- torica, also an alleged German spy; Willard J. Robinson,
an American, and the late Dr. Hugo Schweitzer, one of the best known German business men in New York.
It was alleged that the activities of Wessells had to do with "ways and means of secretly placing explosives, or securing other persons secretly to place explosives, on wharves located in the United States, on ships and vessels in ports of the United States, and plying between ports of the United States and other countries; to blow up, injure, and destroy the same, and cause fires thereon, and thereby hinder and hamper the prosecution of the war by the United States against Germany."
The final overt act charged was that in July, 1917, Wessells requested "information as to ways and means of importing toy blocks from Switzerland," his purpose being to find "ways and means of secretly and clandestinely introducing into the United States explosives and ingredients of explosives concealed in toy blocks."
Had any of these toy blocks come into the hands of innocent children, what matter to a mind which would regard the Lusitania sinking as justifiable war? What difference would it make to a man hiding T. N. T. in a child's toys whether he killed babies in Flanders or on the high seas or in American homes? Such men are unmoral. One would call treason one of their lesser crimes.
There was in New York City a certain German whom we will call von S. He was an inventor of a machine called an aeromobile, which, however, he said he would not sell to any government but that of Germany. He was arrested by agents of the Department of Justice, charged with uttering disloyal, scurrilous and profane remarks against the Government and military forces of the United States. He is a German-born citizen of the United States. Enter now another citizen of the United States who spoke as good German as von S did and who posed as "an official representative of the German Imperial Government in the United States." This latter gentleman said he wanted to buy the S invention for the Fatherland. S turned himself inside out, saying among other things: "Everything is fair in war—gas, poison,
