Chapter I: Have a Rendezvous with Death (1)

_By_

Alan Seeger

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear....
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

From _Poems_. Copyrighted 1916 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. By permission of the Publishers.

TRICKING THE TURK

Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook’s Perilous Adventure to Surprise and Blow Up a Warship at the Dardanelles

It hardly need surprise any one that each of a multiplicity of deeds and feats of daring and heroic adventure should, by different writers, correspondents, or official observers, be described as the most notable, the most brilliant, or the most courageous undertaking or achievement of the war. The simple fact is that the unparalleled war called for the souls and spirit and mental qualities of men as never did war before, and so many things were done that amounted to triumphs over the impossible, each one of which taken by itself seemed to overtop all others, that it would require a concourse of Solomons to determine which was the supreme excellence. They were all striking enough to command the superlatives of description. And some of these great accomplishments need but a few lines for their recital. It is not the volume of words that determines the value.

One of these briefly recorded deeds was that of Lieutenant-Commander Norman D. Holbrook, of the British submarine _B-11_, which “all his brother officers concur in regarding as one of the finest individual feats performed during the war.”

In the Dardanelles the old Turkish battleship _Messudiyeh_ lay in guard of the mine fields, and, acting on his own initiative, Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook set out to sink the old ship by torpedoing her at her anchorage where she idled under the protecting guns of the land forts. It was, from the viewpoint of the conservative minded, a mad enterprise. Even under the most favorable conditions the underwater navigation of the Dardanelles is most perilous, beset with forbidding difficulties, so swift are the currents that never cease racing through the straits, producing swift whirlpools and strong eddies as they strike projections. But when to these natural obstructions and dangers are added five distinct rows of mines it would seem that running the Dardanelles in a submarine would prove a feat quite impossible of accomplishment. That is what many said dissuasively; but Lieutenant Holbrook is apparently one of those who hold the opinion that nothing conceivable is impossible. He set out with Lieutenant Sydney Thornton Winn, his second in command, and his regular crew. Cautiously, slowly the _B-11_ stole along toward its objective, fairly crawling to avoid the rows of mines and beat the swirling currents. Arrived clear of the mines, but uncertain of the exact location of the _Messudiyeh_, Lieutenant Holbrook deliberately came to the surface in the bay, took an informing survey, submerged again and a little while later rose in perfect position for a shot and sent a torpedo crashing into the side of the astonished old warship that immediately proceeded about the business of sinking to the bottom of the sea.

A COMPASSLESS RETURN

But the shot that settled the _Messudiyeh_ aroused the forts and started the torpedo boats, and the _B-11_ became the target of the guns. She promptly sought refuge by a dive and had to lie submerged for several hours to elude her hunters. The object of the hazardous excursion accomplished, there was the problem of getting back, which was now gravely complicated by the fact that the compass of _B-11_ went wrong in the commotion and was not dependable. The Lieutenant had to find his way out without it. But he did it; passing again the five rows of mines, escaping the swirl of the currents that seemed rushing to slam the submarine against the rocks, returning to station safely and without casualty or mishap.

That was Dec. 14 and Dec. 26 the London _Gazette_ published the announcement that the King had approved the grant of the Victoria Cross to Lieutenant Holbrook, and that Lieutenant Winn had been made a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. A writer at that time said:

“That the torpedoed battleship was guarding the mine field adds a touch of comedy to the proceedings that must have been singularly gratifying to Lieutenant Holbrook and his gallant companions who crept along the sea floor with him that eventful day.”

CANADIANS

_By_

W. H. Ogilvie

With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs,
With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes in the roofs,
Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye,
Through our English village the Canadians go by.

Shying at a passing cart, swerving from a car,
Tossing up an anxious head to flaunt a snowy star,
Racking at a Yankee gait, reaching at the rein,
Twenty raw Canadians are tasting life again!

Hollow-necked and hollow-flanked, lean of rib and hip,
Strained and sick and weary with the wallow of the ship,
Glad to smell the turf again, hear the robin’s call,
Tread again the country road they lost at Montreal!

Fate may bring them dule and woe; better steeds than they
Sleep beside the English guns a hundred leagues away;
But till war hath ned of them, lightly lie their reins,
Softly fall the feet of them along the English lanes.

Author and _Country Life_.

FIRST OF ITS KIND

Eye-witness Account of a Duel at Sea between Great Steamers Built for Passenger Traffic

Early in the war the Cunard trans-Atlantic steamer _Carmania_ was converted into an auxiliary cruiser. Painted black from stem to stern (that was before the art of “camouflage” was introduced), and mounted with eight 4.7 guns, she left Liverpool for a reconnoitering cruise in the South Atlantic. Between 600 and 700 miles east of the coast of Brazil there is a small island of rock known as Trinidad (not to be confused with the West Indian Island of that name). The _Carmania_ came in sight of this island one morning toward the end of September and discovered three steamers in the vicinity. As soon as these steamers caught sight of the piratical looking _Carmania_ they moved about uncertainly for a time and then made off. But when it was apparent that the black intruder was alone, the largest of the three steamers turned back. This ship proved to be the _Cap Trafalgar_, a magnificent steamer, the chief of the Hamburg-South American Line, built for the special purpose of successful competition with the British Royal Mail in securing the South American passenger traffic and shipping trade. She too was equipped as an auxiliary cruiser, with eight 4.1 guns, up to date, their newness offsetting the extra caliber of the _Carmania’s_ older guns.

