FIGHTING THE UNDERGROUND ENEMY
For years before it plunged the world into war the German Government,
as in every country in which it could obtain the necessary foothold,
had been applying in the United States its policy of “peaceful
penetration.” Toward that end it had endeavored by many apparently
innocent means to hold the loyalty of American citizens or residents
of German birth or extraction, to create a dominant body of sentiment
in favor of anything and everything German, and to secure the open
or concealed control of vast quantities of business through which it
could operate for the furtherance of German interests, political,
industrial, financial or cultural. German methods and ideals accepted
in schools and colleges; German departments in universities that were
centers of influence for the spreading of admiration of everything
German; in some regions Germanized public schools; a country-wide
net-work of German societies and associations through which love and
loyalty for the “fatherland” were kept alive; millions of dollars
of German money invested in American business, frequently under
disguised ownership; German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats using
their offices and privileges for the promotion of all manner of
intrigue against the interests of the country; plots for the control
of industry, the destruction of property, the inciting of sedition,
the hatching of conspiracies, the rousing of enmity against us in
friendly nations--these were some of the things the American people
found had been going on under their very noses, many of which they
had thoughtlessly aided, when the shock of war opened their eyes
to the character and the methods of the enemy who, for the sake of
civilization, had to be rendered innocuous. It was an enemy who had
not only to be fought on the open battlefield but foiled in all the
underground tricks and activities in which he was exceptionally expert
and incessantly busy.
Before our entrance into the war Germany had used her own and the
Austro-Hungarian embassies and her well organized spy system to
carry on operations against England and France, her diplomatic
representatives and her agents secretly concocting and directing
activities that would interfere with the efficiency of the Entente
Allies and might also be depended upon to create friction and possibly
even war between them and the United States. After the two ambassadors
and their staffs had been sent home because of these machinations
and the United States had declared war, there still remained the spy
system, which had been greatly increased and strengthened during the
first years of the war. Huge sums of money financed it and it was
directed and carried on by some of the most experienced agents of the
German Foreign Office. To aid them Germany had sent to this country
many professional men, scientists and others with instructions to
advance German interests and to assist in the carrying on of her
underground activities in every possible way. The Intelligence Division
of the United States War Department estimated that Germany maintained
in this country, before and after our entrance into the war, an
immense, secretly operating force of between 200,000 and 300,000 paid
and volunteer workers. There was also the wide-spreading net-work of
business firms, apparently innocent, but really a cover and medium for
enemy machinations.
Emissaries to blow up bridges and railroads and do other damage
were sent into Canada. Malcontents from Ireland and India were
sought out and financed and aided in the laying of plots to create
dissatisfaction, riots and, if possible, revolution in their home
countries. A French traitor was brought to the United States and
furnished with money for setting on foot a traitorous scheme in France.
Much ingenuity was expanded in the endeavor to create friction between
this country and Japan. In Mexico Germany diligently spread propaganda
to influence the people and government of that country against the
United States and aided and financed terroristic movements and
activities whose purpose was to embroil the two nations in war.
Germany’s underground activities in the United States, some of them
dating before our entrance into the war, some of them carried into
the period of our war participation, and others not begun until after
we became a belligerent, included many and varied schemes to prevent
this country from exercising its rights under international law, to
interfere with its effective prosecution of the war and to undermine
its political and trade relations with other countries. An effort was
made to gain control of airplane building. There was an attempt to
secure a similar hold upon the munitions industry, by maneuvering it
into the hands of German capital so camouflaged that its character
would not be recognized. A particularly well organized and cunningly
concealed scheme, directed and financed in the United States, was set
on foot to buy up and hoard wool and woolen and other textiles, in both
North and South America, needed for the clothing of our own and our
associates’ armies.
Plots were laid and feverishly pushed forward for blowing up ships
bearing troops or war cargoes across the Atlantic and for wrecking
munition plants and other war industries. German agents sent throughout
the Southern states did their best to incite race riots among the
negroes and to instigate a race war, working among them in their homes
and churches and following them into cotton fields and mills and even
into the army camps. Much effort and ingenuity were expended in the
attempt to cause dissatisfaction and strikes among the workers in war
industries and strife among those of different nationalities.
