THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE
On going to war with the great masters of spy craft last year, the
United States had only a handful of secret service men to guard its
internal frontier. Within our borders were a million and a half
men and youths who were enemy aliens. Not all of them hostile,
it is true; but all potentially dangerous because great national
organizations existed--even shooting societies--through which
German influences might reach in a few hours or days. And in every
centre of population there were captains and field marshals of
German intrigue, supplied with unlimited money, to appeal to their
feelings and to lead them should a chance come to strike.
Yet America, during the first year of war, has been singularly
peaceful. No serious disturbance has hampered war preparations
conducted on a gigantic scale. Even the Selective Service Act,
inconsistent with all our volunteer traditions and pride, was
accepted almost without opposition. Instead of a red reign of
conflagration and civil strife, there have been no outbreaks
worthy of the name; and, according to the Underwriters’
Association, not a single fire in our munitions plants of a clearly
established incendiary character.
Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory, in fact, had solid grounds
for declaring to the executive committee of the American Bar
Association recently: “I do not believe that there is to-day any
country which is being more capably policed than is the United
States.” _He added that for every man engaged in detecting and
investigating violations of federal laws in April, 1917, there
are at least one thousand to-day_; while reports on new cases are
coming in at the rate of fifteen hundred a day!
That sounds like a miracle of organization, doesn’t it? Even the
army, with its pride-compelling record of expansion, is a slow
coach beside these legions of “plain-clothes” soldiers who hold our
inner lines. Let’s see how it happened.
When the war broke, the only secret service work done by
the Government was handled by five small organizations. The
Department of Justice had its Bureau of Investigation, charged
with the discovery of offenses against the federal statutes--not
a large force, but quite adequate to its peace-time job. The
Treasury Department maintained a secret service with two definite
functions--to protect the President’s life and person, and to
prevent counterfeiting. The Army and Navy had each a few officers
detailed to its intelligence service--the gathering of military
and naval information and the protection of our own plans and
operations. And finally the State Department possessed a small
intelligence section of its own. But by comparison with the
territory to be covered and the number of active German and
Austrian agents in the country, there were few experienced men
available for counter-espionage. And there in the background were
that million and a half enemy aliens who would bear a lot of
watching.
The declaration of war, then, instantly brought an emergency. Part
of it the Department of Justice met by striking swift and hard
at all who were unquestionably enemy agents. Because of their
propaganda and other activities against the Entente Allies, these
agents had been under observation for some time. Within forty-eight
hours the more dangerous had been rounded up--under the hoary old
act of 1798, which gave the President power to intern enemy aliens
when their being at liberty might constitute a menace to the public
safety.
There remained the urgent need of an immense increase in the
Government’s counter-espionage forces. It would take thousands of
trained and intelligent operatives to keep watch of the German
agents and German sympathizers who swarmed throughout the country.
As a class, such operatives did not exist: to draft the right
kind of raw material from civil life would involve delays, great
personal sacrifices on the part of the men drafted, and an enormous
yearly budget. Thousands of business and professional careers would
be interrupted at critical stages. Most of the men who accepted
the call would be risking after-the-war failure in their chosen
callings. The work simply couldn’t be done that way.
Then it was that the American Protective League found a way to do
it.
The League is a volunteer body of 250,000 patriotic Americans,
organized with the approval and operating under the direction of
the Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation. It cross-cuts
every commercial, industrial, professional, social, and economic
level in American life. Bank presidents and bell hops, judges
and janitors, managers and mechanics--all ranks meet on its
common platform of loyalty and service. It has woven a net of
discreet surveillance across more than a thousand American cities
and towns; and the meshes are so small that few active German
agents slip through. It reaches out into the country as well.
More than 52,000,000 people--about half the population of the
United States--live in communities where the League has active
and effective organizations; where too, propaganda, or sedition,
sabotage or plain slacking are neither popular nor healthy.
The League was born in March, last year, two weeks before we
declared war. The idea originated with Mr. A. M. Briggs of Chicago.
