The German Secret Service in America 1914-1918Jones, John Price
History
The German Secret Service in America 1914-1918
Jones, John Price
World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- Germany
"But even if strikes do not occur it is probable that we should
extort under pressure more favorable conditions of labor for our
poor downtrodden fellow countrymen in Bethlehem. These white
slaves are now working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. All
weak persons succumb and become consumptive. So far as German
workmen are found among the skilled hands means of leaving will be
provided immediately for them.
"Besides this, a private German registry office has been
established which provides employment for persons who voluntarily
have given up their places. It already is working well. We shall
also join in and the widest support is assured us.
"I beg your Excellency to be so good as to inform me with
reference to this letter by wireless. Reply whether you agree. I
remain, with great haste and respect,
"DUMBA."
The aide memoire, written by the editor of a Hungarian weekly,
proposed to create unrest by a campaign in foreign language newspapers
circulated free to labor, muck-raking labor conditions in Bethlehem,
Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Bridgeport, where there were
great numbers of foreign workmen, Hungarians, Austrians, and Germans.
This was to be supplemented by a "horror novel" similar to the bloody
effort of Upton Sinclair to describe the Chicago stockyards. Special
agents of unrest, roll-turners, steel workers, soapbox orators,
picnic organizers, were all to be insinuated into the plants to
stir up the workmen. This editor had stirred them up a few weeks
before at Bridgeport--the strike which Lamar claimed as his own
accomplishment--and he presented to Baron Burian a really comprehensive
plan for creating unrest through his well-subsidized foreign-language
press. And in passing it on, Dr. Dumba stood sponsor for it.
The British government saw in the discovery of the letter and the cool
impudence of it, a rare chance for propaganda in America. So, as has
been said, the _World_ published the story, and at once the wrath of
the truly American people justified President Wilson in doing what he
and Secretary Lansing had already determined to do--to send Dr. Dumba
home. Perhaps Dumba's reference to the "self-willed temperament of the
President" in another note found on Archibald had something to do with
the haste with which the Ambassador's recall was demanded; it followed
on the heels of the publication of the letter:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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