[Illustration: (last page) In which he unintentionally revealed the guilty purposes of Von Papen to violate American neutrality and commit a crime against human life, and which Horn refused to sign upon his “honour as a German officer” until it was altered to remove the fantastic tale about a confederate in Canada. By looking closely the erasure of the period after the word “true” can be seen, made to permit this correction to be added] If Werner Horn had been less honest, less humane, the black wickedness of his Imperial masters would have been less clearly visible. He was the one who was punctilious to respect American neutrality--while they flouted it. He was the one who risked his own life rather than imperil others--while they sat snug in Washington devising means to place on the rudders of American ships the bombs that would add another horrid chapter to their crimes. A mere criminal at Vanceboro might have been accused of exceeding their criminal instructions--Werner Horn refused to carry out the instructions they had given. One cannot forbear to publish here a humorous incident in this case, in no way related to its immediate currents, but so characteristic of the American attitude in general at that time. Here was a drama of international politics, fertilizing the germs of war--the seeds of our own entrance into the conflict, with its present expenditures of billions in treasure and its prospective expenditure of human blood and tears. Into this epic picture walks a Yankee trader with a bottle of liniment for frost bite in his hand, and asks for a “testimonial.” It is significant, because it was a faithful miniature of America at large in February, 1915--asleep to the perils of its “isolation,” but wide awake to the main chance in war-begotten trade. Well could Von Papen and Von Bernstorff, well could the Kaiser in Berlin, afford to smile a little longer, and marvel again at a people still “so stupid.” But the American Government was on still other German plotters’ trails. They were not asleep, nor stupid. Even while they went through the long, legal processes in which German intrigue tried in vain to save Werner Horn from delivery to Canadian justice (and Horn was supplied with good counsel and every facility for making his defence), among the Yankee traders there was alert activity as well as dormant patriotism. The way in which the Department of Justice, through these merchants, lawyers, doctors, men of the “main chance,” soon had a network of special agents in every city, town, and hamlet in the country, is one of the cleverest pieces of American Government detective work born of the war. CHAPTER III ROBERT FAY AND THE SHIP BOMBS