Mr. Briggs is now Chairman of the National Board of Directors of
the American Protective League. He secured authority to establish
it as a volunteer auxiliary of the Department of Justice on March
22, 1917. Within a month he had the League in operation with
several thousand members. With him, Captain Charles Daniel Frey
and Mr. Victor Elting were responsible for its development and
the organization of the work. Mr. Frey is organizer and First
Chief of the Chicago District, the original working unit of the
American Protective League. The plan, the policies, and the methods
developed in the Chicago District, which includes 280 cities and
towns, were approved by the Department of Justice, and have been
generally followed throughout the country as the model and standard
for subsequent organizations. Mr. Elting, as Assistant Chief at
Chicago, has from the inception of the League been active in the
development of its policy. These three, now national directors with
headquarters at Washington, are modest about taking any credit for
the amazing extension of the League and its extraordinary present
usefulness. They insist that the first great response was due to
the general recognition of a national crisis, the impulse to do
something to meet it, and the patriotic and unselfish coöperation
of every local chief and individual operative in the country.
At all events, it was knowledge of how widespread and unscrupulous
was the German spy system, and how seriously it was affecting
the temper and loyalty of aliens and naturalized citizens, that
launched the League. Proposal was made to the Department of Justice
that a volunteer auxiliary of simon-pure Americans be formed to
keep watch for the Government in every neighbourhood and to make
most of the Department’s investigations for it. The service would
be without pay. No inquiries would be undertaken without reference
of the case to the Department first. And no expense accounts would
be presented for money spent. Doubts may have existed regarding
the feasibility of the plan. Such men as were needed would be hard
to interest in the drudgery of police investigation. But Mr.
Briggs was confident that there were thousands of business and
professional men past service age and necessary to their families
and communities who still were fired with patriotism and filled
with wrath at the progress of German propaganda and plotting in
this country. They were successful men of affairs--men of proved
judgment, intelligence, initiative, and energy. The Department
could not buy their full time at any price, but it could command
their spare time, plus as many work-hours, on occasions, as were
necessary to complete any task. There were also men of service age,
eager to fight but held at home by obligations or other causes, who
would not stint either time or energy in the League’s service.
Given authority to go ahead March 22, 1917, the League was
organized on military lines. The plan was that each city and its
tributary country should be broken up into divisions, in charge of
inspectors. Divisions were cut up into districts, with captains in
command. And each captain recruited as many working squads, under
lieutenants, as the size and character of his district demanded.
Reinforcing this territorial organization was another which
treated every important industry, trade, and profession, and even
large business establishments and office buildings as individual
organization units. The territorial organization was known as the
Bureau of Investigation; the classified trade, professional, and
industrial force as the Bureau of Information. As a matter of fact,
they were just the right and left arms of the League. Each had its
specialized work to do, but the big jobs in each case were the same.
From the start, the two main functions of the League stood out
boldly. The first was “to make prompt and reliable report of all
disloyal or enemy activities and of all infractions or evasions of
the war code of the United States.” The second followed naturally:
“to make prompt and thorough investigation of all matters of
similar nature referred to it by the Department of Justice.” Close
coöperation with the local agent of the Department was essential in
both instances.
Because the plan had been carefully worked out, the League made
a flying start in a great Western city. Inspectors, captains,
lieutenants were commissioned and assigned to their units.
“Operatives,” picked with equal caution, were sworn in and given
their credentials. By May first, there were a thousand men engaged
in the absorbing new game.
Thousands of investigations taxed the young ardour and endurance of
the League--suspected spy activities, seditious speeches, lying
reports about the Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., and Knights of Columbus,
pro-German propaganda, suspected treasonable conspiracies, sabotage
cases and, later, organized and individual efforts to evade the
draft. But every member was under pledge to run down to the end any
case assigned to him, whether it took a day or a week, and results
came speedily.
Though lacking in experience, most of the members had unusual
equipment as investigators. Nearly all had imagination and logical,
work-trained minds. Many of them were men of means and could devote
all of their time to urgent cases. Instead of waiting for an O. K.
on a requisition for a motor car, they had machines of their own
to use. Without considering how an item would strike a government
auditor, they could and did spend their own money to get the facts
they sought. Without having to finesse approaches to necessary
sources of information, they could usually draw on a wide circle
of friends for inside facts which a professional detective might
require days to secure.
[Illustration: Officers of the American Protective League, an
organization of 250,000 patriotic American business men who
coöperate effectively with the Department of Justice in its
operations against spies, slackers, and seditionists. Above, Mr. A.
