Part 28

From the beginning of the war until its end the American public was constantly thrilled by the sensational and usually highly circumstantial accounts which appeared in the press, particularly the Sunday supplements, of the operations of German secret agents in the United States. Every one, I suppose, has heard, in some one of its many versions, the story of the German spy who was shot in the telephone-booth of a New York hotel by a Secret Service operative while giving a confederate information relative to the sailing of American transports. Though I have heard that story related, with minutest detail, in clubs, over dinner-tables, and in the smoking-compartments of Pullmans, I never heard any one ask the quite obvious questions as to why it was necessary for the operative to shoot the spy instead of taking him alive, or how the confederate proposed to transmit the information to Germany. One picturesque version of the story laid the scene in a crowded New York Subway train, the Secret Service man having his automatic in his pocket and firing through the cloth of his coat. Then there was the equally sensational story of the Hoboken family in whose employ was a German spy disguised as a maid of all work. One day she mysteriously disappeared, and a few hours after her disappearance Secret Service agents called at the house and searched the belongings she had left behind her. Their search was rewarded by discovering, under a false bottom in her trunk, a complete set of the plans of the defenses of New York harbor. Variations of that tale placed its locale in Stamford, Conn., in Chittenango, N. Y., in Newton Centre, Mass., in Key West, and in Los Angeles, while the papers discovered in the mysterious trunk ranged all the way from drawings of coast-defense guns to a copy of the German Naval Code. The same hysteria which led the public to accept these ridiculous concoctions at their face value, and to beg for more, caused them to suspect all sorts of well-known persons of being engaged in espionage activities—the general commanding a certain American division, a famous woman aviator, a still more famous prima donna, a Jewish banker noted for his philanthropies, the chancellor of a great university, and even the secretary to the President having been discovered—so the rumors had it—to be German spies. At one period of the war, indeed, it was popularly reported that spies were executed every morning at daybreak on Governor’s Island. Now I dislike to destroy illusions and to spoil perfectly good stories, but the dictates of truth compel me to assert that not a single spy was executed on Governor’s Island or anywhere else in the United States, though it is my personal opinion that a few such executions would have brought to an abrupt end the series of fires, explosions, strikes, and other cases of sabotage for which the agents of the Wilhelmstrasse were responsible. For stating this opinion, quite early in the war, at a dinner in Boston at which I was a speaker, I received a mild reprimand from the Adjutant-General of the Army. On the occasion in question I remarked, if I remember rightly, that I was convinced that the most effective method of dealing with spies was not to intern them but to inter them. And I am still of the same opinion.

Though Germany had a number of secret agents operating in the United States—though not nearly as many as was generally supposed—the only one of them who measured up to the popular conception of a spy was a woman known as Madame de Victorica. In certain respects she came very near to meeting the specifications for an international adventuress as laid down in the mystery stories of Messrs. Chambers and Oppenheim. The results she obtained were, however, distinctly disappointing—at least from the Wilhelmstrasse point of view. Her father was the Prussian general to whom Marshal Bazaine handed his sword at the surrender of Metz; her mother was a Prussian countess; her sister was married to a Prussian nobleman, and her brother was a Jesuit priest serving as a chaplain in the Austrian Army. Madame de Victorica has had three husbands—all South Americans. Two died within a few months after marrying the handsome adventuress; the third was divorced. According to her confession, Madame de Victorica was trained in espionage work at the Naval Intelligence Bureau in Berlin and was sent to the United States by the authorities of the Wilhelmstrasse for the purposes of obtaining military and naval information, to foment labor troubles, to tamper with the Roman Catholic clergy, and to lay the plans for a rebellion in Ireland more successful than the abortive one of 1916. She memorized a code before leaving Berlin. The secret ink in which her letters were written was given her at the Chemical Institute and was carried in two silk mufflers, the ink being obtained by saturating them in cold water and wringing them. Writing in this ink could be developed with iodine tablets, manufactured by a well-known firm of London chemists, dissolved in vinegar. Other messages were transmitted by means of pin-pricking certain letters in newspapers. Madame de Victorica was unquestionably a woman of considerable intelligence and social position; she had had some experience as a journalist, and was apparently credited by the Germans with quickness of wit and resourcefulness as an organizer. This reputation she only partly justified, however, for she talked indiscreetly on the steamer while coming over, wasted time and money after her arrival in New York in buying elaborate gowns, and was an inveterate user of drugs. As the result of converging lines of inquiry pursued by Military Intelligence and the Department of Justice, she was arrested, together with several of her confederates, in August, 1918. There you have a thumb-nail sketch, as it were, of the most dangerous German agent in America. She can thank her lucky stars that the Wilhelmstrasse sent her to the United States instead of to France or England, for had she been caught in either of those countries her career would have ended not between stone walls but between a stone wall and a firing-party.

