THE TIGER OF BERLIN MEETS THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
Franz Von Rintelen was the German tiger who missed his spring. He
was the most powerful, the most dangerous, agent of the Kaiser
in the United States: and to-day he nurses his hatred of us
behind prison bars. But he did not retire to confinement until
after our Government completed an extremely difficult and tedious
investigation that was made necessary by his care in concealing
the insidious work of propaganda and destruction in which he had
engaged.
Rintelen was a tiger in the implacable hatred he bore this country
and in the ferocity with which he carried that hatred into action.
Sent to America in 1915 to hinder the shipment of munitions to
the Allies, he sought first to poison the press, then to corrupt
labour, and, not content with these things, he finally tried
to hire thugs to burn, to dynamite, and to assassinate, where
other persuasions failed; and he did succeed in setting fire to
thirty-six ships at sea, causing millions of dollars of loss, and
imperiling hundreds of human lives.
Rintelen had, however, the other side of the tiger’s character--its
graces. When the ---- made port at New York on April 3, 1915, it
bore as passenger one Émil Gasché, a Swiss. The moment Gasché
passed the customs officers Gasché ceased to exist, and in
his place appeared handsome young Von Rintelen, unexpectedly
arrived in America for his fourth visit and renewing pleasant
acquaintanceships in society and in Wall Street. He was “the same
old chap,” to quote his own description of himself in one of his
letters--rich, of a family long accustomed to riches; well-bred,
of a family long proud of its aristocratic connection with the
Imperial Court at Berlin (his father had long been the equivalent
of our Secretary of the Treasury); young, the youngest of the
chief bankers of Germany; handsome, with the good looks that come
of regular features and of a slender frame hardened by athletics
and made distinguished by the bearing of an officer; a sportsman,
who raced his yacht in the Emperor’s regattas at Kiel--an affable,
cultivated, witty, accomplished man of the world. No wonder he had
been popular on his former visits. On one of them he had opened
in New York a branch of the Deutsche Bank, one of the greatest of
the government-controlled banks of Germany, and on another he had
widened these financial relationships with Wall Street. He had
travelled the country over and knew people everywhere; and he knew
about hundreds more, even to their private affairs in money and
politics and those intimate weaknesses that pass into the gossip
of the smoking-room. He spoke the language with only the slightest
accent but in its purest form, and was adept in our peculiar kind
of humour--altogether, a fine and likable fellow, who liked us.
Until the war. And until the Germans, stung by the lost illusions
of a quick and glorious victory, facing the gray outlook of a long
and bitter struggle, looking about for some one to blame for their
plight, and wearied of “strafing” England, found a new narcotic
in a hatred of America. America, that made the cartridges and
shells that patched up the unpreparedness of France and Britain
and Russia, which Germany had calculated as one of the factors
in the equation of victory. America, that--as their rising rage
made their voices shriller--“is murdering our sons and brothers
on every battlefield from Switzerland to the sea for the sake of
blood-bought gold.”
This cry became an article of fanatical faith to the German people.
It became likewise a very practical problem to the hard-headed
leaders in Berlin. If they could cut off this supply of munitions,
the Allies could be beaten. There was no hope of cutting it off at
sea--the British Navy would attend to that. It must be stopped at
its source: stopped in America, by a made-to-order public opinion,
or by corruption, or by violence--but stopped.
“Whom shall we send to America?” was their problem. Rintelen was
chosen. He could be trusted--he was a director of the Deutsche
Bank, he knew America. He was given credit at the Hamburg-American
Line office in New York for $547,000, authority for as many
millions more as he wanted, independent powers as great as the
German Ambassador’s at Washington, the instructions of the German
Government, and the blessing of the Fatherland.
An American traitor in Berlin gave Rintelen his cue for operations
in America. This man’s name is known, and will one day be written
alongside Benedict Arnold’s, but to disclose it now would interfere
with more practical efforts for his mortal punishment. Part of that
punishment he is already enduring--he is still in Germany. This
traitor told Rintelen that the most useful man in America for his
purpose was David Lamar, of New York. Rintelen fixed that name in
his memory, and left Berlin.
His first barrier was the old, old barrier to German conquest,
the British blockade. Rintelen ran that under cover of the Swiss
passport, under the name of Gasché.
Arrived in New York on April 3d, Rintelen lost no time in getting
acquainted with Lamar. He disclosed to him his mission to this
country and the money he had to execute it. The Tiger of Berlin met
the Wolf of Wall Street.
