that he had brought to the hearing three distinguished specialists in
the matter of wild beasts, Dr. Irwin of the Bureau of Plant Industry,
Major Frederic Russell Burnham, a fine old pioneer whom Richard Harding
Davis did describe in his “Real Soldiers of Fortune,” and “Captain
Fritz Duquesne, formerly in the Boer army, who is lecturing and writing
on this subject....” Dr. Irwin spoke earnestly for the introduction
of the hippo, Major Burnham made an absorbing address on the habits
of wild animals he had known--and a herd of camels he once pursued in
Texas--and our bright and voluble Captain Fritz then told the committee
extraordinary things of the home of the hippopotamus, the delicacy of
its flesh, the amiability of its temperament, and the carelessness
of its appetite. “During my boyhood,” he said at one stage of the
proceedings, “the French soap manufacturers used to come down there
and pay us all sorts of prices, competing with one another, to get the
fat of the hippopotamus; and we made a considerable amount of money
from saving the fat when we killed a hippo. The Boers were in the habit
of going down to the river and killing a hippo and bringing it in and
dividing it among the different families in the district. It is pretty
hard to get rid of four and a half tons of meat. In the case of the
bones of the animal, we would take an ordinary wood saw and saw them
in halves, and make a great big pot of soup for a large number of the
people, including the Kaffir servants on the ranch, or the farm, as we
call it.” Again: “My father was instrumental in sending the camel to
Australia from Africa, and also in introducing it into the Kalahari
desert. The German Government now uses the camel exclusively for its
cavalry in the Kalahari desert, which is practically the counterpart of
the deserts in this country. My father had the contract to take them
over to Australia for the West Australian Government and I took them
over there. To-day camels and ostriches from Africa are being raised in
Australia.”
Mr. Chapman asked: “Do you think animals such as you have mentioned
would become acclimated here without difficulty?” Duquesne replied:
“Yes, I was over there recently in one place where Colonel Roosevelt
passed through, and the frost was that thick (indicating about one
inch). That is where he went to get some of his best animals....” In
discussing the zebra he said: “There is nothing wrong with the animal.
The English in Africa want to get percentage, you know. They put an
animal out and they want to break it in right away, and they want to
get some money for it right on the spot. That is what they are in
Africa for. They want to take on the animals and break them in at
once. The Germans are more scientific than the English. In German East
Africa they are making a great success of domesticating these animals
I have spoken of, and crossing the zebra.... The Germans in Germany,
France, and Belgium, not to mention those in the United States, tried
scientifically to make the leopard change his spots, too.”
The man really exhibited an unusual acquaintance with wild beasts, and
he summed up the picturesque argument for the bill when he said: “If
there is vegetation in a river, the hippopotamus will never leave the
river. If you had the hippopotamus in Louisiana and it ate up all your
water plants you would be quite willing to let the hippo live down
there. You see the water plants have to live on a certain amount of
air, and the fish live on a certain amount of air. Neither the plant
nor the fish can live on air that is not there. As the plant is the
stronger, and is able to take the air from above, it will draw it at
the bottom and draw it from the top, and the fish is suffocated in the
water. Then when a storm comes and blows the water plants, which are
floating, all to one side, the fish are netted up against them and kept
in one place until they die. These plants exhaust the air in the water
that is passing through the fishes’ gills and that destroys the fish.”
I wish there were space here to reproduce all the proceedings of that
hearing--it is historic vaudeville: a German spy teaching a class of
American congressmen about the hippo, and suggesting subtly that when
they purchase a fleet of the great beasts for the Louisiana bayous,
they let him round them up. He would have done it if there had been
American money in it.
[Illustration: 1. Fritz Duquesne as a War Correspondent
2. Duquesne as a Boer Soldier
3. From Duquesne’s Press Notices
4. As a British Prisoner of War
5. A Prisoner’s Bank Note Found in Duquesne’s Effects]
American money appeared from another source, however, in 1911. Duquesne
had been working in a desultory way for the moving pictures, and he
interested one Hite, a functionary in the Thanhouser Film Company, in
a plan to explore Central America with a moving-picture camera. Ashton
said he also obtained financial support from Frank Seiberling of the
Goodyear Rubber Company of Akron, a great patron of sports, and the
financier of the ill-fated balloon “Akron” in which Walter Wellman once
tried to cross the Atlantic. He set sail in 1911 for Jamaica, where he
enlisted the finances of his father-in-law, Wortley, in the project,
and then moved on to Guatemala. There he was suspected of revolutionary
activities, and after cabling Washington and receiving a satisfactory
report from the state department, he was released, and made his way
through Honduras to Nicaragua. There he spent some time, and saw
something of O’Connell, the railroad man--enough to receive a pass
over all lines of the Nicaraguan railroad.
