Count von Bernstorff, Dr. Dernburg, and two well-known German bankers held a conference at the German Embassy in Washington on Tuesday, June 1. At that conference the Ambassador outlined in detail instructions he had received the day before from Berlin to proceed with this propaganda, and he declared to the three men there present that his Government considered the success of the plan as of vital importance, superseding every other phase of the war situation. The bankers at once returned to New York, and at a meeting next day with Captain Boy-Ed and several other men at the German Club outlined their plan of campaign. For months past the German Ambassador has been in possession of a list of factories all over the country engaged in turning out munitions of war for the Allies. Last Saturday a concerted movement was begun toward securing a majority control of many of these plants. When one of the bankers at the conference in Washington asked the Ambassador if he had any conception of the magnitude of the financial problems involved in the scheme he replied that his Government was fully prepared to pay everything necessary, and repeated that the fate of the empire might rest on the success or failure of the plan. He then added these words: "There is no limit, gentlemen, to the amount of money available." The activities of the representatives of Count von Bernstorff in this matter have already brought them up to the point of negotiation, or attempted negotiation, with the Fore River Shipbuilding Company, the Remington Arms Company, the Bethlehem Steel Company, and the Union Metallic Cartridge Company. Government officials, when notified of this new propaganda yesterday, were a unit in declaring it was impossible to believe that such a scheme could be carried through successfully. In the first place, they pointed out that activity of this kind would be a direct violation of the Sherman act, and, secondly, a case of conspiracy would lie against individuals attempting such a movement for wholesale violation of contracts, which would become necessary in order to carry the plan to its successful conclusion. The moment the German agents in New York began to disclose their purpose, several cunning individuals who have had some slight connection with the contracts for supplying the Allies with various materials have deliberately put themselves in the path of these agents under the pretext that they already had contracts, or were about to be given contracts, and have already mulcted the German Government of many thousands of dollars. In two specific cases men have talked of having contracts for picric acid--the manufacture of which necessitates the most skilled training, with most expensive and complicated machinery, and which is only being attempted in four places in this country, and were promptly paid off, on their pledge that they would violate these alleged agreements. One of these deals was made in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel last Saturday.