of the facts that you not forth." Not only to Americans, however, but to all the belligerent countries, and above all to neutrals, will Mr. Price Jones's book be of service in warning them how the Kaiser makes war.
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