And how the Wolf’s eyes must have glistened, for he was at the
leanest of the hungry days which regularly followed seasons of
opulence in the ups and downs which varied the career of this
extraordinary man. For Lamar was, and is, an extraordinary man.
Endowed by nature with a fascinating personality and with a
brilliant mind, which he had enriched by study, a man capable of
great things, he was possessed by that strange perversity which
often afflicts men of exceptional cleverness--he would rather make
one dollar by adroit crookedness than a million by unexciting
honesty. Perhaps his origin affected his character--he declined,
on the witness stand, to give his true name and parentage on the
ground that to do so would bring disgrace upon persons still
living. He entered Wall Street as a young man from nowhere, and
at first gave promise of a brilliant and honourable career. He
early made his mark in finance. He was employed by J. P. Morgan
& Company and other great banking concerns, and in those days
of his legitimate activities amassed a large fortune. But this
was dissipated in gambling on the stock market, and then Lamar
gravitated to the gutter. For years it was a by-word on the Street
that if you wanted a clever man to do a crooked job, David Lamar
was the man you were looking for. He had the brains to do it right,
he had the presence to “get away with it,” and he would do anything
for money.
These traits had got him into trouble shortly before Rintelen met
him. When the Pujo Committee of Congress was investigating the
“money trust” several years ago, some crooked brokers in Wall
Street wanted some inside information that was going to affect
the price of certain stocks in which they were interested. They
could not get this information by legitimate means, and so they
adopted Lamarian means. Lamar knew that a member of Congress was
entitled to ask for this information. Mr. Mitchell Palmer was a
Member of Congress. Lamar had one of his devious inspirations. He
called up a banker’s office, got the man there who knew what Lamar
wanted to know, declared that he was Mr. Palmer, and demanded the
information--and got it. Lamar repeated the exploit several times.
But once too often. He was detected, arrested and tried, convicted,
and on December 3, 1914, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment
for the crime of impersonating an officer of the Government. He
appealed the case on the ground that a Representative in Congress
was not “an officer of the Government.” When Rintelen met him the
following April, Lamar was out on bail pending the decision on this
appeal.
Lamar was then in desperate straits. Bad luck had followed him in
the Street for two years, and had crowned his misfortunes with
this expensive trial and threatened imprisonment. He owed money
everywhere for personal expenses; the merchants with whom he
traded had stopped his credit; he had descended to borrowing from
his friends in sums as small as two dollars at a time. Then he
met Rintelen, who was on fire with a passion that blinded him to
consequences and who flourished before the eyes of the famished
Wolf a half million dollars of real money. Here was manna fallen
from heaven.
“Could Lamar help Rintelen!” With his most convincing eloquence,
Lamar assured him that he could. Never had Rintelen been better
advised, so Lamar declared to him, than when his friend in Berlin
had given him his name. For he had friends in Washington, he
whispered, men powerful in the Government. And friends among the
labouring people, the men whose hands made those munitions Rintelen
had come to stop, and whose hands might be paralyzed by the clever
use of brains and money. Lamar would supply the brains: Rintelen
would supply the money. The Wolf saw good hunting ahead.
Lamar laid before Rintelen a scheme. They would capitalize the
American passion for peace: they would capitalize in particular
the labouring man’s aversion to war. A section of opinion among
labouring men held that wars were instigated by capitalists for
gain, and were fought by labouring men who gave their lives to make
good the selfish ambitions of the rich. And one of the American
people’s deepest convictions was that war was an odious moral
crime; and that universal peace was attainable by the pursuit of
moral ideals.
Lamar declared, then, that by working through his friends in
labour, he could organize the workers of America so that they would
refuse to work on the implements of destruction of “capitalistic”
war. And that, by working through his friends in the Government,
he could create a national sentiment that would force Congress to
place an embargo on munitions. But these things would cost money.
Lamar never forgot money.
Now we see a sudden transformation in Lamar’s circumstances.
The frayed debtor appeared in his old haunts garbed in the most
fastidious selections of the tailor; the accumulated debts of
years were paid; the subway and the street car gave way to
automobiles--and Lamar was particular that the garage should supply
only the fine car that was father to the Liberty motor. He moved
his family from a cheap apartment in New York to a fine house
at Pittsfield, Mass. His own quarters were the hotels Astor and
Belmont in New York, the Willard in Washington, the La Salle in
Chicago, the Claypool in Indianapolis. Things were looking up.
