My adventures as a German secret agent

Front matter

w

The Bridgeman H. Taylor passport upon which von der Goltz

returned to Germany and later went to England. In the

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword . . . 1

I — I find an old letter, containing a strange bit of scandal — and its contents draw me into the service of the Kaiser. . . ... .,. . . . . . . .. . 5'

Foreword

have not attempted to write an autobiography. This book is merely a summary — a sort of galloping summary — of the last ten years of my existence. As such, I venture to write it because my life has been bound up in enterprises in which the world is interested. It has been my fortune to be a witness and sometimes an actor in that drama of secret diplomacy which has been going on for so long and which in such a large way has been responsible for this war.

There are many scenes from that drama that have no place in this book — many events with which I am familiar that I have not touched upon. My aim has been to describe only those things with which I was personally concerned and which I know to be true. For a full history of the last ten years my readers must go elsewhere; but it is my hope that these adventures of mine will bring them to a better understanding of the forces that have for so long been undermining the peace of the world.

Foreword

Inevitably there will be some who read this book, who will doubt the truth of many of the statements in it. I cannot, unfortunately, prove all that I tell here. Wherever possible I have offered corroborative evidence of the truth of my statements; at other times I have tried to indicate their credibility by citing well recognized facts which have a direct bearing upon my contentions. But for the rest, I can only hope that this book will be accepted as a true record of facts which by their very nature are insusceptible of proof.

So far as my connection with the German Government is concerned, I may refer the curious to the British Parliamentary White Papers, Miscellaneous Nos. 6 and 13, which contain respectively my confession and a record of the papers found in the possession of Captain von Papen, former military attache to the German Embassy at Washington, and seized by the British authorities on January 2 and 3, 1916. There are also, in addition to the documents reproduced in this book, various court records of the trial of Captain Hans Tauscher and others in the spring of the same year. Of German activities in the United States, the newspapers bear eloquent testimony. I have been concerned

Foreword

rather with the motives of the German Government than with a statement of what has been done. These motives, I believe, you will not doubt.

But there is one point which I must ask my readers not to overlook. I have told that I became a secret agent through the discovery of a certain letter which contained very serious reflections upon one of the most important personages in the world. I have told, also, how the possession of that letter had an important bearing upon the course of my life — how it led me to America, and how in the struggle for its possession, I very nearly lost my life. This, I know, will be severely questioned by many. Before rejecting this part of my story, I ask merely that you consider the fate that overtook Koglmeier, the saddler of El Paso, whose only crime was that he had been partially in my confidence. I ask you to recall that another German, Lesser, who had been associated with me at the same time, mysteriously disappeared in 1915, shortly before von Papen left for Europe. No one has been able to prove why these men were treated as they were. And if I did not have in my possession something which the German Government regarded as highly important, why the surprising

Foreword

actions of that Government, actions none the less astonishing because they are well known and authenticated? Consider these things before you doubt.

Finally, let me say that I have taken the liberty of changing or omitting the names of various people who are mentioned in these adventures, merely because I have had no wish to compromise them by disclosing their identity.

New York, July 8, 1917.

ERRATA

Page 5. Chapter I. First line: March 28th, 1917 should read March 29th, 1916.

Page 41: Kut el Amerara should read Kut el Amara.

Page 140. Last two paragraphs: December 23rd should read December 20th.

Page 171. Second paragraph: October 8th should read October 3rd, 1914-

CHAPTER I I find an old letter, containing a strange

bit of scandal — and its contents draw me into

the service of the Kaiser,

(\N March 28th, 1917, the steamer Finland was warped into its Hudson River dock and I hurried down the gang plank. I was not alone. Agents of the United States Department of Justice had met me at Quarantine; and a man from Scotland Yard was there also — a man who had attended me sedulously since, barely two weeks before, I had been released under rather unusual circumstances from Lewes prison in England; the last of four English prisons in which I had spent fifteen months in solitary confinement waiting for the day of my execution.

My friend from Scotland Yard left me very shortly; soon after, I was testifying for the United States Government against Capt. Hans

Tauscher, husband of Mme. Johanna Gadski, the diva. Tauscher, American agent of the Krupps and of the German Government, was charged with complicity in a plot to blow up the Welland Canal in Canada during the first month of the Great War. During the course of the trial it was shown that von Papen and others (including myself) had entered into a conspiracy to violate the neutrality of die United States. I had led the expedition against the Welland Canal and I was telling everything I knew about it. Doubtless you remember the newspapers of die day.