It is easy enough to understand, if not to sympathize, with the reasons which led Madame de Victorica to come to the United States in the capacity of a German spy, for she was, after all, German to the core, her relatives for generations before her having held high positions under the Prussian crown. But it is not easy, indeed it is almost impossible, for a loyal American to understand how men who were born and educated in the United States and who had a long line of American ancestors behind them, could sell their honor and their loyalty for German gold. It is, however, a curious and regrettable fact that certain persons whose disloyalty was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt were purely American, so far as their birth and parentage were concerned, their only connections with Germany being financial ones. Of these I have particularly in mind three men, all, if I am not mistaken, possessing university educations, who were journalists and correspondents of considerable standing until the discovery of their pro-German activities blasted their reputations and plunged them into oblivion. One of them—a correspondent who had seen service in several wars—was caught in the act of carrying messages from the Austrian Ambassador in Washington to Berlin. He was arrested by British intelligence officers and returned to the United States. His passport was taken from him, and those who were once his friends now pass him by without speaking. Another of these gentry succeeded, in spite of his German sympathies and affiliations, in obtaining admission to a training-camp, being given a commission and sent to France. But, as the result of representations made by the Intelligence Division, which was thoroughly familiar with his career, he was brought back to the United States, subjected to an official interrogation, confessed, and, though he made desperate efforts to have the President accept his resignation, was dismissed from the army “for the good of the service.” The third of this precious trio went to Germany as a correspondent, at once constituted himself a champion of everything German, savagely attacked the land of his birth, and, upon the fall of the Kaiser, fled to Sweden, where, so far as I am aware, he is still living in exile, a real “Man Without a Country.”

The great organization built up by Von Papen and his fellows for purposes of sabotage made it imperative, upon the entry of the United States into the war, that a system should immediately be devised for the protection of those plants and workers engaged in the manufacture of munitions. With the declaration of war the United States became, almost overnight, the greatest manufacturer of war materials in the world. In every city in the land factories producing the tools of the fighter’s trade were running night and day, and other factories, hundreds of them, began to spring up as though at the wave of a magician’s wand. The nation was a-hum with feverish industry from ocean to ocean. But of what avail was this tremendous wave of manufacturing activity, of what use the expenditure of billions in the erection and operation of plants and factories, unless those plants and factories were afforded protection against fire and the acts of enemy agents? To fill this need there was organized, in July, 1917, the Plant Protection Section of the Military Intelligence Division.