Lamar carried other men with him on his rising tide of fortune.
Frank Buchanan, labour Representative in Congress from the
Seventh District of Illinois (North Chicago), likewise became a
traveller and the patron of exclusive hotels. Henry B. Martin,
who eked out a precarious living in the lobbies of Congress,
after a dubious career as an officer of the Knights of Labour in
the ’nineties, framed his wizened figure in a new and luxurious
setting. H. Robert Fowler, the splendid high light of whose
gray life as a half-lawyer, half-farmer, in a country town in
Illinois, was expiring in the last days of a term in Congress, was
suddenly revived, before his final extinguishment, by the light
glittering from anonymous gold. Herman J. Schulteis, whose talents,
insufficient for success in the law, had been more profitably
employed in the defunct Anti-Trust League (of which more later),
rose rapidly in the monetary scale.
These men were the instruments Lamar used in his scheme to stop the
munitions industry and to get Rintelen’s money. That scheme was
to build up a great political organization of labouring men and
farmers. This organization would oppose the making and shipment of
munitions; it would exert pressure to compel workers to abandon
the factories, and it would exert pressure to compel Congress to
declare an embargo on the shipment of arms. This organization was
labelled “Labour’s National Peace Council.”
Lamar, fortified with Rintelen’s money, launched his scheme in
Washington. This scheme was an inspiration of genius. Able lawyers
have declared that no cleverer conspiracy has ever come to their
attention. Its beauty was its simplicity. Rintelen dealt with
no one but Lamar--the other leaders never saw him, and most of
them never heard of him until after the scheme was exposed by
the Government. In his turn, Lamar operated entirely through
Martin. To Martin he gave his instructions to see labour leaders,
to organize the fake Peace Council, to hold its camouflage
“convention,” to flood the country with lecturers and printed
matter urging an embargo on munitions. And through Martin he paid
the bills.
Lamar and Martin were old associates. They had worked together
in the Anti-Trust League, another of the creations of Lamar’s
restless mind. The Anti-Trust League originated in the feverish
’nineties, when the country had its fears that the growth of great
corporations spelled the control of the Government by monopolies.
The League had its days of prominence when it was financed by big
interests that used it to fight other big interests to get the
things they both wanted. But in 1915 the League was a skeleton,
consisting of Lamar, Martin, Schulteis, and a few others, held
together by the bond of small salaries drawn from some source that
preferred to remain unknown.
When Martin undertook to organize Labour’s National Peace Council,
under the direction of Lamar, the first man he approached was Frank
Buchanan. Buchanan was labour’s leading champion on the floor of
Congress. He had been president of the international union of
the structural iron workers, and he had earned the confidence
of organized labour, and the friendship of Samuel Gompers, the
patriarch of organized labour.
Lamar, Buchanan, and Martin, assisted by Fowler and Schulteis,
engineered a mass meeting of workingmen in Chicago in June, 1915,
at which resolutions were adopted calling for a convention of
labourers and farmers at Washington to protest against the traffic
in munitions. The same men, with this “mandate” behind them, met
in Washington on June 22d, and organized Labour’s National Peace
Council. They prepared printed appeals, in the high language of
humanitarianism, addressed to the labour unions and the granges,
and mailed them by the ton to all parts of the country. They
offered to pay all travelling expenses and for lost time to
delegates which these bodies should send to a convention to be held
in Washington on July 31st and August 1st.
As a preliminary to this convention, Martin paid labour leaders
and other speakers to go into all sections of the United States
and address labour unions and granges. Probably all these speakers
acted in good faith. They were pacifists, and when they got an
opportunity to preach their doctrine, they accepted it. The
opportunity seemed legitimate enough--the name of Frank Buchanan
as a sponsor of the movement was sufficient. Their audiences,
too, were sincere. Workmen and farmers had before their eyes the
contrast of their own peaceful land with a Europe drenched in
blood. The blessings of peace were never more apparent. They sent
delegates gladly to a meeting that seemed designed to perpetuate
those blessings.
But Samuel Gompers opposed the convention of Labour’s National
Peace Council. He, too, was a pacifist--had for years taken a
leading part in the movement for international peace. But Gompers
was a thoughtful man as well. And experienced. And wise. He told
Buchanan some things Buchanan should have told himself. Buchanan
came from Chicago to Atlantic City to meet Mr. Gompers and upbraid
him for his opposition to the Council. Mr. Gompers gave him some
fatherly advice. In effect, he said:
“Frank, you have earned a good name in labour. We are proud of you,
and we trust you. You are at life’s meridian, with years of useful
service ahead. But listen to an old man, who sees the shadows
growing very long, and who has watched many movements come and go.