You will remember how, at that time, the magnitude of the German plot against the neutrality of the United States became finally apparent. You will remember how, in connection with my exposure came the exposure of von Igel, of Rintelen, of the German Consul-General at San Francisco, Bopp, and many others. With all of these men I was familiar. In the activities of some of them I was implicated. It was I, as I have said, who planned the details of the Welland Canal plot. I shall tell the true story of these activities later on.

But first let me tell the story of how I became to be concerned in these plots — and to do that I must go back over many years ; I must tell how

I first became a member of the Kaiser's Secret Diplomatic Force (to give it a name) and incidentally I shall describe for the first time the real workings of that force.

I have been in and out of the Kaiser's web for ten years. I have served him faithfully in many capacities and in many places — all over Europe, in Mexico, even in the United States. I served the German Government as long as I believed it to be representing the interests of my countrymen. But from the moment that I became convinced that the men who made up the Government — the Hohenzollerns, the Junkers and the bureaucrats — were anxious merely to preserve their own power, even at the expense of Germany itself, my attitude toward them changed. That is why I write this book — and why I shall tell what I know of the aims and ambitions of these men — enemies of Germany as well as of the rest of the world.

I was not a spy; nor was I a secret service agent. I was, rather, a secret diplomatic agent. Let me add that there is a nice distinction between the three. A secret diplomatic agent is a man who directs spies, who studies their reports, who pieces together various bits of information, and who, when he has the fabric complete, personally makes his report to the highest authority or carries that particular plan to its desired conclusion. His work and his status are of various sorts. Unlike the spy, he is a user, not a getter, of information. He is a free lance, responsible only to the Foreign Office; a plotter; an unofficial intermediary in many negotiations; and frequently he differs from an accredited diplomatic representative, only in that his activities and his office are essentially secret. Obviously men of this type must be highly trained and reliable; and their constant association with men of authority makes it necessary that they, themselves, be men of breeding and education. But above all, they must possess the courage that shrinks at no danger, and a devotion, a patriotism that knows no scruples.

This, then, was the calling into which I found myself plunged, while still a boy, by one of the strangest chances that ever befell me, whose life has been full of strange happenings.

As I recall my adolescence I realize that I was a normal boy, vigorous, wilful, fond of sport, of horses, dogs and guns, and I know that but for the chance I speak of, I should have grown up to the traditions of our family — Cadet school— the University — later a lieutenancy in the German Army — and to-day, perhaps, death "somewhere in France."

And yet, in that boyhood that I am recalling, I can remember that there were other interests which were far greater than the games that I loved, as did all lads of my age. Mental adventure, the matching of wits against wits for stakes of reputation and fortune, always exercised an uncanny fascination over my mind. That delight in intrigue was shown by the books I read as a boy. In the library of my father's house there were many novels, books of poems, of biography, travel, philosophy and history; but I passed them by unread. His few volumes of court gossip and so-called "secret history" I seized with avidity. I used to bear off the memoirs of Marechal Richelieu, the Cardinal's nephew, and read them in my room when the rest of the household was asleep.

I recall, too, that there was another tendency already developed in me. I see it in my dealings with other boys of that day. It was the impulse to make other people my instruments, not by direct command or appeal, but by leading them to do, apparently for themselves, what I needed of them.

Such was I, when my aunt who had cared for me since the death of my parents some years before, fell ill and later died. I was disconsolate for a time and wandered about through the halls and chambers of the house, seeking amusement. And it was thus that one day I came upon an old chest in the room that had been hers. I remembered that chest. There were letters in it — letters that had been written to her by friends made in the old days when she was at court. Often she had read me passages from them — bits of gossip about this or that personage whom she had once known — occasionally, even, mention of the Kaiser.

Doubtless, too, I thought, there were passages which she had not seen fit to read to me: some more intimate bits of gossip about those brilliant men and women in Berlin whom I then knew only as names. With the eager curiosity of a boy I sought the key, and in a moment had unlocked the chest.

There they lay, those neat, faded bundles, slightly yellow, addressed in a variety of hands. Idly I selected a packet and glanced over the envelopes it contained, lingering, in anticipation of the revelations that might be in them. I must have read a dozen letters before my eye fell upon the envelope that so completely changed my life.

