IVTHE HINDU-BOCHE FAILURES

Bret Harte said that “the heathen Chinee” was peculiar. The British have learned long since that the Hindu, being an Oriental, cannot help being equally “peculiar,” and it is a great tribute to British persistence that it has labored so hard and so successfully in the good government of a people so temperamentally complex. They have studied the Hindu, and have understood him as well as may be. Understanding him they have watched him. When war broke out, this great Oriental empire presented to Britain a grave problem, for as a Hindu editor in the United States phrased it, “England is Germany’s enemy. England is our enemy. Our enemy’s enemy is our friend.”

It is not in my intention or power to discuss the methods which England employed to maintain strict loyalty in the Indian peninsula, but to outline here the part we played in uncovering a plotwhich threatened seriously to complicate her efforts around on the other side of the earth.

Scotland Yard told us in February, 1917, that Hindus were conspiring in bomb plots with certain Germans in the United States. If it was true, it was against the laws of our country. They supplied us with a few names, but tactfully suggested that inasmuch as it was our country and our laws which the plotters were attempting to disturb, we would prefer to develop the case ourselves. Various authorities in this country had already had strong suspicions of the British claims, but as yet those suspicions had not grown to proof of any specific act. So we went to work.

Among other names which were furnished us was that of one Chakravarty, whose address was 364 West 120th Street, New York. For more than a fortnight men of the Bomb Squad under Mr. (now Lieut.-Col.) Nicholas Biddle, as special aid to the commissioner, watched that house. They hired a room opposite, where through a slit in the window shade they could keep the doorway under observation. At the hours when working New York leaves its home to make money, and comes home at night having made it, the door was rarely used, but sometimes at mid-forenoon,sometimes in the small hours of the morning, the men on watch saw several dark-skinned individuals pass in and out of the house. The building itself gave no sign of suspicious activity. We were on the brink of war, and as was the case in most of the other houses in the block, an American flag hung draped in the front window. What went on behind the camouflage screen we did not know. Now and then our men, hiding in the shadow of the areaway, would go quietly up into the dark doorway and listen, but the house never gave out a sound. There was certainly no indication that these Hindus were conspiring with the Imperial German Government in dynamite plots.

We knew certain East Indians who could be depended upon, and told them to call upon Chakravarty. This ruse failed because Chakravarty never presented to the callers anything but a guileless reception. So far as they could learn his occupation was that of manufacturer of pills; he and a certain Ernest Sekunna constituted the Omin Company, which company packed in aluminum boxes and sold to a limited clientele pills which like most patent remedies were recommended for any ailment from indigestion up or down—if the pill sold, then it was a success. This news didnot quiet our impatience, and we decided on a raid.

On the night of March 7, 1917, Detectives Barnitz, Coy, Randolph, Murphy, Jenkins, Walsh, Sterett and Fenelly called at the house, Sterett, pretending to be a messenger, and carrying a dummy package, presenting himself at the front door, and the rest of the party covering other avenues of escape. The portal was opened by a little Hindu who looked up innocently to Sterett and said that Dr. Chakravarty was not in—he had gone to Boston. The detectives announced their intention of searching the house. The little man protested, and was given certain short reasons why the search was in order. Surprise, injured innocence, and irritation crossed his olive-drab face, and he announced that he was a patriotic American and that he had never done anything to break the laws of the United States. If we wanted Dr. Chakravarty, he said, we should go and get him, and not disturb a peaceful household in this way, and he added that Chakravarty had left for New England months before, leaving no address. In this the little Hindu was borne out by the answers which the other occupant of the house gave to our questions—this was Sekunna, a German of thirty-five or so. We searched thehouse, and took the two prisoners and considerable material to headquarters.

A Handbill, printed in Hindu, used by the Hindu-Boche Conspirators

The search disclosed a supply of literature of the Omin Company describing the properties of its pills, a photograph of Sekunna and Chakravarty as the turbaned benefactors of an unhealthy world, and a number of express money-order receipts, deeds and a bank book which showed the missing Chakravarty to be one who had acquired a good deal of money during the past two years. The photograph on closer inspection revealed that the little prisoner was Dr. Chakravarty himself. Sekunna verified this, and Chakravarty, confronted by it, admitted it.

We asked the prisoner how he had suddenly come by the $60,000 which his books showed. He said that it was his inheritance from the estate of his grandfather in India, and that no less a personage than Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, had paid him, in December, 1916, $25,000 of the $45,000 due from the estate. About $35,000 had been given him, he added, by a lawyer named Chatterji, from Pegu, Burma, in March, 1916.

So far as he gave us his history, it related that he had graduated from the University of Calcutta, and had lived for a time in London, andlater in Paris, before coming to the United States. He had heard that there was a warrant out for his arrest in India for sedition, probably due, he suggested, to his having written several articles on the subject of British Rule.

“Have you been to Germany recently?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he answered. “How could I get there, with the British watching for me? They would arrest me if I tried to go. Why do you ask that?”