You are in wrong. This scheme is bad. There is too much easy money
being passed around in it. Labour hasn’t got money to spend like
this. Somebody who has not labour’s interests at heart is putting
up that money.
“And take the Council’s aims themselves. Suppose you succeed in
stopping the manufacture of munitions--what will happen to labour?
Two years ago, our boys were walking the streets, begging for a
job. To-day, every man of them has work, and wages are going up.
War work has done that. Do you want to stop the opportunity of
labour to make a living?”
But Gompers’s eloquence left Buchanan cold. In the face of his
pleadings and advice, Buchanan accepted $2,700 from Martin in
the following six weeks. He saved his face at the last minute by
resigning the presidency of Labour’s National Peace Council the day
before the convention met.
The convention met in Washington on July 31st, at the New Willard
Hotel. Its members were impressed, as it was intended that they
and the country in general should be impressed, by the sonorous
voice and important presence of Hannis Taylor, former American
Minister to Spain and author of text books on constitutional
and international law, such as “The Origin and Growth of the
English Constitution” and “International Public Law.” He made
an opening address in which, from his heights of knowledge, he
solemnly declared that munitions shipments were in violation of
international law. His address was largely devoted to assurances
to his hearers that he was an authority on such matters and that
they could take his opinion as disposing of the legal aspect of
this question. Mr. Taylor was there to lend distinction to the
gathering, and he left no doubts in their minds that he thought he
was doing it.
But when the delegates got down to business, there was trouble. The
farmer delegates became suspicious--they had vague fears of the
source of the money that was paying the bills; they did not like
the company they found themselves in. They first declined to bind
their constituents to the resolutions that were offered: then they
left the convention.
On the second day, the labour delegates became equally restless.
Buchanan had withdrawn. The delegates who used the opportunity
of being in Washington to call on Mr. Gompers came away from his
office with heavy hearts. Returning to the Willard, they saw
the machinery being manipulated by the discredited Martin and
Schulteis. “What have these fellows got to do with us?” they asked
one another. And then they asked “these fellows” quite bluntly,
“Who’s putting up the money for this show?” Martin, backed to the
wall of the Willard bar by their insistent demand for an answer,
replied with an evasive, “What difference does it make?” And when
they shouted that it made a profane lot of difference, he answered
defiantly that it was all right “even if it’s German money.”
That finished the labour delegates. They, too, went home.
But the ringleaders had put out a resounding resolution calling for
an embargo on munitions. And though the convention had fizzed out,
it had done an enormous lot of harm. Thousands of labouring men and
farmers had been indoctrinated with a specious pacifism that was
reflected later in the attempts to evade the Conscription Act when
we entered the war. The Government to-day is contending with the
moral antagonisms aroused in certain sections of the country by the
orators and writers of Labour’s National Peace Council.
In this moral infection, the work of Hannis Taylor played an
important part. He wrote legal opinions for the Council, declaring
that the traffic in munitions was unconstitutional. He received
$700 for this work. These opinions were printed and distributed
broadcast, and did much harm. More recently, Taylor was counsel
for Robert Cox, the Missouri draft registrant who sued to restrain
General Leonard Wood from sending him with his regiment to France.
On his behalf, Hannis Taylor contended that the Conscription
Act was unconstitutional, asserting that the only power of
Congress to call out troops was under the militia clause of the
Constitution which reads: “To execute the laws of the Union,
suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” This meant, so Taylor
contended, that no citizen could be sent, against his will, outside
the United States to fight its battles.
This absurd doctrine, which would force us to fight this war on
our own soil instead of allowing us to defend ourselves in Europe
against German aggression, was promptly punctured by the Supreme
Court of the United States. In his brief before that Court Hannis
Taylor used language so violent that the counsel for the Government
asked that it be expunged from the record. Taylor in his brief
accused the President of being a “dictator,” of seizing powers
“in open defiance of the judgments” of the Supreme Court, and of
demanding “such an aggregation of powers as no monarch ever wielded
in any constitutional government that ever existed.”