Propaganda, both open and concealed, was carried on by innumerable
methods in the hope of influencing sentiment against the war, in favor
of Germany, or against our war associates. For this purpose there
were used moving pictures, the pastors of German churches, the German
language press, the newspapers of other languages, writers in German
pay who contributed articles and correspondence to American newspapers
and magazines, German owned or controlled periodicals whose directing
influence was well concealed, and a great number of societies having
for their ostensible purpose the aiding of the aims of labor, or of
pacifist sentiment, or of socialism.
The United States Department of Justice discovered, in the course of
its investigations, that the German Government had placed in this
country for the use of these various underground activities over
$27,000,000, of which $7,500,000 had been spent in propaganda.
For measuring forces with an enemy of this sort the United States, when
it entered the war, was inadequately equipped with laws. A friendly
people, believing in square and open dealing between nations as between
individuals and trusting those to whom it had given citizenship and
business and professional hospitality, as it would expect to be trusted
in another land, had never thought it necessary to enact such laws
as this emergency demanded. The only weapon of consequence which the
Government had ready for conflict with the underground enemy was a
statute which had been in force more than a hundred years permitting
the arrest and internment by executive order of an alien enemy believed
to be a menace to the public safety. Advantage was taken of this at
once and some of the most dangerous agents of Germany were soon under
guard and innocuous for the duration of the war. This internment
statute was a powerful weapon in putting down enemy activities, while
the severity with which it was enforced from the very beginning was
effective in discouraging the continued hatching of plots.
An espionage law enacted two months after our declaration of war and
strengthened later on and a sabotage bill dealing with injury to
property gave the needed means for dealing with a difficulty the
nation had never before encountered. The espionage act was effective
against organized or deliberate enemy or disloyal propaganda, but it
was not intended to curtail the rights of free speech or of a free
press and in its enforcement the courts made every effort to protect
these rights as the basis of our political institutions. In the
emotional tensity of the time it was inevitable that there should be
bitter charges of excessive leniency on one side and, on the other,
of unnecessary severity from those who feared the undermining of our
principles of freedom. But in the end there were few who did not
recognize that substantial justice had been meted out in most of
the many cases. German alien enemies were required to register and
480,000 men and women were thus listed. A system of permits governed
their movements and debarred them, without special permission,
from the District of Columbia and from specified zones surrounding
fortifications, docks, piers, wharves, warehouses, and other places
important for war purposes. They were forbidden also to enter or leave
the United States.
Much more lenient treatment was given to the subjects of
Austro-Hungary, upon whom the only restriction was that of not leaving
the country, although they were also subject to arrest and internment
if guilty of dangerous activities. They proved to be worthy of the
trust placed in them, for, although there were seven or eight times as
many of these enemy aliens as of those of German citizenship, they gave
little trouble of any sort, their labor helped importantly in much of
our war production and throughout the war they were quiet, industrious
and law-abiding.
Germany’s spies and agents were of several nationalities and in order
to keep an effective watch upon their movements a stringent passport
system was instituted which made impossible the departure from this
country of any one whose purpose was not clear and proper. Private
persons were forbidden to carry mail out of or into the country, as
a means of preventing enemy agents from sending reports by others.
Officers and crews of neutral ships were not allowed to land at
United States ports without permits from the Department of State. A
large force of picked and trained men, numbering several hundreds,
scrutinized every ship coming into or going out of the important ports,
her cargo and her passengers, to make sure that no enemy agent was
among them or material of any sort intended for the enemy secreted in
hold, or quarters, or cabins.
Supplementing the six secret service agencies of the Government, all
of which were immediately and very greatly increased to enforce these
provisions and deal with enemy activities, there sprang into life,
almost over-night, the American Protective League. An organization of
citizen volunteers, it was a unique development of the situation and in
spirit and methods thoroughly characteristic of the American people.
The League was born out of a realization of the danger the country
faced, overrun as it was with enemy agents directed by some of the most
skillful intriguers and spy captains that a nation specializing in
spying and intrigue had been able to train, and out of the loyal wish
to serve.