“Because I wanted to know,” I answered. I had good reason to believe that he had been there because among his effects we found several exhibits which pointed toward such a trip. A letter from a woman in Florida dated December 13, 1915, said:

“I would never for one moment try to deter you from the effort or achievement of your lofty ideals and noble aims, for in this as in many other things my spirit accords with yours. Brother dear,donothing,saynothing,trustnobody, without extreme caution. God speed you. God hasten your return to those who are interested in you, and in all in which you are interested. Bless you, precious brother.”

This indicated a journey, clearly. A cablegramdated Bergen, Norway, Dec. 23, 1915, addressed to Sekunna, read, “Safe arrival here,” and took him as far as the Continent, at least. Three postcards supplied the rest of the information; they were addressed by Sekunna to himself at a Berlin address, and bore the instructions, “Return to Sender, E. A. Sekunna, Omin Company, 417 E. 142nd Street, New York City”; postmarked Berlin in December and January, they suggested that Chakravarty had used them as part of a pre-arranged system of communication with America in which he did not wish his own name used.

I found among the papers a photographic print of Chakravarty wearing a fez, which I knew was not an orthodox head-dress for a Bengalese. Furthermore, it struck me that the print was of the size and finish usually used on passports for identification of the bearer. I showed it to him, with the remark:

“Why do you tell me you haven’t been in Berlin, when you used this photograph so you could get a passport as a Persian?”

He bit. “I see you got me,” he replied. “I lied to you. I want to tell you a different story—the real one. I did go to Germany.”

“Why?”

“To see Wesendonck. He is a secretary for India of the German foreign office. He wanted to make plans for propaganda for the liberation of India from British rule.”

Chakravarty sat there and unfolded an amazing story. He touched gingerly upon his own part in it at first, then evidently sensed the fact that there were others in the plot guilty of perhaps no less reprehensible but more violent crimes, and the little doctor’s capture and confession not only gave clues to the authorities which enabled them to follow up the outstanding German-Hindu plots in America, but developed prosecutions of the first magnitude and the keenest general interest.

1. Franz Schulenberg2. Ram Chandra3. Ram Singh (on the left)4. Dr. Chandra Chakravarty and Dr. Ernest Sekunna5. Dr. Chandra Chakravarty in his Persian Dress

The enterprises must be recounted out of their actual sequence. The first he claimed to have had little part in—the project of an uprising in India which its sponsors hoped would repeat the Mutiny of 1857—but with a more successful outcome. Captain Hans Tauscher, the New York agent of the Krupp steel and munitions works, was in Berlin when war broke out. He reported for active duty to Captain von Papen, in New York, as soon as he could cross the Atlantic, and one of his earliest services was the purchase of a large quantity of rifles, field guns, swords and cartridges,which he stored in 200 West Houston Street, New York. On January 9, 1915, he shipped a trainload of arms and ammunition to San Diego, California. There it was loaded into a little vessel, theAnnie Larsen, which had been chartered by German interests, and theAnnie Larsenput to sea, ostensibly for Mexico, where revolutionary arms were in demand. Her real destination was a rendezvous off Socorro Island with theMaverick, a tank-ship which had been bought in San Francisco with German money. TheMaverickwas to trans-ship the arms, flood them with oil in her cargo tanks in case she might be searched, and proceed by way of Batavia and Bangkok to Karachi, a seaport in India which is the gateway to the Punjab. There she would be met by friendly fishing vessels who would land her cargo, and if all went well, there would be a massacre of the garrison of Karachi, and hell would break loose over India. The effect of such an uprising upon Great Britain’s sorely tried military condition of early 1915 would have been incalculable. The native troops in France who were helping to stop the breach until England’s great armies could be trained would have to be recalled, the semi-loyal tribes would have seen their opportunity, Germany would hardly have hesitated to throw a Turkishforce at the northern passes, and altogether it would not have been pleasant for the integrity of the British Empire.

TheMaverickand theAnnie Larsenmissed connections at Socorro. TheAnnie Larsenwandered about the Pacific for some weeks and eventually put into Hoquiam, Washington, where the United States seized the arms. TheMaverickblundered from Socorro to San Diego, to Hilo, Hawaii, to Anjer, Java, by way of Johnson Island, then to Batavia, Java, where she was received with disappointment by a German agent and where she was finally sold. The filibuster ended in flat and costly failure: the arms cost not less than $100,000 and probably $150,000, the freight to the Pacific Coast some $12,000, the charter of theAnnie Larsen$19,000, the purchase of theMaverickinvolved hundreds of thousands, not to mention the individual fees of the numerous agents employed.

