MEXICO, IRELAND, AND BOLO
Huerta arrives in New York--The restoration plot--German intrigue
in Central America--The Zimmermann note--Sinn Fein--Sir Roger
Casement and the Easter Rebellion--Bolo Pacha in America and
France--A warning.
Germany learned during President Roosevelt's administration that
the Monroe Doctrine was not to be tampered with. The United States
stood squarely upon a policy of "hands off Latin America." But both
commercial and diplomatic Germany were attracted by the bright colors
of the somewhat kaleidoscopic political condition of the Central
and South American nations. In political confusion, Mexico, at the
outbreak of war, led all the rest. This suited Germany's purpose
perfectly--provided that at least one faction in Mexico might be
susceptible to her influence. The first three years of war proved
to the satisfaction of the most skeptical that Mexican unrest would
trouble the United States, and it was upon this theory that Germany
long before 1914 baited her hook for Mexico.
Propagandists in our neighbor republic added fuel to the already
brisk flame of native hostility to the Yankee. A considerable German
commercial colony grew up, assimilated the language and customs of
Mexico, and bade fair to be a strong competitor in the development of
the huge natural resources waiting there for foreign capital. By 1914
Germany had evidently expected to be in a position sufficiently strong
to enlist Mexico on her side in case the United States gave trouble.
The reader will recall that Admiral von Hintze in the summer of 1914
had recommended Captain von Papen for a decoration for having organized
a fair military unit of the Germans in Mexico. That same summer,
however, saw Mexico with troubles of her own, and German efforts
against the United States through Mexico had to be postponed.
Early in 1914 General Huerta, an unscrupulous, powerful and dissolute
factionist, had executed a _coup d'etat_ which placed him in the
president's chair. He at once advertised for bids. The United States
had no intention of protecting him, and in order to stop at its source
any trouble which might prove too attractive to a foreign power,
placed an embargo upon the shipment of American arms into Mexico. The
American fleet was despatched to Vera Cruz to see that the order was
carried out. The steamship _Ypiranga_, with a cargo of arms, succeeded
in eluding the fleet, and under orders from the German admiral, and the
direction of Karl Heynen, the arms were landed.
Huerta had promised the presidency to Felix Diaz. In order to get him
out of the way he sent Diaz to negotiate a Japanese understanding. The
United States gently diverted Señor Diaz from his mission. Huerta began
to lose the grip he held; three other factionists, Villa, Carranza
and Zapata, each at the head of an army, were aiming at his head, and
shortly before the world went to war the old rogue fled to Barcelona.
There Rintelen negotiated with him in February, 1915, and out of their
conferences grew a plan to restore him to the Mexican presidency.
This plan would have meant war between Mexico and the United States,
which was precisely what von Rintelen and his Wilhelmstrasse friends
desired: American forces would have to be mobilized at the Rio Grande,
and American munitions, destined for the Allies, would have to be
commandeered and diverted to Mexico.
The aged general arrived in New York in April, and was interviewed
and photographed. He told the public through the newspapers that he
proposed to acquire an estate on Long Island and the public considered
it not inauspicious that the veteran warrior should have come to pass
the remainder of his stormy life in the world's most peaceful country.
Fortunately for the peace of the United States not every one believed
him.
Within a week of his arrival von Rintelen slipped into New York. He
placed in the Havana branch of the Deutsches Bank and in banks in
Mexico City some $800,000 to Huerta's credit, and within a short time
the political jackals who lived on foreign subsidy began to prick up
their ears. Von Papen and Boy-Ed had made trips to the Mexican border,
arranging through their consular agents in the Mexican towns across the
river the mobilization of Germans in Mexico, the storing of supplies
and ammunition, and the deposit of funds in banks at Brownsville, El
Paso, San Antonio and Douglas. Not all Mexicans in the United States
were Huertistas, however, and one Raphael Nieto, Assistant-Secretary of
Finance to Carranza, was quite as eager to follow Huerta's activities
as were the agents of the United States. The Carranzistas joined forces
with the Secret Service and found out that the plot had already begun
to develop.
During the month of May, Huerta frequently met a member of the German
Embassy at the Hotel McAlpin. Von Rintelen was clever enough not to
negotiate in person, but he dined frequently with the Embassy member.
