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.
All this was planned in the most systematic manner and there were no flaws in any part of the scheme. We
had the explosives, we had the men sworn to obey the orders.
In only eight cases, however, out of some seven thousand destructions we had planned, were our men able to
do their work. I am convinced there must have been some leak somewhere -- some traitor -- or the things