We knew in a general way of this plot, though it remained for the tireless efforts of United States District Attorney John W. Preston in San Francisco to unearth the details. In a raid which had been made on the office of Wolf von Igel, von Papen’s secretary, at 60 Wall Street, New York, agents of the Department of Justice hadfound von Igel’s memoranda of correspondence in arranging the expedition through the San Francisco consulate. But Chakravarty said that the revolutionary end of the project had been handled by another Hindu, Ram Chandra, and denied that he was guilty of any part in it. Ram Chandra had negotiated with the German consuls in Seattle and San Francisco, and through them with Tauscher and von Papen. Chakravarty supplied the names of Hindus who had sailed on theAnnie Larsen, said that there had been Filipinos and Germans aboard as well, and added that the Filipinos had been transferred to a German ship, and had later escaped from her in a motorboat while she was being pursued by a Japanese cruiser. But, he said, he had nothing to do with it—it was Ram Chandra who was the real agent.

It was this Ram Chandra who was editor of the Hindu revolutionary newspaperGhadr(Mutiny) published at Berkeley, California. He succeeded to the editor’s chair in 1914 when his predecessor, Har Dayal, out on bail after an arrest for ultra-free speech, had fled across the continent and the Atlantic Ocean to Berlin. There Dayal established the Hindustani Revolutionary Committee, collaborating with, taking orders from, and financed by the German Government,under the direction of Herr Wesendonck of the Foreign Office. Ten million marks had been placed to their credit, and German consulates throughout the neutral world had instructions through their parent-embassies to render all possible assistance to the revolutionary project, and to spend whatever money might be necessary, charging it to the account of the Indian Nationalist Party. Three hundred thousand dollars was invested in China and Java. Hindus were sent through Persia and Afghanistan into India with German credit to foster unrest, and Afghanistan itself was full of spies trying to break the Amir’s promise, given to the British Government at the outbreak of war, that he would maintain strict neutrality. It was this same Har Dayal who conferred with Chakravarty when the latter made his visit to Berlin in December, 1915. The reason for this visit to Berlin came out very soon, and that will lead us in turn to the second of the German-Hindu plots hatched in America.

TheAnnie Larsen’sCash AccountGupta’s Code Message

Chakravarty got bail from a surety company without much trouble. Two or three days after his arrest he called me up on the telephone and said that a man named Gupta had threatened him. “He says I must give him $2,000. And there is another man named Wagel. He is a Hindu.He wants $10,000 from me, otherwise he will do me harm. He already has had $7,000 from the German Government in Mexico. He has demanded $20,000,000 of Count von Bernstorff to finish up the revolution in India.”

“Wait a minute, now,” I suggested. The figures were going to my head. “Where is Wagel?”

“I do not know,” Chakravarty answered.

“Well, where is Gupta?”

“He is a student at Columbia,” replied the little man.

“All right, doctor,” I said, “we’ll not let any harm come to you.”

Detectives Coy and Walsh at once got on the trail of Gupta. They found him in his dormitory room at 73 Livingston Hall, Columbia, and brought him to headquarters. “I saw of Chakravarty’s arrest in the paper,” he said, “and I thought I might be arrested if he implicated me.” Gupta knew full well he would be arrested, for there was jealousy between the two, and he went on to reveal why.

Heramba Lal Gupta was then thirty-two years old. Since his boyhood in Calcutta he had been all over the world, and had studied in the United States. In the spring of 1915 he had severalconferences with Captain von Papen in the city in which the military attaché conceived such confidence in the young Hindu that he gave him $15,000 for expense money and sent him to Chicago to confer with Gustav Jacobsen, an ex-German consul. With him went Jodh Singh, another Hindu who had migrated from Brazil to Berlin and thence to Captain von Papen, and an art collector named Albert H. Wehde. They were joined by George Paul Boehm and a German named Sterneck, and two plans were arranged. Gupta, Singh and Wehde were to proceed to Japan to establish connections and obtain assistance for fomenting Indian revolt. Boehm and Sterneck were to go to the Philippines, pick up a third plotter, Chakravarty’s lawyer-friend Chatterji, proceed thence to Java to meet two escaped officers of the destroyed German cruiserEmden, and thence to the Himalayan hills north of India, where Dr. Frederick A. Cook, the Arctic romancer, was on an expedition. There they were to overpower the Cook party, Boehm was to assume the explorer’s identity and travel about the hills spreading sedition among the native tribes. This wild plan failed completely, as the Germans never kept their appointment in Java. (Gupta believed in preparedness to the extent oftaking Boehm to several shooting galleries in Chicago and practising pistol firing with him.)