M. Briggs, founder; left, Capt. Daniel Frey, and right, Mr. Victor
Elting, National Directors]
The League’s rule in assigning cases, indeed, is to choose as
investigator the man whose social, professional, or business
connections are such that he can “clean up” with the least
effort and in the shortest space of time. When there are many
places to visit, the case goes to a man owning a motor car. If
it is complex in character, with lines extending into various
industries, clubs, trades, and so on, the work may be divided and
several members assigned to it. The main idea is to get the work
done, and done quickly--the secondary purpose to make it as easy as
may be for the members.
League members knew little about methods of investigation. But
they had that priceless gift, intelligence, and they learned
by doing. There was such a mass of complaints, tips, and wild
guesses concerning enemy activities waiting to be handled, that no
extensive schooling could be attempted. The cleverest government
operatives available and experienced city and private detectives
talked to groups of captains and lieutenants, and these passed
along the information to their men. A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief of
the Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, was quick
to recognize the possibilities of the League. Everywhere his
organization gave invaluable aid and coöperation in training League
members.
Able lawyers made brief but comprehensive digests of the laws
involved and the rules of evidence to be observed. Methods of work
and problems of authority and conduct were explained at length
in a handbook. Supplementing the handbook and the law digest,
bulletins were published at intervals to suggest better methods,
to report fresh evidence of German plans and propaganda, or to sum
up and interpret the new laws which Congress was enacting for the
punishment of espionage and sedition.
Close touch was kept at every step with the Department of Justice.
Forms for reports and records were adopted, conforming to the
system in use by the Department. Carbons of all reports and records
were made for the files of the Bureau of Investigation. Eventually
a complete record of each case found its way to the master file in
Washington. In this way duplication of effort was avoided, complete
coöperation assured, and the exact status of any inquiry could be
learned in a moment by any one needing the information.
Far from running wild in its enthusiasm to corral all enemy agents,
the League tried to give every alien it investigated an American
square deal. Perhaps the finest paragraph in the handbook is this
one urging the right of aliens to considerate treatment until their
unfriendly attitude is revealed:
“Many aliens resident in this country are absolutely loyal to
its institutions and its laws, and many individuals having the
legal status of alien enemies are not only conducting themselves
with due respect to our laws, but are of great value in industry
and business. Great care must be exercised by members to avoid
unnecessary alarm to aliens and to avoid causing apprehension upon
their part as to the fairness and justice of the attitude of the
Government toward them. In this regard members will be called upon
for the exercise of judgment and discretion of a high order. They
should protect citizens and aliens from unjust suspicion, but must
fearlessly ascertain and report treason and disloyalty wherever
found.”
All this has to do with the investigation of specific cases after
they have been brought to the League’s attention by the report of
a member, an outside complaint, or a request from the Department
of Justice for an inquiry into the facts. Quite as important in
discouraging disloyalty or pro-German activities is the service of
League members as eyes and ears for the Government in detecting and
making first reports on offenses or intended offenses against the
war code of the United States.
This means that every League member is always on the lookout
for any word or act that smacks of sedition or espionage. It is
here that the classified organization by industries, trades,
professions, and individual business establishments develops its
full value. When a factory making munitions, clothing, motor
trucks, or any other war necessity has been organized as a League
unit, the members are on the alert for signs of disturbance. They
can quickly report to their supervisor what they have seen or
heard, and, after comparing notes, can take precautions against
the threatened trouble. If they need outside help in checking up
a suspect after working hours, the territorial organization is
ready to coöperate. The suspect need never know that he is under
suspicion until his guilt or innocence is pretty well established.
Such a factory unit is typical of the League organization in the
larger cities. Besides the strictly industrial group, there are
usually eight broad divisions, any one of which may be important
enough to have an assistant bureau chief, and several captains,
lieutenants, and individual units. These divisions take in the
real estate, financial, insurance, and professional groups,
the hotels, transportation companies, public utilities, and
merchandising interests--wholesale, retail, and mail-order. And the
industries alone may be numerous and powerful enough to call for
separate divisions--munitions, packers’ products, food stuffs, war
equipment, metal trades, lumber, motor cars, electrical machinery
and supplies, chemicals and paints, and so on. It all depends on
how numerous and how large are the establishments in each line.
