HOTEL ST. GEORGE Felix Fieger, Proprietor, Nyack-on-Hudson, December 26, 1914. His Excellency The Imperial German Ambassador, Count Von Bernstorff, Washington, D. C. Your Excellency: Allow me most obediently to put before you the following facts: It seems that an attempt has been made to produce the impression upon you that I prematurely abandoned my post in New York. That is not true. I. My work was done. At my departure I left the service well organized and worked out to its minutest details, in the hands of my successor, Mr. Carl Ruroede, picked out by myself, and, despite many warnings, still tarried for several days in New York in order to give him the necessary final directions and in order to hold in check the blackmailers thrown on my hands by the German officers until after the passage of my travellers through Gibraltar; in which I succeeded. Mr. Ruroede will testify to you that without my suitable preliminary labors, in which I left no conceivable means untried and in which I took not the slightest consideration of my personal weal or woe, it would be impossible for him, as well as for Mr. Von Papen, to forward officers and “aspirants” in any number whatever, to Europe. This merit I lay claim to and the occurrences of the last days have unfortunately compelled me, out of sheer self-respect, to emphasize this to your Excellency. II. The motives which induced me to leave New York and which, to my astonishment, were not communicated to you, are the following: 1. I knew that the State Department had, for three weeks, withheld a passport application forged by me. Why? 2. Ten days before my departure I learnt from a telegram sent me by Mr. Von Papen, which stirred me up very much, and further through the omission of a cable, that Dr. Stark had fallen into the hands of the English. That gentleman’s forged papers were liable to come back any day and could, owing chiefly to his lack of caution, easily be traced back to me. 3. Officers and aspirants of the class which I had to forward over, namely the people, saddled me with a lot of criminals and blackmailers, whose eventual revelations were liable to bring about any day the explosion of the bomb. 4. Mr. Von Papen had repeatedly urgently ordered me to hide myself. 5. Mr. Igel had told me I was taking the matter altogether too lightly and ought to--for God’s sake--disappear. 6. My counsel, ... had advised me to hastily quit New York, inasmuch as a local detective agency was ordered to go after the passport forgeries. 7. It had become clear to me that eventual arrest might yet injure the worthy undertakings and that my disappearance would probably put a stop to all investigation in this direction.