Gupta, Singh and Wehde set sail from San Francisco in theMongoliaand landed in Yokohama, September 16, 1915. Gupta immediately got in touch with various prominent Hindus. Although their conferences were enthusiastic and the prospect of obtaining Japanese arms for the revolution was good, his work was hampered by the discovery on the part of British agents that Gupta was in Japan. He was notified within a week of his arrival that he must leave by the next steamer: the next steamer was bound for Shanghai, a British port; the order was equal to delivery into the hands of the British, and death. A Japanese friend came to his rescue. He took him to his house, followed by the police. By a subterfuge the police were distracted long enough to allow the Hindu to slip out the back door, jump into an automobile, and flee to the interior of the country. There he was hidden for six months, between the flimsy walls of his friend’s house. It was May of 1916 before he could escape, smuggled out in an eastbound vessel, and it was June before he returned to New York. There he found that the following order had been issued from Berlin:

“Berlin, February 4, 1916. To the German Embassy, Washington.“In future all Indian affairs are to be exclusively handled by the committee to be formed by Dr. Chakravarty. Dhirendra Sarkar and Herambra Lal Gupta, the latter of whom has meanwhile been expelled from Japan, thus cease to be representatives of the Indian Independence Committee existing here.“(Signed)Zimmermann.”

“Berlin, February 4, 1916. To the German Embassy, Washington.

“In future all Indian affairs are to be exclusively handled by the committee to be formed by Dr. Chakravarty. Dhirendra Sarkar and Herambra Lal Gupta, the latter of whom has meanwhile been expelled from Japan, thus cease to be representatives of the Indian Independence Committee existing here.

“(Signed)Zimmermann.”

Gupta, in short, found himself displaced. His expedition had been a failure. Chakravarty had had his job for nearly six months. He tried to negotiate with Chakravarty for a restoration of some of his lost prestige, but the little man would not have much to do with him. In January, 1917, the French secret service intercepted at the Swiss border a letter postmarked New York, November 16, 1916, and addressed as follows:

“Mr. Albourge“Hotel Des Alpas“Territel“Montreau, Switzerland.”

The letter was in cipher, and was seized and returned to French agents in the United States, and by them turned over to the American authorities for investigation, at about the time whendiplomatic relations were broken off with Germany. Search here disclosed little. The letter was typewritten, and the only clue to its message was a hint suggested by a sub-address on the back of the envelope:

“Mr. Chatterjee”

who was apparently a Hindu. (This, by the way, was the same Chatterji who persists in cropping up in the wings of this story from time to time). Now there is no “Hotel Des Alpas” in Montreux; the name of the inn referred to is the “Hotel des Alpes.” Again, the name “Territel” was apparently a misspelling of “Territet,” and “Montreau” probably meant “Montreux.” When we captured Gupta we found in a memorandum book not only the address cited above, but thesame misspellings—pretty conclusive proof that he was the author of the letter. This address was later found with the same misspellings, in the mailing list ofGhadr, the revolutionary paper published in California. Thus little errors combined to forge important links.

The code of the Gupta letter was a popular and scholarly volume by an American author: Price Collier’s “Germany and the Germans,” published in New York in 1913. The letter was so writtenthat the words which contained the meat of each sentence were carefully enciphered. The letter said, for example:

“... I donot believe thereare very many menincluding98-5-298-1-198-1-998-4-198-5-898-3-3———”Who can show muchbetter results a-long the line of97-1-397-1-1197-6-597-8-4———132-1-1———“Undertook”

Turning to page 98 of “Germany and the Germans,” we see that the second letter of the fifth line isb; the first letter of the first line ish; the ninth letter of the first line isu; the first letter ofthe fourth line isp; the eighth in the fifth line ise; and the third in the third linen. Sum total: B-h-u-p-e-n—a Hindu name. On page 97, the first few lines read:

“am willing to concede that perhaps even an emperorhas been baptized with the blood of the martyrs,and feels himself to be in all sincerity the instrumentof God; if we are to understand this one, we mustadmit so much.“In certain ...” etc.

Thus 97-1-3 isw, 97-1-11 iso, 97-6-5 isr, 97-8-4 isK; total w-o-r-k. 132-1-1 isI. Our translation reads therefore:

“I do not believe that there are very many men including Bhupen, who can show much better results along the line of work I undertook.”

Four columns to the typewritten page it ran on over seven sheets of foolscap, and wound up with a plea in plain English which showed that Gupta was angry:

“Seems no action taken yet. If want work, change methods completely. I insist the man in charge is not only useless but spoiling the work;important workers wasting time for want of coöperation and funds while that man is squandering money. Do not care what you decide, I inform you as it is my duty but you don’t seem to pay any attention. This is my last warning for the cause. Again I appeal to you to think more seriously and not spoil the work by leaving it in the hands of irresponsible and insane person. I again tell you that no one is willing to work with him because he does not understand anything, secondly he spends money in a ridiculous way, thirdly he does not do any work. Think seriously and reply.”

