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The Authorized History of The American Protective League
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BY
Emerson Hough
Author of
The Mississippi Bubble," ** 54-40 or Fight,
" The Magnificent Adventure," etc.
A Revelation of Patriotism
The Weh is published by authority of the National Directors of the American Protective League, a vast, silent, volunteer army organized with the approval and operated under the direction of the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation.
The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago
Copyright, 1919
By
The Reilly & Lee Co.
Made in V. S. A.
The Web
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SPECIAL MEMBER'S EDITION
THE WEB
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Rank Badge No
In appreciation of his patriotic service to his country during the Great World War
AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE NATIONAL DIRECTORS
This Book is No.
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To THE UNKNOWN AMERICANS
ummmed, unhonored
unrewarded
who made this history possible
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THE CALL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
" It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many mouths of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts. . . . To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that w^e have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. ' '
THE ANSWER OF THE CONGRESS OF THE L^^TED STATES
''Whereas, The Imperial German Government has com- mitted repeated acts of war against the Government and the People of the L^nited States of America ; therefore be it
*^ Resolved, hy the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared ; and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Governinent; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States."
STATEMENT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
February 1, 1919
On the occasion of the dissolution to-day of the American Protective League and the final termination of all of its activ- ities, I take the opportunity to express to its National Directors and all other officers and members my personal thanks for their assistance to me and to my Department dur- ing the period of the war. I am frank to say that the Department of Justice could not have accomplished its task and attained the measure of success which it did attain with- out the assistance of the members of the League.
Your reward can only be the expressed thanks of your Government. As the head of the Department of Justice, under which the American Protective League operated, I render you such thanks with sincere pleasure. Upon the occasion of a request from a member of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives for an expres- sion of opinion by me as to the adoption of a joint resolution by the Congress of the United States, extending the thanks of Congress to the members of the League, I have urged in strong terms the adoption of such a resolution, as one justly earned by the organization during an extended period of devoted and effective service.
The work of your organization will long be an inspiration to all citizens to render their full measure of service to their country according to her need, without reward, and with abundant zeal.
Respectfully,
T. W. Gregory
Attorney General
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
" Signed! "
The one word, spoken by a young officer of the U. S. Army, a strip of paper in his hand, confirmed to his associates the greatest news the world has ever known. It was the corrected foreword of peace. The armistice had validly been signed by Germany.
In these first days of peace, the streets were full of shout- ing, laughing, weeping men and women gone primitive. The sane and sober population of America, engaged in sending a third of a million men a month to join the two millions on the front in France, turned into a mob. Their frenzy was that of joy. The war was over.
On the day following the confirmation of the armistice, some who had sat together in a certain room in Washington were scattered. Six thousand resignations of Army officers were handed in within twenty-four hours. The room in which the news of the war's end was thus received was one in the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff in Washington. There lie the secrets of the Army. All in that room were officers of the Army, or soon to be such. All were volunteers. I may with propriety say that for a time I had sat with those who had ear to the secret voices of the world, in the tensest atmosphere I ever knew.
It was whispers that " M. I. D." heard — the whispers of perfidious men, communicating one with the other, plotting against the peace of America, the dignity of our Govern- ment, the sacredness of our flag, the safety of American lives and property. Here sat the authorized agents of the Army, employed to hear such whispers, enlisted to catch the most skilled and unscrupulous spies the world has ever known, the agents of a treacherous and dishonorable enemy.
All those connected with the Military Intelligence Divi- sion daily felt also the touch of this great, silent, smooth-
11
12 AUTHOR'S PREFACE
running machinery of the Department of Justice, whose gov- ernmental mission it was to do detective work on the largest scale this country ever knew. We heard the voice of the War College through the official liaison therewith ; also those of the General Staff, the War Department, the Post Office Department, the cable censors, the censors of the Expedi- tionary Forces. It all worked as an interlocking, vast, silent machine — a solemnly, almost mournfully silent machine, of which America knows almost nothing, the rest of the world nothing at all.
Day by day, in ghostly silhouette, passed sinister figures, themselves silent; those who plotted against America. All the deeds that can come from base and sordid motives, from low, degenerate and' perverted minds; all the misguided phe- nomena of human avarice and hate and eagerness to destroy and kill — such were the pictures on the walls of *' M. I. D.'*
I have spoken of certain essential liaisons against espion- age and propaganda. More often seen than any other ini- tials in the desk algebra of '* M. I. D." were three initials — " A. P. L." This or that information came from A. P. L. This was referred to A. P. L. for more light. Every ques- tionnaire of a man applying for a commission in the Army was referred back to A. P. L., and A. P. L. took up the question of his unswerving and invincible loyalty. A. P. L. found slackers and deserters in thousands. A, P. L. found this or that spy, large or little. A. P. L., obviously, had a busy mind and a long arm.
Yet if you should look in the Governmental Blue Book for this powerful branch of our Government, you could not find the initials there at all. Very many Americans never heard the name of this wholly unofficial organization which passed on so many governmental questions, was of so much aid in so many ways to the Government. A. P. L, is not and never was a part of any state or national arm, service, de- partment, or bureau. But openly and proudly it has always been definitely authorized to carry on all its letter-heads, '' Organized with the Approval and Operating under the Direction of the United States Department of Justice, Bu- reau of Investigation." These are its credentials.
A. P. L., the mj^sterious power behind our Government, was no baseless fabric of a vision, as hundreds of Germans
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 13
and pro-Germans can testify through their prison bars; but it passes now and soon will '' leave not a wrack behind." As these pages advance, the word issues for its official de- mobilization. It was honorably encamped on a secret and silent battlefield, but now, once more to use a poet's word, it has " folded its tents like the Arab, and silently stolen away." It was, and is not. You never have known what it was. You never will see its like again.
*' A. P. L." means the American Protective League. It means a silent, unknown army of more than a quarter mil- lion of the most loyal and intelligent citizens of America, who indeed did spring to arms over night. It fought battles, saved lives, saved cities, saved treasures, defended the flag, apprehended countless traitors, did its own tremendous share in the winning of the war. It saved America. It did protect. It was a league.
It did all this without a cent of pay. It had no actual identification with the Government. Yet it has won scores of times the written and spoken thanks of our most respon- sible Government officials. Its aid in the winning of the war can not be estimated and never will be known. Not even its full romance ever can be written. May these hurrying pages save all these things at least in part, though done in the full consciousness that their tribute can be but a frag- ment of the total due.
The American Protective League was the largest company of detectives the world ever saw. The members served without earlier specialized training, without pay, without glory. That band of citizens, called together overnight, rose, grew and gathered strength until able to meet, and abso- lutely to defeat, the vast and highly trained army of the German espionage system, which in every country of the globe flooded the laud with trained spies who had made a life business of spying. It met that German Army as ours met it at Chateau-Thierry, and in the Argonne, and on the Yesle and on the Aisne. Like to our Army under arms — that Army where any of us would have preferred to serve had it been possible for us to serve under arms — it never gave back an inch of ground. Growing stronger and better equipped each day, it worked always onward and forward until the last fight was won.
14 AUTHOR'S PREFACE
A. P. L. has folded its unseen and unknown tents. It will bivouac elsewhere until another day of need may come. Then, be sure, it will be ready. On the day that the American Pro- tective League disbanded, it had no money in the treasury. It had spent millions of dollars, and had brought to judg- ment three million cases of disloyalty. There, obviously, un- written and unknown, scattered in every city and hamlet of America, was a tremendous story, one of the greatest of all war stories, the story of the line behind the guns.
When the men of long or of transient connection with M. I. D. had shaken hands and said good-bye, the National Directors of the American Protective League asked me to stop on and write the history of the American Protective League. And so, in large part, as a matter of loyalty and duty, with millions of pages of records at hand, with a quar- ter of a million friends I have never seen, who never have seen one another, who never otherwise would know the iden- tity of one another, I began to do something which most obviously and certainly ought to be done. This book is writ- ten alike that these quarter million unpaid soldiers may know of one another, and that a hundred million Americans may also know of them accurately, and thank them for what they did.
Before I had done the last page of the strange history, I knew that I had felt an actual reflex of the actual America. I knew that I had been in touch with one of the most astonish- ing phenomena of modern days, in touch also with the most tremendous, the most thrilling and the most absorbing story of which I ever knew.
EMERSON HOUGH
Washington District of Columbia United States of America February 14, 1919.
CONTENTS Book I : The League and Its Work
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Awakening 19
II The Web 29
III Early Days of the League 38
TV The League in Washington 44
V The Law and Its New Teeth 55
VI German Propaganda 62
YII The German Spy Cases 82
VIII The Spy Himself 107
IX Handling Bad Aliens 120
X The Great I. W. W. Trial 133
XI The Slacker Raids 141
XII Skulker Chasing 148
XIII Arts of the Operatives 163
Book II: The Tales of the Cities
I The Story of Chicago 179
II The Story of New York 199
III The Story of Philadelphia 210
IV The Story of Newark 226
V The Story of Pittsburgh 239
VI The Story of Boston 246
VII The Story of Clevet.and 256
VIII The Story of Cincinnati 267
IX The Story of Dayton 276
X The Story of Detroit 285
XI The Story of St. Louis 293
XII The Story of Kansas City 303
XIII The Story of Minneapolis 310
XIV The Story of New Orleans 324
XV The Story of California , 332
Contents Book III: The Four Winds
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Story of the East 363
II The Story of the North 381
III The Story of the South 418
IV The Story of the West 438
Book IV: America
I The Reckoning 453
II The Peace Table 473
Appendices 483
BOOK I
THE LEAGUE AND ITS WORK
THE WEB
CHAPTER I
THE AWAKENING
The "Neutral Cases" — First Realization of the German Spy System in America — Overcrowding of the Depart- ment of Justice — The Birth of a New Idea — Formation of the American Protective League, Civilian Auxiliary — Astonishing Growth of the Greatest Semi-Vigilante Move- ment of the World.
We Americans have always been disposed to peace. We have not planned for w^ar. Our Army has never been a menace to ourselves or to any other nation; our Navy% though strong and modern, never has been larger than a country of our extent in territory andj industry admittedly ought to have. No one has feared us, and there has been none of w^hom we have had any fear. We have designedly stood aloof from entangling alliances. The tw^o great oceans traditionally have been our friends, for they have set us apart from the w^orld's quarrels. An America, far off, new, rich, abounding, a land where a man might be free to grow to his natural stature, where he might be safe at his own fireside, where he might select his own rulers and rest always secure under his ow^n form of government — that w^as the theory of this country and of this form of government. That w^as the reason w^hy this country, natur- ally endowed above any other region of the world, has gro^vn so marvelously fast.
There was reason for America's swift stature. She was a land not of war, but of peace. Rich, she threw open her doors. Frank, free, honest, generous, she made welcome all who came. She suspected none, trusted all, and to
19
20 THE WEB
prove this, offered partnership in her wealth to any man of the world, under a system of naturalization laws whose like, in broadness and gcnerosit}^ does not exist. Peace — and the chance to grow and to be happy. Peace — and a partnership in all she had. Peace — and a seat free at the richest table of the Avorld. That was what America offered ; and in spite of the pinch and the unrest of grow- ing numbers, in spite of problems importedi and not native to our long-untroubled land, that was the theory of Ameri- can life up to a date four years earlier than this.
In that four years America has changed more than in any forty of her earlier life. But yesterday, young, rich, laughing, free of care, Homerically mirthful and joyous, America to-day is mature, unsmiling, grave, dignified — and wise. What once she never suspected, now she knows. She has been betrayed.
But America, traditionally resourceful, now suddenly agonized in the discovery of treachery at her own table, has out of the very anguish of her indignant horror, out of the very need of the hour, suddenly and adequately risen to her emergency. She always has done so. When the arms of the appointed agents of the law ever have wearied, she has upheld them. She has done so now, at the very moment of our country's greatest need.
The story of hoAv that was done ; how the very force of the situation demanded and received an instant and suffi- cient answer ; how the civilians rallied to their own flag ; how they came out of private life unasked, unsummoned, as though at spoken command of some central power — that is a great and splendid story of which few ever have known anything at all.
It is a great and splendid story because it verifies America and her intent before all the high courts of things. These men did obey the summons of a vast central power. But it was no more than the soul of America that spoke. It was no more than her theory of the democracy of mankind which issued that unwritten order to assemble the minute men, each armed and garbed in his own way and each resolved to do what he could in a new and tre- mendous day of Lexington.
It was not autocracy which gave the assembly call to
THE AWAKENING 21
these silent legions. They mobilized themselves, so rapidly as to offer one of the most curious psychological problems of history. Why did these men leave their homes almost all at once, each unknown at first to the other, in large part each unknown to the other even now? How did it come about that an army of a quarter of a million men enlisted themselves and then offered their services to a government which needed them but never had asked for them? How did it come that — contrary to all European traditions — this tremendous striking-power began at the bottom in our democratic war-born instinct, and worked upward into the Government itself, as a new institution, wholly unrecognized in the constitution of state or nation? Usualh' the Government issues the order for mobilization. But here the greatest band of minute men ever known in the world mobilized as though unconsciously, as though to some spiritual trumpet call. Having done so, it oft>red itself to the Nation's heads, saying, "Here we are. Take us and use us. We ask no pay. We enlist till tlie end of tlie tear."
It was the spirit voice of anguished America which mo- bilized the American Protective League. There never was a time when America could lose this war. The answer was always written in the stars. Somewhere, high up in the heavens, blind Justice let fall her sword in a gesture of command; and that was all. The issue of the war was determined from that moment. It was certain that Ger- many, brutal, bloody, autocratic, destructive, would be de- feated beyond the sea. Yes, and on this side of the sea.
On this side, much was to be done, more than Ave had dreamed. Troubled but unparticipating, we stood aloof and watched the soil of all Europe redden with the blood of men — and of women and children. Even we still stood aloof, hands clenched, gasping in an enraged incredulity, watching the sea also — the free and open highway of the world, redden with the blood of men — and of women and children. But still we took no part, though indeed some of our young men could no longer stay at home and so enlisted under some Allied flag.