The tonnage of the _Carmania_ was 19,524, that of the _Cap Trafalgar_, 18,710. Splendid targets, both “so colossal,” said a writer, “as to be beyond the possibility of a failure to hit with any gun-layer.” A well-matched pair—ocean-going palaces, taken from their peaceful pursuits, transformed into war machines, neither having any appreciable advantage over the other as a belligerent, and now ranged against each other for a decisive duel. There was a fair field, too, for the two steamers seen with the _Cap Trafalgar_ continued their retreat and disappeared across the horizon, though one returned later.

It was the first sea duel of its kind. Never before had two floating hotels played at gun fire with each other, each intent on sending the other to Davy Jones’s locker if possible. When the action began the vessels were separated by about 8,000 yards, and their nearest approach was about 4,000 yards. As the sinking of its enemy was the aim, the guns of each combatant were directed at the water line of the other. Of the first few shells fired by the _Cap Trafalgar_, three made holes in the _Carmania_ at and above the water line, one tore through the stewards’ quarters, one smashed the lower deck galley and carried away the fire main leading to the bridge and fore-part of the ship, the latter the most serious damage.

A report of the engagement written two hours after, by one who took part in it was published in the _War Album De-Luxe_, from which the following is taken:

A DISTURBED LUNCHEON

“One never saw such a scatter as when we sat down to lunch and ‘Action!’ was sounded! Feeling ran high that this time we were in earnest; everyone was at his post in the twinkling of an eye. Ten minutes afterwards the conflict started, at a range of about six miles, both ships closing rapidly. The din that followed was unnatural and terrifying, and men’s hearts leaped to their mouths, for here was death amongst us. But the heat of work changed white faces to red. Blood once seen revives savagery in the human breast, and all our thoughts, after those first few moments, were concentrated in the grim work at hand, which was to sink as speedily as possible the monster that was vomiting red and steaming arrogantly towards us.

“By a clever maneuver our captain turned the ship round just as the enemy was bringing his pom-poms into play as well as the big guns, and brought our starboard battery, fresh and eager, to bear. Then we turned into demons, in a scene that had turned diabolical. Screaming shrapnel, returned by salvos of common shell, splinters everywhere, lumps of iron, patches of paint, a hurricane of things flying, hoarse shouting, and unintelligible sounds from dry throats, men discarding garments, and laughing with delirium—over all a white pall hiding the ghastly work.

“What matter that a shot cannoned down the after companion and laid low three of the whip party? Volunteers were not wanting to close in the breach and keep up a brisk supply of ammunition to the hungry guns. Or that a shot glanced off the shield of No. 1 gun, past the officer in charge, and blew away the neck of a corporal of Marines passing projectiles along the deck, leaving him leaning over the magazine hatchway, head dangling down, and dripping blood on to the madmen working below? Or that a shell burst by the feet of a man carrying another one in his hands?

“Word went round that we were on fire forward—the bridge, in fact, was blazing. A shell had torn through the cabins below, setting them alight, and the flames by this time reached and enveloped the bridge, since water could not be turned on in the first instance, as the main on the lower deck had been shot away. But the ill news was more than compensated for by the frenzied announcement that the enemy was also on fire and listing, moreover, on his side. So our main control was gone. The captain, first lieutenant, and navigating party had to leave the bridge to the flames—not before gaining us victory, however, by the splendid way they handled the ship in heading off the enemy, preventing him from turning round and bringing his idle guns on the port side to bear, and by keeping him on our starboard quarter so we were able to use five of our guns to his four.

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Major William A. Snow

_2nd Division, 2nd Engineers, Company “E”_

He was cited four times in Division orders and twice recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross. He went into the first line at Verdun March, 1918. When the British were attacked by the Germans in the vicinity of Beauvais, in April, he received his majority in time to be in command of a battalion at Château-Thierry.]

“The enemy listed a little more, and our work was done; his shooting became higher and more erratic, then stopped altogether. We ceased firing, and turned our attention to fighting the flames roaring up on high in the fore part of the ship. Luckily, we were able to stop the engines and keep the ship before the wind. The bridge and all its precious fittings and contents were doomed, as also the cabins below it; the officers who occupied them lost all their effects. A fireproof door in the staircase leading to the lower cabins effectually kept the fire from spreading in this direction, otherwise there might not have been very much left of the _Carmania_. The action raged hotly for an hour; after that, desultory firing was continued until the end.

