The German spy-ring in the US believed they had just the man to sabotage the American mules that were being shipped to the Western Front to help the Allies. James "Big Jim" Larkin, who was doing his own bit to hinder shipments of munitions from American ports, would inject the mules with disease cultures that would bring on a fever during the voyage and knock them out of the war effort.
This proposal from the German consul in San Francisco, von Bopp, was rejected by Larkin. "I told him I would have nothing to do with such methods; that I was a propagandist and believed in mass action and mass intelligence."
This is from Larkin's own account of his adventures in the US and Mexico during the first World War, now made available for the first time from the National Archives in Washington, thanks to the efforts of SIPTU and the former US ambassador, Ms Jean Kennedy Smith. The historian Emmet Larkin was allowed to look at the document when writing his 1965 biography of James Larkin, but not to copy it.
Larkin set down his experiences in an affidavit in Dublin in January 1934 for the US government, which was seeking $40 million from Germany for acts of sabotage by its agents like von Bopp. According to Larkin, he was repeatedly asked by the German agents, often posing as diplomats, to carry out acts of sabotage like blowing up munitions dumps.
Larkin had gone to the US in October 1914 to promote the international labour movement but also to hinder "the British empire in its struggle" against Germany. The German agents whom he contacted welcomed the renowned labour organiser, whose fame had spread with the 1913 lock-out in Dublin.
Captain Boy-Ed told Larkin: "We want men of serious and extreme view to undertake what we realise will be a dangerous but essential and vital work." He was shown how to use a flammable liquid nicknamed "firewater" to sabotage munitions factories and how to use other devices to sink freighters bound for Europe.
Larkin wrote that "the effect of the demonstration further strengthened my conviction of having nothing to do with this method of sabotage". He preferred organising strikes in munitions plants and on the waterfronts where he had some success.
Von Bopp did not give up and offered Larkin "a fast motor yacht" to destroy vessels which would be designated by a code. The messages would come through "a small Bible in which punctures would be made under letters by pin or needle". Larkin said he "would not be party to any proceedings where human life was involved". When the US entered the war in 1917, Larkin kept on his "antiwar work". He was "arrested on a number of occasions, third-degreed and held for trial under the Espionage Act" but was acquitted before a Judge Ryan in Jamaica, Long Island.
The Germans were disappointed with the Irish-American contribution to sabotage. As Larkin put it: "The Germans complained bitterly that they had been let down by the Irish and they looked upon the leaders of the Irish group, as they expressed it in their own words, as four-flushers and political grafters." The Germans obviously had a good command of American slang.
Larkin was also invited to Mexico by the Germans to meet "certain high officers". After crossing the Rio Grande in a flat-bottomed boat, he found the Hotel Juarez in Mexico City to be full of Germans and Austrians, and once they "got so enthused about a German military success that the police had to be called". A second visit to Mexico went badly for Larkin. He got to La Paz, then took a motor boat to Guayamas where he "was put up at a hotel formerly a monastery, owned by a Dublin man who was a British secret service man". Eventually he reached Mexico City where the Germans took him to the Spanish Club. "There was very heavy drinking and gambling going on. Of course, in neither of which I participated."
The Germans again complained and said "they were disgusted with their Irish friends" because they "had turned out to be the most loyal of Americans". The Germans asked Larkin to return to the US and carry out "destructive sabotage measures". When he refused, "their whole demeanour changed". When Larkin returned to his hotel he was refused entry. Then his wallet and bag were stolen. He blamed the Germans. He had to sleep on a park bench in the Plaza Madero where a Mexican was stabbed. On his way to the border he was "attacked by three Mexican bullies on the train." It was Larkin's "definite opinion" that the German authorities in Mexico City were the instigators.
All this and more Larkin swore in the affidavit for the US government lawyer, Mr John J. McCloy, who later became one of the most important American administrators. He became president of the World Bank in 1947 and then US military governor in Berlin and high commissioner in Germany until 1952.
The full Larkin affidavit is reproduced for the first time in the new compendium on his life called James Larkin: Lion of the Fold, published by Gill and Macmillan. It will be officially launched at Liberty Hall on Monday week at a ceremony to be attended by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and a delegation of trade unionists from the US, led by John Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO, the biggest labour federation in the US.
It is part of SIPTU's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Larkin's death, who according to the SIPTU president, Mr Jimmy Somers, "for 10 years fought the good fight with his American comrades at a time of repression of the labour movement" in the US.
Von Bopp might have had a different view.