Much of what had occurred at these conferences in the McAlpin was known
to government agents, who had been concealed where they could take
notes on the conversation. On June 1, 1915, General Huerta, with Jose
Ratner, his "financial adviser," held a conference in the Holland House
with a former Huertista cabinet minister, a son of the Mexican general,
Angeles, and certain other personages who purposed to take part in
the revolution for the sake of this world. One of the men present was
a Carranza spy, and through him it became known that Huerta outlined
that he had ten millions of dollars for immediate use in a plot to
restore him to his former position, twice that sum in reserve, and that
more would be forthcoming if necessary. Arms and ammunition, he said,
would be shipped into Mexico secretly, supplies would be accumulated
at certain border towns, and envoys had already been sent to incite
desertion from the armies of Carranza and Villa.
Rintelen did not know that the Carranzistas had sold out to the
authorities. Rintelen had already purchased some $3,000,000 worth of
arms and cartridges, and he was prepared to see the enterprise to a
successful conclusion. Incidentally he was quietly supplying six other
Mexican factions with funds in case Huerta's measure of success should
prove too intoxicating.
Because he was a figure of considerable international notoriety and
indisputable news interest, the press had been following Huerta's
movements with strict attention. Affairs at the border were not
reassuring and there persisted the feeling that Huerta in the United
States held promise of Huerta once more in Mexico. In July, his
agent, Ratner, issued the following frank though apparently ingenious
statement:
"General Huerta and those of us associated with him are confident that
the whole Mexican situation will be cleared up within ninety days. We
believe that to rule the country is a one-man job. And in that time
we expect that one man to come forward and unite the country. General
Huerta does not care to indicate the man he has in mind, but he is from
our viewpoint a true patriot, and naturally that excludes both Carranza
and Villa.
"General Huerta may or may not return to Mexico some day, and may or
may not hold office there again. At present he is giving himself up
wholly to an agreeable and home life in this city (New York)."
Whether or not General Huerta was to "return to Mexico some day"
depended upon the temper of the United States. He knew that when he
authorized the statement. He did not know--or else he was incredibly
bold--that the Government was in possession of the whole story, and
that orders had been issued from the highest source in the country
not to let him return. One day in the late summer he slipped away,
ostensibly to visit the San Francisco Exposition. Government agents
shadowed him and let him make his own pace. He took the southern route,
and traveled so quietly that his flight was not publicly marked until
he had passed through Kansas City. As he approached the border he
became as eager as a boy at the prospect of his 'return from Elba';
then, as he was almost in sight of the soil from which he had been
exiled, he was arrested on a technical charge and jailed.
In August Rintelen fled the country. The _Providence Journal_ had just
published an irritating charge that Boy-Ed was carrying on negotiations
with Mexico; the German Embassy denied the charge, although Boy-Ed
with his knowledge of Mexico had assisted ably in the plot; and the
excitement of official interest in Huerta's recent connections made von
Rintelen nervous. When he was captured at Falmouth by the British, his
man-Friday, Andrew V. Meloy, confessed that he had inadvertently tipped
over the plot when he had innocently telephoned a Carranzista to find
out, for safety sake, whether the Carranza party suspected Huerta. It
was this Carranzista who made a few inquiries of his own, and succeeded
in planting the spy in the Holland House meeting.
The aged general, although he was transferred to a more comfortable
prison, took his confinement bitterly. His dream had been bright
indeed, and it had been bluntly interrupted. As the autumn came on his
health showed signs of failing, and his career of dissipation began
to total the final reckoning. The illness became grave, and after
two surgical attempts to save his life, he died in January, 1916,
heartbroken.
Von Eckhart, the minister to Mexico City, was to Mexico what
Bernstorff was to the United States and he employed faithfully the
familiar tactics of his superior: revolution, editorial propaganda,
filibustering and double dealing. In the fall of 1916 the fine German
hand could be seen prompting a note sent by Mexico to the United
States urging an embargo on the shipment on munitions and foodstuffs
to the warring nations (Mexico had neither foodstuffs nor munitions to
supply). And in December, 1916, Eckhart was robbed of the achievement
of a conspiracy of fantastic proportions.
In order to appreciate the fantasy, one must bear in mind the
temperament of a Central American. Eckhart and his colleague, Lehmann,
German minister to Guatemala, proposed to harness that temperament to
a German wagon and drive the Latin republics to the formation of "the
United States of Central America," which presumably would have borne a
Prussian eagle in the field of its ensign.