“Of the two colliers that accompanied the enemy, one steamed away at the commencement of the action and was never seen again. The other, and smaller of the two, followed suit until he noticed the plight of his escort, and returned to pick up the survivors. Anon, an order went round the decks: ‘All firemen down below.’ The firemen had been doing yeoman service, running hoses and buckets of water to the scene of the fire, just as the stewards had distinguished themselves by taking round water and limejuice to the guns’ crews under shell fire, and also helping with carrying away the wounded. The reason for this order was ominous. The yeoman of signals had sighted smoke on the horizon to the north, and made out a bunch of funnels. It could not but be the _Dresden_, or whatever German cruiser the armed merchantman we fought was in company with, returning to the assistance of her consort, who had been signaling to her during the action. A great pity, indeed, one of our cruisers was not in touch with us at the time. What a fine haul it would have been!

_Vale_, CAP TRAFALGAR!

“Just as we got the fire well in hand, and were starting to run to the American coast, we beheld the most awe-inspiring sight of our lives—the last moments of an ocean leviathan. The wounded ship, distant from us about five miles, suddenly lurched over on the starboard beam-ends, looking for all the world as if she were about to turn turtle. Lower and lower she went, until her huge funnels were level with the water, pointing in our direction like two tunnels side by side, and dense clouds of smoke and steam escaped from all parts of her as from a volcano in a high state of activity. As quickly again, the mammoth righted herself; down, down went her bows; up and up her stern, till quite one-third of the hull stood upright to the sky; then, with a majestic plunge, she slid beneath the waves, game to the end, for the last to disappear was the German flag.

“A ring of foam and half a dozen boats crowded with dark forms were all that were left at 2 p.m. of the brave _Cap Trafalgar_ and her ornate saloons and winter gardens, the ship that conveyed Prince Henry of Prussia on his triumphant tour of the South American Republics.”

The casualties of the _Carmania_ are reported to have amounted to nine men killed and twenty-six wounded out of four hundred and twenty-one hands all told, a low percentage owing to the wide distribution of the various parties. The survivors of the _Cap Trafalgar_ landed at Buenos Ayres consisted of eighteen officers and two hundred and ninety-two men, which would give her casualties at about eight officers and one hundred men if she carried the same number of men as the _Carmania_.

Seventy-nine direct hits were counted on the _Carmania_, and innumerable small holes from splinters; her boats were riddled, as also masts and ventilators; her rigging and wireless aerial were shot away.

NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

The Men Who Captained the Merchant Ships Are Among the Heroes of the War

By telling the story of Captain Frank M. Custance, of the Royal Navy Reserve, as typical of the stories of a coterie of merchant ship men in the service, Mr. Ralph E. Cropley most interestingly reminds the public that the war was not altogether won by the men in the trenches. The merchant ship commanders played some small part in the winning. Indeed, Mr. Cropley goes somewhat further. He concludes his story of Captain Custance, which appeared in the New York _Evening Post_, with this paragraph:

“Without their valor this war would have been over long ago and Germany would have won. I say this without reserve, for it is the truth. It has only been by their untiring sacrifices that the soldiers have gotten to the trenches at all and been kept supplied with munitions and food. The merchant ship men have done work which gold cannot pay for and never have thought of themselves—simply of the great cause which to them has meant the end of cruelty.”

Though Captain Custance is an English seaman he is familiarly known to Americans who have sailed between New York and Bermuda in the winter or to the Land of the Midnight Sun in summer, for he was Captain of the tourist boat _Arcadian_ that made those trips in the different seasons. He was up among the Norwegian fords when England entered the war, and it was a question whether he could save his ship by evading the Germans. Not that he personally had any question about it. He proceeded to act with the calm assurance characteristic of his conduct in normal sailings, quietly determined to get safely away. So, excellent seaman that he was, “in the darkness of that famous Monday night of Aug. 4, 1914, without a pilot, he took her through the dangerous ford to sea. ’Twas indeed a feat.”

But there were dangers at sea, too, for it was necessary to avoid any ship or craft that heaved in sight, and constant vigilance, with much dodging, was necessary before he got into Liverpool with his American passengers saved from anything so unpleasant and perilous as drifting in open boats on the high seas. With equal success he landed them in New York some days later, their number having been added to by Americans stranded in England.

TURNED TO MINE-SWEEPING

Then the _Arcadian_ was dismantled and turned into a transport, and Captain Custance took her back to England filled with Canadian troops. But wanting a more war-like job he appealed to the Admiralty and eventually was assigned to the perilous duty of mine-sweeping, to keep the sea about the Orkneys free from the floating or sunk mines, to the sowing and planting of which the Germans were devoting their devilish activities. When it is borne in mind that Captain Custance was then 46 years old, with wife and several children, one may appreciate the patriotic zeal that kept him in this dangerous employ for two years. During that time he stuck at it with never a glimpse at his family until he was called to London to have the King confer on him the D. S. O.

