The letters seized illegally from Rosamond Young's home provided the only incriminating evidence federal officials could use to arrest Karl Muck. The BOI, at the instigation of Mrs. Jay, had been hunting for ways to catch Muck in some form of criminal activity, so it could then remove him from his important position in Boston. Its job would have been much easier if Muck had been a German spy or if he had sabotaged munitions plants. Unable to find any legitimate offense, investigators interrogated members of the Boston Symphony until they learned of Rosamond Young and the cache of letters in her home. The Muck-Young letters demonstrated a level of emotional and physical intimacy deemed inappropriate by certain BOI officials. Thomas Boynton, District Attorney Dewey's supervisor, wrote personally to John Lord O'Brian at the War Emergency Division of the Justice Department about the scandalous nature of the letters, saying “a very considerable number” were “entirely obscene in character.”

The Comstock Act of 1873 and the Mann White Slavery Act of 1910

The private correspondence between Karl Muck and Rosamond Young that was seized without her permission provided the BOI with proof that the BSO conductor was guilty of sex crimes. While letters between two consenting adults having an affair may not seem criminal, there was a basis for the BOI to arrest and charge Muck through the provisions of two separate federal acts that he and Young had violated: the Comstock Act of 1873 and the Mann White Slavery Act of 1910. The former law was named for anti-obscenity crusader and former dry goods salesman Anthony Comstock, who had received financial backing from capitalists J. P. Morgan and Samuel Colgate to push the bill through Congress. It prohibited the transportation of obscene items through the US Postal Service.

Hardships Increase in Boston

On the morning of December 6, 1917, the French ship Mont Blanc approached Halifax Harbor in Nova Scotia and collided with the SS Imo, a six-thousand-ton Norwegian ship on route to Belgium to deliver relief supplies. The day was just beginning. Children were walking to school along the waterfront. Workers made their way to factories, offices, rail and dockyards. Hearing the commotion, those still inside their homes ran to their waterfront windows to witness the crash. The Mont Blanc, bound for France and filled with six million pounds of high explosives, erupted in a fiery blaze that heated its volatile cargo to nine thousand degrees Fahrenheit, turning the ship into a “monstrous hand-grenade,” sending chunks of metal projectiles from the disintegrating vessel outward in all directions at 3,400 miles per hour, puncturing nearby ships, slicing open rooftops, and vaporizing those in its path. The force of the blast caused a ground wave, or earthquake, penetrating the bedrock at 13,000 miles per hour, shaking homes off their foundations. The ferocious detonation produced a mushroom cloud, a giant gas fireball filled with vaporized particles, metal and human, that rose two miles in the air and threw into the atmosphere tons of dark oil that rained down on its victims, blackening their faces with a slimy tar. Air waves followed, traveling at 21,000 miles per hour and shattering almost every window in Halifax, shooting pieces of glass like knives into the eyes and bodies of those who stood watching. Within a second, onlookers were blind, riddled with glass shrapnel, or dead. Most buildings within a two mile radius were obliterated. The shock from the blast violently parted the harbor waters, forming a tidal wave, or tsunami, that engulfed inland streets, drowned inhabitants, and flooded buildings nearly sixty feet above sea level. In the final accounting, the explosion killed almost two thousand people and wounded nine thousand more. Twenty-five thousand people, almost half the population, were suddenly homeless. The thickly settled waterfront community that occupied more than three hundred acres looked like no-man's land—a war zone. Ruptured gas lines blew up additional structures, trapping many survivors in the rubble of their flattened homes. Trees and telephone poles were snapped at their bases. Cement and masonry structures were obliterated. Fires started everywhere, as wooden buildings acted like kindling fuel.

Muck's troubles were far from over when he and his wife Anita returned to Europe in September of 1919. The US federal government had expelled the couple with little regard for their well-being or their privacy. Utterly destroyed by America, a country they once called home, Karl and Anita attempted to reacclimate themselves to a world they had left behind many years before. Muck was initially unable to find stable employment as a musician in the post–World War I economy. He no longer had any savings to speak of, and he had no property. His close political connections to the kaiser did not help matters. In 1918, Wilhelm had abdicated the throne and was exiled to the Netherlands. As New York Times music critic Olin Downes pointed out, “Muck was no hero welcomed home.” The only work he could find was as an itinerant conductor, traveling from city to city, living in hotel after hotel. The transitory quality of their lives was difficult for the couple to bear. Muck worked as a guest conductor at the Berlin State Opera and the Munich Opera Festival, among other places, but these assignments, while prestigious, offered no long-term financial security. Economic instability was only part of the trouble Karl Muck would face, however.

BOI Fails to Maintain the Plea Bargain: The Sealed Muck-Young Letters Are Released to the Press

Just two and a half months after Muck's deportation, another series of events would prove that his troubles were far from over. On November 9, 1919, the Boston Post ran a twelve-part series exposing the real reason for Karl Muck's internment, publishing the very private (and supposedly sealed) letters of Karl and Rosamond. The sensational series was sent by the Associated Press across the United States and Europe, causing Karl, Anita, and Rosamond enormous suffering.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, Muck had accepted a plea bargain and agreed to internment as a “dangerous enemy alien” in exchange for secrecy regarding his affair with Rosamond. He had been assured that if he served his time at Fort Oglethorpe, the US government would not divulge the couple's love letters. Bureau of Investigation division superintendent George E. Kelleher and assistant superintendent Norman L. Gifford had ostensibly committed themselves to permanently sealing Muck's private correspondence in exchange for internment.