INCENDIARISM
Increased munitions production--The opening explosions--Orders
from Berlin--Von Papen and Seattle--July, 1915--The Van Koolbergen
affair--The autumn of 1915--The Pinole explosion.
A bomb is an easy object to manufacture. Take a section of lead
pipe from six to ten inches long, and solder into it a partition of
thin metal, which divides the tube into two compartments. Place a
high explosive in one compartment and seal it carefully (the entire
operation requires a gentle touch) and in the other end pour a strong
acid; cap it, and seal it. If you have chosen the proper metal for
the partition, and acid of a strength to eat slowly through it to the
explosive, you have produced a bomb of a type which German destroying
agents were fond of using in America from the earliest days of their
operation.
When the first panic of war had passed, the Allied nations took
account of stock and sent their purchasing agents to America for
war materials. Manufacturers of explosives set to work at once
to fill contracts of unheard-of size. They built new factories
almost overnight, hired men broadcast, and sacrificed every other
consideration to that of swift and voluminous output. Accidents were
inevitable. Probably we shall never know what catastrophes were
actually wrought by German sympathizers, for the very nature of the
processes and the complete ruin which followed an explosion guarded the
secret of guilt. No doubt carelessness was largely to blame for the
earlier explosions, but instead of diminishing as the new hands became
more skillful, and as greater vigilance was employed everywhere, the
number of disasters increased. The word "disaster" is used advisedly.
Powder, guncotton, trinitrotoluol (or TNT, as it is better known),
benzol (one of the chief substances used in the manufacture of TNT) and
dynamite were being produced in great volume for the Allies in American
plants within a comparatively short time--all powerful explosives even
in minute quantity.
At sea the German navy was losing control daily. It therefore behooved
the German forces in America to stop the production of munitions at its
source. It may be well, for the force which such presentation carries,
to recount very briefly the major accidents which occurred in America
in the first few months after August, 1914.
On August 30 one powder mill of the du Pont Powder company (strictly
speaking the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company) at Pompton Lakes, New
Jersey, blew up. In September a guncotton explosion in the Wright
Chemical Works caused the death of three people, and a large property
damage. In October the factory of the Pain Fireworks Display Company
was destroyed, and several people were killed. In the same month the
fireworks factory of Detwiller and Street in Jersey City suffered an
explosion and the loss of four lives. These explosions were the opening
guns.
Throughout August and September most of these accidents may be
attributed to the inexperience and confusion which followed greatly
increased production in the powder mills. But a circular dated November
18, issued by German Naval Headquarters to all naval agents throughout
the world, ordered mobilized all "agents who are overseas and all
destroying agents in ports where vessels carrying war material are
loaded in England, France, Canada, the United States and Russia."
Followed these orders:
"It is indispensable by the intermediary of the third person having
no relation with the official representatives of Germany to recruit
progressively agents to organize explosions on ships sailing to enemy
countries in order to cause delays and confusion in the loading, the
departure and the unloading of these ships. With this end in view we
particularly recommend to your attention the deckhands, among whom
are to be found a great many anarchists and escaped criminals. The
necessary sums for buying and hiring persons charged with executing the
projects will be put at your disposal on your demand."
Equally incriminating proof that the "destroying agents" were active in
and about the factories lies in a circular intercepted by the French
secret service in Stockholm, in a letter addressed by one Dr. Klasse in
Germany to the Pan-German League in Sweden, in which he said:
"Inclosed is the circular of November 22, 1914, for information and
execution upon United States territory. We draw your attention to the
possibility of recruiting destroying agents among the anarchist labor
organization." This circular was signed by Dr. Fischer, Councillor
General of the German Army.
In the first six months of 1915 the du Pont factories at Haskell,
N. J., Carney's Point, N. J., Wayne, Pa., and Wilmington, Del.,
experienced explosions and fires; a chemical explosion occurred
in a factory in East 19th Street, New York; the Anderson Chemical
Company, at Wallington, N. J., was rocked on May 3 by an explosion of
guncotton which cost three lives; five more lives were flashed out in
a similar accident in the Equitable powder plant at Alton, Ill. On
New Year's Day, the Buckthorne plant of the John A. Roebling Company,
manufacturers of shell materials, at Trenton, was completely destroyed
by fire, the property loss estimated at $1,500,000. And on June 26, the
Ætna Powder plant at Pittsburgh suffered a chemical explosion which
killed one man and injured ten others.
Most of these "accidents" had taken place near the Atlantic seaboard.