In 1913 he returned to the United States. Among the papers which we
discovered was a record of an insurance policy for a maximum of $80,000
worth of moving picture film at $4 a foot, which Duquesne took out
with the Mannheim Insurance Company in New York on December 17. He was
setting out on another expedition, and he wished to insure his reels of
film on shipboard from
“seas, fires, pirates, rovers, assailing thieves, jettison,
barratry of the master and mariners, and all other perils,
losses and misfortunes that have or shall come to the hurt,
detriment or damage of the said goods and merchandise or any
part thereof.”
By a separate certificate the company also insured Duquesne against
further risk, thus:
“It is agreed that this insurance covers only the risk of
capture, seizure or destruction by men-of-war, by letters of
marque, by taking at sea, arrests, restraints, detainments
or acts of kings, princes and people authorized by and in
prosecution of hostilities between belligerent nations....”
and off to the Spanish Main and the pirates and the assailing thieves
sailed Fritz Duquesne.
His migrations during the years of 1914 and 1915 are not clear. This
much is certain: that on June 16, 1915, Sir C. Mallet, the British
minister at Panama, wrote to the foreign office in London the following
note, setting forth an observation he had made that day in the Zone:
“Through a Canal Zone detective I learnt confidentially that a
passenger named Captain F. Duquesne, travelling with a passport issued
by the United States Consul at Mañaos, Brazil, had embarked for
Trinidad on the R. M. S. _Panama_ on the 14th instant.
“My informant stated that Captain Duquesne poses as an American officer
but in reality is an intelligence officer in the service of the German
Government.
“I have warned the Governor of Trinidad by telegraph so that a watch
may be kept on Captain Duquesne’s movements.”
The wily captain had been cruising rather busily through the Caribbean,
over the Isthmus, and into South America. His passport connected him
with Mañaos, the British message established his presence at Panama
and Trinidad, a German war communiqué dated “December 20,” and signed
by the German consul, Lehmann, in Guatemala, showed that he was an
acceptable guest at the outposts of the German Empire. And he had
visited Nicaragua before he entered Panama in 1915, for we found in his
possession this letter:
“Managua, May 5, 1915.
“Imperial German Consulate
for Nicaragua:
“It is a pleasure for me to recommend to you, my countrymen,
the bearer of this, Mr. Fritz Duquesne, Captain of Engineers to
the Boer army, very warmly.
“The same gentleman has on many occasions given many notable
services to our good German cause.
“The Imperial German Consul,
“UEBERSEXIG.”
Enclosed in the envelope was Uebersexig’s personal card, reinforcing
his recommendation of Duquesne as an accredited German agent.
Trinidad is a good jumping-off place into the far tropics, and it
is quite possible that as Ashton said Duquesne disappeared into the
interior of Brazil, and “explored the unknown regions of Brazil and
the Amazon.” It is not hard to find unknown regions of Brazil within
a few miles of the coast. He probably did not penetrate far into the
interior, for in January of 1916, he showed up in lower Brazil.
He emerged from the interior as a valiant explorer, preceded by native
carriers whom he had hired to transport his precious movie-film. As
he approached the port of Bahia Duquesne’s personality underwent a
perceptible change. Duquesne suddenly became George Fordham. Among his
papers we found an application for shipment by a Brazilian broker which
read as follows:
“Honorable Superintendent.
“Francisco Figuerado requests a permit to ship for New York
via steamer _Verdi_ to sail on January 28, 1916, a case as
described below:
“Bahia, January 27, 1916.
“Raul E. de Oliveira, Custom House Broker.
“1 case weighing 80 kilos 00$500
“One case of potter’s earth in dust (samples)”
Potter’s earth may have been included in the materials in the case,
but that is doubtful, for on October 4, 1916, “Mrs. Alice Duquesne
being duly sworn deposes and says that she accompanied her husband,
Captain Fritz Duquesne, during his trip through Central America in the
Spring and Summer of 1914. That in the baggage was an iron trunk used
to carry moving picture films and negatives which she presumes to be
the same trunk that was subsequently shipped by Capt. Duquesne per
the S. S. _Tennyson_ from Bahia to New York sailing in January, 1916.