The decision of the Supreme Court, affirming the Government’s right
to draft its citizens for service overseas, was delivered by Chief
Justice White. That stern old veteran of the Lost Cause in our
Civil War, speaking with the aloofness and dignity of that august
Court, in measured terms expressed an opinion of Mr. Hannis Taylor
that is worth repeating. He said:
... we must notice a suggestion made by the Government that
because of impertinent and scandalous passages contained in the
brief of the appellant the brief should be stricken from the
files. Considering the passages referred to and making every
allowance for intensity of zeal and an extreme of earnestness
on the part of counsel, we are nevertheless constrained to
the conclusion that the passages justify the terms of censure
by which they are characterized in the suggestion made by the
Government. But despite this conclusion which we regretfully
reach, we see no useful purpose to be subserved by granting the
motion to strike. On the contrary, we think the passages on their
face are so obviously intemperate and so patently unwarranted
that if as a result of permitting the passages to remain on the
files they should come under future observation, they would but
serve to indicate to what intemperance of statement an absence
of self-restraint or forgetfulness of decorum will lead and
therefore admonish of the duty to be sedulous to obey and respect
the limitations which an adhesion to them must exact.
In all the operations of Labour’s National Peace Council, including
its convention, Lamar kept in the background, as he knew labour
had no reason to own him or to love him. Buchanan and the rest
supplied the proper colour of propriety. From his retreat in the
Willard Hotel in Washington, Lamar was sending ecstatic telegrams,
reporting progress, signing the name of David H. Lewis, and
receiving in reply approving messages from Rintelen, who used
Jones, Miller, and Muller as aliases. The convention seemed a great
success. And its preparation and operation had got the German’s
money. Of the $547,000 that Rintelen brought, Lamar got more than
$300,000. It looked so good to Rintelen that he was ready to get
more--from Germany or from his limitless sources of credit here.
But all was not well with Rintelen. He had other lines out besides
Lamar’s, and he caught some disquieting fish--some of which he
did not identify until later. First, he was playing the social
game not wisely but too well. He gave dinner parties; was a guest
at others. He should have been more politic than he was. The
_Lusitania_ was sunk on May 7th. Instead of adopting the manner of
a man deep enough in intrigue to know that he should speak of this
crime as a lamentable blunder of his country’s, he justified it.
His words gave the gravest offense to his guests. He went further,
and threw out hinted threats of other perils that would confront
ships carrying munitions--hints that he himself had had a hand in
the mysterious fires on ships that were almost a daily occurrence.
Some dinner guests in New York took him seriously and reported him
to the Government, which had been suspicious of him almost from the
day of his arrival in this country.
Also, Rintelen undertook to get newspaper publicity favourable to
an embargo on the shipment of munitions. He got himself introduced
to “Jack” Hammond, an old newspaper man in New York, and closed
with him a contract for syndicate articles in a chain of papers
across the country. He met Hammond as one Fred Hansen, a ship
captain. (Hammond later testified that Rintelen told him that he
“killed” Hansen the day after the _Lusitania_ was sunk.) After
sizing Hammond up as worthy of trust, he re-introduced himself as
E. V. Gibbons, a purchasing agent, with offices in the building
occupied in part by the Transatlantic Trust Company. And at length
he confided to Hammond his real importance in the scheme of things
German.
Early in this relationship Hammond became sure that this man was
planning to violate the laws of the United States, and he reported
the matter to the Department of Justice. The Department, already
suspicious, asked Hammond to keep up his connection with Rintelen,
and through this means it learned a great deal about him. Not
enough to cause his arrest--Rintelen never confided that much in
any American but Lamar, who had his own reasons for silence.
Out of Rintelen’s multifarious activities arose many of the
mysterious fires and explosions in munitions plants, the burning of
ships at sea, the attempts on the Welland Canal in Canada, strikes
in war industries, and the like. The discovery of Dr. Walter A.
Scheele’s part in the incendiary bombs matter, and his connection
with Rintelen, began to make the ground fairly warm under
Rintelen’s feet. And the Government was taking an uncomfortable
interest in Labour’s National Peace Council. Rintelen became uneasy.
His fears were now fed from a new quarter. Andrew D. Meloy became a
confidant of his, and Meloy had his own axe to grind. Rintelen had
taken an interest in the German activities in Mexico, and almost
from the day of his arrival had been intimate in this work with
Federico Stallforth, a German banker of Mexico City who joined
Rintelen in New York. Stallforth had offices with Meloy at 55
Liberty Street, and when the Transatlantic Trust Company became
embarrassed by Rintelen’s presence, Stallforth persuaded Meloy to
rent Rintelen desk room. Their acquaintance started there, about
July 1st.