Outside the larger cities territorial organization is the rule.
When the district is identified with some industry of special value
in war, like mining, lumbering, or cattle raising, protection of
that industry may be the chief function of the League.
Not only does the classified method of organization help each
trade and profession to police itself; it greatly facilitates
important inquiries. For example, suppose that the Government
wants to find and learn the local errand of a visiting electrical
engineer with a German name and considerable cash whom it has had
under surveillance elsewhere. On being asked for a report, the
League’s local Chief assigns the case to one of his deputies. The
latter notifies the supervisors of the various hotel units to watch
out for the stranger, report his arrival, and keep watch of his
letters and telephone calls. He also communicates with the head of
the professional division and asks that an electrical engineer be
detailed on the case.
When the suspect has been located and the hotel supervisor has
transmitted any other information he has been able to get, the
engineer member begins work. Going to the hotel he finds or makes
a way to become acquainted with the stranger, offers him the usual
professional courtesies, and gives him a chance to suggest why he
is in town or whom he wants to see. Direct questions are not asked,
of course, since they would put the stranger on his guard. After
he has carried the inquiry as far as he can, the engineer member
quietly and casually goes his way, unless the stranger has accepted
his offers of help or hospitality.
If the suspect has “covered up” more than an honest engineer
should, he is systematically shadowed by other League operatives
during the remainder of his stay. Walking out or staying in his
room, travelling in taxicabs or in street cars, making business
calls or social calls, one or more of his two “shadows” would
probably keep him in sight and make memoranda regarding every
person he met and spoke with and every significant circumstance
that took place. Only when in a private house or in his hotel room
would he escape observation--and even then a fairly close tab would
be kept on what he was doing.
A record would be made of every telephone call, every telegram,
every letter received, with particular reference to the postmark,
dates, and the return cards on the envelopes. His baggage would
be inventoried and described, even to its hotel labels, its
character, and its probable price and origin. When he finally
departed, if the porter bought his tickets for him or whether he
purchased them himself at the station, his route, and his first
destination--all would be matters of history. One of his “shadows”
would even see him safely past the last suburban stop from which he
might double back to the city or to a waiting confederate.
This seems a mighty pother to make about an apparently innocent
traveller. But the League prefers to work overtime and play safe.
The narratives of some of the “tailings” would make marvellous
reading if they only led up to the proper dramatic climax. Many
of them do--but those are not to be talked about yet awhile. And
the others are significant only because they are the records of
uninteresting tasks as faithfully executed as though the sheltering
doorway or hotel lobby chair were a listening post in France.
Remember that these tasks were made both complex and difficult
by the lack of laws defining espionage, disloyalty, and sedition
as punishable crimes. That ancient act of 1798 could be invoked
for the internment of dangerous enemy aliens. But an American
citizen, native or naturalized, could spit treason and plot trouble
unchecked so long as he did not run foul of the civil or the
criminal code. That is all changed now; the amended Espionage and
Sedition Law, signed by the President in June, 1917, is so broad
and has such a fine set of serviceable teeth that no disloyal
citizen or unfriendly alien can escape the penalty if his guilt can
be proved.
For more than a year, however, the League was compelled not only to
prove a citizen’s pro-German activities; it had also to find a way
to punish them, or at least to discourage them. Every inquiry into
such a case, therefore, had to be supplemented by an effort to find
evidence of an offense against the civil or criminal statutes. And
where this failed, a good old-fashioned “talking to” often had the
desired effect.
Hatred of “Prussian militarism” and pretended allegiance to the
United States were the favourite pose of many propagandists whom
the League rounded up and secured billets for in various internment
camps. Most of these had taken out their first naturalization
papers; except in a few middle and western states like Nebraska,
where “first papers” and six months of residence confer the right
to vote, this was no protection when evidence of disloyalty or
pro-German activity was adduced against them.
Typical of this class was the case of an Austrian officer of
reserves who was six months under investigation before he was
arrested. Like so many other interned Teutons, his entry into
the United States had been by way of the Argentine. Traced back,
it was discovered that he had reported to the Austrian Consul in
Buenos Aires as an officer of reserves at the first mobilization
call, July 27, 1914; and again when he sailed for the United
States with a false Swedish passport in 1915. Then, in succession,
he had registered at the San Francisco, St. Louis, and Chicago
consulates--at the last on September 30, 1915.