Carranza disliked Cabrera of Guatemala; so, too, did Dr. Irias, a
Nicaraguan liberal. Certain factions in Honduras disapproved of their
president; certain factions in Guatemala could be counted on to support
revolution against Cabrera; Dr. Irias, the defeated candidate, disliked
Emiliano Chammorra, the President of Nicaragua, enormously. What more
natural than that they combine forces and with German money and arms
kindle not one revolution but a series of them, with an invasion thrown
in for good measure? Accordingly they conferred with a Salvadorean
politician, a Cuban revolutionist, and an associate of the Costa
Rican minister of war. The cast complete, they planned to assemble
revolutionary forces, with German military advisers, on the coast of
Salvador. Using Salvador as a base, attacks were to be made upon
Nicaragua and Guatemala, and at the proper time Carranza was to invade
Guatemala from the north. Colombia's services were to be enlisted
by the promise of restoration of the Republic of Panama--originally
a Colombian province. As soon as the combined revolutionaries had
succeeded in overthrowing their governments, they were to form the
United States of Central America, with Irias as president, and William
of Hohenzollern as counsel.
Our levity is pointed not at the Central American temperament and
political instability, but rather towards the grotesquely serious
objective of the German plotters. If their military forces had been
Prussian shock troops they would certainly have succeeded. The use
of a Mexican gunboat to transport German officers with an airplane
and wireless apparatus from Mexico to Salvador exposed the plan.
President Cabrera of Guatemala had a small but effective force of
thirty thousand men, and a well-equipped artillery, armed--and he
was prepared for attack from either frontier. He also enjoyed the
confidence of Washington, and he informed Washington at once what was
afoot. The answer arrived presently in the shape of the American fleet,
on a peaceful expedition to survey the Gulf of Fonseca, its newly
acquired Nicaraguan naval base. The revolutions failed for want of
revolutionists, the German enterprise failed for want of revolutions,
and of the conspirators only one, Tinoco of Costa Rica, succeeded in
capitalizing the unrest by a _coup d'etat_ which made him president.
The plot never reached maturity in Colombia or Panama.
Before dismissing it from consideration, however, it is worth a
moment's analysis. With any degree of success it would have distracted
the United States, and perhaps have involved her marine corps as well
as her navy. It contained possibilities of war between Mexico and the
United States. It projected a blow at the Panama Canal. It concerned
a territory in which commercially as well diplomatically the United
States had definite concern and in which Germany had already shown a
greedy interest. Incidentally it reveals--in its offer to Colombia--the
same diplomatic technique as that which was shortly to startle the
United States into the last step towards war, the so-called "Zimmermann
note."
At 3 A. M. (Berlin time) on January 19, 1917, the following message was
sent by wireless to Count von Bernstorff from the Foreign Office:
"BERLIN, January 19, 1917.
"On the first of February we intend to begin submarine warfare
unrestricted. In spite of this it is our endeavor to keep neutral
the United States of America.
"If this is not successful we propose an alliance on the following
basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and together
shall make peace. We shall give general financial support and it
is understood that Mexico is to recover the lost territory in
New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. The details are left to you for
settlement.
"You are also instructed to inform the president of Mexico of the
above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain there
will be an outbreak of war with the United States and suggest that
the President of Mexico on his own initiative should communicate
with Japan suggesting adherence at once to this plan; at the same
time offer to mediate between Germany and Japan.
"Please call to the attention of the President of Mexico that the
employment of ruthless submarine warfare now promises to compel
England to make peace in a few months.
"(Signed) ZIMMERMANN."
This document was decoded from the official dictionary cipher and laid
in the hands of President Wilson almost immediately following the
rupture of diplomatic relations. It was made public on February 28,
when the public temper was at whitest heat. Mexico did not repudiate
the note at once, and four days later despatched a denial of having
received any such proposal as Zimmermann had suggested. Eckhart
was forcing Carranza's hand with the lure of the projected Central
American enterprise already outlined. (Eckhart had had Carranza so
completely under his influence at one time that when the United States
despatched to Mexico a friendly note warning her of the presence of
German submarines in the Gulf, Mexico retorted--at Eckhart's literal
dictation--that the United States might do well to ask the British
Navy why it did not prevent German undersea craft from approaching the
Americas.) The month of March fled by, and America went to war; since
that date no official expression except one of praise for Mexico's
attitude of amiable neutrality has issued from Washington.