That the said trunk was about ½ inch thick, and made of iron about 45
inches in length by 30 inches in height by 26 inches in depth ... had
a hinged cover that overlapped the sides of same, and fastened down
with two thumb screws and a lock. That two iron bands went around the
trunk and were riveted to same. That the cover was lined with packing
where it overlapped the sides of the trunk. That the said trunk was
of very solid construction, painted a dark green, almost black, and
that two men were required to lift same.” Hardly a suitable receptacle
for potter’s earth. Furthermore, George Fordham, whose handwriting is
identical with that of Fritz Duquesne for the simple reason that the
two men were the same, on February 11 signed an invoice at the American
consulate in Bahia stating that he solemnly and truly declared that
the 28,000 feet of moving picture film and the 4100 negatives which
he was shipping back to the United States were to the best of his
knowledge and belief of the manufacture of the United States and had
been exported from the United States in 1913.
[Illustration:
1. A significant clipping found in Duquesne’s effects
2. A German Communique found on Duquesne
3. The United States Customs invoice by which Duquesne, as
“George Fordham,” shipped his “Films”
]
The _Tennyson_ sailed quietly out of the river-mouth into the Atlantic
and Duquesne vanished just as quietly. On February 26, when the ship
was coasting along the Brazilian forest toward the Equator, a terrific
explosion occurred in her hold, and three sailors were killed. The iron
trunk never reached New York. The news of the catastrophe set fire to
the British in South America and the English press seethed with such
paragraphs as this--which we found in Duquesne’s papers, clipped from
an Argentine newspaper:
“Rio de Janeiro.
“The confession of the clerk Bauer, arrested in connection
with the _Tennyson_ outrage, which led to the discovery of the
papers and funds of the band of German bombers in an English
safe deposit institution reveals a plot of far-reaching
consequences fraught with danger to the neutrality of a number
of South American republics, as well as peril to the lives of
their citizens.
“Besides a number of important documents, the police seized
$6,740 in American bills, which were in an envelope marked
‘On His Majesty’s Service’ and addressed: ‘Piet Naciud.’
When this name was published it caused quite a shock in the
Allied circles here, as this man always cultivated their
society and even recited at their benefits. He was ever loud
in his denunciations of the Germans, and as he was a Boer,
or pretended to be one, was doubly liked for his seemingly
praiseworthy attitude. Little did the English dream that they
were harbouring a black-hearted spy in their midst whom they
now know as one of the leading plotters whose audacity is
beyond belief. The safe deposit was in his own name, and he
gave his home address as Cape Town. Neither he nor the agent
Niewirth and his fellow conspirators have yet been arrested. It
is believed that they left with Naciud in a powerful motorboat
that he owned.”
How Captain Fritz Duquesne, alias Fordham, alias Naciud, must have
chuckled as he sat safely in the neutral Argentine and read this
flattering tribute to his audacity. For he did turn up presently
in Buenos Aires, and embarked on a new audacity--nothing less than
collecting the insurance of $80,000 for the loss of the film which he
claimed to have shipped in the iron box!
Let Ashton take up the story:
“... his wife ... tried to collect the insurance, but was advised
that she would have better chances ... if he would disappear. He
then assumed the name of Fredericks. In 1916 a report was published
in the New York _Evening Post_ and the New York _Times_ that he had
been assassinated by Indians in the interior of Bolivia, and being
interested I called at the office of the N. Y. _Post_ and asked Mr.
A. D. H. Smith, editor, to look this report up, and he found that
the report came from the Associated Press, the same being signed
‘Fredericks.’ They also had a cablegram signed, ‘Captain Duquesne,’ and
it said: ‘I am still alive.’ The report also said that he was the sole
survivor of an attack from the Indians and that he was somewhere in
Bolivia recovering in a hospital, the location being unknown. He sent
the message signed ‘Fredericks’ himself from Buenos Aires.
“He then became connected with the Board of Education of the Argentine,
supplying films for the schools, and a certain politician in Buenos
Aires claims he gave him $24,000 with which to purchase films (certain
educational films). He claims to have come to New York with a man named
Williamson and purchased the films, paying $24,000 in cash.”
