Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1918 — MILLIONS SPENT ON HUN PLOTS [ARTICLE]

MILLIONS SPENT ON HUN PLOTS

German Propaganda in the U. S. Cost Berlin Government f ~~ $7,500,000. BERNSTORFF ORDERS READ A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief of the Bureau of Investigation, Tells Senator* Cost of Attempts to Subvert American Public Opinion. Washington. Dec. ia—Germany spent more than $7,500,000 for the dissemination of propaganda In this country from the beginning of the war, according to the testimony of A. Bruce Bielaski, chief of the bureau of investigation of the department of justice, on the stand in the senate investigation of German and brewery propaganda. Some of this, he said, was used in purchasing controlling interests in newspapers, some for the printing and distribution of pamphlets and some was sent to the German consulates in principal cities. Bielaski was asked by Senator Overman to put in the hearing an account of the activities of 8010 Pasha, executed in France as a spy, while he was in this country.

8010 was brought to this country by a representative of W. R. Hearst, Bielaski said, and was taken to the German embassy by Adolph Papenstadt, a wealthy German of New York, who is now interned. Later, the witness said, 8010 was introduced to Mr. Hearst, who Invited him to lunch and who later attended a number of meetings with him. Bolo’s mission in this country was ostensibly to obtain print paper, the committee was told, but in reality it was to obtain money for purchasing a newspaper in France. After getting it he returned to France. Activities of Labors’ National Peace council, organized in Chicago, in May, 1916, were discussed by Bielaski. The purpose of the organization was to crystalize sentiment for peace and to demand that the shipment of munitions to the allies be stopped. The council accomplished nothing, Bielaski said, largely because Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, took a firm stand against it. Ordered Germans Out of Plants. More letters from the secret files of Count von Bernstorff were read to the committee by Mr. Bielaski. Among them were instructions to all German consuls in the United States to get German subjects out of plants producing materials for the allies. The consuls were ordered to stop Germans above the rank of common laborer from working in such plants, under a section of the imperial code, and to report to the German consulate at New York. Bielaski read to the committee at length from the diary of Dr. Karl Fuehr, the German agent whose activities figured prominently in the investigation. The notes of Fuehr said that on the day following the publication of private letters of H. F. Albert he consulted with Albert at Cedarhurst, N. Y., and later discussed the incident with Samuel Untermyer. Bielaski said Captain von Papen, the former German military attache, sent a message in 1915 to the German consul at St. Louis saying that two agents for the Brotherhood of Metal Workers in New York, Samuel Scollard and J. E. Hall, had begun a movement to stop the shipment of munitions to the allies. Scollard was afterward indicted in the Industrial Workers of the World case at Chicago. Tried to Use Labor Organizations.

The witness told how when Capt Franz von Rintelen came to the United States in 1915 to endeavor to stop ship ments to Great Britain he met David Lamar, convicted afterward in New York and sent to prison for impersonating A. Mitchell Palmer, then a member of congress. Von Rintelen, he said, formed labor organizations in the interest of keeping the United States out of the war through Lamar and in connection with that work $500,000 was collected. “Only a small part of it was spent, however,” said Bielaski. “Lamar had a habit of taking credit for a great many things he had nothing to do with. At a mass meeting in New Jersey, at which Secretary Bryan spoke, Lamar took credit for organizing, but he had nothing to do with It” The New York Staats Zeitung was mentioned by Bielaski in connection with the financing of a secret propaganda to the extent of $495. A letter from Bernstorf! to B. H. Ridder of that paper said: “To my great regret I am unable to pay any money for political purposes, as I feel that we must keep out of the domestic politics of the United States.” “I think that letter must have been written for publication,” said Bielaski, “because the money was paid.” Just what the project referred to was not disclose* by the correspondence, but the witness said It might have been in connection with the election of Congressman Buchanan of Chicago.