Just as the proximity of Mexico to the United States had for a number
of years past carried with it the possibility, almost the certainty, of
differences between the two countries, rising out of the temperamental
differences of their peoples, so for a longer period had Ireland and
England suffered for their contiguity. It is a truism to remark that
the Irishman cherishes his national grievances, but that characteristic
accounts for a further phase of German intrigue on American soil.
Hatred of England sent many thousands of Irish to the United States in
the past fifty years. They found it a country to their liking, which
England was not, and although they had become indissolubly attached
to their adopted land, there were in America in 1914 (and there are
in 1918) numerous Irish who had no dearer wish than that England come
off second best in the great war. Allies after Germany's own heart
they were, therefore. They had been cultivated long since: in 1909,
when plans were being made for a centenary celebration in 1914 of
the peace that had reigned between the United States and England,
German-American and Irish-American interests began to raise a structure
of their own, exploiting the prominence which certain Germans, such
as Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz, had enjoyed in the construction of
the nation. The programme of these interests included the erection of
elaborate memorials over the graves of prominent German Americans,
the dissemination of legends of German heroes in America, and more
practically the frustrating of the projected Peace Centenary.
Many of the organizations thus united for a practical purpose found a
clearing-house in the American Truth Society, of which Jeremiah O'Leary
was the head. Although the Centennial Celebration itself was rudely
interrupted by the advent of war, the German-Irish acquaintanceship
was nourished by the German propagandists in America. They observed
with pleasure the circulation by the Clan-na-Gael of cards informing
the Irish in America that troops from Erin were being assigned to the
most dangerous posts and the bloodiest attacks and subjected to the
most severe enemy fire in France, and that the hated British were
dragging Irish boys from their homes to fill up the ranks. Between
September, 1914, and April, 1915, funds amounting to $80,000 for the
purchase of arms and the printing of seditious papers and leaflets
were forwarded from America to Dublin banks, and then mysteriously
were withdrawn. An inflammatory publication known as _Bull_, published
by O'Leary, and not barred from the mails until September, 1917, went
broadcast over the United States, inciting bitterness against England,
and found a greedy circle of readers in the German-American population.
John Devoy, a Sinn Feiner of standing in America, fanned the flame
with a newspaper known as the _Gaelic American_, published in New
York, and it is this American-printed sheet which furnished the Irish
revolutionists with material for a part of the plot which they were
preparing for fruition in the year 1916.
[Illustration: _Copyright, International Film Service_
Jeremiah A. O'Leary]
In 1916 Sir Roger Casement, an Irish knight, made his way into Germany.
He was permitted to visit the prison camp at Limburg where some 3,000
Irish prisoners of war were quartered, and he moved about among them
attempting to obtain enlistments in an army which was to effect a
coup in Dublin to overthrow the British government in the Castle and
to proclaim an Irish Republic. He circulated numerous copies of the
_Gaelic American_ to arouse the men. He was variously received. Some
of the prisoners held their release worth treason--but only fifty-odd.
The greater majority rejected Sir Roger's offer, and some even chose
to curse and spit at the suggestion that they break their oaths of
allegiance to Great Britain. He succeeded, however, in enlisting German
financial assistance, and in early April, 1916, a cargo of captured
Russian arms and ammunition was forwarded to Kiel and loaded into the
German auxiliary steamship _Aud_.
Some 11,000 revolutionists were in a state of mental if not martial
mobilization in Ireland by this time. There were in Dublin some 825
rifles. But so cleverly were the volunteers' orders passed from
member to member, that Sir Matthew Nathan, Under-secretary of State
for Ireland, testified later that he did not know until three days
before the outbreak occurred that German interests were coöperating.
Evidently, however, sympathizers in America knew it full well, for in
the von Igel papers captured in von Papen's office in New York was
found the following message to von Bernstorff:
"NEW YORK, April 17, 1916.
"Judge Cohalan requests the transmission of the following remarks:
"The revolution in Ireland can only be successful if supported
from Germany, otherwise England will be able to suppress it,
even though it be only after hard struggles. Therefore, help is
necessary. This should consist primarily of aerial attacks in
England and a diversion of the fleet, simultaneously with Irish
revolution. Then, if possible, a landing of troops, arms, and
ammunition in Ireland, and possibly some officers from Zeppelins.
