I've just come across a copy of Spreading Germs of Hate by George Sylvester Viereck (New York: Horace Liverlight, 1930). It appears to be an autobiography, although, oddly, Viereck appears in the 3rd person. Anyway, there's a brief (one page) reference to Crowley, which I quote below, in case anyone hasn't already come across this (I hadn't):
(p.51)
One of the contributors to The Fatherland was Aleister Crowley, a British poet, who has been compared to Swinburne as a master of metrics. Crowley dabbled with black magic and propaganda! he edited Viereck's belletristic magazine, The International, in which many writers of the modern school won their first spurs. Crowley subsequently boasted of being in the British Secret Service, but his claims are repudiated by Sir William Wiseman. Thus, with recruits from many ranks, including black magicians, The Fatherland grew.
What do we know about Sir William Wiseman?
PS Ewers also gets brief mentions in the book.
(p.51)
One of the contributors to The Fatherland was Aleister Crowley, a British poet, who has been compared to Swinburne as a master of metrics. Crowley dabbled with black magic and propaganda! he edited Viereck's belletristic magazine, The International, in which many writers of the modern school won their first spurs. Crowley subsequently boasted of being in the British Secret Service, but his claims are repudiated by Sir William Wiseman. Thus, with recruits from many ranks, including black magicians, The Fatherland grew.
What do we know about Sir William Wiseman?
PS Ewers also gets brief mentions in the book.
Sir William Wiseman was an officer in British Intelligence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Wiseman,_10th_Baronet
PS Ewers also gets brief mentions in the book.
What is mentioned about Ewers in the book, Watkins?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Wiseman,_10th_Baronet
Watkins, the wikipedia link provided to you by Michael Staley contains the information that Lieutenant colonel Sir William Wiseman, 10th Baronet, (1 February 1885 – 17 June 1962), was a British intelligence agent and banker, and that he was a general partner at the American investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co. from 1929 till 1960. That he was sent by British intelligence as head of the British intelligence mission in the United States, to establish an agency in New York. That he acted as a liaison between the US President Woodrow Wilson and the British government, was closely associated with the US President, met with the President and the President's Special Adviser Colonel Edward M. House on a regular basis, and on one notable occasion in August 1918 spent a week’s vacation with the President and the said adviser. The reference number one in the said Wikipedia link leads you to the article Englishmen in New York: The SIS American Station, 1915-21, in the periodical Intelligence and National Security Volume 19, Issue 3, 2004.
The net link that the said reference leads to - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0268452042000316269#.U3zoySibLEw - contains the following abstract for the article Englishmen in New York: The SIS American Station, 1915-21:
Abstract
This article examines the organization, personnel and selected operations of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in New York during and immediately after the First World War. Under the leadership of Sir William Wiseman, SIS agents successfully combated German intrigues as well as Irish and Indian nationalists. The greatest challenges, however, were managing the shifting relationship with American authorities and the encroachments of rival British agencies such as MI5. The roles of Guy Gaunt, Robert Nathan and Norman Thwaites are given particular attention.
Thomas Boghardt, a senior historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C. - and author of the book Spies of the Kaiser: German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era published in 2004 - was a lecturer at a series of lectures to commemorate the outbreak of the World War I, that I visited in March this year. The title of his lecture was: German Intelligence in World War 1: Tactical Victories and Strategic Failure.
When I discussed Aleister Crowley's claims about influencing the US to join the UK in the First World War, with the historian Thomas Boghardt, he said that British intelligence would not have needed any assistance from Aleister Crowley in influencing the US to join the UK in the First World War, because British intelligence since 1915 had had direct access to the US President through the head of the British intelligence mission in the United States, Sir William Wiseman. And the historian Thomas Boghardt also told me that the German Embassy in the USA officially distanced itself from Aleister Crowley's pro-German propagandist employer George Sylvester Viereck in 1916, because the latter was considered a loose cannon.
In the quote provided by you from the book Spreading Germs of Hate by George Sylvester Viereck (New York: Horace Liverlight, 1930), in the first post in this thread Wakins, it is stated that Sir William Wiseman repudiated Crowley's boasting of being in the British Secret Service during the First World War. Being the successful head of the British intelligence mission in the United States, Sir William Wiseman would be well aware of that the German Embassy in the USA had officially distanced itself from Aleister Crowley's pro-German propagandist employer George Sylvester Viereck in 1916.
I have written more on Aleister Crowley in relation to Intelligence service work in the nineteen thirties in the thread "Saturday June 28th Dr. Richard Spence on Coast to Coast" --- http://www.lashtal.com/forum/index.php?topic=2983.msg82756;topicseen#new
Thanks both. I'll get back with the Ewers refs when i have a chance to check the book.
Not a great deal on Ewers. Viereck mentions a stormy meeting in New York City between German steamship companies (whose employees were unemployed as a result of the blockade), "the editor of The Fatherland" (i.e. himself), some other influential pro-Germans, and German Embassy officials, amongst whom was Prince Hatzfield, who objected to The Fatherland being employed in the propaganda battle. Ewers passionately argued against this, calling German diplomacy "bovine." Viereck also mentions a debate on the War held in NYC, at which Ewers spoke, to a pro-Ireland and pro-Germany audience.