Those broad-beamed boats known as trawlers in which the fishermen ply their calling were the instruments employed in mine-sweeping, and admirable they were for the business, but comfortless enough for other purposes. Said the Captain in a letter: “It’s no joke monkeying about in a tiny craft hunting ‘tin fishes.’ In daylight it’s bad enough, but at night it’s extremely dangerous, as one can’t see the sea, and one is liable to half swamp oneself in turning. And as far as any comfort below goes, there isn’t any. Everything is damp and cold, and the steward loses the greater part of your food in bringing it to you, and what you finally receive is a cold, unpalatable mess. Yet, by God! it’s something to be out here having a chance to bag a bally German swine.”

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Sergeant William Herren

_58th Infantry, Machine-Gun Company_

His company was fighting near Villa Savage. The majority of their machine guns were destroyed. On the morning of April 7, 1918, Sergeant Herren went through a deathly artillery bombardment in order to get more machine guns and ammunition for his company. With his reinforcements and bravery he enabled the right flank of his company to advance, and capture a German machine-gun position and repulse counter-attacks.]

Besides the danger from mines there was the excitement of submarine shelling of the fleet every now and then. In one attack of that kind Custance’s trawler struck a mine and sank. After that the Captain was given a steam yacht, no longer at her best, the _Mingary_, in which he did patrol work, visited and overhauled neutral ships, and kept a weather eye out for submarines and mines.

The performance that gained him the D. S. O. was the day after the Jutland naval fight, when the German fleet had fled, leaving only the submarines to prowl and finish off the wounded if possible. The dreadnought _Warspite_ was one of the wounded and poorly protected by destroyers as she toiled along with deranged steering gear. The Captain saw three submarines maneuvering against the _Warspite_, and despite the fact that the chances were all against him in an attempt to beat off three submarines with his little yacht and its tiny guns Custance rushed the _Mingary_ pell mell to the rescue, acting with such suddenness that he took one submarine by surprise and was able to ram it, got so close that he could use his guns on the next one and sink it and so thoroughly scared the third one that it submerged instantly without an offer of fight.

Later the Captain was in command of the _Maid of Honor_ in convoying colliers across the English Channel by night. There were no lights, there was no signaling by whistle, there was traffic both ways, troop ships, darkness everywhere. Skilled navigators were necessary—men of the merchant ship sort. Out of all his convoys going or coming, only three ships were torpedoed, only two being lost.

In the final part of the war he crossed and recrossed the Atlantic in convoy. It was then that the _Justicia_ was torpedoed. “She remained afloat for twenty-four hours, and Custance would have saved her if a German had not dived under the ring of patrol boats that surrounded her and fired a finishing torpedo.”

In getting off the dying _Justicia_ Custance nearly lost his life, yet, says Mr. Cropley, “I received a very apologetic letter saying he was sorry he hadn’t been able to save the cigarettes he was bringing over to me.”

CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES

(_An Incident_)

_By_

Dan Burnet

I

Still the guns!
There’s a ragged music on the air,
A priest had climbed the ruined temple’s stair,
Ah, still the guns!
It’s Christmas morning. Had ye all forgot?
Peace for a little while, ye battle-scarred—
Or do ye fear to cool those minds grown hot?
Up the great lovely tower, wracked and marred,
An old priest toils—
Men of the scattered soils,
Men of the British mists,
Men of France!
Put by the lance.
Men of Irish fists,
Men of heather,
Kneel together—
Men of Prussia,
Great dark men of Russia,
Kneel, kneel!
Hark how the slow bells peal.
A thousand leagues the faltered music runs,
Ah, still the wasting thunder of the guns,
Still the guns!

II

Out of the trenches lifts a half-shamed song,
“Holy Night”
Here, where the sappers burrowed all night long
To bring the trench up for the morrow’s fight,
A British lad, with face unwonted white,
Looks at the sky and sings a carol through,
“God rest you merry, gentlemen!”
It was the only Christmas thing he knew.
And there were tears wrung out of hard-lipped men,
Tears in the strangest places,
Tears on troopers’ faces!

III

They had forgotten what a life was for,
They had been long at suffering and war,
They had forgot old visions, one by one,
But now they heard the tolling bell of Rheims,
Tolling bell of Rheims;
They saw the bent priest, white-haired in the sun,
Climb to the hazard of the weakened spire,
They saw, and in them stirred their hearts’ desire
For Streets and Cities, Shops and Homes and Farms,
They only wanted space to love and live;
They felt warm arms about them—women’s arms,
And such caresses as a child might give
Coming all rosy in the early day
To kiss his world awake....
The British lad
Broke off his carol with a sob. The play
Of churchly musics, solemn, strange, and sad,
Fluttered in silver tatters down the wind,
Flung from the tower where the guns had sinned
Across the black and wounded fields.... The bell
Sang on—a feeble protest to the skies,
Until the world stood like a halted hell,
And men with their dead brothers at their feet
Drew dirty sleeves across their tired eyes,
Finding the cracked chimes overwhelming sweet.

IV

Aye, still the guns!
And heed the Christmas bell,
Ye who have done Death’s work so well,
Ye worn embattled ones,
Kneel, kneel!
Put by the blood-stained steel,
Men from the far soils and the scattered seas,
Go down upon your knees,
While there lives one with peace upon his eyes,
While hope’s faint song is fluttered to the skies,
In that brief space between the Christmas suns,
Still the guns!