The system of plant protection provided, first of all, for a physical examination of the munition factories of the country with a view to minimizing the danger of their destruction by fire. Basing their plans on the estimates of the insurance companies that 85 per cent of all fires are the result of carelessness, the inspectors sent out by the section insisted, as a measure essential to the success of their work, on a systematic and wholesale house-cleaning, the wave of cleanliness which struck those American plants engaged in the manufacture of munitions during the first year of the war being directly traceable to the orders of the Plant Protection Section. The officers of the section next turned their attention to measures for the prevention of sabotage and the fomentation of labor troubles by enemy agents, which was accomplished by the introduction of what was known as the “interior organization system.” This consisted in the establishment within the plant of a complete espionage system, composed of old and trusted employees, who worked as Secret Service agents, and were unknown to one another. In cases where it was deemed necessary, this body was re-enforced by trained and experienced operatives from the Plant Protection Section, who usually obtained positions as workmen in the plant without the knowledge of the management. By this means the perpetrators of many cases of sabotage were discovered, incipient strikes were prevented, agitators and professional trouble-makers were kept under surveillance, and, if their actions warranted, were placed under arrest, and an unceasing watch kept on the movements of enemy agents. The campaign of sabotage and destruction which German sympathizers had been conducting almost unchecked was abruptly halted, for so wide-spread and efficient was the section’s organization that the enemy agent was constantly haunted by the fear that his most trusted confederate might be a secret operative who was watching his every action. Though it never had more than 400 active agents (this does not include, of course, the enormous number of volunteer operatives recruited from the workers themselves), the section extended its protection to more than 37,000 manufacturing plants, and, during the period of its war-time operations, made upward of 270,000 recommendations for arrests, investigations, and prosecutions, or for further plant protection.

Agents of the Plant Protection Section succeeded in gaining admission to the innermost councils of the I. W. W. and kindred organizations, and, by thus obtaining advance notice of any contemplated action, were successful in averting strikes and labor troubles which would have caused the loss of millions of dollars, and, through halting the flow of munitions to the front, the loss of thousands of American lives. The success of the section in this phase of its work was due, first, as I have already explained, to its ability to obtain advance information of impending trouble, and, secondly, to the fact that the agents of the section were in a position to handle a delicate labor situation in an absolutely impartial manner, taking no sides and inspiring the confidence of both employers and employees. Thus it came about that the section was frequently able to compose differences between capital and labor when other arbitrators, who did not so completely hold the confidence of both parties to the dispute, failed.

After the Armistice the activities of the section consisted, in the main, in protecting the government against fraudulent claims presented by manufacturers and in guarding the great plants and warehouses which were abandoned upon the cancellation of war contracts. In one case the section obtained and prepared evidence for a grand jury which so conclusively showed fraud on the part of certain manufacturers holding government contracts, that another concern, which had already presented claims amounting to $600,000, upon learning that they were being investigated by agents of the section, hurriedly withdrew them. Another example of the efficiency which characterized the work of the section is illustrated by the case of a concern engaged in the manufacture of shells, the evidence presented by the section resulting in the indictment of the president and ten other officials of the company for submitting shells to the government for inspection under fraudulent circumstances.

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The difficult, perplexing, and highly delicate work connected with the various phases of the censorship was intrusted to the Tenth Section of Military Intelligence, a number of subsections being established for the censorship of mail matter, telegraphs and telephones, radio, books and permanent literature, foreign-language newspapers, religious and pacifist publications, photographs, motion-pictures, and mail to or from prisoners of war.

To assume censorship of the mails was a new experience to our government, for it was in direct opposition to American customs and traditions and was extremely repugnant to a large and influential section of the American people. It was undertaken, indeed, only after its necessity had been urgently and repeatedly emphasized by our allies. Early in the war France had taken over the censorship of the Swiss mails, leaving to England the supervision of the mails to and from Holland and the Scandinavian countries. Little attention had been paid, however, to the Spanish, Mexican, and Central and South American mails, save when they passed through the postal barrier erected by the Allied censorship around the neutral states of Europe. The first problem that faced the American censors, therefore, was to close the channels of information leading into Germany through Spain, or out of Germany, via Spain, to the Americas, Spain being in constant communication with Berlin by a powerful system of wireless. Upon our entrance into the war it became imperative to close this gap in the news blockade which was in force against the enemy. This done, the only possible way for a German sympathizer in the western hemisphere to communicate with Germany was indirectly, through an intermediary in a neutral country, it becoming necessary for a German agent in South America, for example, to direct his communications to some confederate in Holland or Scandinavia. Such communications, which were usually disguised as innocent social or business letters, but in reality contained concealed messages in code, cipher, or invisible ink, would then be transcribed by the confederate in the neutral country and forwarded to the particular bureau of the German Government for which they were intended, either by special courier or through ordinary postal channels.

