Nabbed at Sea
“Through Adams’ efforts Ruroede and four Germans, one of them an officer in the German reserves, were arrested on January 2, on the Scandinavian-American liner Bergensfjord outward bound to Bergen, Norway. They had passports issued through Adams at Ruroede’s request under the American names of Howard Paul Wright, Herbert S. Wilson, Peter Hanson and Stanley F. Martin.
“Von Wedell himself was a passenger on the Bergensfjord, but when he was lined up with the other passengers, the Federal agents, who did not have a description of him, missed him and left the vessel. He was later (January 11) taken off the ship by the British, however, and transferred to another vessel for removal to a prison camp. She struck a German mine and sank, and von Wedell is supposed to have drowned.”
An explicit letter from von Wedell to von Bernstorff dispelled any possibility of doubt that the German Ambassador was fully cognizant of the false passport frauds.
“Ruroede was sentenced to three years in Atlanta prison. The four reservists, pleading guilty, protested they had taken the passports out of patriotism and were fined $200 each.
“The arrest of Ruroede exposed the New York bureau, and made it necessary for the Germans to shift their base of operations, but did not put an end to the fraudulent passport conspiracy. Capt. Boy-Ed assumed the burden, and hired men to secure passports for him.”
But the increased vigilance and thoroughness of the British reduced this service to a negligible quantity before the entrance of the United States into the war squelched it entirely.
An incident in connection with the arrest of Ruroede is related by French Strother in his story “Fighting German Spies” published in The World’s Work. Ruroede “was being urged by the Assistant United States District Attorney to ‘come across’ with the facts about his activities in the passport frauds, and he had stood up pretty well against the persuasions and hints of the attorney and the doubts and fears of his own mind. About eleven o’clock at night, as he was for the many’th time protesting his ignorance and his innocence, another agent of the Bureau of Investigation walked across the far end of the dimly lit room—in one door and out another—accompanied by a fair-haired lad of nineteen.
“‘My God!’ exclaimed Ruroede, ‘have they got my son, too? The boy knows nothing at all about this.’
“This little ghost-walking scene, borrowed from Hamlet, broke down Ruroede’s reserve, and he came out with pretty much all the story, ending with the melancholy exclamation ‘I thought I was going to get an Iron Cross; but what they ought to do is to pin a little tin stove on me.’”