In less than six months, however, he had applied for naturalization
papers and was arranging to return to Buenos Aires as selling agent
for several American houses. When the State Department denied him
a passport, he devised another means of keeping watch of American
efforts to supplant German houses in the South American markets.
This was an export information bureau, but his information was
not live enough to hold his clients long. Next he projected a
$2,000,000 corporation to take over and operate the German interned
steamships at New York. By turns also he was advertising solicitor
and automobile salesman.
The occupation he followed always allowed him maximum freedom in
moving about and a plausible excuse for approaching almost any one
he wanted to reach. Very early in the inquiry, his defenselessness
appeared; he had entered the country under a false passport and
could be arrested whenever the Department of Justice chose to move.
Because he had arrived in San Francisco eighteen months before our
declaration of war, he was given the benefit of the doubt. Not
until his character as a dangerous enemy alien had been established
was he interned. He will be deported at the end of the war.
Different in detail, but similar in character and outcome, was the
Odyssey of a missionary of German culture, whose earnings were as
nominal as his expenditures were excessive. Arriving in New York in
1912, also by way of the Argentine, he had spent the intervening
time travelling about the country in various rôles which would
bring him in contact with rich Americans of German birth or blood.
At various times he was a dealer in pictures, in stocks and bonds,
and in subscription editions of the German classics.
As a side line, he seems to have been checking up American efforts
to develop sources of potash, Germany’s one great monopoly in
minerals. He even engaged himself as stock salesman for an Eastern
company organized to extract potash from the Pacific kelp fields
and made at least one trip to the coast to study that new industry.
Always his scale of living was far in excess of his earnings from
such sources of income as could be traced. After a long and patient
inquiry--covering nearly eight months from the time the man’s
pro-German utterances were first reported--he was finally interned
for the duration of the war.
Enemy aliens have not been alone in keeping League members up at
night. Far more numerous have been the investigations bearing
upon the character and loyalty of American citizens, particularly
candidates for commissions in the Army and Navy and applicants for
civilian service in positions of trust. Still a third class of
inquiries which have lacked the thrill of espionage cases have been
the thousands of investigations made of claims for exemption or
deferred classification under the selective service law.
Anything like a divided allegiance, of course, would destroy the
usefulness of an army or naval officer--if, indeed, it did not make
him a positive menace to his country. Every character and loyalty
inquiry, therefore, has this background of danger, especially when
the subject is of German or of Austrian ancestry. And sometimes
the League operative must have a keen scent for significant minor
details to detect the danger signal.
For instance, one of the candidates for a recent special officers’
training camp was a young Cincinnati man with a German name. He
was a citizen, of draft age, of such intelligence, experience,
and physique that his acceptance was a foregone conclusion if
his loyalty were assured. Investigation showed him to have been
pro-German in his sympathies before our declaration of war,
and practically silent on war subjects since. His attitude was
correct; and his application for training was a positive count
in his favour. But the League investigator, digging around for
information, learned that his man had been a contributor to a fund
raised by a Gaelic newspaper for the defence of Sir Roger Casement,
when that famous Irish rebel was on trial in London.
If the man had been of Irish blood, such a contribution would
have had little significance; natural sympathy for a compatriot
in trouble might have prompted it. Such an act by a German or an
American, however, suggested more than a passing interest in the
violent pro-German, anti-English propaganda which this particular
weekly exploited. Verifying the story by reference to the files of
the newspaper, the investigator called attention to the fact in
his report, and gave it as his opinion that the candidate wanted a
commission to escape the draft and that he lacked the whole-hearted
loyalty and enthusiasm an Army officer must have to be successful.
And, as the final decision coincided with the investigator’s, the
application was refused.
Another incident--double-barrelled in its effect--has also its
humorous side. One of the Chicago League officials picked up two
deserters on Michigan Avenue early one evening last December.
Neither had an overcoat, one had evidently “hocked” his blouse
to provide food or drink. The League man knew he must turn them
over to the police, but the boys were so cold and wretched that he
determined to give them a good dinner before surrendering them.