SPYING AT ITS WORST

The German Secret Service System the Scrap Basket of Official Honor

Though the knowledge of an enemy’s plans, purposes and preparatory measures is of the highest importance in military campaigning, and though the utmost of courage and daring are often necessary to obtain the required information, the office of the spy has, from time immemorial, been contemned of men. There was but one fate for the captured spy under military rule. Even when the bravery and devotion of the adventuring spy have been admitted to admiration there has remained the instinctive aversion to the office. The reason for the almost universal mental attitude is that spying usually, if not invariably, involves treachery, the betrayal of trust and confidence gained by professions of friendship and sympathetic opinion. The word “spies” stirs the spleen of wholesome minded persons. It implies craft, duplicity, perversity. Few men have been willing to confess themselves spies. However greedily the sensational or adventure-loving reader may follow the narrative of the experiences, the desperate chances, the hazards, the daring risks, the narrow escapes of the successful spy, there is nevertheless a regretful wish that the valor, the intelligence, had found a nobler medium of expression.

But because there is such a thing as fearless, generous self-sacrifice in the performance of undertakings or obligations that come under the general classification of spying, it is perhaps unfortunate that no attempt has been made to discriminate what may be termed honorable (in a military sense) espionage from ignoble spying. Surely there is a vast distinction between the soldier who volunteers to penetrate an enemy’s lines to ascertain particular facts and the person who under the protection of social or official privilege wins trust only to betray it. In the second class there probably is no more despicable violation of moral responsibility recorded in the history of nations than the German intrigue against the United States when this country was still at peace with Germany. The indictment is clearly drawn in a few words in the Flag Day address of President Wilson, June 14, 1917. He said speaking of the German Government:

“They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance—and some of these agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital.”

ITS DIPLOMATIC AIDS

Their Ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff; their military attaché, Capt. Franz von Papen; their naval attaché, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed; their financial agent, Dr. Heinrich Albert, were the diplomatic and social spies who engineered and supplied with necessary information the vicious under-agents of the spy system of which sedition and violence were the shameful instruments.

With patient diligence, John Price Jones, a newspaper man, attached to the New York _Sun_, collected—from documentary evidence, from Secret Service officials and by means of his own investigation over a period of eighteen months—a vast amount of valuable and exact information, the vital part of which Small, Maynard and Company subsequently published in book form, under the title _The German Secret Service in America_. The information in that book, substantiated by governmental and other evidence, is authoritative, and we are indebted to it for much of the matter in this article.

Of the organization of the spy system he says:

“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. Messengers kept him in constant touch with the line-up of Congress on important issues, and two hours later that line-up was known in the Foreign Office in Berlin. 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); a third, woman intimate lived in a comfortable apartment near Fifth Avenue—an apartment selected for her, though she was unaware of it, by secret agents of the United States.

BAIT FOR INGÉNUES

“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 a type so astute as to qualify them for von Bernstorff’s delicate work. To those women whom he chose to see he was courteous, and superficially frank almost to the point of naïveté. The pressure of negotiation between Washington and Berlin became more and more exacting as the war progressed, yet he found time to command a campaign whose success would have resulted in disaster to the United States. That he was not blamed for the failure of that campaign when he returned to Germany in April, 1917, is evidenced by his prompt appointment to the court of Turkey, a difficult and important post, and in the case of Michaelis, a stepping-stone to the highest post in the Foreign Office.

© _Underwood and Underwood._

Count Johann von Bernstorff.

German ambassador to the United States at the time the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed. One of his many acts of duplicity was the sending of a secret message to Germany asking for funds to be used to influence members of the United States Congress.]

“Upon the shoulders of Dr. Heinrich Albert, privy counselor and fiscal agent of the German Empire, fell the practical execution of German propaganda throughout America. He was the American agent of a government which has done more than any other to coöperate with business towards the extension of influence abroad, on the principle that ‘the flag follows the constitution.’ As such he had had his finger on the pulse of American trade, had catalogued exhaustively the economic resources of the country, and held in his debt, as his nation’s treasurer in America, scores of bankers, manufacturers and traders to whom Germany had extended subsidy. As such also he was the paymaster of the Imperial secret diplomatic and consular agents.

© _Bain._

Dr. Dumba

Austrian Ambassador]

“You could find him almost any day until the break with Germany in a small office in the Hamburg-American Building (a beehive of secret agents) at No. 45 Broadway, New York. He was tall and slender, and wore the somber frock coat of the European business man with real grace. His eyes were blue and clear, his face clean-shaven and faintly saber-scarred, and his hair blond. He impressed one as an unusual young man in a highly responsible position. His greeting to visitors, of whom he had few, was punctilious, his bow low, and his manner altogether polite. He encouraged conversation rather than offered it. He had none of the ‘hard snap’ of the energetic, outspoken, brusque American man of business. Dr. Albert was a smooth-running, well-turned cog in the great machine of Prussian militarism.

