Orloff Case

In 1924 Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of Britain's impotent minority Labor Government, reopened diplomatic relations with the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Within a few months the Labor Government was defeated on its Russian policy, a general election was called. At the height of a bitter campaign Lord Northcliffe's Daily Mail printed in noble indignation a letter apparently from Grigory Evseevich Zinoviev, "Bomb boy of Bolshevism," onetime director of the Third International, urging British Communists to revolt, Communist sympathizers in the British Army and Navy to mutiny. As a result the election went overwhelmingly Conservative. Soviet officials denied the Zinoviev letter, British Laborites insisted it was a forgery. Little could be proved.

Last winter to Hubert R.Knickerbocker, Berlin correspondent of New York's Evening Post, appeared one Vladimir Orloff, bald, vandyke-bearded, onetime Councillor of State in the Imperial Russian Government. Mephistophelian M. Orloff had in his possession letters elaborately typed on official Soviet notepaper purporting to show that U. S. Senators William Edgar Borah and George William Norris had accepted $100,000 bribes from Soviet agents.

Correspondent Knickerbocker, unimpressed, went to the Berlin military police with his story. Very quickly it was proved that the Borah letters were forgeries, that bald M. Orloff himself had forged them. Imperial Orloff, whose secret traffickings enabled him to own two houses in Berlin and a country place on the Elbe, was hastily jailed to await trial; jailed with him was Michael Pavlovsky, his "errand boy." Rumors were insistent that not only the Borah letters but the more important Zinoviev letter were the work of Orloff.

Fortnight ago the Orloff trial, long awaited, commenced. Startling was the testimony of Harold Siewert, head of the detective agency which is complainant against the defendants.

"I have been told," said he, "that Orloff and Pavlovsky frequently boasted that they were the authors of the Zinoviev letter."

"Who told you this?" demanded Defense Attorney Walter Jaffe.

"Nuntia!" answered Detective Siewert bluntly.

Consternation! Nuntia is the popular name for Germany's most secret, most unmentionable police organization. It is as unmentionable as Russia's famed Cheka. The embarrassed judge hastily dismissed the witness, adjourned court for three days.

When the Orloff trial finally reassembled there was no more awkward mention of Nuntia. It was simply announced that Detective Siewert had suffered a nervous breakdown, would be unable to testify again. Further, the case would be strictly limited to the forged Borah letters. The prosecution's desire to rush the case through was understandable. Defense Attorney Jaffe had clear and embarrassing proof that the reason Nuntia knew so much about bald Orloff was that Orloff, fanatical anti-Bolshevist, had given long and valuable service to Nuntia as a German spy.

Orloff and Pavlovsky were hastily sentenced to four months imprisonment, a sentence which they had already served awaiting trial. Then they were to be exiled from Germany. The German police, however, announced that Orloff and Pavlovsky had no official nationality. Hence they could not be exiled, "because no other country would receive them." Instead Vladimir Orloff must remain upon his country place, apply for police permission every time he wished to leave the property.

These embarrassing details finished, the Zinoviev forgery still unproved, Forger Orloff practically unpunished, Prussian State's Attorney Ebel and Defense Attorney Jaffe united in long and fervent praises of the noble character, the elegant be havior of U. S. Correspondent Knickerbocker.

Said Herr Jaffe of Newsgatherer Knickerbocker:

"I shall never call him an agent provocateur again. I shall call him spiritus rectus: the Upright Spirit of the trial.

"Knickerbocker in fact was the only point of light in this dark complex of events. I may say that I only wish that all witnesses before the German courts would render testimony as he did."

Other governments, wondering what Spy Orloff 's future relations with Nuntia would be, ordered their agents to observe his conduct closely.