We held in mind our ancient remoteness from all this. We heard still the counsel against entangling alliances.
22 THE WEB
And, quite aside from the idea of material profit, we tried to be fair and impartial in a fight that was not yet ours, though every American heart bled with France and Bel- gium, ached in pain with that of Britain, locked in death grapple in her greatest war — that which must name her still free or forever enslaved. And from Washington came admonition to be calm. President Wilson's appeal went out again and again to the people, and whether or not it ever once seemed to all of us a possible thing for the United States to keep out of this war, at least we sought to do so and were advised and commanded to do so by the chief of our o\ati forces.
Whether or not we all wished to be neutral so many years, we officially and nationally were neutral. There- fore we retained our commercial rights under neutrality. Doing no more than Germany always previously had done, we made and sold arms and munitions in the open markets of the world.
But Germany could not come and get her arms and muni- tions had she wished to do so. Great Britain had some- thing to say about that. Wherefore Germany hated us, secretly and openly — hated us for doing what she once had done but could no longer do.
The enforcement of blockade made Germany hate us. Germany's psychology has always been double-faced — one face for herself and one for the rest of the world. The Austrian double-headed eagle belongs of right also on the German coat of arms. ^'What I do not wish to have done to me is Wrong; what I wish to do to others is Right!" That is the sum and substance of the German public creed and the German private character — and now we fairly may say we know them both. The German is not a sports- man— he does not know the meaning of that word. He has not in his language any word meaning "fair play." Nothing is fair play to a German which does not work to his advantage. The American neutrality in combination with the British blockade did not work to his advantage. Hence — so he thought — it was all wrong.
The Germans began to hate America more and more. We did not know, at that time, that Germany had been planning many years for ''diesen aufunsangehangten
THE AWAKENING 23
Krieg" — ''this war forced on us!" We did not have any idea that she had counted upon two million German- Ameri- cans to help her win this war; that she knew every nook and cranny of the United States and had them mapped; that for years she had maintained a tremendous organiza- tion of spies who had learned every vulnerable point of the American defenses, who were better acquainted with our Army than Ave ourselves were, and who had extended their covert activities to a degree which left them arro- gantly confident of their success at war, and contemptuous of the best that America ever could do against her. Ger- many never doubted that she w^ould win this war. It was charted and plotted out many years in advance, move by move, step by step, clear through to the bloody and brutal end which should leave Germany commander of the world.
Now, in the German general plan of conquest, America had had her place assigned to her. So long as she would remain passive and complaisant — so long as she would furnish munitions to Germany and not to England or France or Russia, all well, all very good. But when, by any shift of the play, America might furnish supplies to Germany's enemies and not to Germany — no matter through whose fault — then so much the worse for America ! It never was intended that America should be anything but expansion ground for Germany, whether or not she remained complaisant. But if she did not — if she began in her own idea of neutrality to transgress Germany's two- headed idea of ''neutrality" — that meant immediate and positive action against America, now, to-day, and not after a while and at Germany's greater leisure.
"I shall have no foolishness from America!" said Wil- liam Hohenzollern to the accredited representative of this country in his court — William Hohenzollern, that same pitiable figure who at the final test of defeat had not the courage of Saul to fall on his sword, not the courage of a real King to die at the head of his army, but who fled from his army like a coward when he saw all was lost — even honor. His threat of a million Germans in America who would rise against us was not ill-based. They were here. They are here now, to-day. The reply to that threat, made by Gerard, is historic. "Majesty, let them rise. We
24 THE WEB
have a million lamp-posts waiting for them." And this herein tells the story of how the million traitors at America's too generous table were shown the lamp-posts looming.
The German anger at America grew to the fury point, and she began covertly to stir herself on this side the sea. The rustling of the leaves began to be audible, the hiss- ing grew unmistakable. But America, resting on her old traditions, paid no attention. We heard with sympathy for a time the classic two-faced German- American's wail, ^ ' Germany is my mother, America my wife ! How can T fight my mother?" The truth is that all too many German- Americans never cared for America at all in any tender or reverent way. Resting under their Kaiser's Delbrueck injunction never to forget the fatherland, they never were anything but German. They used America ; they never loved her. They clung to their old language, their old customs, and cared nothing for ours. They prospered, because they Avould live as Ave would not live. It would be wrong to call them all bad, and folly to call them all good. As a class they Avere clannish beyond all other races coming here. Many Avho at first were openly pro- German became more discreet ; but of countless numbers of these, it is well ImoAvn that at their own firesides and in supposed secrecy they privately were German, although in public they were American. Of Liberty bond buyers, many of the loudest boasters Avere of this ** loyal German- American citizenship." They really had not earned even the hyphen.
Open and covert action Avas taken by Germany on both sides of the Atlantic to bring America into line. Not fear- ing America, nor knoAving the real America at all, Ger- many did much as she liked. Outrages on the high seas began. All international laAv Avas cast aside by Germany as fully as in her invasion of Belgium. She counted so surely on success and Avorld-conquest that she Avas abso- lutely arrogant and indifferent alike to laAv and to human- ity. The militaristic Germany began to show — brutal, crafty, bestial, lacking in all honor, ignorant of the Avord ''fair play," callous to every appeal of humanity, wholly and unscrupulously selfish. We began now to see the
THE AWAKENING 25
significance of that ''efficiency" of which our industrial captains sometimes had prated over-much. Yes, Germany- was efficient !
The strain between the two countries increased as the blockade tightened, and as the counter-plot of the German submarines developed. Then came the Lusitania. . . . I can not write of that. I have hated Germany since then, and thousands of loyal Americans join in hatred for her. All of good America has been at war with her at heart from that very day, because in America we never have made war on women and children. We are bound by every instinct to hate any nation that does, Turk, German or ignorant savage.
The Lusitania was Germany's deliberate action. She arrogantly commanded us in a few newspaper advertise- ments not to sail on the Lusitania — as though she owned us and the sea. After the deed, she struck medals in com- memoration of it. German church bells rang to glorify it. A German holiday was created to celebrate it. German preachers there and in America preached sermons lauding it. It was a national act, nationally planned, nationally ratified. From that day we were at war. Let those who like, of whatever station, say ''We are not at war with the German people." That is not true. The German people, the German rank and file, not their leaders alone, were back of all these deeds and ratified them absolutely on both sides of the Atlantic.
From that day, too, the issue might really have been known. I went into the elevator of a building in my city, a copy of a newspaper in my hand with the black headline of the Lusitania across the page. The German operator of the elevator saw it as I turned it toward him silently. "Veil, they vere varned!" he said, and grinned.
That incident shows Germany in America, then and now, covert, sinister, sneering, confident, exultant. You could not find an answer you would dare speak to such a man. There is no deed that you could do. I pulled together, and only said, "It will cost Germany the war." And so it did.
But we did not go to war; we tried to keep out of the w^ar. The daily page of red horrors fresh from Europe taught us what war meant at this day of the world.
26 THE WEB
Women naturally did not like the thought of casting their sons into that brutal hell. And then arose the female-men, the pacifists, forgetting their sex, forgetting their country, forgetting the large and lasting game of humanity's good, which cannot count present cost, but must plan for the long game of the centuries.
With the pacifists suddenly and silently rose the hidden army of German espionage and German sympath}^ in our own country, quick to see that here was their chance ! Millions of German gold now came pouring across to finance this break in America's forces. Her high ministers to our Government began their treachery, forgetful of all ambassadorial honor, perjuring themselves and their coun- try. The war was on, on both sides the Atlantic now.
And still America did not knoAv, and still America did not go to war. We dreaded it, held back from it, month after month — some, as it seems to many, wrongly and unhappily even did what they could to capitalize the fact that we were not at war. But the hidden serpent raised its head and began to strike — to strike so openly, in so long a series of overt acts, that now our civil courts and the great national machinery of justice in Washington became literally helpless in their endeavors at resistance.
We were not at war, but war was waged against us in so many ways — against our lives and property — that all sense of security was gone. We offered as our defense not, as yet, our Fleet or our Army, but our Department of Justice. Day and night that department at Washing- ton, and its branches in all the great cities, in New York, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, San Francisco, labored to clear the constantly increasing dockets, to keep down the constantly increasing heaps of suspect cases. It was evident that America was hearing from the Kaiser's million Germans in America. But where were the lamp posts ?
The Department of Justice found itself floo-ded and sub- merged with work in the Bureau of Investigation, collect- ing evidence against German spies and German law- breakers. It was plain what efforts now were making to undermine America. But the truth was, the grist was too much for the mill. We had never organized a system to
THE AWAKENING 27
handle covert and hidden war as Germany had done. We had fought in the open when, rarely, we had fought at all. The great mill of Justice clogged up and broke down, not from any inefficiency or inadequacy in average times, but because it never could have been predicted that ** Neutral- ity Cases" such as these ever would be known in our history. In this war, giant figures only have ruled. The world was not prepared for them.
The outrages went on. Germany, confident of the suc- cess of ruthless submarine warfare, told us when we could sail, how we must mark our ships — said, sneeringly, "Veil, you vas varned!"
It had very early become plain to all Americans that we could not always submit to this. More and more now we were browbeaten and insulted. More and more also our hearts were wrung at the sight of splendid Prance, fighting gamely and proudly and silently for her life; at the lists of the gallant British dead; the whole story of the stag- gering lines of Liberty. It was plain that the great prize of free institutions, of human liberty itself, was about to be lost to the world forever. It became plain that the glorious traditions of America must perish, that her answer to humanity must be forever stilled, that she, too, must be included in the ruin of all the good things of iUe world. It began also to be said more and more openly that America would come next — that we must fight ; if not now, then at some later day, and perhaps without these Allies.
So our war spirit began in the total to outweigh and overtop our peace spirit and our pacifist spirit and our hesitant spirit. We knew we would be at war. Many of us deplored and do still deplore the fact that we waited so long in times so perilous. We lost two precious years; billions in treasure, and what is immeasurably worse, mil- lions in lives. So much for hesitancy.
But now, as bearing upon the purpose of this account of the American Protective League, it is to be kept in mind that for months and years the Department of Justice had been at war with the hidden German army here. And, as the Germans were pushing back the Allies over there, they were pushing us back here, because we were not ready for so unforeseen a situation.
28 THE WEB
What saves a country in its need ? Its loyal men. What reinforces an army called on for sudden enlargement ? Its volunteers. What savedi San Francisco in its days of riot and anarchy in 1850? Its Volunteers for law and order. What brought peace to Alder Gulch in 1863 when criminals ruled ? Its Volunteers for law and order. America always has had Volunteers to fight for law and order against criminals. The law itself says you may arrest without warrant a man caught committing a felony. The line be- tween formal written law and natural law is but thin at best.
There was, therefore, in the spring of 1917 in America, the greatest menace to our country we ever had known. Organized criminals were in a thousand ways attacking our institutions, jeopardizing the safety, the very continu- ity of our country. No loyal American was safe. We did not know who were the disloyal Americans. We faced an army of masked men. They outnumbered us. We had no machinery of defense adequate to fight them, because w^e foolishly had thought that all these whom Ave had wel- comed and fed were honest in their protestations — and tlieir oaths — when they came to us.
So now, Ave say, an imperious cry of NEED came, AATung from astounded and anguished America. It Avas as though this actual cry came from the heavens, *'I need, you, my children ! Help me, my children ! ' '
That cry AA^as heard. Hoav, it is of small importance to any member of the American Protective League, Avhose wireless antennas, for the time attuned, caught doAvn that silent wireless from the skies. No one man sent that mes- sage. Almost, we might say, no one man ansAvered it, so many flocked in after the first Avord of ansAver. No one man of the tAvo hundred and fifty thousand Avho first and last ansAvered in one Avay or another Avould say or Avould want to say that he alone made so large an ansAver to so large a call. None the less, Ave deal here Avith actual his- tory. So that noAv we may begin with details, begin to show hoAv those first strands were Avoven which in a few weeks or months had grown into one of America's strong- est cables of anchorage against the terror which was abroad upon the sea.
CHAPTER II
THE AVEB
Methods of Work — Getting the Evidence — The Organ ization in Detail — The Multifold Activities of the League.
It is to Mr. A. M. Briggs of Chicago that credit should go for the initial idea of the American Protective League. The first flash came many months before the declaration of war, although, for reasons outlined, it long was obvious that we must eventually go to war.
The Department of Justice in Chicago was in a terribly congested condition, and long had been, for the neutrality cases were piling up.
**I could get ten times as much done if I had men and money to work with," said Hint on G. Clabaugh, Superin- tendent of the Bureau of Investigation. ''There are thou- sands of men Avho are enemies of this country and ought to be behind bars, but it takes a spy to catch a spy, and I've got a dozen spies to catch a hundred thousand spies right here in Chicago. They have motor cars against my street cars. They're supplied with all the money they want ; my own funds are limited. We 're not at war. All this is civil work. We simply haven't ways and means to meet this emergency."
"I can get ten or twenty good, quiet men with cars who'll work for nothing," said Mr. Briggs one day. '* They '11 take either their business time or their leisure time, or both, and join forces with you. I knoAV we 're not at war, but Ave 're all Americans together."
In that chance conversation — only we ought not to call it chance at all, but a thing foreordained — began the great- est society the world ever saw, — an army of men equipped with money, brains, loyalty, which grew into one of the main legions of our defense. That army to-day probably
29
30 THE WEB
knows more about you and your affairs than you ever thought anyone could know. If you w^ere not and are not loyal, those facts are known and recorded, whether you live in Ncav York or California or anywhere between.
Once started, the voluntary service idea ran like Avild- fire. It began as a free taxicab company, working for the most impeccable and most dignified- branch of our Govern- ment— that branch for w^hich our people always have had the most respect.