It lay in a corner of the chest, as if hidden from too curious eyes — a yellow square of paper, distinguished from its fellows by the quality of the stationery alone, and by its appearance of greater age. But I knew, before I had read fifty words of it, that I was holding in my hands a document that was more explosive than dynamite!

For this letter, written to my aunt years before, by one of the most exalted personages in all of Germany, contained statements which, had they been made by any one else, would have been treason to utter, and which cast the most serious doubts upon the legitimacy of the Kaiser 3 Wilhelm II.

I realize fully that what I have written will seem grossly improbable to most of my readers. I know that few persons will believe me- And since I cannot prove what I have said, since the letter is no longer in my possession, I can ask you only to consider the facts and to weigh for yourself the probabilities of my statement.

Those of you whose memories go back to the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, will readily recall the notorious ill-feeling that existed between Wilhelm II and his mother, Victoria, the Dowager Empress Friederich. Stories have too often been told of this enmity, culminating in the virtual banishment from Berlin of the Queen Mother, for me to need do more than mention them. But what is not so generally known is the small esteem in which Victoria was held by the entire German people. During the twenty years of her married life as the wife of the then Crown Prince Friederich, she was treated by Berlin society with the most thinlyveiled hostility. Even Bismarck made no attempt to conceal his dislike for her, and accused her — to quote his own words — of having "poisoned the fountain of Hohenzollern blood at its source.'*

Victoria, for her part, although she seems to have had no animosity toward the German people, certainly possessed little love for her eldest son, and did her best to delay his ascension to the Imperial throne as long as she could. When in 1888 Wilhelm I was dying, she tried her utmost to secure the succession to her husband, who was then lying dangeously ill at San Remo. "Cancer," the physicians pronounced the trouble, and even the great German specialist, Bergman, agreed with their diagnosis. There is a law that prevents any one with an incurable disease, such as cancer, from ascending the Prussian throne; but Victoria knew too well the attitude of her son, Wilhelm, toward herself, not to wish to do everything in her power to prevent him from becoming Emperor so long as she could. In her extremity she appealed to her mother, Queen Victoria of England, who sent Mackenzie, the great English surgeon, to San Remo to report on Friederich's condition. Mackenzie opposed Bergman and said the disease was not cancer; and the physicians inserted a silver tube in Friederich's throat, and in due course he became Emperor Friederich III.

But in spite of Mackenzie and the silver tube, Friederich III died after a reign of ninety-eight days — and he died of cancer.

Now what was the reason for this hostility between mother and son and between Empress and subjects? There have been many answers given — Victoria's love for England, her collossal lack of tact, her impatient unconventionality. Berlin whispered of a dinner in Holland years before, when Victoria had entertained some English people she met there — people she had never seen before — and had finished her repast by smoking a cigar. That in the days when the sight of a woman smoking horrified the German soul ! And

Berlin hinted at worse unconventionalities than this.

As for the animosity of the Kaiser, that was attributed to the fact that he held her responsible for his withered left arm.

Plausible reasons, all of these, and possibly true. But consider, if you will, the rumors that followed Victoria all her life — the story of an early attachment to the Count Seckendorf, her husband's associate during the Seven Weeks' War of 1866 — the reports, sometimes denied but generally believed, of her marriage to the Count not long before her death. Consider, too, the dissimilarity between the Kaiser and the other men of his race — big, slow-minded, amiable men — so unlike Wilhelm II, with his aggressive, alert personality, his quick mind and his Piedmontese face. And can you not imagine the attitude of a woman who had been guilty of infidelity and yet retained her sense of national lonor — the hesitancy she might feel at seeing the child of this infidelity upon the throne, and so perpetrating a gigantic fraud upon a people and a husband whom she respected if she did not love ? And have not women been known to hate, rather than love, the offspring of a guilty union?

True or not, these suppositions — what does it 14 matter? You can see, can you not, why I believed that my letter told the truth, and why I knew that here was a plaything which would astound the world, if made public?

But what to do with this letter to which I attached so much importance? Something impelled me not to speak of it to my family. But who else was there?