This would enable the Irish ports to be closed against England
and the establishment of stations for submarines on the Irish
coast and the cutting off of the supply of food for England. The
services of the revolution may therefore decide the war.
"He asks that a telegram to this effect be sent to Berlin."
Presumably such a telegram was sent, although on April 17 Sir
Roger, with his recruits, was at Kiel. Three days before the Berlin
press bureau had authorized the issuance of a despatch through
the semi-official Overseas News Agency that "political rioting in
Ireland is increasing." On the same day a news item was published in
Copenhagen stating that Sir Roger had been arrested in Germany to
allay any suggestion that he was engaged in any other enterprise. On
the afternoon of Thursday, April 20, a German submarine stuck its
conning tower out of water off Tralee, on the Irish coast. Three men
presently emerged, unfolded a collapsible boat, and rowed ashore in it.
The three were Casement and two of his henchmen, come home to Ireland
to spread the news that German arms and German aid were at hand. Off
the southwest coast the patrol ship _Bluebell_ of the British Navy
sighted, on Good Friday morning, a ship flying the Norwegian flag, and
calling herself, in answer to the _Bluebell's_ hail, the _Aud_, out of
Bergen for Genoa. Under the persuasive effect of a warning shot from
the _Bluebell_ the _Aud_ followed her as far as Daunt's Rock, where
her crew of German sailors set fire to her, hoisted the German naval
ensign, abandoned ship, and then surrendered under fire. The _Aud_
sank, carrying the arms for Irish revolution with her. Sir Roger was
arrested in hiding, and on Easter Sunday Dublin broke out in revolt. On
Monday a cipher message reached O'Leary, telling him of the uprising
hours before the British censor permitted the news story to cross the
ocean. John Devoy burst out in a heated charge in the _Gaelic American_
that--
"The sinking of the German ship loaded with arms and ammunition
... was the direct result of information treacherously given to the
British Government by a member of the Washington Administration ...
Wilson's officials obtained the information by an act of lawlessness, a
violation of international law and of American law, committed with the
deliberate purpose of helping England, and it was promptly put at the
disposal of the British Government...."
This charge was denied at once from Washington. The specific "violation
of international law and of American law" to which Devoy referred was
generally supposed to be the seizure of the von Igel papers, for the
accusation is the same as that which von Igel made when his office was
raided. How Devoy knew that the von Igel papers contained information
of the proposed expedition from Kiel to Ireland is a question which
Devoy has no doubt had to answer to the Government of the United States
since then. He and O'Leary, with Dennis Spellisy, who had collected
large sums of money for the Sinn Fein cause, were loud in their
protests against the execution of the ringleaders of the revolt on May
3rd, which put a sharp end to the endeavors of the revolutionists. That
O'Leary was known to the German system of secret agents in America
needs no further substantiation. To credit him with generalship,
however, would be doing him too great honor and the Irish-American
population injustice; O'Leary was bitterly pro-German, but so were
hundreds of more prominent and influential Irish-Americans: one could
find the names of several New York Justices upon the roster of the
Friends of Peace. Sir Roger Casement petitioned for a Philadelphia
lawyer at his trial for treason, and Sir Roger's sister attempted
unsuccessfully to reach President Wilson, through his secretary, Joseph
P. Tumulty, in an effort to bring about intercession in the doomed
knight's favor. (Mr. Tumulty was approached more than once by persons
whom he had reason to suspect of alloyed motives who desired to "set
forth a case to the President.") The link between the old country and
the new is close, the future of Ireland is one of more than usual
interest and concern to the United States, and the fact that the great
majority of Irish-Americans have subordinated their insular convictions
to the greater conviction of loyalty to their adopted land is at once a
fine augury of ultimate solution of the Irish question, and a dignified
rebuke to the efforts which Germany has made through America to exploit
Ireland.
On Washington's Birthday, 1916, there came to New York one who posed
as a French publisher and publicist. He brought excellent letters of
recommendation, and was well supplied with money. He was personable,
and well sponsored, and he was correspondingly well received. Within
a month he left the United States for France, with appropriate
expressions of his appreciation of American hospitality.
