“In 1912 the first trouble arose over dividends not being forthcoming
from his investments. He was still strong in Berlin and went there
and raised fresh capital with which he succeeded in placating some of
his investors. Then he was attacked in a Vancouver German paper which
charged him with unscrupulous methods in handling foreign capital.
Copies of this were mailed to Berlin to members of the Reichstag by the
Vancouver editors, and the matter was brought up for discussion by
that body. Alvo was game. He sued the local paper and secured judgment
in a criminal action against the editors. But the fat was in the fire
as far as his German clients were concerned, though he managed to keep
his affairs afloat.
“In the early part of 1914 the financier’s creditors, both in Europe
and Canada, were pressing him. He was tied up in such a mass of deals,
counter-deals, and trades of property with Arnold and the Dominion
Trust Company that an army of auditors has never as yet succeeded in
untangling them. He owed over $10,000 to one of Vancouver’s chartered
banks on some Victoria Island timber deals, which he had anticipated
selling to the British Columbia government for a park reserve. The
Vancouver manager and a dozen of the staff were dismissed through their
connection with this loan.”
He doubtless had advance notice of the outbreak of war, for he suddenly
left Canada.
Later interviewed by a New York paper he said he could “best serve his
country and his clients by returning to the Pacific Coast,” and from
the outbreak of the war until his arrest on the suspicion that he was
implicated in a plot to steal the plans of the Puget Sound Navy Yard
of Bremerton, he remained in Seattle and other American Pacific Coast
cities.