In my perplexity I did an utterly foolish thing. I put my whole confidence in a man's word. There was, serving at a nearby fortress, a General Major von Dassel, who was in the habit of coming to our house quite regularly. To him I went, and under pledge of silence I told him my story. Of course, he broke the pledge and left immediately for Berlin. All doubts, if I had any, as to the importance of the document vanished with him. And if I had any misgivings concerning my own importance they quickly vanished, too. Back from Berlin, with General Major von Dassel came an agent of the Reichs Kanzler. He did not come to our house ; instead von Dassel sent for me to go to his headquarters in the fortress. I met there a solemn frock-coated personage who, so he said, had come down from Berlin especially to see me. Imagine my elation I I was in my element ; what I had hoped for had at last happened. The pages of Richelieu and of my secret histories were coming true. Another man and I were to lock our wits in a fight to the finish — that pleasure I promised myself. He was a worthy opponent, an official, a professional intriguer. As I looked into his serious, bearded face, I built romances about him.

The agent of the Chancellor wanted my document and my pledge to keep silent about its contents. Through sheer love of combat, I refused him on both points. He tried persuasion and reason. I was adamant. He tried cajolery.

"It is plain," he said, in a voice that was caressingly agreeable, "that you are an extremely clever young man. I have never before met your like — that is, at your age. A great career will be possible to such a young man if only he shows himself eager to serve his government, eager to meet the wishes of his Chancellor."

Of course, I was delighted with this flattery, which I felt was entirely deserved. I began to believe that I was a person of importance. I became stubborn — which always has been one of my best and worst traits. I saw that the gentleman in the frock-coat was becoming angry; his serious eyes flashed. Apparently much against his will, he tried threats; he suavely pointed out that if I persisted in my resolve not to turn over the document, destruction yawned at my feet. The threats touched off the fuse of my romanticism. I felt I was leading the life of intrigue of which I had read.

"If you will wait here," I told him, "I shall go home and get the document for you."

The Chancellor's representative stroked his beard, deliberated a moment and seemed uncertain.

"Oh, the Junge will come back all right," put in the General Major von Dassel. But the Junge did not come back. My family had always been excessively liberal with money, and I had enough in my own little "war chest" to buy a railroad ticket, and a considerable amount besides. So I promptly ran off to Paris; and to this day I don't know how long the gentleman in the frock-coat waited for me in von Dassel's office.

The terrors and thrills and delight of that panic stricken flight still make me smile. No peril I have since been through was half as exciting. . . Berlin! . . . Koln! . . . Brussels! It was a race against apprehension. I was happily frightened, much as a colt is, when it shies at its own shadow. Although I was in long trousers and looked years older than I was, I had not sense enough to see the affair in its true light ■ — a foolish escapade which was quite certain to have disagreeable consequences. And so I fled from Berlin to Paris.

From Paris I fled, too. There, any circumstance struck my fevered imagination as being suspicious. After a day in the French capital, I scurried south to Nice and from Nice to Monte Carlo. Precocious youngster, indeed, for there I had my first experience with that favored figure of the novelist, the woman secret agent. No novelist, I venture to say, would ever have picked her out of the Riviera crowd as being what she was. She wore no air of mystery; and though attractive enough in a quiet way, she was very far from the siren type in looks or manners. The friendliness that she, a woman of the mid-thirties, showed a lonely boy was perfectly natural. I should never have guessed her to be an agent of the Wilhelmstrasse had she not chosen to let me know it. Of course, the moment she spoke to me of "my document," I knew she had made my acquaintance with a purpose. If the dear old frock-coated agent of the Chancellor had been asleep, the telegraph wires from Berlin to Paris and Nice and Monte Carlo had been quite awake,

The proof that I was actually watched and waited for thrilled me anew. It also alarmed me when my friend explained how deeply my government was affronted. Soon the alarm outgrew the thrill and in the end I quite broke down. Then the woman in her, touched with pity, apparently displaced the adventuress. We took counsel together and she showed me a way out.

"Your document," she said, "has a Russian as well as a German importance. Why not try Petersburg since Berlin is hostile? For the sake of what you bring, Russia might give shelter and protection."

Remember, I was very young and she was all kindness. Yes, she discovered for me the avenue of escape and she set my foot upon it in the most motherly way. And I unknowingly took my first humble lesson in the great art of intrigue. For as I learned years afterwards, that woman was not a German agent but a Russian!