In April, 1918, that same man faced a French firing squad, guilty of
having attempted to betray his country, and of having traded with the
enemy.
He was Paul Bolo Pacha, Paul Bolo by common usage, Pacha by whatever
right is vested in a deposed Khedive to confer titles. Born somewhere
in the obscurity of the Levant, he came as a boy to Marseilles. He was
successively barber's-boy, lobster-monger, husband of a rich woman who
left him her estate, then café-owner and wine-agent. Then he drifted to
Cairo, and into the good graces of Abbas Hilmi, the Khedive. Abbas was
deposed by the British in 1914 as pro-German, and went to Geneva; Bolo
followed.
Charles F. Bertelli, the correspondent in Paris of the Hearst
newspapers, naïvely related before Captain Bouchardon, a French
prosecutor, the circumstances of his acquaintanceship with Bolo, which
led to the latter's cordial reception at the hands of Hearst when he
arrived in New York. " ... Jean Finot, Directeur of _La Revue_, ... had
sent him a letter of introduction to Mr. Hearst and had requested me to
accredit him with Mr. Hearst. He had said to me: 'Occupy yourself with
the matter, Bolo has very great political power; he is the proprietor
of _Le Journal_ and it would be well that Hearst should know him.'
... I made the voyage with Bolo.... I spoke of Bolo to Hearst and the
latter said to me, 'If he is a great proprietor of French newspapers,
I should be very glad to....' As a compliment to Hearst, Bolo gave a
grand dinner at Sherry's.... Bolo had two personal guests: Jules Bois
and the German, Pavenstedt...." We need draw on Bertelli no further
than to introduce the same Adolph Pavenstedt in whose offices Papen
and Boy-Ed had sought refuge at the outbreak of war in 1914; Adolph
Pavenstedt, head of the banking house of G. Amsinck & Co., through
which the attachés paid their henchmen for attempts at the Welland
Canal, the Vanceboro bridge, and at America's peace in general. Bolo
had made Pavenstedt's acquaintance in Havana in 1913.
Four days after he landed in New York, and before the Hearst dinner
(which was incidental to the plot) Bolo had progressed with his
negotiations to betray France to a point where von Bernstorff sent the
following message to the Foreign Office in Berlin:
"Number 679, February twenty-sixth.
"I have received direct information from an entirely trustworthy
source concerning a political action in one of the enemy countries
which would bring about peace. One of the leading political
personalities of the country in question is seeking a loan of one
million seven hundred thousand dollars in New York, for which
security will be given. I was forbidden to give his name in
writing. The affair seems to me to be of the greatest possible
importance. Can the money be provided at once in New York? That
the intermediary will keep the matter secret is entirely certain.
Request answer by telegram. A verbal report will follow as soon as
a trustworthy person can be found to bring it to Germany.
"BERNSTORFF."
[Illustration: _Copyright, International Film Service_
Paul Bolo Pacha (on the right)]
Herr von Jagow felt that even at that date peace with any belligerent
was worth $1,700,000. He cabled back:
"No. 150, February twenty-ninth.
"Answer to telegram No. 679:
"Agree to the loan, but only if peace action seems to you a really
serious project, as the provision of money in New York is for us
at present extraordinarily difficult. If the enemy country is
Russia have nothing to do with the business, as the sum of money
is too small to have any serious effect in that country. So too
in the case of Italy, for it would not be worth while, to spend so
much.
"(Signed) JAGOW."
The plan approved, the next step was to pay Bolo. Bernstorff's
cablegram of March 5, Number 685, pleaded for the money.
"Please instruct Deutsches Bank to hold 9,000,000 marks at
disposal of Hugo Schmidt. The affair is very promising. Further
particulars follow."
The next day Hugo Schmidt, American representative of the Deutsches
Bank, sent the following wireless through the station at Sayville to
the Deutsches Bank Direktion, Berlin:
"Communicate with William Foxley (the Foreign Office) and
telegraph whether he has placed money at my disposal for Charles
Gladhill (Count von Bernstorff)."
The reply came three days later. It read:
"Replying your cable about Charles Gladhill (von Bernstorff) Fred
Hooven (the Guaranty Trust Company of New York) will receive
money for our account. You may dispose according to our letter of
November 24, 1914, to Fred Hooven."