Yet Germany was active in the far West. On May 30 a barge laden with a
large cargo of dynamite lay in the harbor of Seattle, Washington. The
dynamite was consigned to Russia and was about to be transferred to a
steamer, when it exploded with a shock of earthquake violence felt many
miles inland, and comparable to the explosion in the harbor of Halifax
in December, 1917. Two counterfoils in von Papen's check-book cast some
light on the activities of the consulate in Seattle, the first dated
February 11, 1915, the amount $1,300, the payee "German Consulate,
Seattle," the penned notation. "Angelegenheit" (affair) preceded by a
mysterious "C"; the second dated May 11, 1915, for $500, payable to one
"Schulenberg"[2] through the same consulate.
The month of July was a holocaust. A tank of phenol exploded in New
York, the benzol plant of the Semet Solvay Company was destroyed at
Solvay, N. Y.; on the 7th serious explosions occurred at the du Pont
plant at Pompton Lakes and at the Philadelphia benzol plant of Harrison
Brothers (the latter causing $500,000 damage); on the 16th five
employees were killed in an explosion and fire at the Ætna plant at
Sinnemahoning, Pa., three days later there was another at the du Pont
plant in Wilmington; on the 25th a munitions train on the Pennsylvania
line was wrecked at Metuchen, N. J.; on the 28th the du Pont works
at Wilmington suffered again; and the month came to a fitting close
with the destruction of a glaze mill in the American Powder Company at
Acton, Mass., on the 29th. (The British army in Mesopotamia had just
entered Kut-el-Amara at this time, and far to the northward Germany was
prosecuting a successful campaign to force a Russian retirement from
Poland.)
Each incident raised havoc in its immediate vicinity. Each represents a
carefully worked-out plan involving a group of destroying agents. There
is not space here to describe the plots in detail, nor to picture the
horror of their results. But the affidavit of Johannes Hendrikus Van
Koolbergen, dated San Francisco, August 27, 1915, may serve to show
typical methods of operation, as well as to provide a story more than
usually melodramatic.
Van Koolbergen was a Hollander by birth, and a British subject by
naturalization. In April, 1915, he met in the Heidelberg Café, in
San Francisco, a man named Wilhelm von Brincken, who lived at 303
Piccadilly Apartments, and who asked Van Koolbergen to call on him
there. The latter, however, was leaving for Canada, and it was not
until some five weeks later that he returned and found that in
his absence von Brincken had twice telephoned him to pursue the
acquaintance.
Van Koolbergen called. Von Brincken explained that he was a German army
officer, on secret service, and employed directly by Franz Bopp, the
German consul in San Francisco. His visitor's identity and personality
was apparently well known to him, for he offered Van Koolbergen $1,000
for the use of his passport into Canada, "to visit a friend, to assist
him in some business matters." Van Koolbergen refused to rent his
passport, but volunteered to go himself on any mission. This offer
was discussed at a later meeting at the consulate with Herr Bopp, and
accepted, after, as Koolbergen said, "I became suspicious, and upon
different questions being asked me ... I became very pro-German in the
expression of my sentiments."
He was shown into an adjoining office, and von Brincken popped in, and
"asked me if I would do something for him in Canada ... and I answered:
'Sure, I will do something, even blow up bridges, if there is any money
in it.' (This struck my mind because of what I had read of what had
been done in Canada of late--something about a bridge being blown up--)
And he said: 'If that is so, you can make good money.'"
Von Brincken made an appointment with his newly engaged destroying
agent for the following day. On the window-sill of 303 Piccadilly
Apartments sat a flower pot with a tri-colored band around its rim.
If the red was turned outward towards Van Koolbergen as he came along
the street, he was to come right upstairs. If he saw the blue, he was
to loiter discreetly about until the red was turned; if the white area
showed, he was to return another day.
The red invitation signaled him to come up, and the two bargained for
some time over Van Koolbergen's Canadian mission, without coming to an
understanding. Once safely out of von Brincken's sight, the "destroying
agent" pattered to the British Consulate and betrayed to Carnegie Ross,
the consul, what was afoot. Ross urged him to advise Canada at once, so
Van Koolbergen retold his story in a letter to Wallace Orchard, in the
freight department of the Canadian Pacific Railway at Vancouver, B. C.