Meloy was a well-known engineer and promoter. He had exploited
concessions in Mexico--railroad rights of way and gold mines--and
in his home state of New Jersey had floated some real-estate
“developments.” Meloy saw in Rintelen exactly what Lamar had
seen--a lot of real money and an eagerness too great for caution.
He began to belittle Lamar’s scheme. Labour’s National Peace
Council would never do. It looked good on paper, but it would never
stop the shipment of munitions. He even hinted that Lamar had
been “playing” Rintelen. Now, if Rintelen wanted a real scheme,
certain to succeed, he knew the very thing. Direct action--stop
the bluffing and the dangerous intrigues. Buy the whole munitions
output of the country. Bid high enough to get it, pay for it
outright, and store it. That would cost money, lots of it: but what
was money in comparison with the certainty of German victory which
this plan would insure?
Rintelen was dazzled. Here was the authentic voice of American
big business speaking. A magnificent scheme. He would take it to
Germany, take Meloy with him, and get his Government to O. K. it.
But how get back to Germany? He had grave doubts about the Gasché
passport being good again. He put the question to Meloy, and Meloy
advised against it. There was a better way: get a new passport
under a new name. So for a few days Rintelen became “Edward V.
Gates, wine merchant, of Millersburg, Pa.” In this guise Meloy
introduced him to one of his own real-estate salesmen, and Rintelen
took this man to dinner once or twice to work up the illusion.
Then, one day, he asked the salesman to go with him to the passport
bureau in New York and be his witness to an application for a
passport. The salesman went, and in good faith swore that Rintelen
was Edward V. Gates. His faith was not so good when he swore he
had known him for three years. The application was transmitted
telegraphically to Washington. Much to Rintelen’s astonishment and
alarm, it was denied.
Meanwhile, Meloy had been working on a devious scheme to protect
himself in his mission to Berlin. He must be cloaked in eminent
respectability on this errand, for it would be an unpopular one
with the British if they knew its real purpose, and he must hide
that. First of all, he would take his wife, who did not know what
his mission was. She had taken an active interest before the war
in the peace movements centring at The Hague, and nothing was more
natural than that she should wish now, during the war, to renew her
friendships in Holland with an eye to furthering a cause now more
than ever vital to the world.
But Meloy was not content with only one companion. He must have
others who would expand the picture of innocence abroad. One of
his neighbours in the suburb on the Jersey Coast where he made his
country home was a wealthy woman known widely in America for her
interest both in the peace and suffrage movements. Meloy telephoned
to her and asked her to see him at his home. This lady drove over
one summer evening in her motor car, accompanied by two women
friends. The friends sat in the open car while she sat on the porch
talking to Meloy. Meloy is very deaf; the lady had to talk loudly
to make him hear. Meloy differed from most deaf people, who usually
speak in a lower tone than those who hear well--he went rather to
the other extreme, and spoke louder than most folks do. The women
in the car heard the conversation, and they heard it a second time
when their friend repeated it to them on the way home. And the
Government heard it also, from the lips of all three.
The burden of the conversation was this: Meloy was taking his wife
to Europe for a vacation; they were going to Holland, where so
many forward-looking movements for the good of mankind made their
international headquarters; he would be drawn aside a great deal by
business affairs and Mrs. Meloy would be lonesome; he was anxious
to provide companionship for her, if the lady would accompany them,
he would pay all her expenses, he would assure her that her journey
would be made _de luxe_, he would (he put it more delicately) even
add a money consideration, he would see that the journey included
a visit to war-bound Germany, now so difficult of access, that in
Germany she should have _entrée_ to social circles so exclusive
that they were inaccessible even to the American Ambassador, and
that, to crown all, she should be presented to the Kaiser.
The lady said she would think it over. It was an attractive
invitation, but she did not just like it--perhaps it was too
attractive. She talked it over with her friends: they advised
against it. She telephoned Meloy next day and declined.
Meloy repeated the invitation to several women. All declined. Then,
as the _Noordam_ was to sail on August 3d, and he had no more time,
he decided to take his secretary, a Miss Brophy.
Rintelen was now thoroughly alarmed. The Government’s refusal to
grant his fraudulent application for a passport indicated that
it knew about him. The Government was getting “warm” in its
investigation of the incendiary bombs. The Government was taking an
unpleasant interest in Labour’s National Peace Council. Rintelen
felt irresistibly the pangs of _Heimweh_, the longing for home. He
must go, at any risk. He would chance it as Gasché again.