The ten private cars grew to two dozen. As many quiet- faced, silent drivers as were necessary were always ready. Word passe-d among reliable business men, and they came quietly and asked what they could do. They were the best men of the city. They w^orked for principle, not for excitement, not in any vanity, not for any pay. It was the " live-wires " of the business world that were selected. They were all good men, big men^ brave and able, else they must have failed, and else this organization never could have grown. It was secret, absolutely so ; clandestine absolutely, this organization of Regulators. But unlike the Vigilantes, the Klu Klux, the Horse-Thief Detectors, it took no punishments into its own hands. It was absolutely non- partisan. It had then and has now no concern w4th labor questions or political questions. It worked only as collec- tor of evidence. It had no governmental or legal status at all. It tried no cases, suggested no remedies. It simply found tJie facts.
It became apparent that the City of Chicago was not all America. These American men had America and not Chi- cago at heart. Before long, five hundred men, in widely separated and sometimes overlapping sections, were at work piling up evidence against German and pro-German suspects. These men began to enlist under them yet others. The thing was going swiftly, unaccountably swiftly. America's volunteers were pouring out. The Minute Men w^ere afoot again, ready to fight.
This was in March of 1917. Even yet we were not at war, though in the two years following the Lusitania mur- ders, the world had had more and more proof of Germany's heartless and dishonorable intentions. The snake was now out of the leaves. The issue was joined. We all knew
THE WEB 31
that Washington soon would, soon must, declare war. The country was uneasy, discontented, mutinous over the delay.
Meantime, all these new foci of this amateur organiza- tion began to show problems of organization and adminis- tration. The several captains unavoidably lapped over one another in their work, and a certain loss in speed and efficiency rose out of this. The idea had proved good, but it was so good it was running away with itself! No set of men could handle it except under a well-matured and adequately-managed organization, worked out in de- tail from top to bottom.
We may not place one man in this League above another, for all were equal in their unselfish loyalty, from private to general, from operative to inspector, and from inspector to National Directors ; but it is necessary to set down the basic facts of the inception of the League in order that the vast volume and usefulness of its labors properly may be understood. So it is in order now to describe how this great army of workers became a unit of immense, united and effective striking power, how the swift and divers developments of the original idea became coordinated into a smooth-running machine, nation-wide in its actiA^ties.
Now at last, long deferred — too long — came April 6, 1917. The black headlines smote silence at every American table.
WAR!
We were at War! Men did not talk much. Mothers looked at their sons, wives at their husbands. Thousands of souls had their Gethsemane that day. Now we were to place our OAvn breasts against the steel of Germany.
The cover was off. War — war to the end, now — war on both sides of the sea — war against every form and phase of German activity! America said aloud and firmly now, as, in her anguish, she had but recently whispered, '^I need you, my children ! ' ' And millions of Americans, many of them debarred from arms by age or infirmity, came forward, each in his own way, and swore the oath.
The oath of the League spread. Not one city or state, but all America must be covered, and it must be done at once. The need of a national administration became at once imperative.
In this work on the neutrality cases Mr. Clabaugh and
32 THE WEB
his volunteer aids often were in Washington together. The Department of Justice, so far from finding this unasked civilian aid officious, gladly hailed it as a practical aid of immeasurable value. It became apparent that the League was bound to be national in every way at no late day.
All this meant money. But America, unasked, opened her secret purse strings. Banks, prominent firms, loyal individuals gave thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a work which they knew must be done if America was to be safe for decent men. And so the silent army of which you never knew, grew and marched out daily. Your house, your neighbor's, was known and watched, guarded as loyal, circled as disloyal. The nature of your business and your neighbor's was known — and tabulated. You do not know to-day how thoroughly America knows you. If you are hyphenated now, if you are disloyal to this flag, so much the worse for you.
It early became plain to manufacturers and owners of large industrial plants of all sorts that they were in imme- diate danger of dynamite outrages. Many plants agreed to present to the League monthly a considerable chocque to aid the work of safeguarding. Many wealthy individ- uals gave additional amounts. A very considerable sum was j:-aisedi from the sale of badges to the operatives, it being explained to all that they were sold at a profit for the benefit of the League. At all times large amounts came in, raised by State or local chiefs, each of whom knew his own community well. On one day in October, 1917, a call Avent out to 6700 members of the League to meet on a certain evening at Medinah Temple in Chicago, admission to be by credentials only. That meeting was addressed by Chiefs and others. In a short time $82,000 was raised. Later on, certain bankers of national reputa- tion— F. A. Vanderlip of New York, George M. Reynolds of Chicago, Festus Wade of St. Louis, Stoddard Jess of Los Angeles, and others — sent out an appeal to the bankers of America in the interests of the League. This perhaps would of itself have raised a half million more, but it came among Liberty Loan activities, and before it was fully under way, the news of the Armistice broke, which
THE WEB 33
automatically ended many things. But the American Pro- tective League had money. It can have all the money it may need in any future day.
It was not until fall of 1917 that, in answer to the imperious demands of the swiftly grown association, now numbering thousands in every State of the Union, and in order to get into closer touch with the Department of Justice, the League moved its headquarters from Chicago to Washington. Mr. Charles Daniel Frey of Chicago, who had worked out with his associates the details of a per- fectly subdivided organization, was made Captain U. S. A. and liaison officer for the League's work with the Military Intelligence Division of the Army, a division which itself had known great changes and rapid development. The three National Directors were now A. M. Briggs, Chair- man; Captain Charles Daniel Frey, and Mr. Victor Elting, the latter gentleman, an attorney of Chicago, having before now proved himself of the utmost service in handling certain very tangled skeins. Mr. Elting had been Assist- ant Chief in Chicago, working with Mr. Frey as Chief. Then later came on, from his League duties in Chicago, Mr. S. S. Doty, a man successful in his own business organization and of proved worth in working out details of organization. Many others from Chicago, in many capacities, joined the personnel in Washington, and good men were taken on as needed and found. It would be cheap to attempt mention of these, but it would be wrong not to give some general mention of the men who actually had in hand the formation of the League and the conduct of its widely reaching affairs from that time until its close at the end of the war. They worked in secrecy and they asked no publicity then or now.
One thing must be very plain and clear. These men, each and all of them, worked as civilian patriots, and, except in a very few necessary clerical cases, without pay of any sort. There was no mummery about the League, no countersigns or grips or passwords, no rituals, no rules. It never was a ^'secret society,*' as we understand that usually. It was — the American Protective League, deadly simple, deadly silent, deadly in earnest. There has been no glory, no pay, no publicity, no advertising, no reward
34 THE WEB
in the American Protective League, except as each man's conscience gave him his best rewaixi, the feeling that he had fulfilled the imperative obligations of his citizenship and had done his bit in the world's greatest war.
By the time the League was in AVashington, it had a quarter-million members. Its records ran into tons and tons; its clerical work was an enormous thing.
The system, swiftly carried out, was unbelievably suc- cessful. An unbelievable artesian fountain of American loyalty had been struck. What and how much work that body of silent men did, how varied and how imperatively essential was the work they did, how thrillingly interesting it became at times as the netted web caught more and more in its secret sweeping, must be taken up in later chapters.
As to the total volume of the League's work, it never will be kno^^Ti, and no figures will ever cover it more than partially. It handled in less than two years, for the War Department alone, over three million cases. It spent millions of dollars. It had a quarter million silent and resolute men on its rolls. These men were the best of their com- munities. They did not work for pa}^ They worked for duty, and worked harder than a like number in any army of the world. Some of the things they did, some of the astonishing matters they uncovered, some of the strange stories they unearthed, will be taken up in order in the pages following, and in a w^ay more specifically informing than has hitherto been attempted.
The League totals are tremendous, but the trouble with totals is that they do not enter into comprehension. A million dollars means little as a phrase, if left barren of some yard-stick for comparative measurement. Thus, when we say that long ago the number of suspect cases investigated by the American Protective League had passed the three-million mark, we hail the figures as grandiose, but have no personal idea of what they mean, no accurate conception of the multitude, the nature and the multi- plicity in detail of the three million separate and distinct cases. It is when we begin to go into details as to the work and its organization from unit to block, from opera- tive to chief, that we begin to open our eyes.
THE WEB 35
The government of this country had had thrown on it all at once a burden a thousand times as great as that of times of peace. We had to raise men and money, muni- tions, food, fuel for ourselves and all the world. We were not prepared. We had to learn all at once the one and hardest thing — one which America never yet had learned — economy. We had to do all the active and positive mate- rial things necessary to put an Army in the field across seas — build ships, fabricate ordnance, arm large bodies of men, train them, feed them, get their fighting morale on edge.
Yes, all these things — but this was only part. Our nega- tive defense, our silent forces also had to be developed. We had to learn economy — and suspicion. That last was hard to learn. Just as delay and breakdowns happened in other branches of the suddenly overloaded government, so a breakdown in the resources of the Department of Jus- tice— least known but most valuable portion of our nation's governmental system — was a thing imminent. That was because of the swift multiplication of the list of entirely new things that had to be looked into with justice, and yet with speed. It is not too much to say that without the inspired idea of the American Protective League, its Web spread out behind the lines, there could not long have been said in the full confidence of to-day, **God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives."
Besides being an auxiliary of the Department of Justice, the League was the active ally also of the Department of War, of the ^slvj, of the State, of the Treasury. It worked for the Shipping Board, the Fuel and Foodj Administra- tions, and the Alien Property Custodian. It ran down, in its less romantic labors, sugar-allowance violators, violators of the gasless-Sunday laws, the lightless-day laws, violators of the liquor laws, as well as the large offenders — the spies who got internment or the penitentiary as the penalty of getting caught. All these large and small activities may- be understood by a glance at the report-sheet of any divi- sion chief. The heads and sub-heads will show the differ- entiation. The chart following this chapter will show the method of organizing the League 's personnel which was used in practically all the great cities. The table of dates which
36 THE WEB
immediately follows, sets forth in outline the League's early history, and indicates the rapidly broadening character of the League's work.
EARLY DATES OF THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE
January 25, 1917 First Call by Mr. Clabaugh,
February 2, 1917 Second Call by Mr. Clabaugh (for
automobiles).
February 2 to 25, 1917 Automobiles and Plans.
February 25, 1917 Submitted Plan.
March 1, 1917 Plan Endorsed and Forwarded to
Washington.
March 15, 1917 Invited to Washington.
March 22, 1917 League Authorized.
March 22, 1917 New York Division Started.
March 22 to 26, 1917 Organizing in Chicago.
March 26, 1917 Chicago Division Started.
March 27, 1917 Milwaukee Division Started.
March 29, 1917 St. Louis Division Started.
April 6, 1917 State of War with Germany
Acknowledged.
April 9, 1917 Philadelphia Division Started.
November 1, 1917 Board of National Directors Organ-
ized.
November 15, 1917 National Headquarters Established
in Washington.
This will close a brief and necessarily incomplete review of the widely ramified nature of that Web ^vhich America made over night in her time of need.
There was also a confidential pamphlet, originally sent only to members, which elaborates and makes clear the basic purposes of the League, whose personnel and methods already have been covered. It is given in full as Appendix B. A great historic interest attaches to this document, Avhich tells the complete inside story of the League and the manner in which it first was organized for its w^ork. It is not necessary to say that this now appears before the eyes of the general public for the first time.
Lastly, there is for the first time made public the solemn oath taken by each member of the American Protective
THE WEB 37
League. Years hence, this page will have historic value. It records one of the most singular phenomena of the American civilization.
THE OATH OF MEMBERSHIP
I, , a memier of the Ameri- can Protective League, organized with the approval and operating under the direction of the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation, do hereby solemnhj swear:
That I am a citizen of the United States of America; and that I will uphold and defend the Constitution and Laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and will bear true faith and allegiance to the same at all times as a true and loyal citizen thereof.
That I will give due time and diligent attention to such service as I shall undertake to render; and that I will execute promptly and to the best of my ability the commands of my superiors in connection therewith.
That I will in all respects observe the rules and regulations, present and future, of this organization; and that I will promptly report to my superiors any and all violations thereof, and all information of every kind and character and from whatever source derived, tending to prove hostile or disloyal acts or intentions on the part of any person whatsoever and all other information of any kind of interest or value to the Government.
That I will not, except in the necessary performance of my duty, exhibit my credentials or disclose my membership in this organization; and that I will not disclose to any person other than a duly authorized Government oflSeial or ofiBcer of this organization, facts and information coming to my knowledge in connection with its work.
That the statement on the opposite side hereof, by me sub- scribed, is true and correct.
That I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge my duties, as a volunteer for the defense and preservation of the United States of America. SO HELP ME OOD
CHAPTER III
EARLY DAYS OF THE LEAGUE
"D. J." and "A. P. L."— The Personal Statement of the Chicago Division Superintendent of the U. S. Bureau of Investigation — Early Days of the League — The Nation Unprepared — Swift Rallying of the Minute Men.
^'WitJiout exaggeration, I think tJie Chicago Division of the American Protective League did seventy-five per cent of the Government investigating work of the Chicago dis- trict throughout the period of the war. It seems to me that this one sentence covers the situation." — Hinton G. Cla- baugh, Chicago Agent, U. S. Department of Justice.
In previous pages a general outline of the birth and growth of the American Protective League has been given, with a general statement also as to its wide usefulness in the exigencies of the tremendous days of the world war. There will be, h^owever, many thousands of the mem- bers of the League, and a like number of the lay public, who will be curious as to the specific and more personal facts surrounding the early days of the organization. Such facts are part of the country's history as well as that of the League, and therefore ought to be recorded, and recorded accurately and indisputably.
Mr. Hinton G. Clabaugh, division superintendent of the Bureau of Investigation of the U. S. Department of Justice, was asked for a written brief, historically covering the joint activities of the Department of Justice and its A. P. L. auxiliary in Chicago during the early period of the war. The admirably comprehensive record which Mr. Clabaugh has furnished appears in this volume as Appendix A.
No statement of facts and figures, however, or of dates and details, can really cover the story of the American Protective League. It has a character and a history which
38
EARLY DAYS OF THE LEAGUE 39
refuse to classify or to run parallel with other organiza- tions. It was an idea born out of a vast necessity, and its growth seemed to be a thing apart from ordinary busi- ness methods. Indeed, it sprang into such rapid stature that in large part its officers followed it rather than led it. It was almost sporadic in a thousand towns, so quickly did the achievement of organization follow the realization of the need. Thereafter came the days of national organ- ization, of system, patience, perseverance, and efficiency, which made it a well-knit power in all parts of the country.
