The world was their workshop. Plots hatched in Berlin and developed in Washington and New York bore fruit from Sweden to India, from Canada to Chili. The economic importance of the United States in the war needs no further proof than its vast area, its miles of seacoast, its volume of export and import, and its producing power. As a diplomatic problem it offered, among other things, a public opinion of a hundred million people of parti-colored temperament, played upon by a force of some 40,000 publications. As a military factor, the United States possessed a strong fleet, owned the only Atlantic-Pacific waterway, was bounded on the south by Mexico and the coveted Gulf, and on the north by one of Germany's enemies. There was hardly a developed section of the nation which did not require prompt and radical German attention, or one which did not receive it in proportion to its industrial development. Washington, as the governmental capital, and New York as the real capital became at once the headquarters of German operations in the western world. Count von Bernstorff directed all enterprises from the Imperial Embassy in Washington, and from the Ritz-Carlton in New York. An ambassador was once asked by an ingenuous woman at a New York dinner whether he often ran counter of European spies. "Oh, yes," he replied. "I used to stop at the ----, but my baggage was searched by German agents so often that I moved to the ----. But there it was just as bad." "Didn't you complain to the management?"--the lady wanted particulars. "No," the diplomat answered naturally, "for you see every time Bernstorff stops at the ---- I have his baggage searched, too!" The strands of intrigue focussed from every corner of America upon the lower tip of Manhattan. In a tall building at 11 Broadway, which towers over Bowling Green and confronts the New York Custom House, Captain Boy-Ed had his office. A long stone's throw to the northward stood the Hamburg-American building; there Dr. Albert carried on much of his business. Captain von Papen had offices on the twenty-fifth floor of No. 60 Wall Street. If we regard 11 Broadway as the tip of a triangle, with Wall Street and Broadway forming its right angle and 60 Wall Street as its other extremity, we find that its imaginary hypotenuse travels through the building of J. P. Morgan & Company, chief bankers for the Allies; through the New York Stock Exchange, where the so-called "Christmas leak" turned a pretty penny for certain German sympathizers in 1916; through the home of the Standard Oil Companies, as well as through several great structures of less strategic importance. There is more than mere coincidence in this geometrical freak--Germany held her stethoscope as close as possible to the heart of American business. Fortunately, however, the offices of Chief William J. Flynn--until January, 1918, head of the United States Secret Service--were in the Custom House near by.