Mrs. Duquesne was already in New York, having a hard time collecting
her claim against the German-owned Mannheim Insurance Company for the
“sympathy verdict” for damage to the films. He stored the new films
he claims to have purchased in the Fulton and Flatbush Warehouse, 437
Carlton Avenue, Brooklyn--stored them as “statuary,” and used to visit
the warehouse frequently. On one occasion he arrived after hours, and
tried unsuccessfully to bribe the watchman to admit him. He moved to
a small hotel in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and about two weeks after the
storage of the cases of “statuary” in the Brooklyn warehouse, the
warehouse mysteriously caught fire.
By a queer coincidence the “films”--Duquesne has never proved that he
did buy them--which of course were destroyed in this fire too, had been
insured by their purchaser, “Mr. Frederick Fredericks,” for $33,000 by
the Stuyvesant Insurance Company, and he set out to collect the $33,000
for the total loss of his property. If both claims proved successful,
he and his wife would have gathered in some $113,000. But they found it
one thing to be insured and another thing entirely to get the money.
Times were not treating Duquesne well.
Along in July, 1917, when the United States was in the throes of
buckling down to the business of war, and Washington was sweltering
under its increased load of war-time population and business, Ashton,
Duquesne’s old friend, happened to have business in the capital. He
dropped in to call on Robert F. Broussard, of New Iberia, Louisiana,
who in 1915 had been elected senator from this state ... the same
Broussard who had been the author of the hippopotamus bill. Ashton
asked the United States Senator from Louisiana if he had heard from
Captain Duquesne. Ashton continues: “his secretary overheard the
conversation (his secretary is a charming young lady) and I took her
out to dinner, and about five days later she wrote me and said, ‘You
may be interested to know that Captain Duquesne is in Washington, but
does not want it known.’ I immediately became interested and concluded
that if Captain Duquesne was in Washington and did not want it known,
especially to me, I ... would investigate. So I went to Washington ...”
and learned something of Duquesne’s whereabouts and circumstances.
“After hearing this story in Washington,” Ashton continues, “I learned
that this man was in desperate need of assistance and I offered to
help him in any way that I could.... Senator Broussard was trying to
secure a position for him with General Goethals,... also at this time
he had plans on file with the Secretary of the Navy, of an invention
to destroy mines in harbors, and was hoping that he might secure a
position with the Navy Department. I had been offered a position
with George Creel, and I also introduced Duquesne to him, and I then
got in touch with Major Kendall Barnelli. I advised him to listen to
Duquesne and to give him a position. I also advised Barnelli that I was
investigating Duquesne’s story.”
Damon Ashton then brought Pythias Duquesne back to New York and put him
up in the apartment in which the Bomb Squad men had first been called
to investigate the theft of papers. Duquesne begged his friend not
to make him known under his own name, as the insurance case for the
warehouse fire was still pending. So Duquesne continued to masquerade
as “Fredericks.” His health was poor, and he did not go to work at
once. At times Ashton’s charity seemed to irk Duquesne, and he even
went to the telephone and called up an agency to discuss a lecture
tour. The lecture agents told him that only war lectures were making
money. There was a real inspiration, and after working for several
days to assemble a uniform of the West Australia Light Horse, correct
in every detail, he dressed up in it and called at the lecture bureau
as Captain Claude Staughton. His Australian experience as chaperone
to the camels stood him in good stead, and he went about town mixing
with British Army officers without arousing suspicion. He even got on
famously with the late Sir George Reed, prime minister of Australia,
whom he met one night at the Hotel Astor.
The Pond lecture folk took him up and arranged a tour for him.
Consciously or unconsciously, they swallowed Duquesne whole. They
had him photographed in his new uniform, with the ribbons of three
decorations over his heart, and they reproduced the natty figure on the
cover of a publicity folder announcing the subjects on which Captain
Claude Staughton was prepared to talk. “Captain Staughton,” read the
folder, “has perhaps seen more of the war than any man at present
before the public.... He wears ribbons showing that he has received
five medals: two of these the King’s and Queen’s for service in the
Boer war, carrying seven clasps; one is for service in Natal, and two
for bravery in saving lives. A sixth French medal for which he has been
cited is yet to be awarded. At the outbreak of the Boer war, Captain,
then Lieutenant, Staughton, was an officer in one of Australia’s crack
horse regiments, the Mounted Rifles. He went with his regiment to
Africa, and served in Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, Natal
and Basuto Land. He was with Kitchener at the Battle of Paardeburg when
General Cronje was captured; was with Lord Roberts at the Capture of
Bloemfontein; at the fall of Johannesburg and the seizure of Pretoria.
