I 2 
Land & Water 
July 25, 1918 
German Plots Exposed 
The Attempt on American Labour 
By French StrOther Managing Editor, "TA( H'orld's IVork," Sietv York] 
FRANZ vox RINTELEN was the German tiger 
who missed his spring. He was the most powerful, 
the most dangerous, agent of the Kaiser in the 
L'nited States ; and to-day he nurses his liatrcd 
of us behind prison bars. But he did not retire 
to cunfuiement until after our Ciovernment completed an 
extremely difficult and tedious investigation that was made 
necessary bv liis care in concealing the insidious work of 
propaganda and destruction in which he had engaged. 
Rintelen was a tiger in the implacable hatred he bore 
this countrv' and in the ferocity with which he carried that 
hatred into action. Sent to America in 1915 to hinder the 
shipment of munitions to the Allies, he sought first to poison 
the Press, then to corrupt labour, and, not content with 
these things, he finally tried to hire thugs to burn, to dyna- 
mite, and to assassinate, where other persuasions failed ; 
and he did succeed in setting fire to thirty-si.x ships at sea, 
causing millions of dollars of loss and imperilling hundreds 
of human lives. 
Rintelen had, however, the other side of the tiger's charac- 
ter — its graces. When the made port at New York 
on April 3rd, 1915, it bore as passenger one Emil Gasche, 
a Swiss. The moment Gasche passed the customs officers, 
Gasche ceased to exist, and in his place appeared handsome 
young von Rintelen, unexpectedly arrived in America for 
his fourth visit, and renewing p)]easant acquaintanceships 
in society and in Wall Street. 
An American traitor in Berlin gave Rintelen his cue for 
operations in America. This man's name is known, and 
will one day be written alongside Benedict Arnold's, but to 
disclose it now would interfere with more practical efforts 
for his mortal punishment. Part of that punishment he is 
already enduring — he is still in Germany. This traitor told 
Rintelen that the most useful man in America for his pur- 
poses was David I-amar, 
of New York. Rintelen 
fixed that name in his 
memory, and left Berlin. 
His first barrier was the 
old, old barrier to German 
conquest, the British 
blockade. Rintelen ran 
that under cover of the 
Swiss passport, under the 
name of Gasche. 
The Tiger meets 
the Wolf 
Arrived in New York 
on April 3rd, Rintelen 
lost' no time in getting 
acquainted with Lamar. 
He disclosed to him his 
mission to this country 
and the money he had to 
execute it. The Tiger of 
Berlin met the Wolf of 
Wall Street. 
And how the Wolf's 
eyes must have glistened, 
for he was at the leanest 
of the hungry days which 
regularly followed seasons 
of opulence in the ups and 
downs which varied the 
career of this extra- 
ordinary man. For Lamar 
was, and is, an extra- 
ordinary man. Endowed 
by nature with a- fas- 
cinating personality and 
with a brilliant mind 
which he had enriched bv 
study, a man capable of 
great things, he was 
possessed by that strange 
Franz von Rintelen 
Tl 
most powerful of ,ht German plotter, in this country, who directed and paid for 
the burning ol mun.t.on sh.ps, the fomenting of .trike. in factories, and many other 
outrages agamst American lives and property. He is now in prison 
perversity which often afflicts men of exceptional cleverness 
— he would rather make one dollar by adroit crookedness 
than a million by unexciting honesty. Perhaps his origin 
affected his character — he declined, on the witness stand, 
to give his true name and parentage on the ground that 
to do so would bring disgrace upon per^ns still living. He 
entered Wall Street as a young man from nowhere, and at 
first gave promise of a brilliant and honourable career. He 
early made his mark in finance. He was employed by 
J. P. Morgan & Company and other great banking concerns, 
and in those days of his legitimate activities amassed a 
large fortune. But this was dissipated in gambling on the 
stock market, and then Laniar gravitated to the gutter. 
For years it was a by-word on the Street that if you wanted 
a clever man to do a crooked job, David Lamar was the 
man you were looking for. 
"Could Lamar help Rintelen?" With his most con- 
vincing eloquence, Lamar assured him that he could. Never 
had Rintelen been better advised, so Lamar declared to him, 
than when his friend in Berlin had given him his name. 
For he had friends in Washington, he whispered, men power- 
ful in the Government. And friends among the labouring 
people : the men whose hands made those munitions Rintelen 
had come to stop, and whose hands might be paral3'sed by 
the clever use of brains and money. Lamar would supply 
the brains ; Rintelen would supply the money. The Wolf 
saw good hunting ahead. 
Lamar laid before Rintelen a scheme. They would 
capitalise the American passion for peace ; they would 
capitalise in particular the labouring man's aversion to war. 
A section of opinion among labouring men held that wars 
were instigated by capitalists for gain, and were fought 
by labouring Tmenjwho gave ^their lives to make good the 
selfish ambitions of the rich'. And one of the American 
people's deepest convic- 
tions was that war was 
an odious moral crime ; 
and that universal peace 
was attainable by the 
pursuit of moral ideals. 
Now we see, a sudden 
transformation in Lamar's 
circumstances. The 
frayed debtor appeared in 
his old haunts garbed in 
the most fastidious selec- 
tions of the tailor ; the 
accumulated debts of 
years were paid ; the sub- 
way and the street car 
gave way to automobiles 
— and L,amar was par- 
ticular that the garage 
should supply only the 
fine car that was father 
to the Liberty Motor. 
Lamar carried other 
men with him on his 
rising tide of fortune. 
Frank Buchanan, Labour 
Representative in Con- 
gress from the Seventh 
District of Illinois (North 
Chicago), likewise became 
a traveller and the patron 
of exclusive hotels. Henry 
B. Martin, who eked out 
a precarious living in the 
lobbies of Congress, after 
a dubious career as an 
officer 6i the Knights of 
Labour in the 'nineties, 
framed his wizened figure 
in a new and luxurious 
setting. H. Robert 
Fowler, the splendid high 
light of whose grej- life as 