CORRUPTION FUND OF MILLIONS

“Upon him rested the task of spending between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 a week for German propaganda. He spent thirty millions at least in secret agency work, also known by the uglier names of bribery, sedition and conspiracy. He admitted that he wasted a half million.

“His methods were quiet and successful, and his participation in the offenses against America’s peace might have passed unproven had he not been engaged in a too-absorbing conversation one day in August, 1915, upon a Sixth Avenue elevated train. He started up to leave the train at Fiftieth Street, and carelessly left his portfolio behind him—to the tender care of a United States Secret Service man. It contained documents revealing his complicity in enterprises the magnitude of which beggars the imagination. The publication of certain of those documents awoke the slumbering populace to a feeling of chagrin and anger almost equal to his own at the loss of his dossier. And yet he stayed on in America, and returned with the ambassadorial party to Germany only after the severance of diplomatic relations in 1917, credited with expert generalship on the economic sector of the American front.

“Germany’s military attaché to the United States was Captain Franz von Papen. His mission was the study of the United States army. In August, 1914, it may be assumed that he had absorbed most of the useful information of the United States army, which at that moment was no superhuman problem. In July of that year he was in Mexico, observing, among other matters, the effect of dynamite explosions on railways. He was quite familiar with Mexico. According to Admiral von Hintze he had organized a military unit in the lukewarm German colony in Mexico City, and he used one or more of the warring factions in the southern republic to test the efficacy of various means of warfare.

© _Bain._

Captain von Papen

German Military Attaché]

“Von Papen operated from New York after the outbreak of war. “German reservists who had been peaceful farmers, shopkeepers or waiters, all over the United States, were mobilized for service, and paraded through Battery Park in New York shouting ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!’ to the strains of the Austrian hymn, while they waited for Papen’s orders from a building near by, and picked quarrels with a counter procession of Frenchmen screaming the immortal ‘Marseillaise.’ Up in his office sat the attaché, summoning, assigning, despatching his men on missions that were designed to terrorize America as the spiked helmets were terrorizing Belgium at that moment.

“... Although von Papen marshaled his consuls, his reservists, his thugs, his women, and his skilled agents, for a programme of violence the like of which America had never experienced, the military phase of the war was not destined for decision here, and there is again something ironical in the fact that the arrogance of Captain von Papen’s outrages hastened the coming of war to America and the decline of Captain von Papen’s style of warfare in America.

BOY-ED, A TURKISH HALF-BREED

“The Kaiser’s naval attaché at Washington was Karl Boy-Ed, the child of a German mother and a Turkish father, who had elected a naval career and shown a degree of aptitude for his work which qualified him presently for the post of chief lieutenant to von Tirpitz. He was one of the six young officers who were admitted to the chief councils of the German navy, as training for high executive posts.... His duties took him all over the world as naval observer, and he may be credited more than casually with weaving the plan-fabric of marine supremacy with which Germany proposed in due time to envelop the world.

“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 and confidence would serve the Fatherland, cloaking his real designs by frivolity and frequent attendances at social functions. His peace-time duties had been to study the American navy; to familiarize himself with its ship power and personnel, with its plans for expansion, its theories of strategy, its means of supply, and finally, with the coast defenses of the country. He had learned his lesson, and furnished Berlin with clear reports. On those reports, together with those of his colleagues in other countries, hinged Germany’s readiness to enter war, for it would have been folly to attempt a war of domination with America an unknown, uncatalogued naval power. (It will be well to recall that the submarine is an American invention, and that Germany’s greatest submarine development took place in the years 1911-14.)

“And then, suddenly, he dropped the cloak. The Turk in him stood at attention while the German in him gave him sharp orders—commands to be carried out with Oriental adroitness and Prussian finish. Then those who had said lightly that ‘Boy-Ed knows more about our navy than Annapolis itself’ began to realize that they had spoken an alarming truth. His war duties were manifold. Like von Papen, he had his corps of reservists, his secret agents, his silent forces everywhere ready for active coöperation in carrying out the naval enterprises Germany should see fit to undertake in Western waters.

“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. Their own persons were protected by diplomatic courtesy. It required more than two years of tedious search for orthodox legal evidence to arraign these men publicly in their guilt, and when that evidence had finally been obtained, and Germany’s protest of innocence had been deflated, it was not these men who suffered, but their country, and the price she paid was war with America.

_Courtesy of Leslie’s Weekly._

A Deadly Torpedo Leaving the Tube of an American Destroyer

A Whitehead torpedo at the instant it leaves the tube. This tube is above the water line. Torpedo-boat destroyers carry both this kind of tubes and submerged ones. The torpedo, when fired from above the water, submerges itself to a depth determined by the adjustment of its horizontal steering gear, and thereafter runs its course at an even depth beneath the surface.]