In order to show why Gupta was upset and also in passing to show how innocently he had coded his letter, we shall quote it in full, with those words in italics which had to be decoded months later:

“DearChatto: Am back fromJapan. Had lotstrouble.Thakur, realname Rash Behari Ghose, splendid worker inIndiastill inJapan. Sent report twice, besides messages throughGermansources. Went toJapanas planned. Am surprised to hear fromTarakyou said I had norightto go to Japan. See my reports submitted to the committee. Before leavingBerlin Shanghaiauthorities also wanted me for important work. This I was told atGerman Embassyso cannot understand why you failed to know anything about me. Have sent two reports since my return. Hope you got them.Taraksaid you were not satisfied withmy workandBhupen Duttsaid that such incapable men asIshould not have been sent to America.Bhupenbefore leavingAmericasaid toChakravarty ‘Guptanothing butadventurer; should not have been sent,’ and as usual everybody knew and it naturally prejudiced menIhad to work with. What right hadBhupento make such remarks? I don’t claim to be a very capable man. You remember I did not want tocome here. But howBhupenmeasured my abilities? If no report was received how could anybody pass an opinion on unknown things? You maycriticize myreticence. I do not believe there are very many men includingBhupenwho can show much better results along the line ofwork Iundertook. Results of such work cannot be shown inblack and whitebut I challenge anybody who dares ignore thesolid workdone throughour agencies. Time alone can prove it. You cannot compare theworklately undertaken with theprogramwe started with. If wefailed to start a revolution in Bengalas asked by you it has been for the best. If wefailed land armsit was due more toGermansthan anybody else. Ourmen worked, suffered. Stillsuffering. The whole plan under the direct supervision ofGermansof more capablebrains failedtoo. We have succeeded in laying foundation forfuture work. OurworkinJapanhas been unique. EvenLajpat Raiwho slights ourwork, quite often admits in three months moresolid workdone there than any other part of the world outsideIndiain number of years. I understandChakravartyhascharge of affairs. Met him.Tarak Harishsays he was given instruction to form acommitteeof five includingmyself. He did not agree. Said all depended on his discretion. Fact is he has grudge against me and the fault lies withyou. Report went toBerlinconcerning hisrelationswithMrs. Warren. You told him I did it. I did not. Even if I did you had no business to mention my name. I like also to know how did thecommitteesatisfy itself as to the charge being false. FromChakravarty’s lettersonly? He wanted me toapologize. I did not: will not. First I did notreport; secondly suppose I did, in the interest of thecause. I was of opinion he hadconnection with Mrs. Warren. She came to know many things aboutworkthroughhim. Am still of same opinion. I do not care how manywomen man enjoysbut he has no right to talk about seriouswork to women. I do not know whatwork hedoing. Does not give me any information. Thehousehe took withprincely furnitureshows at onceGerman connection. Some of hispamphletsnothing butGerman propaganda. It may be yourpolicy. We havecentres in Japan, Burmah, Manila; regularcommunicationwithIndiathroughJapanesesources.Workingbut badlyin need of funds. Startedworkwith impressionbalance of funds creditedto myaccountwould be forthcoming but no sign of it. For betterworkneed send at least one moremantoJapan.TarakgoingChina, Chakravartytoldhim his men wouldwatch Tarakfor a month. If behaves well will be helped, given facilities. Whatgrand diplomacy! Chakravartytold mecommitteenot sure ofTarakso sent him away.Taraksaid largefundshave been sanctioned. He can draw without receipt. Will you blame me (if this be true) if I fail to understand the policy?Ram Chandra workingin his own way. I did not interfere forfearof creating divisions. Only helped gettingfunds. Have now influence over him but asChakravarty gone San FranciscoI consider my duty keep quiet until hear from you. Haveworkedto best abilities and shall work but cannot do so at the instance of people who I am sure do not know the exact nature of workdone last yearandhalf. Am surprised atmean jealousies, even sacrificingwork. Am shocked at yourfaith shaken in meandmy work. Hope to hear soon all regardingwork. Remember me to all. Did not mail the first letter as waiting for information fromBerlin.”

How the Hindus used Price Collier’s “Germany and the Germans” as a cryptogram

Followed the postscript in English already cited.

The reader will probably be interested, even at the cost of interrupting the narrative, in the way in which this cipher code was discovered and the letter translated. By a partial decipherment by common methods of deduction, it was found to be almost sure that on a certain page of the code book—the name of which was of course notthen known—the phrase “foreign legation” would appear. The cipher experts deduced, too, that the phrase “rush to a newspaper” must appear in a certain line of another page of the volume, and working further they assembled some twenty-five fragmentary words and phrases of whose position in the missing volume they were certain. The problem was to find the volume. The nature of the words and phrases suggested that the work was a recent one, probably dealing with history—and perhaps with the nature of a people. These limitations reduced the field of possibility to a minimum of 100,000 volumes, and the cipher experts set agents at work searching for such books. The caption of the letter, “Hossain’s Code,” threw them off the scent and they spent some time in scouring Allied Europe and America for such a code. There was none, for “Houssain” was merely a Hindu agent in Trinidad. Then, one of the agents hunting for the needle in the haystack found it—Mr. Collier’s book.

