Yet there were serious objections to carrying out a plot to destroy the canal, which occurred to Johann von Bernstorff, the shrewd and cautious ambassador of the Imperial German Government at Washington, and director of the Kaiser's spy army in America. When Captain Franz von Papen first mentioned a scheme for using dynamite on one of the locks of the canal, Count Von Bernstorff, voiced his objections, and laid down the conditions upon which he would consent to such a plot in these words: "You have impetuously fostered a plan which is fraught with the greatest menace to which our country might be called upon to face, Captain. It is the possibility of the United States entering the war on the side of the Allies. The destruction of the canal might well lead to serious complications between the United States and the Dominion of Canada in which the national honor of the Yankees might be brought into question. Let such a question be raised and the entry of the United States against Germany in the war would be inevitable. Damage within its own borders the United States will assimilate, but a threatened stain on the national honor of the country will arouse every American to a pitch of fury which nothing can withstand. "The discovery of the perpetrators under such conditions would be a foregone conclusion. With you or anyone of the others you have mentioned active in the plot, the trail would lead directly to this Embassy and the result would be the making of the one foe Imperial Germany cannot conquer--an aroused America. Come to me when you have explosives acquired through sources which cannot be traced, and when you have men who have never been associated with those who are connected with Imperial Germany. Then, and then only, will you receive the required permission to proceed." That was early in the fall of 1914. Captain Von Papen did not inform his chief that he already had men at Niagara Falls, prepared with explosives and directions, awaiting the word from him to go on their message of destruction. Von Papen had gone to Von Bernstorff without the faintest suspicion that the scheme would be refused the sanction of the Ambassador. Instead, he had expected congratulations for having conceived such a mighty blow as the first act of the secret warfare which had been decreed for America by the Kaiser's command. So the plan was abandoned, but Captain Von Papen kept it in mind as being a scheme which would some day be available for his peculiar talents.