My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent

Formerly Major in the Mexican Constitution-list Army, sometime Confidential Aide to Captain von Papen, Recalled Military Attaché to the Imperial German Embassy at Washington, German Secret Service Agent

GASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

1918

FOREWORD

I HAVE not striven to write an autobiography. This book is merely a summary a sort of galloping summary of the last ten years of my existence. As such, I venture to write it because my life has been bound up in enterprises in which the world is interested. It has been my fortune to be a witness and sometimes an actor in that drama of secret diplomacy which has been going on for so long and which in such a large way has been responsible for this World War.

There are many scenes in that drama which have no place in this book many events with which I am familiar that I have not touched upon. My aim has been to describe only those things with which I was personally concerned and which I know to be true. For a full history of the last ten years my readers must go elsewhere; but it is my hope that these adventures of mine will bring them to a better understanding of the forces that have for so long been undermining the peace of the world.

Inevitably there will be some who read this book who will doubt the truth of many of the statements in it. I cannot, unfortunately, prove all that I tell here. Wherever possible I have offered corroborative evidence of the truth of my statements; at other times I have tried to indicate their credibility by citing well recognised facts which have a direct bearing upon my contentions. But for the rest, I can only hope that this book will be accepted as a true record of facts which by their very nature are insusceptible of proof.

So far as my connection with the German Government is concerned, I may refer the curious to the British Parliamentary White Papers, Miscellaneous, Nos. 6 and 13, which contain respectively my confession and a record of the papers found in the possession of Captain von Papen, former Military Attache to the German Embassy at Washington, and seized by the British authorities on January 2 and 8, 1916. There are also, in addition to the documents reproduced in this book, various court records of the trial of Captain Hans Tauscher and others in the spring of the same year. To German activities in the United States, the newspapers bear eloquent testimony. I have been concerned rather with the motives of the German Government than with a statement of what has been done. These motives, I believe, you will not doubt.