It was Mr. Clabaugh's privilege to have lent aid and en- couragement in the days when the League was not yet a reality, the early days when all was nebulous, when no one knew anyone else, and when cases were pouring into D. J. that had to be handled in the best way possible and at the first moment possible.
The A. P. L. has always served the regular organization of the law, has always worked with or under the super- vision of the D. J. bureau chief nearest at hand, and, indeed, never pretended to do more than that. But this cooperation and interlocking of forces was an easier thing for D. J. superintendents elsewhere, later in the game, after A. P. L. had become an accepted success all over the country.
It was at the very beginning that the greatest difficulties had to be met, and it was during these early troubled days of the League that its history became inseparably linked with that of the Chicago bureau of the Department of Jus- tice. Set down in a seething center of alien activity — for so we may justly call Chicago in the early days of this war — with only a handful of men to rely on, with no laws, no precedents, no support, no help, no past like to the pres- ent, and no future that could be predicated on anything that had gone before, Mr. Clabaugh's bureau was the first to get swamped with the neutrality cases — and the first to be offered counsel, friendship, support, help, money, men and methods, all in quality and amount fitted to win the day for him at once. The Clabaugh story, therefore, is the most important one told by any bureau chief, and it is historically indispensable.
40 THE WEB
It is all very well to have confidence in our government and to believe in a general way that it cannot err and cannot fail, but government in peace and government in war times are two distinct and separate propositions. The sheer truth is that there was absolutely no arm or branch of our government which was prepared for war. In part, we never did get prepared for it, so far as essential equip- ment of a military sort is concerned. In artillery, in aero- planes, in various sorts of munitions and of equipment, we were not ready for war when the Armistice was signed. We had no adequate military or intelligence system, and the splendid force built up as M. I. D. was built after the war was begun and not before. In the same way — al- though, of course, we had the American faith and respect for our courts, believing them to be in some way supernal institutions which could not err and which needed no atten- tion on the part of the people — our judiciary also was unprepared for war. It never would have been prepared for war — never in the world — had it not been for the American Protective League. It is certainly a most curious, almost an uncanny story, how the Minute Men of America once more saved the day, responding instantly to a great national need, not knowing overmuch of this new game, but each resolved to fight — each, if you please, re- solving in unheroic and undramatic way — in much the same frame of mind of those men at Verdun who wrote on the page of martial history the clarion phrase, ''They shall not pass ! ' '
The enemy did not pass in Chicago, nor in New York, nor in San Francisco, nor in any place between. Not prepared — a whole nation in shirtsleeves at the plow — we became prepared. We fought with one hand, while, with the other, we buttoned on the new tunic for which we had not yet been measured, and in Army, Navy, Aviation, In- telligence, Supply, Motor Transport and Department of Justice, we learned as we fought — and won. The organ- ization of the American Protective League reveals a curious phase of life in this republic. It could not have taken place in any other country of the world.
*'A word as to the Chicago organization is in order,'* says the writer of this first report of D. J. on A. P. L.
L
"AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE"
I EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE j
INANCE I I ADMINISTRATION I I MEMBERSHIP I
1 Collection and I I Office Admin- I
E»pulidoo
EZ=ir| U.r--.J ^.r--..!
rELLIGENCE I
r
EARLY DAYS OF THE LEAGUE 41
''The work of the League was presumed to be to report matters of a disloyal nature that came to the attention of the members and to see that they were brought to the attention of the proper Government officials. However, the work of the agents of the Bureau itself increased so rapidly at this time that it was a physical impossibility for the small number to handle the same, and by degrees members of the League who showed aptitude for the work were called upon to assist the agents of the Bureau. Grad- uaUy, more and more work was tlirown on tlie League until practically all complaints coining to tlie Bureau hy mail were turned over to tlie League for them to investigate.' '
If, during the later months of the war, you had visited the Department of Justice in the Federal Building in Chi- cago, you would have found extensive and well-equipped offices, ably manned and humming with activity. Yet the Chicago department, though large in personnel and effi- cient in administration, was greatly overworked in this hotbed of pro-German and enemy spy activity.
After leaving the Federal Building, let us say, you had also decided to visit the headquarters of the volunteer organization in Chicago. Less than a block away from the federal offices, in a stately building given over entirely to the housing of organizations whose sole aim and purpose was the winning of the war, you would have found a set of offices as large, as well equipped, as full of filed records, and of as able a personnel as those of the U. S. bureau. There would be this difference : the latter offices — those of the American Protective League — were run by men who got no pay — and there were almost one hundred times as many of them as there were of the D. J. w^orkers. Yet the two great organizations are parts of the same system, and have worked together in perfect harmony and mutual benefit. Together, they have held German crime and espionage helpless in Chicago all through the war.
Of course, the tremendously expensive operations of so large a secret service organization could be met only by large-handed voluntary giving on the part of private cit- izens. For instance, the office rent alone of the A. P. L. in Chicago ran into thousands of dollars monthly. It was all carried by one public utility concern, the Com-
42 THE WEB
monwealth Edison Company, which turned over the needed space in a building which formerly housed its own offices. It is a part of the private history of the Depart- ment of Justice, scarcely if ever mentioned, that long be- fore the idea of the American Protective League was broached — indeed, at the time when we had just severed diplomatic relations with Germany — Mr. Samuel Insull, afterward Chairman of the State Council of Defense for Illinois, called on Mr. Clabaugh and offered financial aid to the Bureau of Investigation. He said: ''I know how meager your resources are, and I believe there is a lot of trouble not far ahead. Let me know if you need men or money, and I'll see that you get both.'' This, of course, had nothing to do with the later organization of the League, nor with the idea on which it is based, but Mr. Clabaugh always has said that Mr. Insull was the first private citizen to his knowledge to offer financial aid to the U. S. Government.
The public has heard more of '* D. J." than it has of * * A. P. L. " for obvious reasons. Of the two great office systems, one has been running for many years as a Imown part of the Federal Government. The other was two years old, and was always secret in its work and personnel. If it ever were a question of credit or '* glory," the palm must go and has gone to the Federal arm, because that is where the denouements of cases had their home, and where publication of the printable facts originated. A. P. L. carried the evidence to the door of D. J. and stopped. It started cases, but did not finish them.
The public never had more than a very vague idea of the workings of the vast duo-fold machine which held life and property in America so safe in the dangerous days of the war. For instance, the average man reading news- paper mention of Mr. Clabaugh 's activities as bureau head, usually thought of him as public prosecutor. He was not that. It was his duty, as it was the League 's duty, only to procure testimony. His work was not of the legal branch, and he himself never has been admitted to the bar, al- though he — with his auxiliary, A. P. L. — has won the largest and most stubbornly fought criminal cases in the history of the country, and is devoutly feared to-day by countless I. W. W. 's not yet arrested.
EARLY DAYS OF THE LEAGUE 43
The story of all these curiously interactive agencies, official and amateur, is indeed the greatest detective story in the world, and it is very difficult to measure it in full, or to visualize it in detail, so simply did it all happen, so naturally, so swiftly and so much as a matter of course. There is no like proof in history of the ability of the American people to govern itself and to take care of itself. Mr. Clabaugh's vivid and accurate story will bear out all these statements, and it is requested that it be read by all who wish a clear and consecutive acquaintance with the history of the American Protective League. Attention is again called to it as printed in full in Appendix A.
CHAPTER IV
THE LEAGUE IN WASHINGTON
Summary of the League's Results Throughout the United States — Report of the National Directors — Facts, Fig- ures and Totals for All the Divisions.
Facts now may be made public property wbicli until lately might not have been divulged. We therefore shall find profit now in studying the central organization by means of which the aroused Americans combined to fight the hidden forces of their unscrupulous enemy. The origin and growth, the general plans and methods of the Amer- ican Protective League, have been explained; and it will now be well, before we pass on to the specific story of the League's activities, to give some idea of the wide-reaching consolidation of those activities which followed upon the establishment of the National Headquarters.
The report of any official may seem dry and formal, but the records should be made to show how America's ama- teur Scotland Yard organized to fight the forces of Ger- many all over America. This portion of the League's story is therefore of great value to anyone desirous of knowing the logical steps by which the League developed into a truly national institution.
The liaison officer of the National Directors, Captain Charles Daniel Frey, made his report and summary of November, 1918, to Colonel K. C. Masteller of the General Staff, Chief of the negative branch of the Military Intel- ligence Division. This report was a general assembling of the national activities of the League up to the time of the signing of the Armistice. Certain extracts are made in consonance with the general outline above indicated. It should be noted that this report covers only a portion of the League's work in Washington. The Department of
44
THE LEAGUE IN WASHINGTON 45
Justice figures, as was to be expected, exceeded those of any other branch of the League's work. The War Depart- ment totals were also very high — evidence of service rendered' by the League which the AYar Department al- ways has been very courteous and grateful in acknowledg- ing. Captain Frey 's report reads :
Sir: In compliance with your request, we beg to submit the following statement of service rendered the War Department by the American Protective League. As you know, local divisions of the League are in operation in practically all towns and cities of substantial size throughout the United States, and the League has been extended, through a plan of county organization, generally throughout the rural commu- nities. It is not possible to submit to you an accurate classified statement of the aggregate of all of the work done through- out the country. We are able, however, to present a general statement of the activities of the League for the War Depart- ment of the United States, with a detailed report of the work of the local divisions in one hundred communities of the coun- try. The total population of these communities is approxi- mately one-seventh of the population of the entire country.
The work of the American Protective League for the Mil- itary Intelligence Division of the War Department began soon after the entry of the United States into the war. When the National Headquarters of the League were established in Wash- ington in November, 1917, the National Directors conferred with Colonel R. H. Van Deman regarding a plan for wider service throughout the entire country. One of the National Directors was commissioned in the army, assigned to the Mil- itary Intelligence Division and detailed to the work of the League. In April, 1918, a department of the League was in- stalled in the Military Intelligence Division, and since then the work has constantly grown in volume. A Captain in the Military Intelligence is now in charge, and at the present time thirty-six employes are working in the Section.
The increase in the volume of work is clearly shown by the records. Investigations directed by the Section in May, 1918, numbered 819; in June, 1777; in July, 2382; in August, 3617; in September, 6736; and in October, 6604. These investigations were of applicants for overseas service for the Y. M. C. A., Red Cross, Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare, Salvation Army, and other civilian organizations; of applicants for com- missions and employment in various Departments of the Army, including the Quartermaster Department, Surgeon Gen-
46 THE WEB
eral's Office, Department of Aeronautics, Ordnance Depart- ment, Signal Corps, Army Chaplain Service, Chemical Warfare Service, etc. They also included investigations on counter- espionage matters, German propaganda, deserters, slackers and various other miscellaneous cases, all of which was made at the direct request of the heads of the different sections of the Military Intelligence Division at Washington.
The character of this work differs in no way from that of the Department of Military Intelligence having to do with Nega- tive Intelligence. In the one hundred local divisions referred to, the number of cases investigated and reported upon were 62,888, and upon the percentage basis, the number handled throughout the country would be 440,216.
The League has likewise exerted itself in enlisting the aid of the public in reporting enemy activities, disloyalties and evasions of the war statutes. In various cities, bulletins have been posted in prominent places, including street cars, office buildings and places of public gathering, requesting citizens to report to the American Protective League all such cases com- ing to their knowledge. Much important information resulted from this practice.
Because of the fact that the members of the League continue to follow their daily vocations and maintain their normal con- nections with the community, they are afforded unusual oppor- tunities for the investigation of radical organizations of all kinds. The League has been able to introduce members into all of the more important organizations, and to report upon their policies and activities as well as upon the activities of individual members. The number of investigations of this character carried on in the one hundred divisions referred to were 3,645; or 25,515 for the entire country. As most of these were extended, and in many cases involved a complete report upon the local organization as a whole, the figures represent a very considerable amount of work. Under this heading are Included investigations of the I. W. W., the W. I. I. U., pacifist organizations of many kinds, the Peoples Council, the League of Humanity, the Non-Partisan League, the Russellites and certain Socialistic movements. Sabotage investigations and conscientious objectors are also included.
In connection with the development of the overseas service of the Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare, Salvation Army and other civilian organizations of like character, the necessity arose for the careful investigation of the character, history and connections of civilian applicants to such service. Fortunately, the Military Intelligence finally took over the entire work of passing upon the character and
THE LEAGUE IN WASHINGTON 47
loyalty of applicants, and relieved the League of the responsibil- ity of directly advising the organizations concerned of the outcome of the investigations. The Military Intelligence then called upon the League as its agent to make the larger part of the investigations. By this method the name of the inves- tigator and of the individual responsible for the decision remains undisclosed, and the judgment is in that sense im- personal.
The League likewise made investigations of a large number of applicants for commissions in various Divisions of the War Department, including applicants for Chaplaincies.
Investigations as to character and loyalty reached a very large total. The number aggregates 30,166, including certain investigations made prior to the establishment of the League section in the Military Intelligence Division at Washington.
On January 12, 1918, the National Directors issued a bulletin calling upon all local divisions to make full report upon the rumors, current in their communities, which were harmful to the interest of the United States in the prosecution of the war. As a result of this inquiry, a large amount of informa- tion was gathered, complete copies of which were turned over to the Military Intelligence Division for its files.
In view of the fact that a large number of members of the American Protective League enlisted in the military service or were inducted into the draft, the League was requested by the Military Intelligence Division to procure the names of all such men, with their record, in order that the Military In- telligence might avail itself of their services within the mil- itary forces if it so desired.
In addition to the foregoing, miscellaneous investigations for the Military Intelligence were carried on in considerable Volume. These included cases of impersonation of array oflS- cers, vis6 of passports, bribery, theft and embezzlement, and a variety of other cases. These miscellaneous investigations in the local divisions referred to aggregate 19,556, or 136,892 for the country at large.
