The cold, strong hand of American justice wrung that very human cry from Ruroede, who was the central figure (though far from the most sinister or the most powerful) in this earliest drama of Germany's bad faith with neutral America-a drama that dealt in forgery, blackmail, and lies, that revealed in action the motives of greed and jealousy and ambition, and that ended with three diplomats disgraced, one plotter in the penitentiary, and another sent to a watery grave in the Atlantic by a torpedo from a U-boat of the very country he had tried to serve. This is the story:

Twenty-five days after the Kaiser touched the button which publicly notified the world that Germany at last had decided that "The Day" had come to be exact, on August 25, 1914-Ambassador Bernstorff wrote a letter

effusively addressed to "My very honored Mr. Von Wedell." (Ruroede had not yet appeared on the scene.) The letter itself was more restrained than the address, but in it Bernstorff condescended to accept tentatively an offer of Wedell's to make a nameless voyage. The voyage was soon made, for on September 24th Wedell left Rotterdam, bearing a letter from the German Consul-General there, asking all German authorities to speed him on his way to Berlin, because he was bearing dispatches to the Foreign Office. Arrived in Berlin, Wedell executed his commission and then called upon his uncle, Count Botho Von Wedell, a high functionary of the Foreign Office. He was aflame with a great idea, which he unfolded to his uncle. The idea was approved, and right after the elections in November he was back in New York to put it into execution, incidentally bearing with him some letters handed him by order of Mr. Ballin, head of the Hamburg American Steamship Company, and another letter "for a young lady who goes to America in the interest of Germany." If unhappy Wedell had let this be his last voyage-but that belongs later in the story.

Wedell's scheme was this: He learned in Berlin that Germany had at hoine all the common soldiers she expected to need, but

THE FIRST GERMAN AGENT TO DEAL IN FALSE PASSPORTS

Hans Adam von Wedell, who brought back from Berlin, in the fall of 1914, the plan of getting German reserve officers in the United States into Germany by the fraudulent use of passports of neutral nations. He made his headquarters for this work in the rooms of a fraternal organization in New York City through an arrangement made by a Tammany lawyer of pro-German sympathies. Wedell's fraudulent passports got a number of German officers back safely. The method of obtaining and using the passports is explained in detail in the article herewith, as well as the strange outcome of Von Wedell's career

that more officers were wanted. He was told that Germany cared not at all whether the 100,000 reservists in America got home or not, but that she cared very much indeed to get the 800 or 1,000 officers in North and South America back to the Fatherland. Nothing but the ocean and the British fleet stood in their way. The ocean might be overcome. But the British fleet-? Wedell proposed the answer: He would buy passports from longshoremen in New York-careless Swedes or Swiss or Spaniards to whom $25 was of infinitely more concern than a mere lie-and send the officers to Europe, armed with these documents, as neutrals traveling on business. Once in Norway or Spain or Italy, to get on into Germany would be easy.

VON WEDELL'S SUCCESSOR IN THE PASSPORT FRAUDS

Carl Ruroede, who operated from an office in the Maritime Building, across the street from the Custom House in New York. His efforts to buy American passports through American agents led him intc. trouble, involving him in the toils of one of the cleverest and most complete pieces of detective work ever worked out by the United States Department of Justice. How the agents of the Bureau of Investigation played upon his vanity to his undoing, and how he unwittingly became a party to the strange outcome of Von Wedell's career, are described in this article

For a few weeks, Wedell got along famously. He bought passports and papers showing nativity from Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Swiss longshoremen and sailors. Meantime, he got in touch with German reserve officers and passed them on to Europe on these passports.

But he was not content with these foreign passports. passports. In the case of a few exceptionally valuable German officers he wished to have credentials that would be above all suspicion. Consequently he set about to gather a few American passports. Here his troubles began, and here he added the gravest burden to his already great load of culpabilities. For Von Wedell was an American citizen, and proud of it. But he was prouder still of his German

origin and his high German connections, and in his eagerness to serve them he threw overboard his loyalty to the land of his adoption.

Von Wedell applied to a friend of his, a certain Tammany lawyer of pro-German sympathies, who had supplied him with a room belonging to a well-known fraternal organization as a safe base from which to handle his work in passports. What he wanted was an agent who was an American and who had political acquaintanceship that would enable him to work with less suspicion and with wider organization in gathering American passports. Through the lawyer he came in contact with an American, who for the purposes of this article may be called Mr. Carrots, because that is not Carrots his name but is remotely like it.

seemed willing to go into the enterprise and at a meeting in Von Wedell's room Von Wedell carefully unfolded the scheme, taking papers from a steel cabinet in the corner to show a further reason why the American passports he already had would soon be useless. This reason was that the Government was about to issue an order requiring that a photograph of the bearer should be affixed to the passport and that on this photograph should appear half of the embossing raised by the impression of the seal of the Department of State. He agreed to pay Carrots $20 apiece for all genuine passports he would supply to him. Carrots accepted his proposal and departed.