GERMANY’S SECRET ARMY

“A hundred or more of their subordinates have been convicted of various criminal offenses and sent to prison. Still more were promptly interned in prison camps at the outbreak of war in 1917. The secret army included all types, from bankers to longshoremen. Many of them were conspicuous figures in American public life, and of these no small part were allowed to remain at large under certain restrictions—and under surveillance. Germany’s army in the United States was powerful in numbers; the fact that so many agents were working destruction probably hastened their discovery; the loyalty of many so-called German-Americans was always questionable. The public mind, confused as it had never been before by the news of war, was groping about for sound fundamentals, and was being tantalized with false principles by the politicians. Meanwhile Count von Bernstorff was watching Congress and the President, Dr. Albert was busy in great schemes, Captain von Papen was commanding an active army of spies, and Captain Boy-Ed was engaged in a bitter fight with the British navy.”

But long after the departure of the principals for their native land the enterprises they had inaugurated persisted.

Among the pre-war activities the German government made a contract with Dr. Karl Buenz, American head of the Hamburg-American Line, for the provisioning, during war, of German ships at sea, the contract being jealously guarded in the German Embassy at Washington. Merchant ships were to be used for the purpose. July 31, 1914, a cablegram from Berlin called on Dr. Buenz to begin filling his contract. The first ship to be loaded (with coal) was the _Berwind_, and the question arose as to who among the conspirators should apply for the clearance papers. Finally G. B. Kulenkampff, a banker and exporter, was directed to do so. He swore to a false manifest of the cargo and got the papers. The _Berwind_ carried food as well as coal for the provisioning of German warships to be found at secretly designated points, and her destination was not Buenos Ayres as the clearance papers declared, so the United States was unwittingly a party to German naval operations, on the third day of the war, by German mendacity. The _Berwind_ sailed for a little island known as Trinidad (not the British West Indian island) about 70° east of Brazil, and there her cargo was transferred to five German ships, one of which was the _Kap-Trafalgar_, presently sunk by the British auxiliary cruiser, the _Carmania_, which steamed into view while the _Trafalgar_, the _Berwind_ and one other of the vessels were still at Trinidad.

It is interesting to know that most of the ships chartered for this lawless purpose did not carry out the intention. The _Unita_ was one of them and we are told:

“Her skipper was Eno Olsen, a Canadian citizen born in Norway. Urhitzler, the German spy placed aboard, made the mistake of assuming that Olsen was friendly to Germany. He gave him his ‘orders,’ and the skipper balked. ’“Nothing doing,” I told the supercargo,’ Captain Olsen testified later, with a Norwegian twist to his pronunciation. ‘She’s booked to Cadiz, and to Cadiz she goes!’ So the supercargo offered me $500 to change my course. “Nothing doing—nothing doing for a million dollars,” I told him. The third day out he offered me $10,000. Nothing doing. So,’ announced Captain Olsen with finality, ‘I sailed the _Unita_ to Cadiz and after we got there I sold the cargo and looked up the British consul.’”

Under the Buenz contract twelve ships were either purchased or chartered at a total cost of $1,419,394, and it is said that of their shiploads of supplies less than $30,000 worth were ever transferred to German war vessels. Buenz, after much delay in the proceedings, was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta.

THE WIRELESS TREACHERIES

The Sayville Wireless Station on Long Island was for a long time a successfully controlled medium for the direction of spy and propaganda work in this country as well as for communication with wireless stations in Germany, in Central and South America, with wireless ships interned, etc., etc. To this and the other German-owned commercial plants in the United States Capt. Boy-Ed added amateur stations of more or less extended radius as auxiliaries. But owing to complaints of frequent interference with regular messages, 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 antennæ. Not so, however, a prominent woman in whose residence on Fifth Avenue lay concealed a powerful receiving apparatus. Nor did the interned ships obey the order: apparatus apparently removed was often rigged in the shelter of a funnel, and operated by current supplied from an apparently innocent source. And the secret service discovered stations also in the residences of wealthy Hoboken Germans, and in a German-American ‘mansion’ in Hartford, Connecticut.”

© _Underwood, and Underwood._

German Spies in France

After living for ten years in France, they were discovered giving information to the Germans by telephone. They confessed and were shot.]

Later suspicions were aroused by the activities of the German wireless, but the German operators were not at once removed. The United States began taking down the seemingly meaningless jargon that came every morning from the Nauen Station near Berlin. It was two years later, however, that a key to the jumble was discovered and the code revealed. Two codes in fact were found.

“The chief significance of the discovery of the two codes is their conclusive proof that while von Bernstorff was protesting to the American government that he could not get messages through to Berlin, nor replies from the Foreign Office, he was actually in daily, if not hourly, communication with his superiors. Messages were sent out by his confidential operators under the very eyes of the American naval censors. After the break of diplomatic relations with Berlin, in February, 1917, the authorities set to work decoding the messages, and the State Department from time to time issued for publication certain of the more brutal proofs of Germany’s violation of American neutrality. The Ambassador and his Washington establishment had served for two years and a half as the ‘central exchange’ of German affairs in the western world. After his departure communication from German spies here was handicapped only by the time required to forward information to Mexico; from that point to Berlin air conversation continued uninterrupted.”

