February 2i, 191 8 Land & Water 
John Rathom's Revelations 
An account of a remarkable interview between 
Mr. Rathom and Captain Boy-Ed, and the wireless 
conspiracies which originated in Berlin 
II 
The Secretaries of the Austro-Hungarian Embassy at Washington 
These men, with Dr. Dumba. the Ambasjador. were all in the work of obtaining fraudulent passports^ JnllXr^nasroortfto l"ustda" 
labour^s (chiefly longshoremen) who had become naturalized American citizens were mstr^cted to apply ^"^ p^^^PO^t^" ^ustna 
When obtained these passports were bought by the Austrian officials and turned over to the Germans, who erased tne names ana SUD 
SS:te?tVT,^m*esTf Kan reserve officers an\ soldiers, who were thus -abled to return to ^^^^^^y.^L «Lll'otDr"Dumba in 
group above, from left to right, are : Baron Erich Zweidmek, counsellor and Charge d Affaires and, after the recall ot J^'^^^"™"^' ' 
charge of the Embassy Prince Alfred zu Hohenlohe-SchiUingsfurst. attach^; Baron Stephen Hedry deHedri et aeoenereADa, 
SberaiLtofSlmp^erial and Apostolic Majesty: second secretary Consul-General von Gnvic.c ; K. Schwenda, Josef Schoedel, 
y ^K_^^^ J Sobotka, and Charles Pollak, all secretaries of chancellery. 
Mr. John R. Rathom, in his openingarticle. amongst other 
things described how Count von Bernstorff, the German 
Ambassador at Washington, falsely posed as the victim 
of the Foreign Office at Berlin and was compelled to 
carry out instructions that were distasteful to him. 
He was also most careful not to^ allow himself per- 
sonally to be ever mixed up with the more dastardly 
outrages which he had himself helped to plan. 
AT the end of February, 1915, von Bernstorff spent 
several days with Captain von Papen and a 
lawyer, busily engaged in concocting a scheme 
of false affidavits in order to attempt to make 
Mr. Bryan, then Secretary of State, believe that 
immense quantities of dum-dum bullets were being shipped 
from American factories to the British War Office. There 
was never any ground for this accusation, which originated 
in the German Embassy. The day before the Ambassador 
went to Mr. Bryan with his alleged evidence he actually 
rehearsed his approaching visit to the Secretary of State in 
his own library, with one of his secretaries posing as Mr. 
Br>'an. He said to this man at the conclusion of an 
impassioned plea which lasted about five minutes—" Ain 
I impressive enough ? Is my statement forceful enough ? " 
to which the man replied, " Most forceful, Your Excellency." 
" If it appears that way to you," replied the Ambassador, 
" we will have no trouble with the big-mouthed (grossmau- 
lichen) gentleman." 
A question that has been repeatedly asked ever since 
America entered into a state of war with Germany is : " How 
was it possible, with the precautions naturally taken by the 
Teutonic Governments and their agents, to get inside facts 
from the German Embassy and from manv of the offices of the 
German and Austrian Consul-Generals ? ' 
The answer, given here for the first time, is simple enough. 
While the entire story of the methods used in getting inside 
the Teutonic lines in America cannot be told at this moment, 
it is sufficient for present purposes to say that from the 
beginning of the European war, and for some months^ prior 
to that time, the Journal was able to bring to its aid the 
services of many Bohemians and Southern Slavs from every 
part of the United States. It was largely through the self- 
sacrificing activities and the remarkable mental equipment 
of many of these men that I was enabled from day to day to 
receive and tabulate information from the very heart of the 
German and Austrian propagandist system in the United 
States— both the Embassies and many of the Teutonic 
consular offices throughout the country. 
These men (and women as well) not only took grave risks 
in this work— for they were braving German vengeance— but 
gave up their time, and in many cases their own funds, without 
a shilling of compensation from the Journal or anybody else, 
in order to give the facts which would prove to the American 
people the manner in which they were being tricked and fooled 
by the German Ambassador and his fellows. 
A large number of the men engaged in this work were 
lawyers and doctors. A great many of them were labourers 
in factories, some were publishers of Croatian and Bohemian 
newspapers, and the list included several hundred students 
in colleges and high schools. Every one of the men among 
them of age was an American citizen. It is impossible to pay 
too high a tribute to their energy and faithfulness. 
It became apparent to both the German and Austrian 
Ambassadors, after these men had been at work for a few 
months, that the stories printed by the Providence Journal 
must have had their sources in some dangerous leaks. Count 
von Bernstorff— between May, 1915, and December, 1915— 
discharged one of the employees of the German Embassy on 
suspicion of having been involved in- these leaks, and this 
man was immediately approached through friendly channels 
with the result that he has been on the pay roll of the Pro- 
vidence Journal Company ever since his discharge. The right 
man was never discovered bv the Ambassador, nor, until the 
day he left for Halifax, did he have the slightest inkling as to 
who this man was. 
Four months of listening on the SayviUe and Tuckerton 
wireless stations through one of the best equipped and highest 
powered stations on the North American continent, from the 
day the European war began, had also brought to me an 
immense mass of information concerning the propagandist 
activities, not only of German and Austrian aliens in America, 
but also of hundreds of American citizens of German and 
Austrian birth. From many of the latter I was able to 
secure a great quantity of material, particulariy when, as I ^vas 
frequently able to do, I started many of them in active 
recrimination against one another. 
On Sunday, May 2nd, 1915, some months after the 
Providence Journal had begun its series of exposures of 
German propaganda, which at thai time very few people in 
the United States believed to be true, I received a telephone 
message at a New York hotel, where I was staying, from the 
steward of the German Club at 112, Central Park, South. 
After stating who he was, he said that two gentlemen, one of 
whom was Captain Karl Boy-Ed, were very anxious to have a 
chat with me, and asked me if I would see a representative of 
Captain Boy-Ed's, and accompany him to the clubhouse at 
eleven o'clock that moming. I replied that I would, and half 
an hour later a man, who was afterwards identified as Dr. 
Fuhr, one of von Bemstorff's New York spies, came to my 
