Foreign News: Again Frightfulness

“We waited near the fences and jabbed the horses and mules as they came close. We spread germs in their food and in their drinking troughs. We did it at the stockyards north of Van Cortlandt Park, maybe just across the Yonkers city line, where horses were being collected [by the Allies] for shipment to France. I swear to God we did!”

Dictated and signed by a pop-eyed Negro, name of Edwin Felton, this fervent confession was read last week to solemn white folks seated pompously about big green-topped tables in Andrew Carnegie’s commodious Peace Palace at The Hague.

The white folks, who have been sitting off and on for eight years, are the German-American Mixed Claims Commission. To their credit stand some 19,000 awards. But only last week did the quiet, potent Commission become smoking hot news.

“Burn, Bomb, Destroy!” Almost apologetically the U. S. Agent before the Mixed Claims Commission, grizzled Robert Williams Bonynge, Manhattan lawyer, Harding appointee, charged last week that in 1915-16, when the U. S. and Germany were still at peace, the Imperial Government sent over secret agents who committed sabotage throughout the U. S., hired Negroes to infect horses with anthrax germs in New York City, Newport News (Va.), and Baltimore, hired other Negroes to touch off such mighty munitions explosions as New Jersey’s famed Black Tom blast (1916).

“This is no ordinary lawsuit,” said Mr. Bonynge. “Let me assure the Commission that, however earnest I have been, that earnestness comes from no feeling of hostility toward Germany, either on the part of my Government or myself. It springs only from the conviction that our cause is right and just. It has been a matter of regret to me that the Commission’s long work in settling thousands of war claims should practically end with a case which arouses such feeling as this.”

Crisply then he observed: “It is well known and proved that Franz von Rintelen came directly from Section Three B of the General Staff early in 1915 with $500,000 to finance sabotage activities [in the U. S.]. In an affidavit from the British Admiral, Sir Reginald Hall, who intercepted von Rintelen’s instructions, we learn that he was told to ‘burn, bomb and destroy.’ ”

Dramatically, Mr. Bonynge next described to the Commission “a man of vicious and ruthless disposition”: Captain Frederick Hinsch of the German Secret Service who, while held in Baltimore on the interned steamship Neckar, manufactured tubes of anthrax cultures in his cabin, then sallied forth to hire Negroes who jabbed the germs into horses and mules bought by the Allies for War purposes. One batch of 4,500 beasts was jabbed so thoroughly that not one reached France alive.

In stirring conclusion, after reading and waving numerous confessions, Mr. Bonynge cried:

“German officials have testified that no use was to be made of those incendiary devices [in the U. S.] until America entered the War because they did not want to antagonize American public opinion. Yet is it possible to believe the Germans would infect horses and mules and refrain from blowing up munitions plants? No more dastardly thing could be done by any government than spreading germs which not only killed animals but endangered human life as well.”

Wolf of Wall Street. For defense of the German Government, Dr. Karl von Lewinski opened his rebuttal by crying: “We cannot allow the American nation to get the impression that the German Government, before America entered the war, carried on a campaign of frightfulness against America!”

He denounced Agent Bonynge’s charges of wholesale German arson and sabotage as “based on flimsy circumstantial evidence.” He explained ingeniously what happened to Secret Agent von Rintelen and his $500,000 of alleged sabotage money:

“Von Rintelen did great damage to the German cause—there is no doubt about it! He went to America on a purely economic mission, but preferred to foment strikes—and spent a great deal of money doing so. The rest of the money von Rintelen took with him was taken from him by David Lamar, known as ‘the Wolf of Wall Street,* who emptied his pockets in short order. Bombs were manufactured and placed on allied ships, but only one ever exploded as far as is known.”

In his concluding speech Dr. von Lewinski also waxed hot about anthrax germs. Admitting freely and officially that a German agent did hire Negroes to jab animals with anthrax, he asked in effect: “What of it?” He stressed the point that “only animals” were jabbed. “It is fantastic,” cried Dr. von Lewinski, “for the Americans to assert that ‘human life was endangered.’ We all know that anthrax germs are not harmful to human beings!”

Rat-Hole-Man & Kitchener. As the Commission last week pondered testimony and considered the U. S. claim that Germany ought to pay $40,000,000 compensation for Black Tom and Kingsland, cables told that Death had come to a London youth, whose trade was repairing holes gnawed by wharf rats.

Rats are occasionally anthrax carriers. The coroner in this case, after inspecting the corpse, certified that he died of anthrax.

Another British side issue of the Mixed Claims Commission’s labors last week concerned the late, great Lord Kitchener. Lawyer Bonynge, apropos nothing in particular, fished out his portfolio of German confessions one made by a certain Fred Hermann. This alleged “secret service agent” declared that he worked with other German hush-hush men in London early in the War, positively asserted that they learned of Earl Kitchener’s projected visit to Russia on a British cruiser, radioed to Berlin information which enabled Germans to lay the mine which sunk it.

*”Wolf of Wall Street,” as previously set forth is a term applied to any successful operator who may even have been suspected of tricky doings applicable to bear or bull side alike.