So he sailed on the _Noordam_, with Meloy and party. He bore with
him Lamar’s urgent appeals for more funds for Labour’s National
Peace Council, now at the high tide of its success. And he was in
the hands of Meloy, who was at the first of his own rainbow of
hope of millions with which to buy America’s munition output--on
commission.
At Falmouth the _Noordam_ was detained for fourteen hours. The
British took a great interest in the Gasché-Meloy party. Gasché’s
baggage revealed nothing suspicious, but Gasché was removed to
a long residence in an internment camp near London. Meloy was
detained for several days. Mrs. Meloy soon appeared to be beyond
suspicion. Miss Brophy declared that her baggage contained only
personal effects. But at the bottom of her last trunk was found
a wallet containing Gasché’s papers. These were seized, and Miss
Brophy and Mrs. Meloy were allowed to proceed to Holland, where
they were later rejoined by Meloy.
The Gasché papers were most interesting. They contained some
of Rintelen’s letters showing his intimacy with well-known New
Yorkers, and letters in which he referred to his “official mission”
to the United States that were very important, for they proved
what Rintelen steadfastly denied, namely, that he was in this
country by orders of the German Government. In one of them to a
man in Germany, whom he addressed as “Most Honourable Counsellor,”
he wrote: “Your letter of the 25th March [1915] was sent after me
when I was _on an official journey_, and I request you to excuse
the delaying in replying.” And another letter, from the National
Bank Für Deutschland, dated Berlin, 25th May, 1915, and addressed
“To the Landed Proprietor, Von Preskow,” contained this sentence:
“Director Rintelen, who looked after Major Von Katte’s account,
entered the navy on the outbreak of hostilities, and as he is at
present _on an official journey_ is not available at the moment.”
With Rintelen’s internment ended Lamar’s golden fortune and Meloy’s
golden vision and Rintelen’s dream of destruction. And now began
one of the most difficult and one of the longest tasks of the
Department of Justice. For, out of the fragments of evidence at
its command, and out of the seemingly innocent public acts
of Labour’s National Peace Council, and out of the obscure and
isolated outrages to ships and factories in the United States, the
Department of Justice had to construct a pattern that should prove,
by tangible legal evidence, the guilt of Rintelen and Lamar in a
plot to violate the laws of the United States.
[Illustration: RINTELEN AND HIS CONFEDERATES
Above, Rintelen’s photograph on a false passport with which he
tried to escape from the United States; left, Andrew D. Meloy;
right, David Lamar, “the Wolf of Wall Street”]
This long investigation was a fascinating study in human nature.
If only Lamar had been a little different in his manners, he might
have escaped the clutches of the law. If Rintelen had been as wise
as he was clever, he might still be in an internment camp instead
of a prison.
Lamar, it may be recalled, had a weakness for automobiles. He hired
them on all occasions. They were especially useful to him for
conferences with Rintelen. They did not wish to be seen together,
so Lamar would drive to an unfrequented spot in Central Park.
Rintelen would drive up in another car and get into Lamar’s, and
then they would go for a long ride while they discussed their
plans. Sometimes they would go for hours on the North Shore of
Long Island; sometimes for long excursions in the Pelham region of
Westchester County, stopping perhaps at a wayside inn and taking a
room for greater privacy in their conferences.
An agent of the Department of Justice spent six weeks making the
rounds of the garages in New York. He carried Lamar’s picture in
his pocket. He showed it to every chauffeur in every garage. And
every chauffeur who had driven a car for Lamar during that summer
of 1915 recognized the picture, and every one of them applied the
same epithet to its original that Trampas applied to the Virginian
in Owen Wister’s book when the Virginian, in response, drew his gun
and demanded that “when you call me that, smile!” For Lamar, who
was the suave, the gracious, the ultra-polite and charming man to
people whom he wished to cajole, was overbearing, fault-finding,
and peremptory toward those who served him. His movements in the
hotels about the country were several times traced by a rough
description completed by a remark about his manner toward servants.
No waiter or bell-boy ever forgot him. He was forever “kicking
about the service.”
This vivid impression that he made on the chauffeurs contributed
greatly to his undoing. They remembered him perfectly, and recalled
his companions. They recognized Rintelen’s photograph. And several
of them had overheard parts of the conversations that were useful
to the Government. Through these men, Lamar’s connection with
Rintelen in a conspiracy to violate the Sherman Act by restraining
our foreign trade in munitions was established.
