April 25, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
^5 
its fiendish purpose. First of all appeared Fay's admission 
that he had left Germany with money and a passport supplied 
by a man in the German Secret Service. Later, in the 
witness-box, when Fay had had time enough carefully to 
think out the most plausible story, he attempted to get 
away from this admission by claiming to have deserted from 
the German Army. He said that he had been "financed in 
his exit from the German Empire by a group of business 
men who had put up a lot of money to back a motor-car 
invention of his, which he had worked on before the war 
began. These men, so he claimed, were afraid they would 
lose all their money if he should happen to be killed before 
the invention was perfected. This tale, ingenious though it 
was, was too fantastic to be swallowed when taken in connec- 
tion with all the things found in Fay's possession when he 
was arrested. Beyond all doubt, his scheme to destroy ships 
was studied and approved by liis military superiors in 
Germany before he left, and that scheme alone was his 
errand to America. 
Von Papen Again 
Far less ingenious and equally damning was his attempt 
to explain away his relations with von Papen. The sinister 
figure of the military attache of the German Embas^ at 
Washington leers frorh the background of all the German 
plots. And this case was no exception. It was known that 
Fay had had dealings "with von Papen in New York, and in 
the witness-box he felt called upon to explain them in a 
way that would clear the diplomatic service of implication in 
his evil-doings. He declared that he had taken his invention 
to von Papen and that von Papen had resolutely refused to 
have anything to do with it. This would have been well 
enough if^Fay's explanation had stopped here. 
But Fay's evil genius prompted him to make his explana- 
tion more convincing bj' an elaboration of the story, so he 
gave von Papen 's reasons for refusal. These were not at all 
that the device was calculated to do onurder upon hundreds 
of helpless men, nor at all that to have any part in the busi- 
ness was to play the unneutral villain under the cloak of 
diplomatic privilege. Not at all. At the first interview, 
seeing .only a rough sketch and hearing only Fay's description 
of preliminary experiments, von Papen's sole objection was : 
"Well, you might obtain an explosion once and the next 
ten apparatuses might fail." 
To continue Fay's explanation : 
"He casually asked me what the cost of it would be, and 
I told liim in my estimation the cost would not be more 
than $20 apiece. [$20 — £4 — apiece for the destruction of 
thirty lives, and a million-dollar ship and cargo !] As a 
matter of fact, in Germany I will be able to get these things 
made for half that price. 'If it is not more than that,' von 
Papen said, 'you might go ahead, but I cannot promise you 
anything whatever.' " 
Bay then went back to his experiments, and when he felt 
that ha had perfected his device, he called upon von Papen 
for the second time. Von Papen's reply was : 
"Well, this thing has been placed before our experts, and 
also we .have gone into the political condition of the whole 
suggestion. Now, in the first place, our experts say this 
apparatus is not at all seaworthy ; but as regards poUtical 
conditions, I am sorry to say we cannot consider it, and, 
therefore, we cannot consider the whole situati6n." 
In other words, with no thought of the moral turpitude of 
the scheme, with no thought of the abuse of diplomatic 
freedom, but only with thoughts of the practicability of 
this device and of the effect upon political conditions of its 
use, von Papen had put the question before technical men 
and before von Bemstorff, and their decision had been 
adverse solely pn those considerations — first, that it would 
not work, and, second, that it would arouse hostihty in the 
United States. At no stage, according to Fay, was any 
thought given to its character as a hideous crime. 
The device itself was studied independently by two .sets of 
military experts of the United States Government, with 
these results : 
First, that it was mechanically perfect ; second, that it 
was practical under the conditions of adjustment to a ship's 
rudder which Fay had devised ; and, third, that the charge 
of trinitrotoluol, for which the container was designed, was 
nearly half the quantity which is used on our own floating 
mines, and which is calculated upon explosion twenty feet 
from a battleship to put it out of action, and upon explosion 
in direct contact, absolutely to destroy and sink the heaviest 
super-dreadnought. In other words, beyond all question, 
the bomb would have shattered the entire stern of any ship 
and would have caused it to sink in a few minutes. 