At his club, his “guests” created a certain amount of stir--and
seemed to enjoy it. They “didn’t miss a station from soup to
cigarettes,” as one of them expressed it. They were finishing up
when a young man in a captain’s uniform came over and interjected
himself into the feast.
“Excuse me,” he began as the host arose, “may I ask what your
interest in these men is?”
His tone was a shade too crisp, even for so young a captain.
“May I ask yours?” the League man countered.
“I’m in command of the provost guard in Chicago,” the other
declared. “It’s my business to look after deserters.”
It was a fatal bit of brag. The League man knew the provost
marshal--knew this fellow was an imposter. But one job at a time.
“I know these chaps and I’m looking after them,” he answered.
“Come along, boys.” And they departed in the olive splendour of a
taxicab. Then it pulled up a little later before a red light, and a
policeman opened the door. The lads were crestfallen but game.
“It was bully while it lasted,” they declared. “Anyway, they’d have
got us sooner or later.”
Before noon next day the youthful pseudo-captain was wiping his
tears away and explaining why he had been impersonating an officer.
There was a group of musical comedy girls in the foreground and
a trail of forged checks and unpaid club and hotel bills in the
background. He is learning in Leavenworth prison, now, that the
lion’s skin is dangerous apparel and that discretion is the better
part of a masquerade.
The League files are crammed with reports which have blacker
themes--or the scarlet motive which stands for constructive
treason. There are folders that deal with reported graft in the
purchase of materials for Army camps and subsequent fires which
covered up the scanting of buildings. There are others on cases of
undue influence brought to bear on members of exemption boards; and
sickening instances of “quacks” who have ruined strong but cowardly
young bodies for blood money. There are tales of extortion by
shyster lawyers for filling out questionnaires--and other tales of
money paid by enemy aliens to disreputable “fixers” for pretended
protection against the draft.
The mere classified index of the master file at Washington
intrigues the imagination. Just a glance at the main “guides” will
indicate the range:
Enemy aliens
Unfriendly neutrals
“First-paper” aliens
Disloyal citizens
Pro-German “radicals”
Native-born
Naturalized
Disloyal Government employees
Possible spies or German agents
Pro-German applicants for Government positions
Citizens or aliens living in luxury without visible sources of income
Suspicious foreigners
Enemy propaganda
(Twenty sub-heads here)
Enemy alien funds
Alien extortion cases
I. W. W. agitators
Check of jury panels to keep out pro-Germans
Incendiary fires in war-material plants
Wireless stations
Bomb and dynamite cases
Passport applicants
Seditious utterances
Seditious publications
Seditious meetings
Anti-military activities
Organizations to resist draft
Attempted draft evasions
False exemption claims
Physical disability
Dependent relatives
Desertion of wife to enlist in Army
Fraudulent claims of marriage
Army deserters
Impersonation of officers
Sale of liquor to soldiers and sailors
Sale of narcotics to men in service
Hotel surveillance of doubtful transients
Liberty Bond and Red Cross slackers
Theft of Red Cross supplies
Hoarding of foods
Destruction of foods
Character and loyalty of applicants for commissions
In making these investigations the League has coöperated, not only
with the Department of Justice, but also with Army Intelligence,
Navy Intelligence, the Alien Property Custodian, the Food
Administration, the Shipping Board, the Red Cross, the Y. M. C.
A., and with various other offices at Washington.
The number and variety of cases handled have not constituted the
major service of the League, however. Rather, it has been the
character and intelligence of the membership--the ability to
enter and comb any social, professional, or business circle for
information without betraying that an inquiry was afoot. From this
angle alone the original idea was pretty close to an inspiration,
since it improvised in the hour of need such an organization as not
even a generation of effort and many million dollars could have
built up.
Just because it was improvised and its personnel kept secret,
the League could meet the most dangerous German agents on their
own ground and paralyze their efforts by keeping them guessing.
Propaganda dies on the lips of the man who can’t be certain that
his listener is not making mental notes for an official report of
the conversation. And the most subtle scheme of spying or sabotage
is bound to drag when the plot master is harassed by doubts of
the native-born or naturalized accomplices he must enlist for its
execution.