It may be noted in passing that Captain Karl Grasshof of the cruiser _Geier_, that took refuge from the British by tying up in Honolulu harbor, gave high proof of the German nice sense of honor in respect of hospitality. He instituted a series of afternoon concerts by the ship’s band, that the music might drown out the noise of the wireless apparatus as he sent messages to raiders at sea or threw off false reports in English, the purpose of which was to make trouble between the United States and Japan. He said at one time that von Papen inspired this peculiar treachery, but afterwards denied it.

TO INVADE CANADA

On the military side, one of von Papen’s brilliant projects was to organize the German reservists in the United States into an army for the invasion of Canada. The plan was to transport men and guns by night from ports of the Great Lakes by means of powerful motor boats and attack defenseless lake cities, the object being to arouse such fear in the Canadians that they would keep their troops for home defense instead of sending them to the aid of England. This, however, was a project from which the craftier Bernstorff recoiled as smacking too much of open violence. Then von Papen proposed a scheme to blow up the Welland Canal as a terrorizing job. The plot was ascribed to “two Irishmen, prominent members of Irish associations, both of whom had fought in the Irish rebellion.”

The spy, Horst von der Goltz, was the active agent in the preliminary steps, such as recruiting men for the job, securing explosives, etc., Papen, in the name of Steffens, supplying the money and giving the necessary instructions. But after being carried forward almost to the point of action the Welland enterprise was, for some unknown reason, suddenly abandoned and the dynamite (three hundred pounds in suitcases), which had been taken to Niagara Falls, was left with an aviator, and Goltz, with his immediate associate, Constance Covani, a private detective, returned to New York. Von Papen was much provoked by the failure of his second plan to terrorize Canada. Goltz was sent on some commission to Germany in October, sailing on a forged passport, got safely to Berlin and, on his return trip in November, was arrested in England, spy fashion. After a protracted imprisonment, Goltz agreed to turn State’s evidence against his fellow conspirators. A number of arrests resulted, and the plots against Canada were fully revealed.

As more and more precise rules for the issue of passports were made by the government the difficulties of the conspirators in making direct communication with Berlin increased correspondingly. It devolved upon von Papen to provide for the supply of passports to meet the needs of couriers and others who could not get passports in their own names.

“The military attaché selected Lieutenant Hans von Wedell, who had already made a trip as courier to Berlin for his friend, Count von Bernstorff. Von Wedell was married to a German baroness. He had been a newspaper reporter in New York, and later a lawyer. He opened an office in Bridge Street, New York, and began to send out emissaries to sailors on interned German liners, and to their friends in Hoboken, directing them to apply for passports. He sent others to the haunts of tramps on the lower East Side, to the Mills Hotel, and other gathering places of the down-and-outs, offering ten, fifteen or twenty dollars to men who would apply for and deliver passports. And he bought them! He spent much time at the Deutscher Verein, and at the Elks’ Club in 43rd Street where he often met his agents to give instructions and receive passports. His bills were paid by Captain von Papen.”

MANUFACTURING PASSPORTS

The passports secured in this way by von Wedell and by his successor, Carl Ruroede, Sr., in the employ of Oelrichs & Co., were supplied to reservist officers whom the General Staff had ordered back to Berlin, and also to spies whom von Papen wished to send to England, France, Italy or Russia. Among the latter was Anton Kuepferle, who was captured in England, confessed and killed himself in Brixton jail.

© _International News._

Anti-German Riots in Britain

The destruction of the _Lusitania_ by a German submarine caused anti-German riots in many parts of the world. These started in Liverpool when the bodies of dead members of the crew were brought to their homes there, and spread rapidly to other parts of the United Kingdom. The photograph shows the looting of a German’s residence in High Street, London.]

When it became obvious that passports must be serving the ends of persons other than those to whom they were issued the government demanded that each passport should have the photograph of the bearer. But this did not disconcert the conspirators, as _The German Secret Service in America_ tells us. It says: “The Germans found it a simple matter to give a general description of a man’s eyes, color of hair, and age to fit the person who was actually to use the document; then forwarded the picture of the applicant to be affixed. The applicant receiving the passport would sell it at once. Even though the official seal was stamped on the photograph the Germans were not dismayed.

“Adams [Albert G. Adams, a United States Secret Service agent, who had insinuated himself into Ruroede’s confidence] rushed into Ruroede’s office one day waving a sheaf of five passports issued to him by the government. Adams was ostensibly proud of his work, Ruroede openly delighted.

“‘I knew I could get these passports easily,’ he boasted to Adams. ‘Why, if Lieutenant von Wedell had kept on here he never could have done this. He always was getting into a muddle.’

“‘But how can you use these passports with these pictures on them?’ asked the agent.

“‘Oh, that’s easy,’ answered Ruroede. ‘Come in the back room. I’ll show you.’ And Ruroede, before the observant eyes of the Department of Justice, patted one of the passports with a damp cloth, then with adhesive paste fastened a photograph of another man over the original bearing the imprint of the United States seal.