On June 5, 1917, the date of the first registration, approx- imately eighty thousands of members of the League throughout the country assisted at the registration polls, giving advice and assistance to registrants under the law and aiding the oflBcials in all possible ways. In the larger cities, particularly those wuth large foreign born populations, great congestion resulted because of the ignorance of the law and its pro- visions on the part of registrants, and because of the diffi- culty in ascertaining and transcribing correctly their names and other information regarding them. The number of places
48 THE WEB
for registration proved insuflBcient because of the shortness of the hours, and in many places great confusion resulted. Acting under proper instructions, members of the League in large numbers served as volunteer registrants under the direc- tion of the oflScials.
On February 6, 1918, the Provost Marshal General and the Attorney General of the United States united in a request to the American Protective League to cooperate with all local and district exemption boards throughout the United States in locating and causing to present themselves to the proper authorities delinquents under the Selective Service Regula- tions, including those classed as deserters. Thereupon each local division assigned certain members to the Local and Dis- trict Boards within its jurisdiction. These activities are of many varieties and include the investigation of Board Mem- bers, conspiracies and bribery, conspiracies to obstruct the draft, draft evasion in all forms, fraudulent attempts at de- ferred classification, false claims for exemption, failures to report for examination, failures to report for mobilization, failures to file questionnaires, failures to register, failures to secure final classification, failures to notify local boards of changes in address, failures to ascertain present status from the Local Board, failures to entrain, and all other alleged infractions of the regulations. These investigations made by the one hundred local divisions total 323,349. Upon a per- centage basis, the cases handled throughout the country would total 2,263,443, and including the slacker raids, an enormous figure which cannot well be estimated.
Many investigations under the Local Boards were made with extreme difficulty because of the confusion in the spell- ing of names, inaccurate records and constantly shifting addresses due to the roaming character of the individual. We believe that the Provost Marshal General's office will confirm the statement that the number of delinquents and deserters of this character is very great, possibly exceeding two hundred thousands, a group recruited mostly from laborers, harvesters and the other ranks of homeless un- skilled labor. Members of the League have given a great amount of time and energy to these cases.
During the two or three months following the day of first registration, a general effort was made by local divisions of the League in the principal cities to run down those indi- viduals within the draft age who had failed to register on June 5, 1917. In Chicago, a city-wide drive was made during which all stations of the railroads entering Chicago were covered by League operators, and the downtx>wn or loop dis-
THE LEAGUE IN WASHINGTON 49
trict was likewise patroled. This was the first organized effort on a large scale to enforce the regulations. Subse- quently similar action was taken in other cities.
In the early summer and fall of 1918 many slacker drives were conducted throughout the country. They were made under the direction of the oflQcials of the Department of Jus- tice with the active assistance of the Local Divisions of the American Protective League. Effective drives occurred in Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York, Chi- cago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Davenport, Dayton and many cities of lesser size throughout the country.
As a result of a single drive in one city, according to the report of the Division Superintendent of the Bureau of In- vestigation of the Department of Justice, approximately five hundred men were sent to camp as deserters and four thousand delinquents were apprehended. These drives as a whole were carried on with the acquiescence and with the gen- eral satisfaction of the public at large, and with the min- imum of embarrassment to the individuals concerned. The New York city drive presented an exception where certain diflQculties arose.
As a result of these drives, several hundred thousand men were examined throughout the country; tens of thousands who had failed to comply with the requirements of the Selec- tive Service Regulations were compelled to go to their Dis- trict Boards to make good their delinquencies, and many thousand delinquents and deserters were inducted into the army who otherwise might have escaped service.
Members of the League have apprehended many camp de- serters and soldiers absent without leave. They have inves- tigated thousands of requests for furloughs where the soldier claimed illness at home or made other claims. Many fraudu- lent requests were uncovered by these investigations. These Investigations, in the one hundred divisions referred to, num- ber 3,478.
Early in April, 1918, the National Directors conferred with Mr. Fosdick and other officials of the Department of Training Camp activities, and with the oflScials of the Department of Justice, with regard to developing a plan for the successful enforcement of Section 13 of the Selective Service Act and the regulations thereunder, — the section referred to having to do with the protection of the military and naval forces of the United States from the evil influences of vice and pros- titution in the vicinity of the camps. In the one hundred divisions referred to, the number of investigations was 5,866, or in the country at large, 41,062.
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In addition to the foregoing, the reports from local divis- ions indicate that they have made a large number of investi- gations of a general character for the War Department, in- cluding a variety of subjects. Mention should also be made of a considerable amount of service rendered to the Foreign Recruiting Missions in locating slackers and deserters and in making miscellaneous investigations of individuals.
On March 18, 1918, the Military Intelligence Branch of the War Department requested the American Protective League to procure for that Department, for immediate use for intel- ligence purposes, photographs, drawings and descriptions of bridges, buildings, towns and localities, then occupied by the German forces in France, Belgium and Luxemburg, and like- wise in that portion of Germany lying west of a line running north and south through Hamburg. In compliance with that request. National Headquarters issued a bulletin to all Local Divisions, calling upon the entire organization of the League throughout the country to engage in the work, and prescribing a detailed method for carrying it on. The result of the work, and the appreciation of the Military Intelli- gence Branch, was expressed to the League in a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Coxe, under date of June 11, 1918, in which he quotes a letter from Colonel Nolan, chief of the Military Intelligence Force abroad, to the effect that the material contained much information of value and that "the citizens of the United States w^ho donated the above articles and the League which collected them have done something which def- initely helps toward the success of the operations of our army."
Summing up the actual investigations made by the Amer- ican Protective League in the one hundred local divisions referred to, the grand total of cases reported by these divisions is 448,950. As has been show^n, the jurisdiction of these divi- sions embraces approximately one-seventh of the whole pop- ulation of the country covered by all of the local divisions of the League, and while some of the work reported by the one hundred divisions is not duplicated elsewhere, yet the re- verse is true, and it may fairly be said that the entire num- ber of cases handled by the League for the War Department throughout the country is seven times the above figure, or more than three million.
In conclusion, we beg to state that it has been the policy to cooperate with all local. State and Federal departments In enforcing the war laws of the United States. Our Local Chiefs have been able to establish cordial relations with all local police, sheriffs, fish and game wardens, fire wardens,
THE LEAGUE IN WASHINGTON 51
and other officials whose assistance has been invaluable in many cases, and have likewise gained the friendly interest and support of County and State officials generally as well as of the Judicial Departments.
We have not attempted to set forth in this communication the volume of work done for the Department of Justice.
A very prominent phase of work in which the A. P. L. was of use to the War Department is covered very well by the comment of the Department of Justice regarding the law under which the American Army was raised :
The most important of the war laws is the selective-service act. Cases under this act are of three general kinds — first, the violation of the act by the military eligibles themselves; that is, the failure to register in accordance with the regis- tration system under the draft, the failure to file a question- naire, the making of false exemption claims, the failure to report for examination, etc. As soon as a man becomes a deserter, he comes under the jurisdiction of the military authorities and is turned over to them. Up to that point, however, if he does not fully comply with the law and the Selective-Service Regulations, he is subject to prosecution by this department. As the main object of the law is the raising of an army and not the filling of a prison, the depart- ment seeks to deliver to the military authorities for military service all offenders subject to military service and physically fit therefor, except those who willfully and rebelliously refuse military service and can be subjected to substantial punish- ment.
The second class of cases concerns the acts of those who, not themselves subject to military service, induce violations of the act, such as making false exemption claims for others, inducing others to resist military service or evade the law. This classification also includes violations of duty on the part of members of the exemption boards.
The third class of cases relates to the violation of those sections which aim to protect training and mobilization camps from the evil influence of the liquor traffic or pros- titution within the neighborhood of the camp. The first class of cases has thrown upon the representatives of this depart- ment throughout the country an immense amount of work. This work has consisted in part of prosecuting deliberate violations of the law. In far larger measure, however, it has consisted in locating, apprehending, and delivering to local boards or Army officials many thousands of men who
52 THE WEB
for various reasons have failed to appear for physical ex- amination, failed to file questionnaires, etc. Down to July 1, 1918, the department had thns investigated 220,747 cases of this character and caused induction into military service of 23,439 men.
A curious personal quality attaches to the study of the work of the American Protective League, which is perhaps attributable to the fact that all the members were amateurs only and altogether unpaid. No doubt, did space and for- mal limitations permit, a very widespread comment on the personal relations of the members of the League to the League itself would be acceptable to many readers. Within the limits available, however, a certain martial severity and impersonality must be employed. None the less, there ought to be some brief mention made of the work of the National Directors after the establishment of the Washington office. In this connection it is fitting that the names of those men should be mentioned who labored so earnestly and so well to make the work of A, P. L. of vital importance in the winning of the war.
NATIONAL DIRECTORS AND OFFICERS OF ADMINISTRA- TION OF THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE LEAGUE
A. M. Briggs, Chairman Charles Daniel Frey Victor Elting
National Directors November, 1917
S. S. Doty
In charge Bureau of Organization Fel)ruary, 1918
Captain George P. Braun, Jr.
In charge Bureau of Investigation June, 1918
Charles F. Lorenzen
In charge Bureau of Investigation September, 1918
James D. Stover
In charge Bureau of Administration Septemler, 1918
Daniel V. Casey
Editor of The Spy Glass May, 1918
Lieutenant Urban A. Lavery
In charge A. P. L. branch at Military
Intelligence April, 1918
Captain John T. Evans
In charge A. P. L. branch at Military
Intelligence September, 1918
I
THE LEAGUE IN WASHINGTON 53
The enormous growth of the American Protective League in so short a time is sufficient e\ddence in itself that a vast, pressing need existed for the service it rendered. Indeed, the great local activity of the League became a national activity in record time. Reports piled in from all over the country ; the detail of correspondence became enormous ; the filing of records an endless task. All at once the National Directors of the American Protective League found they had taken over a business — one of the largest businesses with which any one of them had ever been identified. It w^ould not be too much to say that they worked day and night for a long period. Their task was a very heavy one, but they brought to it a knowledge of large business affairs and a quality of perseverance which saw them through.
The original headquarters of the League were at 1537 Eye Street, Northwest, an old Washington residence — a quaint and none too convenient business home. All the directors lived in the upper part of this building, and such was the crowded and impractical form of Washington life at the time that they were glad to sleep and sometimes cook their meals in the same building where they did their w^ork. Such a thing as rest or leisure were unknown for two years' time. No one who has not been in part acquainted with Washing- ton in war times knows the handicap under which all such work needed to be done. Transportation, living accommo- dations, clerical help — everything, in that period of the war, became a problem or an obstacle of a very considerable sort. It was faith and enthusiasm which carried these men through, as w^as the case with their associates all over America.
So, gradually, from this central office, the web of the American Protective League was extended until it reached into every state and territory of the Union, and until each line of communication was one of interchange of intelligence from and to the central headquarters. It is only by refer- ence to the portion of this history marked as ''The Four Winds" — showing briefs of reports from all over the Union — that any just knowledge can be gained of the tremendous volume of work done by the central headquarters. Nor does the assemblage offered give more than a mere indication of that volume, because thousands of reports have, for reasons of space, received no notice whatever, unfair as that must
54 THE WEB
always seem to everyone identified with, the compilation of this history.
In the fall of 1918, headquarters were moved from 1537 Eye Street to 1719 H Street, Northwest, another old time Washington residence of stately sort, which remained the home of the National Headquarters until the signing of the Armistice and the dissolution of the League itself. Here Mr. Briggs, Captain Frey and Mr. Elting remained until the end of the game in charge of a loyal band of workers. For all of these men, and those associated with them, there re- main the recollection of a hectic two years of high speed work, in connection with, financial loss to everyone en- gaged in it.
CHAPTER V
THE LAW AND ITS NEW TEETH
Insufficiency of the Espionage Laws at the Outbreak of the War — Getting Results — The Amended Espionage Act — The Law of 1798 Revived — Statement of the Attorney Greneral of the United States.
If predisposed to alien enemy sympathy, a critic might declare that the League was made up of individual bucca- neers, who did high-handed things and escaped punishment therefor only because of the general confusion due to a state of war. Nothing could be more unjust or farther from the truth than such a belief. On the contrary, the League and the Department of Justice as well felt continually held back and hampered by respect for laws admittedly inadequate.
We had matured a great system of jurisprudence, suffi- cient for ordinary needs. Moreover, when war began, we had passed more laws adjusted to the new needs ; but it is a curious fact that, threatened as we were by Germany's per- fected system of espionage and propaganda, we had no actual statute by which we adequately could cope with it until May, 1918 — more than a year after we went to war, and less than six months before the end of the war.
In the spring of 1918, the National Directors began, under the editorship of Daniel V. Casey, the issue of a League or- gan or confidential bulletin, called ''The Spy Glass." The first number of the publication, in June of that year, took up the amended Espionage Act, which was the base of prac- tically all of the A. P. L. and D. J. work during the war. This amendment rebuilt and stiffened the original Espionage Act of June 15, 1917, which had been found insufficient, and *'put teeth in the law," as the Attorney General's office phrased it. "The Spy Glass" printed a digest of the new enactment, which is of essential interest at this point of the League's story as it determined the whole character of the
55
56 THE WEB
League's later activities. This summarization of the Espion- age Act is printed as Appendix C in the present volume.
Up to the close of 1917, we had had, duly amended, many national statutes covering treason and sedition, foreign and hostile connections, pretending to be an officer, enticing to desertion or strikes, trespassing at military places, falsely claiming citizenship, aiding or counseling offense, wearing uniform unlawfully, conspiracy, neutrality, counterfeiting seals, use of mails, trading with the enemy, censorship, for- eign language news item's, sabotage, etc., as well as many specific enactments controlling persons liable for military service, and covering the increase of the army, the questions of evasion, desertion, etc. These powers, broad as they were already, were extended under the blanket powder of the Articles of War, to cover fraud, desertion, mutiny, insub- ordination, misbehavior before the enemy, traitors and spies, murder, rape and other crimes, and the general conduct and dicipline of those in military service.