Gupta, it is evident, was a prejudiced judge of Chakravarty’s ability. Even when Gupta was arrested Chakravarty wiped out past scores, and went bail for the man who had blackmailed and traduced him. But Gupta was definitely introuble this time. The evidence supplied of his trip to Japan, its purpose, and his collusion with Germans brought him to trial in Chicago with Jacobsen, Wehde, and Boehm. (Mr. Chatterji was a witness for the prosecution.) The three Germans, after a trial in which the State’s case had been admirably handled by U. S. District Attorney Clyne, were convicted and sentenced to serve five years in prison and pay fines of $13,000. Gupta was sentenced to two years, fined $200, and released on bail, pending an appeal. He jumped his bail and escaped to Mexico in May, 1918, while a number of his countrymen were being tried in San Francisco.

His escape was probably due to fear. The Hindus are a vengeful lot, and it is no more than possible that the “grapevine cable” had informed him that friends of the men on trial in San Francisco were planning to get even with him for having supplied part of the evidence used against them. Some of that evidence we found in his room at Columbia, and more in his safety deposit box in a Columbus Avenue bank. Among other items was the list of addresses in Switzerland already mentioned, and this was amplified by a letter which we found in Chakravarty’s house, from Sekunna to the little doctor, which read:

“My dear boy,“Enclosed please find addresses from Wesendonck. Send your reports to: Mr. Director Karl Hirsch, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland.”

“My dear boy,

“Enclosed please find addresses from Wesendonck. Send your reports to: Mr. Director Karl Hirsch, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland.”

Chakravarty, in turn, furnished us with two more codes which were used in writing to these addresses: One which cited pages and word-numbers in a certain German-English dictionary, and a second, based on an entirely different principle. The second and third were often used in the same letter, as this fragment from one of Chakravarty’s reports will show. The letter reads, in part:

“50337069403847695228, 265-3, 331-6, 497-2, 337-10-3, 335-14, 77-11.”

The first series of figures is written in the third code mentioned, and must be deciphered by using the following square:

1 2 3 4 5 6 71A B C D E F G2H I J K L M N3O P Q R S T U4V W X Y Z

Each letter is indicated first by the digit marking the horizontal row in which the letter falls, secondby the number of the vertical column. Thus “A” is 1-1, or 11: “K” 2-4, or 24, and so on. But if the Hindu wished to transfer a message in cipher, he would not stop with this simple designation of the letters, for they would recur too often and fall too readily under the “laws of repetition” by which most ciphers can be untangled. So after he had his word translated by this square chart, he added four key numbers to it, those key numbers being fixed and permanent, and being added in rotation. In order that we may find out what this word is, we must therefore subtract the key number thus:

Message50337069403847695228 (or divided into letters)50 33 70 69 40 38 47 69 52 28Key numbers25 11 26 32 25 11 26 32 25 11Result25 22 44 37 15 27 21 37 26 17

Message50337069403847695228 (or divided into letters)

50 33 70 69 40 38 47 69 52 28Key numbers25 11 26 32 25 11 26 32 25 11Result25 22 44 37 15 27 21 37 26 17

Consulting our chart again, we see that 25 is “L,” 22 is “I” 44 is “Y,” and that the message deciphers thus:

L I Y U E N H U N G

The line we quoted above read:

“Li Yuen Hung is now the president of China”

After transmitting the proper-name in the second cipher (as the name of course would not have appeared in the dictionary code), Chakravarty had lapsed back into the first code, as being swifter.

Gupta, we observed, was harshly critical of Chakravarty. Let us see whether he was justified. Chakravarty said he had been commissioned to deal only with the broader propaganda. From captured reports which he transmitted through the German embassy as well as through the mails to Switzerland, he had been delegated to form a committee of five, with Ram Chandra as one of the other members, to handle Indian affairs here. They were to send an agent to the West Indies to stir up the Hindu coolies there, of whom there were estimated to be 100,000, and to send back to India all who would volunteer for revolution. The same policy was to be followed in British Guiana, Java, and Sumatra. From Ram Chandra’sGhadrpress were to be issued reams of propaganda in the various Indian dialects for circulation throughout the East and West Indies, in Hindustan itself, and even for German aviators to drop upon Hindu troops in France. Chakravarty was to procure letters of introduction to parties in Japan which would assure a safe welcome to an emissary to be sent there to carry outwhat Gupta had failed to do, and an envoy was to be sent to China for a similar purpose. It was a broad program, and the doctor set to work immediately upon his return to organize his staff.

