The chief significance of the discovery of the two codes is their conclusive proof that while von Bernstorff was protesting to the American government that he could not get messages through to Berlin, nor replies from the foreign office, he was actually in daily, if not hourly, communication with his superiors. Messages were sent out by his confidential operators under the very eyes of the American naval censors. After the break of diplomatic relations with Berlin, in February, 1917, the authorities set to work decoding the messages, and the State Department from time to time issued for publication certain of the more brutal proofs of Germany's violation of American neutrality. The ambassador and his Washington establishment had served for two years and a half as the "central exchange" of German affairs in the western world. After his departure communication from German spies here was handicapped only by the time required to forward information to Mexico; from that point to Berlin air conversation continued uninterrupted. CHAPTER V MILITARY VIOLENCE The plan to raid Canadian ports--The first Welland Canal plot--Von Papen, von der Goltz and Tauscher--The project abandoned--Goltz's arrest--The Tauscher trial--Hidden arms--Louden's plan of invasion. Underneath the even surface of American life seethed a German volcano, eating at the upper crust, occasionally cracking it, and not infrequently bursting a great gap. When an eruption occurred, America stopped work for a moment, stared in surprise, sometimes in horror, at the external phenomena, discussed them for a few days, then hurried back to work. More often than not it saw nothing sinister even in the phenomena. Less than ten hours from German headquarters in New York lay Canada, one of the richest possessions of Germany's bitter enemy England. Captain von Papen had not only full details of all points of military importance in the United States, but had made practical efforts to utilize them. He knew where his reservists could be found in America. When the Government, shortly after the outbreak of war, forbade the recruiting of belligerents within its boundaries, and then refused to issue American passports for the protection of soldiers on the way to their commands, Captain von Papen planned to mobilize and employ a German army on American soil in no less pretentious an enterprise than a military invasion of the Dominion.