One’s laundry, too, may be a dangerous thing. Lamar denied that he
had stopped at hotels in Chicago and Indianapolis and elsewhere at
the same time that Martin and others were there. But handwriting
experts proved that the names “David Lenaur,” “David Lewis,”
and the like, on hotel registers on those days were in Lamar’s
handwriting. And the conclusive proof of their evidence was that
the laundry lists of the hotels on those days showed that the
laundry mark on the linen of “Lenaur” and of “Lewis” was the
laundry mark of Lamar.
Charge accounts at stores may also prove troublesome. It became
necessary to find out where Lamar banked his money. That was
discovered through Lamar’s stomach trouble. He was a patron of
a druggist in New York who had his pet prescription for his pet
ailment. Lamar sometimes wrote, and sometimes telegraphed, for
another bottle of this medicine. A telegram of this kind sent
the Government agent to the druggist. Did Lamar ever pay by
check? On what banks? The answers led to those banks and thence
to others and thence to Lamar’s brokers, from one of whom alone
evidence was obtained that the whilom bankrupt had lost, in one
series of speculations that summer, $38,000 in cash. Whose cash?
The Government was able to prove that Lamar had got thousands
of dollars from Rintelen, because they produced the men who saw
Rintelen pay it, and Lamar was not able to prove that he had got
any such sums from anybody else, so the jury took the Government’s
theory as fact that Lamar was Rintelen’s man.
The story of this proof is worth telling. On the witness stand at
the trial, George Plockman, the treasurer of the Transatlantic
Trust Company (the Austrian bank in New York with which Rintelen
kept his funds) described the arrangement Rintelen had made to
conceal the passage of money for illegal acts. He had instructed
the Transatlantic Trust Company, when it received checks drawn
by him in a certain form, to cash them without questioning the
identity of the bearer and without requiring him to endorse them.
One check of this kind was presented at the bank one day, and the
paying teller brought it to Plockman to ask if he should pay it.
“Who presented it?” asked Plockman.
“That dark man over there,” replied the paying teller.
“I thought,” said Plockman on the witness stand, “that this man was
a Mexican, but while I was looking at him our vice-president came
up and when he understood the situation and saw the man he said:
‘Mein Gott! Dot is de Volf of Vall Street! I hope Rintelen has not
got into _his_ clutches!’”
One other incident of the trial should be told. Testimony was
brought in that showed how the money for the Peace Council was
spent. One item was for funds to pay the expenses of a German
preacher from St. Louis to attend the convention at Washington and
open the proceedings with prayer. Lamar had never heard of this
until he heard it in the courtroom. It was too much for him. When
this evidence came out, of the lengths to which his own pupils
had out-distanced even their teacher in the art of political
camouflage, he burst into roars of uncontrollable laughter which
literally stopped all proceedings in court, the tears rolling down
his cheeks as he struggled to subdue his mirth.
Out of all the investigations of the Government arose a card index
of every man that Rintelen and Lamar had seen during the four
months from April 3 to August 3, 1915, of every hotel they had
visited, of practically every telephone call they had made and
every telegram sent or received, of nearly every dollar they had
had and spent. Thousands upon thousands of these cards were made
and filed. They convicted both men.
The Government indicted Rintelen, Lamar, Buchanan, Fowler, Martin,
Schulteis, and a man named Monnett, for conspiracy to violate
the Sherman Act in the operations of Labour’s National Peace
Council to restrain our foreign trade. Rintelen, Lamar, and Martin
were convicted. The rest got the benefit of a very slim doubt,
except Frank B. Monnett, the farmer attorney-general of Ohio,
whose reputation in the early suit of Ohio to oust the Standard
Oil Company from the state had been used as “stage setting” by
Martin. He was freed by the Court before the jury was sent out to
deliberate. The convicted men got the limit of the law--one year in
jail. Rintelen was likewise indicted for perjury in his application
for a passport as Edward V. Gates, and again for another crime
against our laws. He was convicted on both charges, and sentenced
to several months’ imprisonment on each.
No one realized better than the judges who sentenced him how
inadequate these punishments to expiate his crimes. But the laws
under which Rintelen was convicted--and they were the only laws
under which his acts (all committed before our entry into the war)
could be questioned--were enacted in times of peace, when no one
dreamed of the world conflict or could have imagined how it would
affect us when it came.
Rintelen has completed serving time on the first of his three
sentences, and has the other two still to serve. The Tiger of
Berlin is securely caged, and not likely soon to be again at large.