y shipping on the Pacific Coast. A German baron,
Von Brincken, said to be one of the kaiser's army officers; an
employee of the German consulate at San Francisco, C. C. Crowley; and
a woman, Mrs. Margaret W. Cornell, were the offenders.

A conspiracy to prevent the manufacture and shipment of munitions to
the allied powers. A German organization, the National Labor Peace
Council, was indicted on this charge, as well as a wealthy German,
Franz von Rintelen, described as an intimate friend of the German
Crown Prince, and several Americans known in public life.

In most of these cases the name of Captain Karl Boy-Ed, the German
naval attache, or Captain Franz von Papen, the German military
attache, figured persistently. The testimony of informers confirmed
the suspicion that a wide web of secret intrigue radiated from sources
related to the German embassy and enfolded all the conspiracies,
showing that few, if any, of the plots, contemplated or accomplished,
were due solely to the individual zeal of German sympathizers.

CHAPTER II

THE PLOT TO DESTROY SHIPS--PACIFIC COAST
CONSPIRACIES--HAMBURG-AMERICAN CASE--SCOPE OF NEW YORK INVESTIGATIONS

The plot of Fay and his confederates to place bombs on ships carrying
war supplies to Europe was discovered when a couple of New York
detectives caught Fay and an accomplice, Scholz, experimenting with
explosives in a wood near Weehawken, N. J., on October 24, 1915. Their
arrests were the outcome of a police search for two Germans who
secretly sought to purchase picric acid, a component of high
explosives which had become scarce since the war began. Certain
purchases made were traced to Fay. On the surface Fay's offense seemed
merely one of harboring and using explosives without a license; but
police investigations of ship explosions had proceeded on the theory
that the purchases of picric acid were associated with them.

Fay confirmed this surmise. He described himself as a lieutenant in
the German army, who, with the sanction of the German secret
information service, had come to the United States after sharing in
the Battle of the Marne, to perfect certain mine devices for
attachment to munition ships in order to cripple them. In a Hoboken
storage warehouse was found a quantity of picric acid he had deposited
there, with a number of steel mine tanks, each fitted with an
attachment for hooking to the rudder of a vessel, and clockwork and
wire to fire the explosive in t