Prussian Plotters Unmasked: Berlin Agent’s Secret Gas Mask Scheme Foiled

In a stunning blow to German espionage, a group of 21 enemy aliens, including two of Berlin’s most notorious plotters, were taken into custody in New York yesterday. The pair, led by Dr. Isaac Straus, the president of the Chromos Chemical Company, had been secretly working on a propaganda and espionage scheme that could have spelled disaster for American forces and the lives of General Pershing’s men on the battlefront. Straus, the publisher of The American Jewish Chronicle, had been making bids to supply gas masks to American soldiers, but in reality, he was trying to get his hands on the formula for the chemicals used in the masks.