On March 11, Schmidt, who was working night and day to consummate the
deal, wirelessed again to Berlin:
"Your wireless received. Paid Charles Gladhill (von Bernstorff)
$500 (which signified $500,000) through Fred Hooven (the Guaranty
Trust Company). Gladhill requires further $1,100 ($1,100,000)
which shall pay gradually."
Bolo's affairs were promising well. He had brought with him from
Paris a letter of introduction to the New York manager of the Royal
Bank of Canada, stating that he was the publisher of _Le Journal_,
which required a large quantity of news print paper every day, and
that he had been commissioned by all of the other large newspaper
publishers in Paris to arrange a contract for 20,000 tons monthly. Bolo
confirmed his intention to perform this mission when he deposited in
the Royal Bank of Canada $500,000 which Hugo Schmidt had drawn from
the German government deposits in the National Park Bank and had given
to Pavenstedt, who in turn checked it over to the French traitor. It
was not the purchase of print paper which interested him, however, but
the perversion, through purchase, of as many French newspapers as he
could lay his slimy hands on; once in his possession, they could be
made to carry out a sinister propaganda for a separate peace between
France and Germany. Germany had offered, through Abbas Hilmi, to yield
Alsace-Lorraine in return for certain French colonies, and to evacuate
the occupied portions of French soil, and by painting such a settlement
in bright colors to the people of France Bolo could have served
Germany's ends effectively either by actually accomplishing some such
settlement, or by weakening the morale which was so largely responsible
for holding the German drive against Verdun, then in the first stages
of its fury.
On March 17, the Deutsches Bank wirelessed to Schmidt:
"You may dispose on Fred Hooven (the Guaranty Trust Company) on
behalf Charles Gladhill (von Bernstorff) $1,700 (which meant
$1,700,000)."
Bolo had his million and three-quarters, which he had asked. He had
made disposition of it through the Royal Bank, setting a portion aside
to his wife's credit, depositing another portion to the credit of
Senator Charles Humbert (part-owner with Bolo of _Le Journal_) and
holding a reserve of a million dollars in the Royal Bank subject to his
call. Then he took ship for France.
His final arrangements with Pavenstedt prompted von Bernstorff to send
the following message on March 20 to the Foreign Office:
"No. 692, March 20.
"With reference to telegram No. 685 please advise our Minister
in Berne that some one will call on him who will give him the
password Sanct Regis who wished to establish relations with the
Foreign Office. Intermediary further requests that influence may
be brought to bear in France so far as possible in silence so that
things may not be spoiled by German approval.
"(Signed) BERNSTORFF."
Von Bernstorff had been cautious enough during Bolo's sojourn in the
United States to negotiate with him only through Pavenstedt, in order
that the Embassy might not be compromised in an exceedingly hazardous
undertaking if any suggestion of Bolo's real designs leaked out. He
was fully prepared in such an event to repudiate Pavenstedt, and to
state honestly that he had never seen or heard of Bolo, for until
the day before he left, when Pavenstedt asked the Ambassador for the
telegram of introduction quoted above, Bernstorff did not know Bolo's
name. That he did know it then, and that he discussed Bolo with Berlin
during April and May is evident from the following cable, sent from the
Foreign Secretary to the Embassy at Washington on May 31:
"Number 206. May 31st. The person announced in telegram 692 of
March 20th has not yet reported himself at the Legation at Berne.
Is there any more news on your side of Bolo?
"JAGOW."
There was not, although Bolo was keeping the cables hot with messages
directing the further transfer of the nest-egg of $1,700,000 which he
had acquired in his month in New York. He wanted the money credited
to the account of Senator Humbert in J. P. Morgan & Co., then through
Morgan, Harjes & Co. of Paris he directed the remittance of his
funds to Paris, then cancelled those instructions and directed that
his million be credited to him in Perrier & Cie., in which he was
interested. What twists and turns of fate occasioned the juggling of
these funds after he returned to France is not known, but certainly
no bag of plunder ever passed through more artful manipulation. The
explanation of its hectic adventures may lie in the fact that the
spectacle of Bolo, commissioned to go to the United States to spend
money for news print, and returning with nearly two millions of
dollars, would have interested the French police.