Not even all these laws, however, were found to stand the extreme demands put on the country by thousands of new and wholly unforeseen exigencies. As a matter of fact, one of the most useful of all our laws against enemy aliens and spies was one not up-to-date at all, but dating back to Revo- lutionary times ; that is to say, July 6, 1798 !^
This old law was unearthed by the agents of the Depart- ment of Justice. It gave almost blanket powers to the Pres- ident of the United States, and it was under the President 's proclamations, based on that old law, that most of the early internment arrests were made. The old law, long disused, was found to work perfectly still! It was extended in force by the regulations controlling enemy aliens.^
It became the duty of the newly organized League to take on the accumulation of testimony under all these new laws ; and w^hat that was to mean may be forecast from the com- ment of the Attorney General of the United States in his annual report for 1918 :
The so-called Espionage Act contains a variety of provi- sions on different subjects, such as neutrality, protection of
1 See Appendix D for text of this law.
* See Appendix E for text of the President's proclamation for the regulation of alien enemies.
THE LAW AND ITS NEW TEETH 57
ships in harbor, spj activities, unlawful military expeditions, etc. Most of the cases which have arisen, however, presenting the most complex problems, have been under the third section of Title I of this act, which is aimed at disloyal and danger- ous propaganda.
This section 3 was amended by a law which became effective May 18, 1918, commonly called the Sedition Act, which greatly broadened the scope of the original act and brought under its prohibitions many new types of disloyal utterance. The use which our enemies have made of propaganda as a method of warfare is especially dangerous in any country governed by public opinion. During the first three years of the war, the period of our neutrality, the German Government and its sym- pathizers expended here a vast amount of money in carrying on different types of propaganda, and these activities are a , matter of public knowledge. During our participation in the war, section 3 and its later amendment have been the only weapons available to this Government for the suppression of insidious propaganda, and it is obvious that no more difficult task has been placed upon our system of law than the endeavor to distinguish between the legitimate expression of opinion and those types of expression necessarily or deliberately in aid of the enemy. The number of complaints under this law pre- sented to the Department of Justice has been incredibly large.
Such, then, was the ultimate machinery of our national laws when, late, but with such speed as a willing Congress could give after the gauntlet was flung and the issue joined, we began to face in dead earnest the peril of the times. We now had at last a full set of laws with teeth in them. But it was a tremendous burden that the older institutions of our administrative machinery had to carry. In sooth, the load was too much. The machinerj^ buckled under it. "We could not do the work we had to get done.
That work was more than ever had been asked of any nation of the world. We had a mixed population of wholly unknown disposition. Some said we delayed going to war for so long because we were not sure our people would back the Government. That, surely, could be the only reason for the delay. All the races of the world were seething in rage and jealousy. We had racial war within our borders. We could not count on our own friends. We could not predict as to what percent of men would be loyal to our flag. We had two million men of German blood inside our borders,
58 THE WEB
guaranteed by their Kaiser to be loyal to Germany. And long before we had gone to war, we had had abundant proof of their disloyalty to us, of their hatred for Britain and France, and their discontent with our own neutrality. We had openly been warned by the German Kaiser that he counted on the loyalty to Germany of many or most of these men. Fear alone held the average pro-German back. But it did not hold back their seasoned spies and the agents who worked under cover. The sudden cessation of pro-German talk which fell when we declared war deceived none but the pacifists. The boasts of German- Americans as to their hold- ings in Liberty Bonds deceived not at all the men who had sat and listened on the inside ; for even at this time the rec- ords were piling up — records of private acts and words of treason to America which had been noted by the A. P. L. The full record of German craft and duplicity, of treachery and treason to America, never will be made public. It was alike a loathsome and a dangerous thing.
Obviously, the hands of our Government sorely needed upholding. Who was to do that? Who would apply all these laws now that we had them? Who should watch two million tight-mouthed men whose homes were here but whose hearts were still in Germany? Who could cope with 300,000 spies, in part trained and paid spies, many of whom were sent over to America long before Germany declared the war which was ''forced" on her?
That was what the American Protective League already was doing when war was declared ; it is what it has done ever since, loyalty, patiently, indefatigably, to an enormous and unknown extent, in an unbelievable variety of detail. If ever you have held its members irresponsible or deemed them actuated by any but good motives, cease to do so now. Be- yond all men of this generation they have proven that pa- triotism is not dead.
The enforcement of the President's proclamation govern- ing the conduct of enemy aliens in this country entailed a tremendous amount of D. J. work, the larger part of which devolved upon the agents of the League. Thousands of in- vestigations of alien Germans were made under its provi- sions. Numerically speaking, however, the work in that im- peratively necessary line yielded to the more thankless labor of slacker and deserter hunting.
THE LAW AND ITS NEW TEETH 59
The function of th.e League in all these matters is obvious. No ease at law will "stick" unless supported by competent testimony. "We have seen that the League was organized for the collection of evidence, and for nothing else. Limited as its power was, it really saved the day for our hard-pressed country. It increased our Army by many thousands of evaders whom it found and turned over to the military authorities. It put hundreds of aliens into internment. It apprehended plotters and prevented consummation of con- spiracies beyond number. It kept down the danger of that large disloyal element, and held Germany in America safe while we went on with the open business of war in the field. It is by no means too much to say that much of the Kaiser's disappointment over his Germxan-American revolt was due not so much to any loyalty to the American flag — for of all of our racial representatives, the Germans are the most clan- nishly and tenaciously loyal to their own former flag — as it was to fear of the silent and stern hand searching out in the dark and taking first one and then another German or pro- German away from the scenes that erstwhile had known him. It was fear that held our enemy population do^vn — fear and nothing else. It was the League's silent and mysterious errand to pile up good reason for that fear.
At the crack of war, certain hundreds of dangerous aliens were interned at once. They simply vanished, that was all, behind the walls of camps or of prisons. It will be mistaken mercy if we shall not deport thousands more when we shall have the time deliberately to do that. Fear is the one thing such men understand. Honor and loyalty, terms interde- pendent and inseparable, are unknown to them. Too many Germans loved America only because they made money easily here. Their real flag still was across the sea, except as they had raised it here in their churches and their schools.
It was sometimes rumored that many spies were shot secretly in America. That would have been done in Ger- many— as witness the deaths of Edith Cavell and others. It was not done here. We did not kill a single spy, a single traitor, — more is the pity. By reason of the fact that we had outspied Germany's vaunted espionage, we nipped in the bud none knows how many plots and conspiracies which otherwise would have matured in ruin to life and property.
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We did not shoot known spies, but we garroted them in the dark and hurried them to jail. That agency of the law is best, after all, which keeps crime from becoming crime. We did not wait for overt acts — we filled our prisons before the acts were done! That is why the public was obliged to ro- mance as to German spies. They are in jail. The report of the Department of Justice itself, of June, 1918, on these war activities will in this connection prove interesting reading:
During the period of American neutrality many persons were prosecuted for criminal acts connected with efforts to aid the belligerents. Some of these cases were still pending when the United States declared war on Germany. A very satis- factory standard of success was attained in the ante-bellum prosecutions. Almost before the ink had dried on the proclama- tion of April 6, 1917, a select company of dangerous Germans were gathered in by the United States Marshals. These prisoners were believed to be potential, and in some cases actual leaders of pro-German plots and propaganda. Sub- sequent discoveries have quite fully confirmed this belief. Recently a most authoritative document was found to contain among other matters the names of several gentlemen whom the German Government trusted to carry on its work here un- officially after the withdrawal of the ofiicial representatives. Of these, all were arrested on April 6, 1917, save one who had already left the country. This disposal of the German leaders had effects which have been continually reflected in the dis- jointed and sporadic character of hostile outbreaks.
One of the most recent, most novel, and most important of the Department's efforts is the denaturalization of disloyal citizens of foreign origin. Many natives of Germany or Aus- tria, sheltered from summary internment by their acquired citizenship and clever enough to avoid the commission of actual crime, have insulted and injured this government at every opportunity. Fortnnately the naturalization law con- tains a clause permitting the cancellation of citizenship papers o'btained hy fraud. Without waiting for further legislation, which is apparently on the way, the Department has assailed a number of defendants believed to have made fraudulent mental reservations of loyalty to their native countries. Sev- eral of these cases have already ended victorfously for the government. More than one defeated defendant has been interned.
Meanwhile the summary arrests have continued. From week to week through 1917 their numbers steadily increased. Since
THE LAW AND ITS NEW TEETH 61
about the beginning of 1918, the rate has been more nearly constant.
Extremists have advocated the universal internment of alien enemies, somewhat after the English practice. Now, Great Britain interned permanently rather fewer than seventy thou- sand alien enemies. The United States would be compelled to intern at least eight hundred thousand Germans and more than twice as many Austrians. The colossal expense of maintain- ing this horde in idleness — civilian prisoners of war are far more useless than convicts, because they may not be forced to work — is too obvious to need discussion.
More temperate critics say that there have been too few arrests, too low a proportion of internments, and too high a proportion of paroles. As to the first and second charges, it is a sufficient answer that conditions have improved instead of becoming worse. A policeman's record should not be judged by the number of people he has put in jail, but by the kind of order maintained on his beat.
In his annual report, issued December 5, 1918, subsequent to the signing of the armistice, the Attorney General stated that six thousand alien enemies had been arrested on presi- dential warrants, based on the old law of 1798. Of these, a "considerable number" were placed in the internment camps in charge of the Army. The majority of these w^ere German men and women, with a certain number of Austro-Hungar- ians. He concludes : " I do not want to create the impression that there is no danger from German spies and German sympathizers. There are thousands of persons in this coun- try who would injure the United States in this war if they could do so with safety to themselves. However, they are no more anxious to be hanged than you are. ' '
The foregoing will show, to any student of the strange and complex situation which has confronted America at home these last four years, the main facts as to the emergencies we met and the means by which we met them.
The surprising thing is that we Americans have not known ourselves! A thoughtful study of the American Protective League is not a mere yawning over phrases of the law any more than it is a mere dipping into exciting or mystifying experiences. It is more than that. It is an excursion into a new and unexplored region in America — into the very heart of America itself.
CHAPTER VI
GERMAN PROPAGANDA
How the Poison was Spread — The Press — The Pulpit — The Word-of -Mouth Rumor — Various Canards Directed Against American Morale — Stories and Instances of the Hun's Subtlety.
Germany made two mistakes — one in beginning the war, the other in losing it. The world has reckoned with her far otherwise than as she hoped. Now she learns what it is to feel defeat. Shrewd as the shrewdest, more patient than the most patient, not lacking courage while victory was with her — yet always showdng that peculiar German clumsiness of intellect — Germany fought with trained skill on both sides the sea. The world know^s the story of the battles in France. Let us now study the battles fought in silence in America.
In actual practice the various secret methods which the Germans employed in America could not always be defined one from the other. A certain confusion and over-lapping existed between the spy systems and those of propaganda and sabotage. Often one man might practice all three. The purpose of this chapter is to take the humblest form of German secret work in America, that practiced by the least skilled and most numerous branch of her spies — the sort of thing which usually is classified as propaganda.
Let no one undervalue the work of propaganda. No army is better than its morale, and no army 's morale is better than that of the people which send it to the front. The entire purpose of enemy propaganda is to lessen the morale either of an army or a people; and that precisely was Germany's purpose with us.
Anything is good propaganda which makes a people nerv- ous, uneasy or discontented. Many of the stories which Ger- many spread in America seemed clumsy at first, they were so easily detected. Yet they did their work, even though
62
GERMAN PROPAGANDA 63
(
sometimes it would have seemed that the rumors put out were against Germany and not for her. These rumors, re- peated and varied, did serve a great purpose in America — they made us restless and uneasy. That certainly is true.
One of the favorite objects of the German propaganda was the Red Cross work. Hardly any American but has heard one or other story about the Red Cross. The result has been a very considerable lessening of the public confidence in that great organization. The average man never runs down any rumor of this sort. At first he does not believe what he hears. At the fourth or fifth story of different sorts, all aiming at one object, he begins to hesitate, to doubt. With- out any question, the Red Cross has suffered much from German propaganda. Not that this organization should be called perfect, for such was not the case with any war organ- ization. Not that the Y. M. C. A. work was perfect, for it was far from that. But the point is that all of these organ- izations, all the war charities, all the war relief organizations, were more nearly perfect than German propaganda has al- lowed us to believe. The most cruel and malicious state- ments against the Red Cross, wholly without foundation, were made, with apparent feeling of all lack of responsibility, by German-loving persons in all parts of the country. A complaint came to Washington Headquarters all the way from Portland, Oregon. Comment is unnecessary:
I am informed that one Bertha A , who is in the
Government service, Bureau of Aircraft Production, Executive Department, Cable Section, oflSce in "D" Building, A% Missouri Avenue, Washington, D. C, has written a letter to a friend of hers here that a w^ard in one of the hospitals in Washington had been set aside for some seventy-five girls who were work- ing in the different bureaus in Washington and had become pregnant since arriving in Washington; and that it was ru- mored that there were about three hundred in addition to the above who had been sent home for the same reason. Would suggest that she be interviewed. We will look up her antece- dents here and if possible secure the letter which she has written or copy thereof. Upon being advised that such a letter had been written, I interviewed the husband of the lady to whom the letter was written, he being bailiff in one of the circuit courts here, and he stated that the quotation as made above was substantially correct.
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Nearly everyone has heard the story of the Red Cross sweater which had a five-dollar bill pinned to it for the lucky unknown soldier who might be the recipient. This sweater is always reported to have been sold and to have turned up in some part of America with the proof attached to it. In no instance has there been any foundation for this rumor. A like baselessness marks the stories of Red Cross graft and misappropriation of funds and waste of money. No doubt there was a certain amount of inefficiency in this work; but that the Red Cross was looted or conducted by dishonest persons was never believed to be true even by the German agents who started the stories.