Orchard telegraphed back demanding Van Koolbergen's presence at once,
and furnished money and transportation. Meanwhile the latter had
pretended to accept von Brincken's commission to go to Canada and blow
up a military train, bridge, or tunnel on the Canadian Pacific line
between Revelstoke and Vancouver, for which he was to receive a fee
of $3,000. The German exhibited complete maps of the railroad, told
when a dynamite train might be expected to pass over that section of
the road, and outlined to Van Koolbergen just where and when he could
procure dynamite for the job. So on a Sunday morning in early May Van
Koolbergen arrived in Vancouver, and lost no time in getting in touch
with Orchard and the British Secret Service, with whom he framed the
following plan:
Van Koolbergen was to send a letter to von Brincken warning him that
something would happen in a day or two. The Vancouver newspapers would
then carry a prepared story to the effect that a tunnel had caved in
in the Selkirk mountains, whereupon Van Koolbergen was to collect for
his services, and to secure incriminating evidence in writing from von
Brincken if possible.
The plot worked well. The news story appeared, and cast a mysterious
air over the accident. Van Koolbergen at once wrote a postcard to von
Brincken:
"On the front page of Vancouver papers of (date) news appears of a
flood in Japan. Our system may be in trouble, so wire here at the
Elysium Hotel."
A few days later Van Koolbergen returned to San Francisco and met von
Brincken, who told him that he had replied to the postcard by telegram:
"Would like to send some flowers to your wife but do not know her
address,"
which meant simply that he had wished to communicate with Van
Koolbergen through the latter's wife. (These messages, by the way, were
despatched from Oakland by Charles C. Crowley, who will appear again.)
And von Brincken paid Van Koolbergen $200 in bills, and asked him to
come to the consulate for the balance of his fee.
Franz Bopp was skeptical. For some reason he mistrusted Van Koolbergen.
He produced a map of British Columbia and asked him to describe what he
had accomplished. Van Koolbergen, confused for a moment, suggested that
he would be unwise to go into detail before three witnesses (Bopp, von
Brincken, and von Schack, the vice-consul). Bopp rose indignantly and
said that his secret was safe with three who had been sworn to serve
the Vaterland. So Van Koolbergen invented and related the story of The
Dynamiting That Never Was, supporting it with copies of the Vancouver
newspapers. Bopp wanted more proof; at Van Koolbergen's suggestion, he
wrote one Van Roggenen, the Dutch vice-consul at Vancouver, asking
him to "inquire of the General Superintendent of the Canadian Pacific
Railway Company why a car of freight which I expected from the East had
not arrived yet, and to kindly wire me at my expense." Van Roggenen
happened to be a friend of Van Koolbergen's, and of course any inquiry
made of the railroad for Van Koolbergen's car of freight would have
been tactfully construed and properly answered. But to make assurance
doubly sure, Van Koolbergen wired Orchard in Vancouver to send him the
following telegram:
"Superintendent refuses information. Found out however that
freight has been delayed eleven days on account of accident.
Signed V. R."
Armed with this fictitious reply, which Orchard soon sent him, Van
Koolbergen called at the consulate, and was paid $300 more in cash.
In order to get as much money as possible as soon as possible, the
"destroying agent" agreed to cut his price from $3,000 to $1,750, and
was promised the money the next day. The next day came, but no money.
Van Koolbergen sent a sharp note to the Consul, suggesting blackmail,
and the German Empire in San Francisco capitulated; von Brincken met
Van Koolbergen at the Palace Hotel and paid him $1,750, (of which he
extracted $250 as commission!). He made Koolbergen sign a receipt for
$700, as he said a payment of $1,750 would look bad on the books, was
much too high--even seven hundred was high, but could be justified
if any one higher up complained. "And," concluded the thrifty Van
Koolbergen in his affidavit written August 27, "I have some of the
greenbacks given me by von Brincken now in my possession."
The San Franciscan participants in the episode were finally brought to
justice. Bopp, Baron Eckhardt, von Schack, Lieutenant von Brincken,
Crowley, and Mrs. Margaret Cornell, Crowley's secretary, were indicted,
tried, and convicted. The men received sentences of two years and
fines of $10,000 each; Mrs. Cornell was sentenced to a year and a day.
The three members of the consulate, thanks to their other activities,
involved themselves in a series of charges for which the maximum
punishment was something more than the average man's lifetime in
prison. Certain of their adventures will appear in other phases of
German activity to be discussed. They may be dismissed here, however,
with the statement that the California consulate also planned the
destruction of munitions plants at Ætna, Indiana, and at Ishpeming,
Michigan.