But at that time I was all innocent gratitude for her kindness. I was thankful enough to proceed to Petersburg by way of Italy, Constantinople and Odessa. Of course, she must have designated a man unknown to me to travel with me, and make sure that I reached the Russian capital. To my hotel in Petersburg, just as the woman had predicted, came an officer of the political police, who courteously asked me not to leave the building for twenty-four hours. The next day the man from the Okrana came again. This time he had a droshky waiting, with one of those bull-necked, blue corduroy-robed, muscular Russian jehus on the box. We were driven down the Nevsky-Prospect to a palace. Here I soon found myself in the presence of a man I did not then know as Count Witte. He greeted me kindly, merely remarking that he had heard I was in some difficulties, and offering me aid and advice. My letter was not referred to and the interview ended.

So began the process of drawing me out. A fortnight later the matter of my information was broached openly and the suggestion was made that if I delivered it to the Russian Government, high officials would be friendly and a career assured me in Russia, as I grew up. But by that time Germany had changed her attitude. Her agents also reached me in St. Petersburg. From them I received new assurance of the importance of the document. If I would release it — so the German agent who came to my hotel told me — and keep my tongue still, Berlin would pardon my indiscretion and assure me a career at home.

Russia or Germany? My decision was quickly made. That very night I was smuggled out of Petersburg and whisked across the frontier at Alexandrovna, into Germany; and the letter passed out of my hands — for the time being.

CHAPTER II. 2" Impersonate a Russian Prince and

steal a treaty. What the treaty contained and

how Germany made use of the knowedge.

QROSS LICHTERFELDE! As I write, it all comes back to me clearly, in spite of the full years that have passed — this, my first home in Berlin. A huge pile of buildings set in a suburb of the city, grim and military in appearance ; and in fact, as I soon discovered.

I was to become a cadet, it seems; and where in Germany could one receive better training than in this same Gross Lichterfelde?

At home I had had some small experience with the exactions of the gymnasium; but now I found that this was but so much child's play in comparison to the life at Gross Lichterfelde. We were drilled and dragooned from morning till night: mathematics, history, the languages — they were not taught us, they were literally pounded into us. And the military training! I am not unfamiliar with the curricula of Sandhurst, of St. Cyr, even of West Point, but I honestly believe that the training we had to undergo was fully as arduous and as technical as at any of those schools. And we were only boys.

Military strategy and tactics; sanitation; engineering; chemistry; in fact, any and every study that could conceivably be of use to these future officers of the German Army; to all of these must we apply ourselves with the utmost diligence. And woe to the student who shirked!

Then there was the endless drilling, that left us with sore muscles and minds so worn with the monotony of it that we turned even to our studies with relief. And the supervision! Our very play was regulated.

Can you wonder that we hated it and likened the cadet school to a prison? And can you imagine how galling it was to me, who had come to Berlin seeking romance and found drudgery?

But we learned. Oh, yes. The war has shown how well we learned.

There was one relief from the constant study which was highly prized by all the cadets at Gross Lichterfelde. It was the custom to select from our school a number of youths to act as pages at the Imperial court; and lucky were the ones who were detailed to this service. It meant a vacation, at the very least, to say nothing of a change from the Spartan fare of the cadet school. I must have been a student for a full three months before my turn came; long enough, at any rate, for me to receive the news of my selection with the utmost delight. But I had not been on service at the Imperial Palace for more than a few days when a state dinner was given in honor of a guest at court. He was a young prince of a certain grand-ducal house, which by blood was half Russian and half German. I recall the appearance of myself and the other pages, as we were dressed for the function. Ordinarily we wore a simple undress cadet uniform, but that evening a striking costume was provided : nothing less than a replica of the garb of a mediaeval herald — tabard and all — for Wilhelm II has a flair for the feudal. From my belt hung a capacious pouch, which, pages of longer standing than I assured me, was the most important part of my equipment; since by custom the ladies were expected to keep these pouches comfortably filled with sweetmeats. Candy for a cadet! No wonder every boy welcomed his turn at page duty, and went back reluctantly to the asceticism of Gross Lichterfelde. That was my first sight of an Imperial dinner. 24

The great banquet hall that overlooks the square on the Uf er, was ablaze with lights. The guests — the men in their uniforms even more than the women — made a brilliant spectacle to the eyes of a youngster from the provinces; but most brilliant of all was Wilhelm II, resplendent in the full dress uniform of a field marshal. I can recall him as he sat there, lordly, arrogant, yet friendly, but never seeming to forget the monarch in the host. It seemed to me that he loved to disconcert a guest with his remarks; it delighted him to set the table laughing at some one's else expense.