During the time of the influenza epidemic, a common story was that doctors had been found spreading influenza germs in the cantonments. It was reported, as no doubt every reader ^vill remember, that two doctors had been shot in one post. Sometimes the story would come from a man who got it from an enlisted man who had been one of the firing squad who had executed several doctors in this way. There was not a word of truth in any of this. The inoculation propa- ganda was German propaganda, pure and simple. It might not seem clear how such mendacity could be of direct help to Germany ; but it had this result — it made American moth- ers and fathers more uneasy about their sons. It made them want to keep their boys at home.
The powdered glass rumor was one of the most widely spread instances of German propaganda. "Who has not heard it divulged in secrecy by some woman, with the in- junction that not a word must be said about it? A German nurse had been detected putting powdered glass in the rolled surgical bandages in the Red Cross work rooms. She had disappeared before she could be arrested, and she had not left her name. That mysterious German woman who worked with the Red Cross is still absent. The rumors of powdered glass in bandages have been practically ground- less— only one division, that in upper New Jersey, reports any case of that sort actually run down. The charges of powdered glass in food sent to the soldiers or put in tinned goods have been found equally baseless. Two cases of glass found in food stuffs are authentically reparted, — both acci- dents, and the glass was broken and not powdered.
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The charges of poisoned wells around cantonments was another canard. Rumors came out that horses, and men also, had been killed by the poisoned water. The entire investigating force of the United States has found one case of poisoned water in a horse trough in West Virginia — and no horse drank of it. The charges about poisoned court- plaster were proved to be equally groundless — indeed, they would seem to be of small reason in any case, because, if Germany was putting out the court-plaster, why should she speak of it ; and why should America put it out at all ? The psychology of it is this: anything which makes the people feel uneasy or anxious is good propaganda for the enemy.
Stories were spread very widely at one time that Canada and England were not practicing food conservation — that we were shipping our food to England and she was eating it without reservation, whereas we were denying ourselves sugar and butter. Perhaps you had best talk with someone who lived in England during the war as to the truth of that. It was one of the many German lies. There was the charge that the price of gasoline was due to the fact that the Stand- ard Oil Company was dumping and wasting large quantities of gasoline. There was nothing in that, of course.
The report of Polish pograms, general Jew killing expedi- tions by the Poles, were magnified and distorted, all with the purpose of making both the Poles and Jews dissatisfied with the conduct of the war. Continually these anti-Ally stories got out, and always they were hard to trace.
This form of propaganda, spread by word of mouth, was the most insidious and most widely spread of all forms. It was, of course, made the more easy by the excited state of mind of the people during war times. You will remember that you yourself bought more newspapers than you ever did in your life — you looked for new headlines, new sensa- tions, all the time. At home, your wife also was eager for sensations, for the news, for the gossip. It was ready for her and every member of her family, and her neighbors and neighbors' families. The spread of a rumor is not governed by the laws of evidence; and hearsay testimony rarely is given twice the same — it always grows.
Into this form of German propaganda came spite work against German- Americans who themselves were loyal. A
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great deal of League activity had to do with running down rumors against persons declared to be pro-German. Some- times these things were found baseless; and again enough pro-Germanism was found to warrant a stern rebuke.
Sometimes, public speakers, well trained in their tasks, put out propaganda which at the time seemed an innocent statement of facts. To the Lake Placid Club of New York came a certain '^ Belgian officer" who spoke very good Eng- lish, and who purported to be able to tell all about the war. He made a long speech, regarding which many members of the local Ked Cross complained bitterly to the American Protective League. This man 's talk, while purporting to be that of an ally of this country, was really German propa- ganda. He denied or justified German atrocities, deplored Red Cross knitting, declared it would take ten million Amer- icans to beat the Germans ; that they were going into a hell of vermin, dirt and disease ; that our army as yet was diffi- cult to find. There was a German orchestra at the Club, supposed to have come from the Boston Symphony Orches- tra. They all applauded vociferously when the speaker made such statements as, ''After the war there will be a day of reckoning. ' ' Further details, which proved that this speaker really was spreading German propaganda, led to his being traced to New York. He was found to have worked at different times in Iowa, Kansas, and elsewhere. The last report was that he was supposed to have sailed for his native country.
There was no way, shape nor manner in which Germany did not endeavor to embarrass us. She had, besides her care- fully trained public speakers, her secret workers who had assigned to them definite objectives. For instance, it was known that the negro race would furnish a considerable number of soldiers for our army. A very wide German propaganda existed among the negroes in Georgia and Caro- lina, and in such northern cities as Indianapolis, where large numbers of that race were located. A certain German was indicted under seven counts for this manner of activity. It was proved that he had told a great many negro privates in the army that they would be mutilated if captured, and that they were going to starve to death in France if they ever got across. The horrors of war with the American
GERMAN PROPAGANDA 67
forces were pointed out to these simple people; but, on the other hand it was explained to them that if they would work for the German interests, they would be allowed to set up a government of their own in America if Germany won the war! They were told Germany loved the negroes and believed in their equality with the white race in every way, and would support their government when once her war was won! One such secret German worker among colored sol- diers and civilians was M. F of New York, in- dicted under seven counts in June, 1918, under the new
Espionage Law. F put out much the same story to
frighten the negroes and make them discontented — wholesale mutilation at the hands of Germans if they were captured in France. He declared that their eyes would be gouged out and their ears cut off. He also said that Germany was al- lowing our transports to reach Europe unharmed because she wanted a lot of Americans in France, where, after cut- ting off their supplies, she intended to starve them all to death.
This looks like making out a bad case for Germany — but
softly. F also said that, on the other hand, Germany
did not want to kill the negroes if they would not fight; that if only they would work for Germany's interests, they should have their own country and their own government. Stories like this were circulated in the South and among
cities in the North with a hea^^ negro population. F
was the first propagandist to be caught with the goods. He was talking much with colored privates in the draft army.
Of course, a prime object of propaganda was to obstruct the draft and to prevent the shipment of munitions. It largely failed, as everyone knows. But still it cannot be said that Germany did not invest such money well as she spent on her secret pro-German propaganda in America. She knew that she had ruined Russia by propaganda. We might further have learned the danger of propaganda as a weapon had we heard the rumor that Germany herself had her collapse hastened by propaganda which Great Britain managed to spread among her people. It is a matter of his- tory that German propaganda caused the Italian debacle in the first Austrian advance into Italy.
Nor is it to be believed that Germany has ceased in her
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propaganda. Slie does not believe herself defeated even now. The undying occult spirit of the old Teutonic Knights still lives to-day in America. Now, you will begin to hear attempts to make us dislike England, attempts to incite Ire- land to revolt against England, attempts to make us dislike France, stories that England and France owe us much for everything they gave us in the way of equipment, aeroplanes, munitions; stories that we will never get back any of the moneys we loaned to the Allies; stories of how simple and innocent the German people are, how anxious they are to be friendly to America. That is all propaganda. By this time we ought to know how to value it.
Of course, the German language papers in this country were hotbeds of propaganda and sedition. Some of them were suppressed by the censorship, some by the indignant American people who informed the courts of justice. Most of them by this time have become tame since they have seen the penitentiary sentences imposed upon the more outspoken of these German editors living in America. These foreign language papers were prominent in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and other cities. They show the strength of German sentiment in America. Every one of them was a center of propaganda, at first outspoken, then more careful. The great majority of these papers, in order to protect their business investments, tried to cover up when they found which way the wind was setting. The censorship officers were flooded with complaints against these papers. For instance, there came all the way from Indian- apolis a complaint against a paper printed in Baltimore, Mary^land, ''The Bavarian Weekly." A. P. L. had many extended translations of articles printed in this paper, the general tenor of which was a laudation of Germany and German methods. One wonders what Germany would have done to any American newspaper printed within the con- fines of Germany which might have expressed such hostile sentiments against the country harboring it.
In addition to these, there were, of course, the English language papers which for one reason or another were covertly or outspokenly in favor of Germany. Papers all the way from New York to Pueblo, Colorado, were bought or were attempted to be bought outright by German capital.
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The most sensational scandals of tliis sort came out of New York.
It is known that in many towns the German element undertook to sow seeds of discontent in the minds of sav- ings bank depositors. Rumors got out — no one could tell where they started — to the effect that the United States Government was going to confiscate all the savings of the people ; that the bonds would never be paid off. Of course, all this w^as absurd, but it had its effect upon servant girls and others who were loyally putting their savings into the securities of the government. It cost a great deal of time and expense to run down such rumors.
The pulpit was a recognized part of the German system of spy work in America, as has elsewhere been noted. ^ It is not just to accuse all Lutheran ministers of desecrating the cloth they wore. There are good Lutheran ministers who are loyal Americans without question. At the same time it is true that more charges have been brought against pastors of the Lutheran church, and charges of more spe- cific nature, than against any other class or profession in our country. There are scores andj hundreds of such re- ports which came into the National Headquarters of the A. P. L. from all parts of the country, more especially those parts which have heavy German settlements. These are so numerous that one cannot avoid calling the Lutheran pulpit in America one of the most active and poisonous influences which existed in America during the war. A sample report comes in from the Chief of the A. P. L. at Armour, S. D. :
I have reported on five German Lutheran preachers of this vicinity. They are all of the same stripe — profess loyalty, but actions speak otherwise. It seems strange to me that they have such an anxiety to get into active war work in the army and navy.
In yet another and longer specification, the same chief states :
I am becoming concerned about the large number of reports I get locally regarding German Lutheran ministers in this part of South Dakota. They are attempting to obtain
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positions of trust in Government work in the army and navy. / would not trust one of them in this part of the State. We have had troutle continually tvith the German communities where these ministers are located. Twenty-nine were con- victed from Tripp. . . . Our Government might as well choose men from Berlin as to select German Lutheran min- isters from this part of South Dakota. It seems to me that the A. P. L. should investigate and see what is inducing all these German Lutheran ministers to apply for Government positions. If even one succeeds in obtaining an appointment, it would be an opening.
This matter went before the Military Intelligence Divi- sion in Washington and received proper handling there.
A report from Osage, Iowa, came in against a certain priest in another Iowa town. The entire record of this man is given, besides other details regarding his parentage, his education, and his conduct of his church. ^'Previous to the entry of the United States into the war, he upheld Germany in all particulars. Since war has been declared, he has been more careful in his speech. A service flag was dedicated in our village, which consists of but one street. The ceremonies were held in front of this man's house. He did not attend the services. The next Sunday he roasted his congregation for giving money toward the flag and told them they should give quite as much to the church. A committee of five men visited him and invited him to sub- scribe to the Third Loan.*'
One of these clerical gentlemen who have remained loyal to the Kaiser, though not to Christ, is the Reverend John Fontana, Lutheran clergyman of New Salem, North Da- kota. He was convicted for preaching sedition, and got a three-year sentence in a Federal Court. This did not deter his likewise loyal Kaiserliche congregation. By a vote of fifty-seven to twenty-two the members decided to continue him as their beloved pastor. Yet this is what Judge Ami- don said to Fontana when he was arraigned, — words which ought to be printed in large letters and displayed promi- nently in every street of every city of every portion of America. The Judge said to the prisoner:
You received your final papers as a citizen in 1898. By the oath which you then took, you renounced and abjured all
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allegiance to Germany and the Emperor of Germany, and swore that you would bear true faith and allegiance to the United States. What did that mean? That you would set about earnestly growing an American soul, and put away your German soul.
Have you done that? I do not think you have. You have cherished everything German and stifled everything American. You have preached German, prayed German, read German, sung German. Every thought of your mind and every emotion of your heart through all these years has been German. Your body has been in America, but your life has been in Germany. You have influenced others who have been under your ministry to do the same thing.
There have been a good many Germans before me in the last month. They have lived in this country, like yourself, ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, and they have had to give their evidence through an interpreter. It has been an impressive part of the trial. As I looked at them and tried, as best I could, to understand them, there was written all over every one of them, "Made in Germany." American life had not dimmed that mark in the least.
I do not blame you and these men alone. I blame myself. I blame my country. We urged you to come; we welcomed you; we gave you opportunity; we gave you land; we con- ferred upon you the diadem of American citizenship — and then we left you.
When we get through with this war, and civil liberty is made safe once more upon this earth, there is going to be a day of judgment in these United States. Foreign-born citi- zens and the institutions which have cherished foreigners are going to be brought to the judgment of this Republic. That day of judgment looks more to me to-day like the great Day of Judgment than anything that I have thought of for many years. There is going to be a separation on that day of the sheep from the goats. Every institution that has been engaged in this business of making foreigners perpetual in the United States will have to change — or cease. That is going to cut deep, but it is coming.
It must be pointed out that in spite of this charge of the judge, and in spite of the sentence of this minister of the gospel, his flock remained loyal to him and invited him back to preach when he got out of jail !
It has always been charged against the Germans in America that they were the most clannish of all the for-
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eigners coming to settle in this country. They, longer than any other people, retain their own institutions, their own language, their own customs. In parts of the country there are schools which teach the German language more than they do the English — a practice which, in all likelihood, will be discontinued w^hen the troops come back from France and Germany. Without any doubt or question, pro-German school teachers were German propagandists, usually of the indiscreet and hotheaded sort.
From Terre Haute, Indiana, comes a complaint regarding Miss Lena Neubern — that is what we will call her— a hot socialist and worse, who was a school teacher. Miss Neu- bern had two brothers in that city who refused to allow an American flag to be placed in front of their store, or to allow their clerks to attend the parade of the Third Liberty Loan. A committee of citizens called on them and told them '*in strong term what was expected of them." Miss Neubern taught her school children, Americans, that the ** Kaiser was just as good a man as President Wilson; that the United States was in this war, not for democracy, but for commercial supremacy; that the United States was as greedy as Germany; that we were controlled by England, always the enemy of the United States." Miss Neubern refused to allow the Star Spangled Banner to be sung in her room, and did all she could to hinder the sale of Thrift Stamps among the children, though in other schools large numbers of stamps had been sold. This active and intelli- gent young woman pleaded guilty of this charge and was dismissed by the school board. One wonders whether the German Government would have stopped at the dismissal in a similar instance !