A brief description of the contrivance reveals the mechanical 
ingenuity and practical efficiency of Fay's bomb. A rod 
attached to the rudder, at every swing the rudder gave, 
turned up, by one notch, the first of the bevelled wheels 
within the bomb. After a certain number of revolutions of 
that wheel, it in turn gave one revolution to the next ; and 
so on through the series. The last wheel was connected 
with the threaded cap around the upper end of the square 
bolt, and made this cap slowly unscrew, until at length the 
bolt dropped clear of it and yielded to the waiting pressure 
of, the strong steel spring above. This pressure drove it 
downward and brought the sharp points at its lower end 
down on the caps of the two rifle cartridges fixed below it — 
like the blow of a rifle's hammer. The detonation from the 
explosion of these cartridges would set off a small charge of 
impregnated chlorate of potash, which in turn would fire the 
small charge of the more sluggish but stronger dynamite, 
and that in turn would explode the still more sluggish but 
tremendously more powerful trinitrotoluol. 
The whole operation, once the spring was free, would take 
place in a flash ; and instantly its deadly work would be, 
accomplished. 
Picture the scene that Fay had in his mind as he toiled 
his six laborious months upon this dark invention. He saw 
himself, in imagination, fixing his infernal box upon the 
rudder post of a ship loading at a dock in New York harbour. 
As the cargo weighed the ship down, the box would disappear 
beneath the water. At length the ship starts on its voyage, 
and, as the rudder swings her into the stream, the first beat 
in -the slow, sure knell of death for ship and crew is clicked 
out by its very turning. Out upon the sea the shift of wind 
and blow of wave require a constant correction with the 
rudder to hold the true course forward. At every swing the 
helmsman unconsciously taps out another of the lurking 
beats of death. Somewhere in mid-ocean — perhaps at black 
midnight, in a driving storm — the patient mechanism hid 
below has turned the last of its calculated revolutions. 'The 
neck piece from the bolt slips loose, the spring drives down- 
ward, there is a flash, a deafening explosion, and five minutes 
later a few mangled bodies and a chaos of floating wreckage 
are all that is left above the water's surface. 
This is the hideous dream Fay dreamed in the methodical 
180 days of his planning and experimenting in New York. 
This is the dream to realise which he was able to enlist the 
co-operation of half a dozen other Germans. This is the 
dream his superiors in Germany viewed with favour, and 
financed. This is the dream the sinister von Papen .en- 
couraged and which he finally dismissed only because he 
believed it too good to be true. This is the dream Fay 
himself in the witness-box said he had thought of as "a good 
joke on the British." 
In this picture of infernal imagining the true character cf 
German flattings in America stands revealed. Ingenuity of 
conception characterised them, method and patience and pains,- 
taking made them perfect. Flawless logic, fl.mless mechanism. 
But on the human side, only the blackest passions and an utter 
disregard of human life ; no thought of honour, no trace of 
human pity. 
It happened in the ca.se of Fay that the agent himself was 
ruthless, and deserved far more than the law was able to 
give him when convicted of ^lis crimes. But through 
all the plots, von Papen, von Bemstorff, and the Imperial 
German Government in Berhn were consistent. Their hand 
was at the helm of all, and the same ruthless grasping after 
domination of the world at any price led them to the same 
barbarous code of conduct in them all. 
(To be continued.) 
TURKEY AND THE WAR. 
Y^HEN the history of the war is written, the most outstanding 
"^ event after the battle of the Marne will be found to have 
been the entrance of Turkey into the war on the side of the 
enemy. But for this there would have been no Gallipoli, no fall of 
Kut; the expeditionary forces to Salonika, Mesopotamia, and 
Palestine would have been unnecessary; the Dardanelles would 
have remained open for the export of corn and oil from Russia and 
Rumania; Rumania would have been secure, Bulgaria not daring 
to move; there would have been no Armenian massacres. Think 
what it would have meant, had Turkey remained neutral ! 
Victory would have been won months ago. 
Friendship and goodwill between Great Britain and Turkey was 
traditional. How did it come about that it broke down at this 
tremendous crisis? The circumstances have hitherto been veiled 
in secrecy, but with the publication of the diplomatic experiences 
of Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador at Constantinople 
from 1913 to 1916, all the facts will be revealed, 
Mr. Morgenthau's diplomatic record will be published in 
Land & Water early next month, It will be found to be an in- 
valuable contribution to the history of these times. 
