ound
Captain Rice even in his own country and showed the intense
determination of the Germans to prevent, if they could, any more big
cargoes of munitions reaching England on the _Mongolia_. Our second
visitor was a man who had been an officer in the German Army years
before. After leaving Germany he came to the United States and became a
citizen.

[Sidenote: A German-American turns German spy.]

In August, 1914, when the Huns invaded Belgium, he became all German
again and returned to Europe to serve with the German Army on the French
front, from which region he was ordered by the German Government back to
the United States, where his command of English and knowledge of the
country made him valuable to the propaganda and spy groups here. All
this and much more I found out shortly after his visit, but the
afternoon he called I (I was alone at the time) received him without
suspicion, since he said he came to pay his respects to Captain Rice,
whom he had known in China.

[Sidenote: Deceiving the spy.]

It was not until his apparently casual questions about the time of the
_Mongolia's_ sailing and whether she was to be armed became annoying
that "I woke up," and looking attentively at this over-curious visitor,
I encountered a look of such cold hostility that with a shock I
realized I was dealing with a spy, one who was probably armed, and who
appeared determined to get the information he sought. In a few seconds
of swift thinking I decided the best thing to do was to make him believe
that Captain Rice himself did not know whether his ship was going out
again, and that no one could tell what course of action the ship owners
would take. After forty minutes of probing for information he departed,
convinced there was no information to be had from me.

[Sidenote: How signals could be sent by German agents.]

It was ascertained that his New York home was in an apartment house on
the highest point of land in Manhattan. In this same house there lived
another German, who received many young men, all Teutons, as visitors,
some of whom spent much time with him on the roof. The possibility of
their signaling out to sea from this elevation is too obvious to be
dwelt on, and it is beyond doubt that some of the submarines' most
effective work at this time and later was due to the activities of these
German agents allowed at large by our too-trustful laws of citizenship.
So exact and timely was much of the information these spies