In all his work he had the coöperation of von Bernstorff and the embassy at Washington. Chakravarty organized a Pan-Asiatic League as a blind, so that Hindus posing as its members could travel without exciting suspicion. His work was somewhat handicapped in the early spring by an automobile accident which took him to the hospital, and by the seizure of the military attaché’s papers in von Igel’s office. He hired a Chinaman named Chin as the delegate to China, and shipped him off on a Greek vessel from New York. Referred by Berlin to Houssain, the spy in Trinidad, Chakravarty established contact with him, and supervised the formation of an organization there. In July Chakravarty started for a tour of the West, in the course of which he visited two disloyal Hindus in Vancouver and determined upon a plan of action for that section. Then he swung down to San Francisco, where he called upon Ram Chandra, the western head of the committee. He conferred with friendly agents of Japanese newspapers who proposed to attack the Anglo-Japanese treaty. He conferred with W. T. Wang,private secretary to the new president of China, as the secretary was leaving for Peking, and learned that “some of the prominent people are quite willing to help India directly and Germany indirectly—on three conditions, those conditions being a secret treaty with Germany for military protection, to last five years after peace had been declared, and to be secured by giving China one-tenth of all the arms and ammunition which she would undertake to smuggle across the Indian frontier.” By the late autumn of 1916 Chakravarty was acting as the master-wheel in a most elaborate and complicated machine for disturbing British rule in almost all of her colonial holdings, and it is safe to say that if theMaverickaffair had not roused shipping inspectors to unusual vigilance to prevent filibustering, the United States might have seen the bloody result of his work by March of 1917, when we arrested him. Even as it was, he was the general manager of a going concern.

It may be wondered how he was able to perfect an organization. The answer to that we found in Gupta’s safety deposit box—a list of two hundred or more members of an Indian society in the United States, a large proportion of whom were students in American colleges, senthere for education on scholarships, in the hope that they would return to their native country and uplift it. Some of them were influential agents, and they were scattered conveniently about the country. Add to this force the coöperation of almost innumerable German agents and pay it with a share of the $32,000,000 which Chakravarty said had been set aside in Berlin for anarchistic, race-riot and Hindu propaganda in the western world, and you have a real factor for trouble. It is perhaps surprising that the organization worked undiscovered as long as it did, but it is more surprising that having worked under cover for more than fourteen months it did not break out into a grave demonstration. Chakravarty’s arrest, however, came in time, and the authorities were on the whole satisfied that so much time had elapsed because it gave them more clues to work on and a larger group to round up.

And Chakravarty himself was pleased, I think. When he confessed his trip to Berlin, he was on the horns of a dilemma, for he feared the British would revenge themselves on him. I assured him that he would be protected as an American prisoner. He said, “Well, if I tell you about what I have done for the Germans, and they hearabout it, they will kill me. And in any case my own people will kill me. You don’t know them!” I again quieted him and suggested that he tell me now where he got the money which he said had come to him from his estate in India.

“Von Igel gave it to me,” he answered. “I could not go to his office downtown, so I sent Sekunna. In all I got $60,000. I spoke of the poet, Tagore, because he won the Nobel prize, and I thought he would be above suspicion.” He had bought the house at 364 West 120th Street and equipped it comfortably as a residence. He bought a house in 77th Street to open a Hindu restaurant. He bought a farm at Hopewell Junction to use as a rendezvous for the plotters. And when he had given us valuable information, and had appeared at the trial, and had been himself convicted and had served his sentence (a short term) in jail, and the smoke had cleared away, he was the owner of three nice parcels of real estate and a comfortable income. Dr. Chakravarty, although a failure as a Prussian agent, fared pretty well as an investor of Prussian funds.

After a series of digressions which I hope have not led us too far from the path, we may return to the third of the Hindu-German projects in which we of the Bomb Squad were especially interested.Ever since Captain von Papen’s check-book had been captured by the British at Falmouth in January, 1916, students of the German plots in the United States had wondered why two of the stubs bore the entries:

In December, 1917, Barnitz, Randolph and I had gone to San Francisco to testify in theAnnie Larsen-Maverickcase. It so happened that a German who was unable to give a satisfactory account of himself had just been picked up at San Jose. His name was Franz Schulenberg, and at the invitation of the San Francisco authorities we assisted in the examination of the prisoner. He testified that in the early months of 1915 he had met Lieutenant von Brincken, of the San Francisco Consulate, who had sent him to the consul at Seattle. There von Papen in person paid him $4,000 to buy fifty guns, fifty Maxim silencers, a ton of dynamite, and deliver it to one Singh, at the border between Sumas, Washington, and Canada. There Singh was to deliver it to a smallarmy of coolies, who would start a reign of terror in the Canadian northwest, dynamiting bridges, railways and shipping, and shooting guards. Schulenberg had actually bought some of the munitions when he received a letter from von Brincken telling him to break off relations with the Hindus. After some time he tried to get more money from von Brincken, but Franz Bopp, the consul, spurned him, and von Brincken sent him to New York, to get it from von Papen. Von Papen refused to pay him further. While Schulenberg was in Hoboken, three men from Paul Koenig’s staff approached him and posing as United States agents offered him $5,000 for any information which would incriminate Count von Bernstorff. Von Papen had had Koenig send them—although Schulenberg did not know this—to test him. One of the three was George Fuchs. The air was getting thick around von Papen’s head at the moment, and he could not afford to have a disgruntled and unpaid henchman gabbling about the saloons in Hoboken. But Schulenberg believed that the three were really American secret service men, and refused to divulge what he knew. The next morning a German whom he had not seen before appeared at his lodging house and gave him a railroad ticket to Mexico. “They’re afteryou—the secret service,” he said. “Here’s a ticket. Use it.” Schulenberg was half sick anyway, and evidently it did not enter his mind to squeal. He fled to Mexico, and von Papen thus disposed of a troublesome source of information. When we talked to Schulenberg, two years later, he was a sorry reminder of another German failure.