The State Department released on October 10, 1917, a telegram from
the Foreign Office in Berlin, addressed to Count von Bernstorff,
which established beyond question the chief's familiarity with these
operations, and more especially the continued desire of the Foreign
Office to interrupt transcontinental shipping in Canada. It is dated
January 2, 1916. Its text follows:
"Secret. General staff desires energetic action in regard to
proposed destruction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad at several
points, with a view to complete and protracted interruption of
traffic. Captain Boehm, who is known on your side, and is shortly
returning, has been given instructions. Inform the military
attaché and provide the necessary funds.
"ZIMMERMANN."
The factory explosions continued. The Midvale Steel Company suffered
incendiary fires; a Providence warehouse containing a consignment of
cotton for Russia was burned; there were fires in the shell plant
of the Brill Car Company, in the Southwark Machinery Company, and
in the shell department of the Diamond Forge and Steel Company.
For August the ghastly recitation proceeds somewhat as follows:
Bethlehem Steel Company, powder flash, ten killed; League Island Navy
Yard, Philadelphia, fire on battleship _Alabama_; Newport News Navy
Yard, three fires in three weeks. In September an explosion in the
aeroplane factory of the Curtiss plant at Depew, New York, a German
suspected; explosions in the shell factory of the National Cable and
Conduit Company at Hastings, New York; an explosion of benzol and
wax in the plant of Smith and Lenhart, New York, in which two people
were seriously injured; an explosion in a fireworks factory at North
Bergen, N. J., in which two people were killed; an explosion which cost
two lives in the shell factory of the Westinghouse Electric Company
at Pittsburgh. Scarcely a week went by during the autumn without an
explosion and fire which wiped out from one to a dozen lives, and from
one hundred thousand to a million dollars. Munitions plants were blown
to atoms in a moment, and hardly before the charred ground had cooled,
were being rebuilt, for the guns in France were hungry.
Out of the mass of munitions accidents in the year 1915 stands sharp
and clear the Bethlehem Steel fire of November 10--of which all
Germany had had warning, and on which the German press was forbidden
to comment--when 800 big guns were destroyed. The du Pont and Ætna
organizations suffered again and again; a chemical plant had two fires
which cost three-quarters of a million dollars; two explosions in the
Tennessee Coal and Iron Works at Birmingham, Alabama, did considerable
property damage, and assisted Germany further by frightening labor away
from work. Suspects were arrested here and there, and always their
trails led back to German or Austrian nationality or sympathy.
Their chiefs were elusive. Captain von Papen sauntered out of the
Ritz-Carlton into Madison Avenue, New York, one afternoon. He idled
down to Forty-second Street, and paused, as if undecided where to
promenade. He turned east, walked a block, and turned again down the
ramp into the Grand Central Station. Quickening his pace--he had only
a minute more--he crossed the great waiting-room, presented a ticket
at the train gate, and a moment later was in the Twentieth Century
Limited, the last passenger aboard. He was seen next day in Chicago.
And for a month thereafter he was completely lost to the authorities,
while, as they found out later, he made a grand tour of the country,
going first to Yellowstone Park, then down the Pacific Coast to Mexico,
where he joined Boy-Ed, and finally returning to New York through
San Francisco. He had ample opportunity to confer with his consular
deputies, and his destroying agents. In August a train loaded with
7,000 pounds of dynamite from the du Pont works at Pinole, California,
was destroyed; in the evidence against von Papen is this letter
concerning the price to be paid for the Pinole job:
"Dear S.: Your last letter with clipping today, and note what you
have to say. I have taken it up with them and 'B'" (who was Franz
Bopp) "is awaiting decision of 'P'" (who was von Papen) "in New
York, so cannot advise you yet, and will do so as soon as I get
word from you. You might size up the situation in the meantime."
Glancing back over the record of 1915--which was hardly mitigated in
the succeeding years of war--one is inclined to marvel at the hardy
perennial pose of the deported attaché, who said as he left the United
States:
"I leave my post without any feeling of bitterness, because I know
that when history is once written, it will establish our clean
record despite all the misrepresentations and calumnies spread
broadcast at present."
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Franz Schulenberg was a deserter from the German army who
advertised in the Spokane newspapers in February, 1915, for land on
which to colonize a number of Spanish families. These families turned
out to be Hindus, whom he proposed to employ in obtaining information
of Canadian shipping, to be relayed by secret wireless to German
raiders in the Pacific. Schulenberg was captured on December 5, 1917,
in an automobile on the road from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, two
days after he had left a woman spy who was associated with von Papen's
office, and who directed Schulenberg's movements in the United States.
He admitted having bought, in 1915, a ton of dynamite, fifty Maxim
silencers, fifty rifles, and a quantity of fuse for shipment to Hindus
near the Canadian border, between Victoria and Vancouver.