Later, in pursuit of DeWet’s army, he was attached to General Knox’s
flying column as intelligence officer and commandeering officer for
the Australian Bushmen. He later entered the Cape forces and took
active part in the clearing up of Basuto Land, and in the last Natal
insurrection he fought with the Natal forces.”
That is a mere fragment of the fighting in which this eulogy proceeded
to sketch Captain Staughton’s modest part. New Guinea, Gallipoli,
Flanders, the Somme, Arras (illustrated by motion pictures), four
times gassed, three times bayoneted, once pronged by a German
trench-hook--those were the high lights of the career which, the folder
assured the public, had finally brought him face to face with the most
fearless lecture audience in the world--the United States. He would be
pleased to lecture on the story of the Anzacs, underground warfare--or,
on “German Spy Methods,” of which “he had learned much in Egypt.”
One of the sub-topics in this lecture on German spy methods was this:
“Germany pays nothing for its spying on us.--We pay it all.--How long
will we stand it?”
Well, we stood it for a long time--too long a time by half. But
not long enough to permit Captain Staughton to lecture before many
audiences, nor to ask this question too frequently. He gulled a few
suburban Sunday schools, but his arrest put an end at least to his
attempt to pick up a bit of odd change by collecting insurance.
For the steamship _Tennyson_ was British territory, and, as this is
written, the report comes that this picturesque charlatan is going back
across the Atlantic, to be tried for the murder of a British sailor. So
begins the last chapter in the story of Fritz Duquesne.
X
THE PRUSSIAN, THE BOLSHEVIK, AND THE ANARCHIST
We caught a glimpse, in the chapter describing the attempt to wreck St.
Patrick’s Cathedral, of the peace-time game of the anarchist group;
we looked into their meeting places and their disorderly minds; and
those of us who are familiar with the localities which were their
haunts in New York City will have been enabled to visualize with some
clearness the squalid surroundings in which they worked. War gave
them new opportunities, and possibly a few high-lights which the Bomb
Squad caught of the anarchist, I. W. W., and Russian activities since
1914 may prove to be readable. If they are readable the author should
be content, but he will not be unless he has put before his people
something which may serve as a warning for the period of readjustment
which the end of war has opened.
An anarchist publication appeared in New York, dated November 15, 1918,
four days after Germany had signed the armistice, with this legend on
its front page, in large type:
“The War Is Dead: Long Live the Revolution!”
It reflects the joyful frame of mind with which orthodox anarchists
received the news of peace, and hailed the beginning of what they
thought would be unrestrained guerilla warfare on law and class. They
had done very little to help the war, and their two chief figures, Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were in prison for obstructing the draft
of America’s army. Yet the anarchists as a class were extremely happy.
Let us review some of the reasons why.
On October 25, 1915, Har Dayal, who had fled at the outbreak of war to
the protection of Berlin, where he was placed in charge of the Indian
Nationalist Committee, wrote from Amsterdam, Holland, to Alexander
Berkman in New York. The letter follows:
“Dear Comrade:
“I am well and busy and sad. Can you send me some earnest and
sincere comrades, men and women, who would like to help our
Indian revolutionary movement in some way or other? I need the
coöperation of very earnest comrades. Perhaps you can find
them in New York or at Paterson. They should be real fighters,
I. W. W.’s or anarchists. Our Indian party will make all
necessary arrangements.
“If some comrades wish to come, they should come to Holland. We
have a centre in Amsterdam, and Dutch comrades are working with
us. If some comrades are ready to come, please telegraph me
from New York to the following address:
“‘Israel Aaronson, c/o Madame Kercher,
“‘116 Oude Scheveningerweg,
“‘Scheveningen, Holland.’
“My assumed name is ‘Israel Aaronson.’ Kindly don’t
telegraph in your own name. The word ‘yes’ will suffice. The
Rotterdam-Amerika Line will receive instructions from us here
to give tickets, etc., to as many persons as you recommend. All
financial arrangements will be made by our party.
“News from India is good. We have lost (?) some very brave
comrades in the recent skirmishes.
“It would be better if you could intimate in your telegram how
many comrades wish to come. For instance, put the number in
some sentence. I shall understand, e. g., Five months’ holiday
coming. Etc., etc.
“The need for the services of comrades is urgent. Please do
come to our help. We are fighting against heavy odds.
“With love and respect.
“Your for the Fight,
“HAR DAYAL.”