The American Protective League, which had its beginning almost
simultaneously with our declaration of war, was a volunteer auxiliary
of the Department of Justice. Its organizer, a private citizen who
saw the necessity of such service and the possibility of securing
the effective coöperation of selected persons everywhere, had it in
operation within a few weeks, with several thousand members. It grew
rapidly and within a year had 250,000 members working for it in their
own communities. The organization was established in every state in the
Union, the country being cut up into divisions, each under a chief, and
each division into districts with a captain in command of each one,
while each captain recruited his own working squads and put them under
lieutenants. This organization by territory was reënforced by another
whose divisions were along the lines of important industries, trades
and professions, the two bureaus working constantly in coöperation. In
the membership of the League was represented every section and phase
of American life--college professors and day laborers, bank presidents
and mechanics, journalists, lawyers, janitors, ministers, carpenters,
judges. The very great value of its service was due to this variety
and to the intelligence and character of its membership, for it was
able to penetrate into all circles, to be on the watch everywhere
in city, town and country and to follow a suspect through the most
devious of wanderings. It investigated pro-German propaganda of every
sort, sabotage cases, suspected spies and their activities, seditious
speeches and printed matter, efforts to evade the selective service
act, lying reports circulated by the “whispering propaganda” method
about American organizations or individuals, and suspected treasonable
conspiracies.
The members of the League, undertaking its work in addition to the
duties of their regular occupations, served without pay and without
rendering expense accounts. It carried on 3,000,000 investigations
upon which it made reports, a great many resulting in the uncovering
of serious disloyalties or enemy activities. So efficient was the
organization that it won the warmest praise from the Attorney General
of the United States, who declared that not only were its active
services of very great value but that its passive effect was of
equal importance, because the knowledge that its eyes and ears were
everywhere had a most discouraging influence upon enemy and disloyal
intentions.
Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, passed early in our war progress,
an Alien Property Custodian took charge of properties and businesses
belonging to enemy aliens in this country or operated for the benefit
of enemy subjects elsewhere. The investigations which uncovered these
business operations, many of them deeply and cleverly concealed,
revealed startling facts as to the extent to which German subjects
had gained commercial and industrial footholds in the United States,
the methods which they had used and the purposes to which they had
applied their resources and their knowledge of the nation’s business
and industrial life. More than thirty thousand cases of enemy owned
business were handled by the Custodian, while enemy owned stock,
ranging in the several cases from fifteen to one hundred per cent of
the total, was found in nearly three hundred corporations. He seized
enemy owned property in the first year of his work to the value of
more than $700,000,000, the businesses in which it was engaged running
the whole gamut of American industry in mining, manufacturing, buying
and selling. Frequently the enemy ownership was so cleverly and
persistently concealed that months of investigation were necessary
to uncover the truth. A great many of these German owned industrial
establishments were used as spy centers and were filled with the agents
of Germany plotting for political and industrial domination. In order
to protect the country in the future and prevent a repetition of this
attempt to conceal a knife meant for her heart, the Alien Property
Custodian was authorized by Congress to sell to American citizens all
enemy owned businesses, the proceeds to be deposited in the United
States Treasury to await decision concerning it by the Peace Congress
which should settle the problems growing out of the war.
Not only did the volunteer organization of the American Protective
League undertake to uncover and stop enemy and disloyal activities,
but a large percentage of the American people individually endeavored
to aid the authorities in the same way. So intense was the general
indignation against Germany and the Germans because of their insidious
methods and the extent to which they had abused the friendly attitude
of America and so high was the spirit of loyalty that young and old,
rich and poor, were everywhere on the watch for signs of disloyal
sentiment. Sometimes this eagerness overstepped common sense and
degenerated into unthinking persecution of people of German birth or
extraction who were good and loyal citizens. It resulted also in the
circulation of many wild rumors of spy activity without basis of
truth. But it also had undoubted good result in the discouraging of the
underground activities of the enemy.
Germany expected confidently that her well organized and richly
provided spy service, her extensive propaganda and her hold upon
business would enable her to undermine and palsy America’s war effort.
But all her careful preparations and the huge sums of money she
expended profited her scarcely at all. The great majority of American
citizens of German blood or birth proved to be loyal to the United
States. The swift hand of justice at once grasped and put under guard
so many of Germany’s agents that the rest were unwilling to run the
risk of continued activity. Over 6,000 enemy aliens were arrested
under warrants and 4,000 were interned in army detention camps for the
period of the war. Systematic disloyal propaganda failed so completely
to produce its desired results, was everywhere so frowned upon and
was so likely to be fraught with danger for those behind it that it
dwindled rapidly. By the end of our first year of war pro-German and
anti-American propagandists had realized the futility of their attempts.
Notwithstanding all the preparations and efforts of the enemy to breed
disloyalty and create disorder and lawlessness and our own lack at
first of legal machinery with which to meet the situation, Germany’s
underground operations were squarely met and wholly defeated and the
country was never more quiet and law-abiding than it was during all the
period of the war.