Owing to the peculiar position of the United States and its distance from the actual battle-front, about 95 per cent of its postal-censorship work was negative in character and only 5 per cent positive, these terms, “negative” and “positive,” being used in the same sense as they applied to other activities of Military Intelligence. By far the greater part of the mail that required censorship was of a nature which might have caused social unrest, labor troubles, or even rebellion in this country. Only a comparatively small number of letters were intercepted which brought positive information concerning the plans of the enemy or of neutrals. In studying this positive information it was necessary for the censors to keep constantly in mind the fact that the enemy intentionally permitted false information to be sent out, which, were it taken at its face value, might lead us to alter our plans or to relax our efforts. For periods of two or three months, perhaps longer, immediately preceding each of the great German offensives, there trickled into the offices of the censor scores of letters depicting in heartrending terms the social unrest and the appalling food conditions in the Fatherland.

Early in 1918 the United States, following the example of France and England, established large chemical laboratories in New York and Washington, where thousands of letters were subjected to tests for invisible ink. The usual letter-paper which is used for communications in invisible ink can be given minor tests without altering its appearance. These preliminary tests are for the purpose of ascertaining whether the paper has been moistened or subjected to other treatment preparatory to the use of invisible ink. In case the minor tests show the paper has received some unusual treatment, a major test is given which results in developing any invisible writing, though it at the same time affects the texture and color of the stationery so that it is impossible to restore it to its original appearance. Practically all mail to or from persons on the suspect lists kept by England, France, and the United States was subjected to such examination.

By assuming the censorship of the Spanish, West Indian, and Latin American mails, the American authorities were able to break up the trade relations which up to that time had existed between German sympathizers in the United States and German forwarding agents in South America. In the latter months of the war Germany found herself in desperate need of rubber in any form for use in electrical devices, particularly for the construction of electrical apparatus to be used in torpedoes and submarines. Hence we find the censorship intercepting suspicious orders for such goods as dental rubber, tobacco-pouches, rubber soles and heels. The censorship also intercepted and confiscated hundreds of tons of German propaganda literature prepared by German agents in Spain and intended for distribution in Latin America. Had this propaganda reached the German agents in South and Central America to whom it was addressed and had it been distributed in accordance with their plans, it would unquestionably have resulted in great social unrest, political demonstrations, and revolutions, if not, indeed, in actual war between certain Latin American countries, thus interrupting our supply of certain products essential to the manufacture of munitions. Had the Germans, for example, succeeded in starting a war between Chile and Bolivia over the Tacna-Arica question, our supply of Chilean nitrates, which we imported in enormous quantities, in all probability would have been cut off. In fact, it was the likelihood of just such an occurrence which led us to spend millions of dollars in the erection of nitrate plants in the United States, thus making us independent of the Chilean nitrate beds. The censorship was likewise largely responsible for preventing revolutions which were planned to take place simultaneously in Cuba and Mexico. German agents had planned to launch a revolution in the Oriente province of Cuba with a view to burning the cane-fields, while at the same time an insurrection was to break out in the Tampico district of Mexico, thus providing an excuse for the destruction of the oil-wells. Had this plan been successful—and it came much nearer being successful than most persons realize—our main sources of supply for oil and sugar would have disappeared. But the plotters in Cuba were indiscreet enough to discuss their plans in letters sent to their representatives in the United States; these letters were intercepted by the postal censors, and a few days later a transport, loaded to the gunwales with American Marines, set sail for Guantanamo. The commander of the Marines had orders to prevent the peace of the island republic from being disturbed. And he did. For which we—and the Cubans—have to thank the postal censors.