For more than a year he covered his tracks. Shortly after his return
the _Bonnet Rouge_, the declining publication which served ex-Premier
Joseph Caillaux as mouthpiece, began to attract attention for its
discussion of peace propaganda. A strain of pessimism over the conduct
of the war began to make itself apparent in other journals. The arrest
of Duval and Almereyda of the _Bonnet Rouge_ disclosed certain of
Bolo's activities and a search of his house in February revealed papers
covering certain of his financial transactions in America. The United
States was requested to investigate, and refused, as the affair was
considered political, and it was not until we joined France in the war
that the request was repeated, this time with better success.
Attorney-General Merton Lewis of New York State conducted an
investigation which revealed every step of Bolo's operations in New
York. His search of the records of the banks involved indicated that
a fund of some $50,000,000 in cash and negotiable securities lay on
deposit in America which the Deutsches Bank could place at the disposal
of von Bernstorff and his fellow conspirators at any time for any
purpose, and which was adequate as a reserve for any enterprise which
might present itself. The evidence against Bolo was forwarded to Paris,
and he was arrested. On October 4, 1917, Secretary Lansing made public
the correspondence which the State Department had intercepted.
The French public became hysterically interested in the case. Senator
Humbert promptly refunded the 5,500,000 francs which he had received
from Bolo for 1,600 shares in _Le Journal_. Almereyda of the _Bonnet
Rouge_ committed suicide in prison; his death dragged Malvy, Minister
of the Interior under Ribot, out of office under suspicion of trading
with the enemy; the editor of a Paris financial paper was imprisoned
on the same charge; "Boloism" became a generic term, and the French
government, feeling a growing restlessness on the part of the public,
encouraged the new diversion of spy-hunting which resulted in the
exposure of negotiations between Caillaux and German representatives in
Buenos Aires. Russia had been dissolved by similar German propaganda,
Italy, after vigorous advances into Italia Irridenta, had had her
military resistance sapped by another such campaign as Bolo proposed
for France, and had retreated to the Po valley; the sum total of
"Boloism" during the autumn and winter of 1917-1918 was an increased
conviction on the part of the Allied peoples that the line must be held
more firmly than ever, while the rear was combed for prominent traitors.
Thus, a year before she entered war, the United States supplied the
scene of one of the outstanding intrigues of the war. How voluble was
Adolph Pavenstedt in confessing his services as intermediary for the
Kaiser; Pavenstedt was interned in an American prison camp ... a rather
comfortable camp. Hugo Schmidt, who on his own testimony was the
accredited manipulator of enormous sums for the German government, was
ingenuous to a degree in his denial of any knowledge of what the money
paid Bolo was to be used for; Schmidt was interned. Bolo was shot.
Revolution in India, a battle royal on the Central American isthmus, a
revolution in Mexico, uprisings in the West Indies, a separate peace in
France--these were ambitious undertakings. For three years they were
cleared through Washington, D. C. We must accept that fact not alone
with the natural feeling of chagrin which it evokes, but with an eye
to the future. We should congratulate our smug selves that our country
was concerned only with the processes of these intrigues, and was not
subject directly to their results. And then we Americans should ask
ourselves whether it is not logical that, our country having served as
the most fertile ground for German demoralization of other nations, we
should be on our guard for a similar plot against ourselves.
That plot will not come noisily, obviously. It will be no crude effort
to suggest that "American troops are suffering at the hands of the
French high command." It will not be phrased in terms which reek of
the Wilhelmstrasse--earnest, plodding, grotesque German polysyllables.
The German knows that an army must depend upon the hearts of its
people, and he reasons: "I shall attack the hearts of the people, and
I believe that if it is a good principle to attack my enemy from the
rear through his people, it is also a good principle to attack his
people from the rear. The heart is as near the back as it is the front,
_nicht wahr_?" The plot will seem, in its early stages, part and parcel
of our daily life and concern; we shall not see the German hand in it;
the hand will be so concealed as not even to excite the enthusiasm
of the German-American, often a good danger-signal. It will involve
institutions and individuals whom we have trusted, and we shall take
sides in the controversy, and we shall grow violently pro-this and
anti-that. We shall grow sick of the wretchedness of affairs, perhaps,
and we shall lose heart. That is precisely what Germany most desires.
That is what Germany is striving for. That is why the nobility of our
citizenship carries with it the obligation of vigilance. It is in the
hope that each one of us Americans may learn how Germany works abroad,
that we may be better prepared for her next step here, that this
narrative has been written.