Although we three members of the Bomb Squad had made the trip to San Francisco to testify to the circumstances of Chakravarty’s arrest, and to the statements which he and Gupta had made, we were not in at the death of the Hindu hunt. The trial was a long affair, with more than a hundred defendants. Aided by the revelations of the little doctor, the Government had presented to the Grand Jury a picture of violation of Section 13 of the Federal Code which caused indictments to be returned against the entire German consulate of San Francisco, its accomplices among the shipping men who chartered theAnnie Larsenand bought theMaverick, its Hindu agents from the nucleus of Berkeley and Ram Chandra’s editorial rooms, and a list of other notorious characters which included von Papen and von Igel, both of whom were by this time safe in Germany. We did, however, have opportunity to observe theIndian prisoners, and we noticed that they did not seem altogether fond of each other. They were forever whispering, wagging their heads, stuffing notes down each other’s necks and when the testimony of one of their number grew too truthful they squirmed and scowled. Chakravarty’s life was threatened during the trial. The officials in charge of the case all had more than their usual share of responsibility to maintain order. The trial lasted more than six months. The Germans upbraided each other in the court room: von Brincken, who had been jealous of Bopp, and had accused him of indifference to his duties, openly showed his independence of his chief, and ill feeling spread among the defendants. Its climax came on April 24, 1918, the day when, with the testimony all in, Judge Van Fleet ordered a recess preparatory to delivering his charge to the jury. Ram Singh, one of the defendants, suddenly rose in the court room and fired two shots at Ram Chandra from a revolver. Ram Chandra fell dead, and as he did so, a bullet from the revolver of United States Marshal Holohan broke Ram Singh’s neck. The jury then received its charge, retired, and returned convictions of the great majority of the conspirators.

So, just as Holohan’s bullet broke Ram Singh’sneck, Chakravarty’s statements had broken the neck of the Hindu plot. But there was one more incident related to it in store for us; it will conclude our story. The men in charge of theAnnie Larsenwere a spy named Alexander V. Kircheisen and a Captain Othmer. Kircheisen’s name had appeared in several German secret service reports as “K-17.” As late as 1917 he was arrested in Copenhagen, Denmark, and on his person was found a letter addressed to another agent, La Nine by name. The letter advised La Nine that if he arrived in the United States before Kircheisen, he was to call for the former’s mail at “Kotzenberg’s, 1319 Teller Avenue, in the Bronx.”

When this information reached us, Detectives Randolph and Senff called at Mr. Kotzenberg’s house. He knew nothing of Kircheisen, he said, except that he was a friend of his cousin’s.

“Who is your cousin?” asked Randolph, in German.

“His name is Othmer,” Kotzenberg replied. “He escaped from San Francisco, and he came back across the whole country, half by train and half in automobile. He stayed here for a while. One morning he put on some overalls and he left and he went away on a Norwegian boat, and I guess now he is back into Germany.”

Randolph and Senff searched the house. They found among other papers, an application which Kircheisen had filled out in New York on January 9, 1917, for a certificate of service as an able seaman. In order to be granted such a certificate he had to swear that he was a naturalized citizen of the United States, and that he would “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies ... and ... bear true faith and allegiance to the same,” which he swore without any qualms of conscience. Furthermore, his character was attested to by one Charles A. Martin, who also wanted a seaman’s certificate. The records of the office show that Kircheisen obligingly turned about and swore to Martin’s good character. I have often wondered who Martin was.... We found in Kotzenberg’s house an expense account which the fugitive Othmer had submitted to von Papen after he had left the unfortunateAnnieat Hoquiam. And finally, we found two scraps of a memorandum book, which constituted the log ofAnnieherself. It reads:

“Mar. 8. left S.D.Mar. 18. arr Soc.Apr. 5. Start Digg. wells.Apr. 9 boatEmmaarrived.2 sailors.Apr. 10.Emmaarrived. two crews working on wellApril 16. Well 22 feet struck hard rock bottom no water gave upApr.17. left for Mex. coast” 22 went ashore in boat look for waterApr.24th. arr at AcapulcoU. S. S.YorktownNansham(?)N. OrleansAnnapolisApril 27 left AcapulcoMay 19 gave up Socorromade for coastJune 7 (two illegible words)got provisionsJune 29 arr. HoquiamJuly 1 arr. W.1 arr. InvestigatorJul. 4aus”

So, in a word, Othmer summed up all the efforts of the Hindus and the Germans to hatch revolution in America. All, all “aus”!

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