One instance to show how much a local organization must depend
upon its specialists. Last summer it became necessary to know
beyond question whether or not a prominent young German-American
in a seaboard city was supplying the funds for the local agitation
against the draft. Suspicion attached to him because he spent
many evenings aboard his fast-racing schooner in the yacht club
harbour, and could not be induced, in any polite and casual way, to
invite any of the League’s yachting members aboard. His crew, two
Scandinavians, were as voluble as oysters.
The schooner was being tuned up for the annual club cruise late in
July. Two extra sailors would be needed for the race. The League
provided one of them. An upstanding young American, too young for
the first officers’ training camp but in line for the second, was
taken into the League, carefully coached, and turned loose in the
harbour with a loaned cat-boat to impress the German-American
skipper with his sailing skill. The boy finessed his approach
successfully and was asked to train with the crew. But he found
nothing material to report until the schooner had actually won the
big race.
That night after the victory had been celebrated in a flood of
champagne, which he alone avoided, he quietly went through all the
private papers in the owner’s cabin, made notes, or copied all that
referred in any way to pro-German activities and returned by rail
to the home port next morning. It turned out that the owner had
been guilty of no real disloyalty, though he had skirted the edge
more than once; but his papers pointed straight to the real source
of the propaganda and the latter was speedily apprehended.
Another interesting case was that of a noted pro-German “pacifist”
who for months was kept under surveillance without evidence being
secured which would bring a conviction under the existing law. He
had declared again and again that nine out of ten Americans were
opposed to the war; that thousands of armed men in Arizona, New
Mexico, and western Texas were only waiting for the signal to rise
against the Government; that another thousand in New York City
were watching for the same signal and a leader. He even intimated
that he had been asked to be that leader. And though the League
could account for every hour of his time, knew every citizen and
Congressman he had conferred with and most of the folk he had
written to, it was December before an indictment could be secured
against him.
That this man is still at liberty, on bail, until the courts reach
the hearing of his case is only a detail. The compensating facts
are that he served the League for some time as a stalking horse
for other citizens and aliens of doubtful loyalty--that ultimately
the close watch on him cut down his activities--and that under the
amended espionage law any one of a hundred things he did or said
would land him quickly in a Federal prison.
In the application of the Selective Service Act the League has
taken off the shoulders of the Government one of its heaviest
and most important tasks. The draft was and is a favoured field
of German agents, who have played upon ignorance and prejudice,
religious and union labour fears, racial antipathies, and the baser
emotions of cupidity and cowardice. They have utilized every device
to persuade men to avoid their military obligations to the country.
To the League is assigned the task of checking up all claims for
exemptions and all failures to appear before exemption boards. This
work, especially in the cities, has entailed enormous labour.
Space forbids a complete review of the League, but at least a
paragraph may be inserted about its organization, which is a
model of simplicity and flexibility. The League creates and is
responsible for its own organization in all of its branches.
Executive control of the organization is centred in a Board of
National Directors operating from National Headquarters at
Washington, D. C., in coöperation with the Attorney-General and
the officials of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of
Justice, and through the latter with other departments and agencies
of the Government.
In each local office the chief is supreme. He investigates his
own men, invites them to join, and directs their work. As already
stated, there is a double organization of the local field--a
classified organization of trades, professions, industries, hotels,
large individual establishments, and office buildings; and a Bureau
of Investigation whose organization is territorial. Uniform blanks
for reports and records are made up after models supplied by
national headquarters, and uniform methods of making investigations
are adopted. This simple plan allows each local organization to
select the types of men that best suit its needs and to adapt
itself entirely to local conditions, while maintaining at the same
time complete touch and coöperation with other communities, with
the national organization, and with the Government.
The success of the League is attested by Attorney-General Thomas W.
Gregory himself. In his annual report to the Congress of the United
States he said of the League: “It has proved to be invaluable and
constitutes a most important auxiliary and reserve force for the
Bureau of Investigation.... This organization has been of the
greatest possible aid in thousands of cases.... Its work has been
performed in a thoroughly commendable manner with a minimum of
friction and complaint and with motives of the highest patriotism.
It is a self-supporting organization, and it would be difficult to
exaggerate the value of its service to the United States Department
of Justice.”