Page:The web (1919).djvu/98

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to have handled this. The notorious Rintelen, who seemed to have operated independently in New York, confined his activities rather to the making of bombs to be concealed on ships, to the incitement of strikes, munition embargoes, etc. Dr. Scheele, one of the three most prominent spies in America, was relied on to devise means of burning ships at sea. His method of bomb manufacture is spoken of later.

What is equivalent to our Military Intelligence Department in Germany, in turn took up the question of sabotage in our ammunition works, and of getting contraband stuff into Germany. Scheele, who was taken in custody by the United States, declared that this country was divided into military districts, and that supplies of arms and ammunition were gotten together. He even declared at one time that he knew of 200,000 Mauser rifles stored in a German club in New York City. He was taken there by Government officials and located the place where the rifles probably had been stored, although they had in the meantime been removed.

Von Papen, military attache at Washington, had much the same work for the army that Boy-Ed had taken on for the navy. He often appears in the revelations of the German spy system, as in the plot against the Welland Canal, and the Vanceboro bridge, for which Werner Horn was arrested. Von Papen had the charge of the Bridgeport Projectile Company, which was intended to disorganize our manufacture of munitions. He had some sort of charge of Scheele, the German chemist spy, who is, perhaps, the best known example now remaining on American soil of the German espionage system.

Special commissions to spread disease germs were sent to this country, as perhaps A. P. L. reading will have indicated. A good deal of this work failed because so many of the German spies were interned early in the war, and there has been no good opportunity since to replace these men properly, the war having traveled too fast when once America was in it.

But what, perhaps, has shocked and horrified Americans more than anything else (and it cannot be too often iterated) was the knowledge that long before this war Ger-