1
Below Zero
by Ellis Parker Butler
From Argosy, May 18, 1918
The activities of the Federal Secret Service men had been so great and so efficient during the spring and summer that we found our hands tied. Our well-arranged plans to injure the United States and hamper its war activities were amounting to nothing whatever. Our agents, after several hundred or more had been arrested and shot, refused to obey our instructions and the carefully planned campaign we had arranged was amounting to nothing.
Through the channel I must not mention I began to receive complaints from Berlin. These were accompanied by most urgent and insistent orders that something be done to convince the people of Germany that their government agents in America were disrupting the American war activities. As I was the head of the entire German activity in the United States this meant that Berlin looked to me to carry out the orders.
I was in no manner suspected by the United States Secret Service. I think I may say that all my arrangements had been made so carefully that I would be the last man suspected.
My position at the head of the great firm of J---- and Company was quite enough to seem an absolute guarantee for my patriotic Americanism, and I had fortified this by acts of seeming patriotism until I was actually looked upon as one of the most staunch and true Americans.
Our plans had, of course, included the blowing up of all munitions factories and all factories whose activities aided the war work of the United States or her Allies. We also planned the destruction of all important bridges, the wrecking of tunnels, and the sinking of as many ships and boats as possible.