Instead of going out to buy passports, he went at once to the Surveyor of the Port of New York, Mr. Thomas E. Rush, and told him what Wedell was doing. Mr. Rush promptly got in touch with his chief in the Treasury Department at Washington, who referred the matter to the State Department, and they, in turn, to the Department of Justice. The result was that Carrots went back to Wedell about a week later and told him he would not be able to go on with the work, but would supply some one to take his place. This was satisfactory to Wedell.

In the meantime, Wedell had introduced Carrots to a fellow-conspirator, Carl Ruroede, a clerk in the ship forwarding department of Oelrichs & Company-a man of little position, but fired by the war with the ambition to make a name in German circles that would put him in a position to succeed Oelrichs & Company as the general agent of the North German Lloyd in New York.

About this time Wedell lost his nerve.

He

Für Ihr freundliches Schreiben. heute und das darin enthal. tene liebenswürdige Anerbieten danke ich Ihnen besten. Ich werde von letzterem eventuell. geon Gebrauch machen und Sie wissen lassen, sich Gelegen heit zu einer Reise bietet. Mit vorzüglichster Hochachtung Thr ergebenster

BERNSTORFF APPEARS AS A PRINCIPAL OF

WEDELL'S

This letter reads in English as follows: "My very honored Mr. von Wedell: I thank you very much for your friendly letter of this day, and the very kind offer therein contained. I shall, eventually, gladly avail myself of the latter and shall let you know when an opportunity for a trip presents itself. Most respectfully, BERNSTORFF." What the trip was for is explained by illustrations on succeeding pages

was a lawyer and realized some of the possible consequences of some of his acts. He had had occasion to forge names to two passports; and also he found out that he had reasons to suspect that he was under surveillance. These reasons were very good: he had arranged for the transportation to Italy of a German named Doctor Stark, using the passport of a friend of his in the newspaper business, named Charles

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Raoul Chatillon. Wedell got wind of the fact that Stark had been taken off the steamer Duca de Aosta at Gibraltar, and was being detained while the British looked up his credentials.

Wedell by this time was in a most unhappy plight. Bernstorff and Von Papen had no use for him because he had been bragging about the great impression he was going to make upon the Foreign Office in Berlin by his work. If any impressions were to be made upon the Foreign Office in Berlin by anybody in America, Bernstorff and Von Papen wanted to make them. Wedell was so dangerously under suspicion that Von Papen, Von Igel and his Tammany-lawyer friend had all warned him he had better get out of the country. Wedell took their advice and fled to Cuba.

The substitute whom Carrots had promised now entered the case, in the person of a man who called himself Aucher, but who was in reality a special agent of the Department of Justice. Aucher was not introduced to Ruroede, the now active German, and so, when he began his operations, he confronted the very difficult

task of making his own connections with a naturally suspicious person.

Carrots had been dealing with Ruroede after Wedell's disappearance; and, by the time he was ready to quit, Ruroede had told him that "everything was off for the present," but that if he would drop around again to his office about January 7, 1915, he might make use of him. Aucher, now on the case, did not wait for that date, but on December 18th, called on Ruroede at his office at room 204 of the Maritime Building, at No. 8 Bridge Street, across the way from the Customs House.

In this plainly furnished office, Aucher appeared in the guise of a Bowery tough. succeeded admirably in this rôle-so well, indeed, that Ruroede afterward declared that he "succeeded wonderfully in impressing upon my mind that he was a gang man, and I had visions of slung shots, pistol shots, and holdups" when he saw him. Aucher opened the conversation by announcing:

"I'm a friend of Carrots'."

"That's interesting," was Ruroede's only acknowledgment.

To which Ruroede replied: "I don't see why I should tell you if I did."

"Well," retorted Aucher. "I'll tell you why. I'm the guy that delivers the goods, and he swears he never got a penny from you. Now did he?"

It was at this point that Ruroede had his visions of "slung shots," so he admitted he had paid Carrots $100 only a few days before.

"Well," demanded Aucher, "ain't there going to be any more?"

without delivering the goods. What's the matter with just fixing it up between ourselves?"

Ruroede now tried to put Aucher off till Christmas, having recalled meanwhile that the steamer Bergensfjord was to sail on January 2nd, and that he might need passports for officers traveling on that ship. But Aucher protested that he was "broke," and further impressed on Ruroede that he had gotten no money from Carrots or Wedell for his work for them. He also produced six letters written by the State Department in answer to applicants for passports, and finally convinced Ruroede of his good faith and that he ought to start him to work right away. They haggled over the price, and finally agreed on $20 apiece for passports for native-born Americans and $30 apiece for passports of naturalized

"Now see here," said Aucher. "Let's cut this guy out. He's just nothing but a booze fighter, and he's been kidding you for money

the latter involved more red-tape and hence more risk. Aucher was to come back on December 24th and bring the passports and get some money on account.