Another form of German propagandist might have been foun4 higher up in educational circles. The faculties of our great imiversities have always been made up in part of a class of men who are of the belief that intellect and scholarship are best shown by eccentricity and radicalism. More than that, we had a number of actual Germans in our university faculties in America. Since it is the propo- sition here to deal in concrete facts and not in mere gen- eral assertions, let us print something which came in, embodied in the report from Champaign, Illinois.
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Champaign, Illinois, is the home of the University of Illinois, and for some reason university towns seem to act as chutes for all sorts of independent thought. There are two strong German settlements in Champaign County, and a very strong German settlement in the city, where many residents have shown very pro-German tendencies. These German settlements have their own German schools, taught by their German Lutheran ministers under the pretense of teaching religion. Sentiment became so intense that the local A. P. L. Chief was requested by the Government to close these schools if possible. Some of them have reopened since the armistice. In such localities the Germans have been very independent and often quite outspoken, so that it was necessary in many cases for the A. P. L. to use influence to prevent violence to them. There were only one or two cases where the citizens got out of control, although many citizens of German descent refused to buy bonds and made disparaging remarks regarding the Avar.
The A. P. L. Chief says: "We were confronted with the problem of ousting five alien enemies at the University of Illinois, two of them regarded as dangerous. "We also had to handle a cook at the aviation barracks, an alien enemy who was deliberately wasting food. We convicted the wife of a German minister in the Federal Court for making disloyal remarks. We had some difficulty with Russellites, Mennonites, and radical Socialists, but all have been kept in hand. Our organization consists of seventy- five members, but about twenty-five of us have done most of the active work." A good and worthy twenty-five.
The reference to Russellites and Mennonites covers two regions of great A. P. L. activity. Pastor Russell, as he was known, passed away from this scene some time ago, but he left behind him seeds of discord. He was perhaps not so much disloyal as he was eccentric and fanatical in his mental habit. His book, ''The Finished Mystery," was so open a plea against war that it was proscribed by the United States Government. A. P. L. operatives ran doAvn a great deal of so-called pro-German talk which originated in the Russellites. An instance of this comes from Coloma, Michigan, which reports: "Radical socialists became ac- tive during August, 1917. Acting under instructions from
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the Department of Justice, we put all of these meetings out of business in the territory of our jurisdiction. No more socialist meetings of any kind here. We got infor- mation which resulted in my calling upon certain Russell- ites. Collected five books of 'The Finished Mystery,' and some copies of the * Kingdom News.' Russellites were watche<i, and they promised to discontinue activities until after the war. They have done so. ' '
It is not to be denied that the following of the radical banner among all nations of the world is an increasing one and one which will demand great care on the part of the governments on both sides of the Atlantic. Bolshevism is the great threat of the day, and we shall have to meet it in America as it must be met in Germany and Russia before there can be any lasting peace.
At times some of these radicals have got caught in the jaws of the amended Espionage Act, as for instance, Eu- gene V. Debs, the veteran Socialist candidate for the presi- dency, who was given three concurrent sentences of ten years each. Early in the fall of 1918, Dr. Morris Zucker, a well known Socialist in Brooklyn, was arrested on a charge of sedition and locked up. He is said to have de- clared that the stories of German atrocities committed by German army officers were not true and that they were circulated by capitalists in this country to further their own purposes. Dr. Zucker was of the belief that American soldiers are **make believe" soldiers. On September 6, 1918, in Philadelphia, Joseph V. Stillson, secretary of the **Kova," a Lithuanian newspaper, was caught by the Espionage Act and sentenced to three years' imprisonment at Atlanta.
In Chicago, in December, 1918, there began the trial of Victor L. Berger, Congressman-elect from Milwaukee, for violation of the espionage act and conspiracy to obstruct the United States in prosecuting the war with Germany. With Berger, four other Socialist co-defendants were ar- raigned: Adolph Germer, National Secretary of the So- cialist party; J. Louis Engdahl, Editor of the American Socialist; William F. Kruse, Secretary of the draft-evading organization of the anti-war Socialists, and Irwin St. John Tucker, a radical Episcopalian rector.
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The trial before Federal Judge Kenesaw M. Landis lasted for more than a month and resulted in a verdict of guilty against all of the defendants. On February 20, 1918, Judge Landis sentenced the convicted men to twenty years' im- prisonment in the federal penitentiary at Fort Leaven- worth, Kansas. In sentencing the men, Judge Landis said :
Their writings and utterances fairly represent the consistent, personal campaigns they conducted to discredit the cause of the United States and obstruct its efforts. By no single word or act did they offer help to the country to win the war. It was a conscious, continuous plan to obstruct the country's military efforts. What has been said in this courtroom by the defendants is but an apology by them for obstructing the country's effort.
The convicted men were granted an appeal to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals by Judge Samuel Al- schuler. In the upper court the defendants were compelled to give their personal pledge to Judge Alschuler that neither by word or act would they do any of the things for which they have been convicted, pending the final dis- position of the case. It should be understood and remem- bered that these men were convicted not for their personal or political beliefs, but for violation of a law of the United States.
A. P. L. reports show that Lake Mills, Iowa, had a state senator who advised young men that they could not be forced to cross the water to fight, nor forced to buy Liberty bonds. He also was alleged to have obstructed the United War Work campaign by telling a client that he did not need to assist. He was connected with the Non-Partisan League and promised the farmers that they would secure control of the Legislature. Affidavits to this effect were handed to **D. J." The Non-Partisan League was well investigated in that neighborhood. The organizer of the local chapter was forced to buy bonds and stamps and to remain inactive until Peace was declared. **He moved away and never came back," says the local chief.
In another Lake Mills office, there was found by American Protective League operatives a picture drawn by a rather good amateur artist depicting a single German blowing to
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pieces the head of an American column of troops. Investiga- tion showed that this picture was drawn by a clerk in a local store. He was drafted and is in France, and the report regarding him is filed with "D. J." His original drawing is in the possession of the National Directors of the A. P. L. A League report, simple and direct, which comes from Todd County, Minnesota, is one of the best and freest expo- sitions of our system of government and the character of our citizenry that may be seen in many a day. The college professor would be valuable who coul-d write a clearer or more useful paper. Says the report:
The Germans of the country are about evenly divided be- tween the Catholic and Lutheran faiths. The Scandinavians are practically all Lutheran. The German Catholics, in gen- eral, allied themselves with loyal element; but a majority of the Lutherans, both German and Scandinavian, gave evidence of pro-German sympathies.
To complicate matters at this time, a political movement under socialist leadership showed great activity. The move- ment was organized under the name of the Non-Partisan League, with its platform built of essentially socialistic planks. The League attained a membership of approximately 1,200 in the summer of 1918. Its representatives and organizers held meetings in every neighborhood and solicited memberships. In the early days of our entry into the war, they demanded the cessation of hostilities; declared that it was a rich man's war; denounced conscription, and were guilty of numberless seditious utterances. Many of the greater lights of the League came into the country and delivered addresses, among whom were Townley, Lindbergh, Bowen, Randall and others. The burden to the cry of these men w^as the iniquity of "Big Busi- ness" and the wrongs of the farmers. As a remedy for all these economic evils, the socialistic schemes of the League were offered, and found acceptance among a greater number than would have been thought possible.
In June, 1917, the Todd County Public Safety Commission was organized. The loyalist element began to assert itself. A system of education was inaugurated to offset the propaganda of the Bolshevists. The better newspapers lent their aid, and the Red Cross and other war activities were pushed. Many public meetings were held, and many outside speakers assisted in the w^ork. The Public Safety Commission made itself felt bj many arrests. Some were fined for seditious utterances, and some were held to the Grand Jury. Conditions in the
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county were such that, while indictments were preferred by the Grand Jury in the state courts, it was impossible in some flagrant cases to secure a conviction by the petit jury. Such relief as was secured was through the state courts. So far as this county was concerned, the federal courts were useless.
Just how far the war is going to affect American politics in the future is something that many a politician in America would be exceedingly glad to knoAv. It may be that there will be some public men, unworthy to be called representatives of the American people, w^ho will cater now, as before the w^ar, to the German vote. We should beware of such men, for all they can do will be to advocate that very propaganda which to-day is matter of execration all over the country.
There have not lacked men, w^ho, more especially before we declared war, have boasted of their German birth and openly made that their main argument for office. In a large Ohio city such a man ran for the mayoralty and polled a very considerable vote. He said many times pub- licly that he would not subscribe to any Liberty Loans and was not in accord with our govervnment. He was very bitter in his denunciation of all who did not side with him. He proclaimed himself a hyphenated German proud of his native origin. He spoke before the German Sangerbund of his city and before delegates of the German-American Alli- ance— and he spoke in German — a democratic candidate for mayor in an American city of the second class! He uttered that old and familiar and useless plea — dangerous in America to-day— ''One can't forget the blood that flows in one's veins." Part of his campaign argument was this: *'I personally hope that the war in Europe will be a draw; but if there must be a victory, if I must choose between intelligent Germany and ignorant Russia, there is but one place for me to cast my lot, and that is with the Kaiser. If I felt otherwise, I would not be human." What he should have said was, if he had felt otherwise, he w^ould not have been German. He concluded his remarks with the statement that if he became mayor, ** Whatever inter- ference there has been in the past with such an organization as I am now addressing, there will be no such interference
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when I become mayor/' But he did not become mayor.
It is only of late that we have heard much of the Non- partisan League in America, even in this day of leagues, societies and alliances, but it has had growth and political significance in certain of the NorthAvestern States. It would not be true to charge the Non-Partisan League with disloyalty as a body, but certainly it would be yet more foolish to say that all its members, in the North-European part of the United States, had been loyal to America in this war, or free of sympathy with Germany. Read the A. P. L. reports — they are not all shown in these pages — of its manifold activities in sections where the Non-Par- tisan League is strongest. Draw your own inferences then, for then you will have certain premises and need not jump at any conclusion not based on premises.
We may take its reports from Dakota and Iowa as fairly good proof of the accuracy of the foregoing statements. Let us, for instance, examine as a concrete proposition the report from Mason City, Iowa. It is done simply; yet it leads us directly into the heart of the problem of America's future and face to face with the basic questions of courage in business and social life which must underlie the future growth of our country. A story? It is all the story of America.
This report, quite normal in all ways, would represent the usual type of report from a nice, average agricultural city, were it not for certain phases of the work it repre- sents. There were 24 alien enemy cases; 97 disloyalty and sedition cases; 21 cases of propaganda, and eleven I. W. W. cases and other forms of radicalism. The state of society reflected by these figures is best covered in the words of the report itself :
In ante-bellum times there existed a more or less "well- grounded opinion that in this vast western farming region the melting pot had most nearly accomplished its task and that here, if anywhere, was a truly American community. The citizen might be of English, Irish, Scotch, Scandinavian, Ger- man or French birth or ancestry, but he was primarily an American. This belief was based upon the fact that here all American institutions and customs received hearty support, that the pepole encouraged to the limit the American liberty
GERMAN PROPAGANDA 79
of thought and action. American politics in our region was relatively free from the corruption encouraged by a large per- centage of ignorant or apathetic voters. In fact, the popula- tion of this region is enlightened, temperate, and prosperous — a condition most favorable if not essential to the proper and full development of a real Americanism.
What did the war bring out? Previous to the advent of America into the war there was, on the whole, a true neu- trality. There were sympathizers and partisans of both sides and there was an even greater class of interested spectators who marveled at the stupendous feats of the armies of both sides. The American declaration of war was gladly acclaimed by the pro-Allies, cheerfully accepted as a call to duty by the great mass of interested spectators. It immediately engaged the support of the majority of those previously pro-German, leaving a very small minority of pro-Germans to carry on the propaganda against the American and Allied cause.
It was to deal with this small minority that we organized in May, 1917, and began to select and swear in A. P. L. operatives.
Among matters which called for constant vigilance, the Non- partisan League came in for a share of our attention. At the time of the entry of the United States into the war, Iowa was being covered with literature for and against this movement, the leading force against the Non-Partisan League being the Greater Iowa Association. The State Council for National Defense considered that it was not for the good of Iowa for this fight to continue, and passed resolutions asking both factions to discontinue their efforts until after the war. The Greater Iowa Association readily acceded to the request, but the Non-Partisan League persisted in its propaganda, and the Council for Defense deemed it wise to take a hand in fairness to the Greater Iowa Association.
But the foregoing mild report does not tell the full story in all of its acrimonious vehemence. A local agricultural journal came out in red head-lines across its cover page, ''Iowa's Reign of Terror!" The editor, in that and subse- quent issues, printed perhaps 50,000 words of condemna- tion of those not included among his own constituents, side- tracking alfalfa and Holsteins wholly for the time. He says:
To-day in Iowa there is a veritable reign of terror, which has been encouraged among Ignorant and irresponsible people,
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by men and organizations who should and do know better, but who are playing upon passion and prejudice for ulterior pur- poses. More harm is resulting from this assumption of author- ity by private individuals, without the shadow of moral or legal right, than by all the pro-German propaganda or real disloyalty in the state. And the worst of it is that it defeats the very purpose which is used to excuse it — the purpose of uniting all our citizens whole-heartedly and sincerely behind the Grovernm^it's war aims. Already this rule of passion, freed from legal restraint, has resulted In the excess of mob violence, of injustice and wrongs towards loyal and patriotic citizens, whose whole lives will be embittered by the brutal intolerance of a few. Our boasted freedom and liberty and love of fair play are being made the victims of methods no better than those of the despoilers of Belgium, from which they differ not in quality but only in degree.
Right to-day in Iowa, men in positions of leadership and responsibility are fomenting and encouraging this spirit of mob rule and terrorism, which is wholly outside the pale of law, and which will result in such a spirit of lawlessness that we will all pay dearly for it in the years to come. The Greater Iowa Association and its allied organizations are among those which are helpinc: to create this atmosphere of dangerous sus- picion and distrust, especially towards farmers' organizations in Iowa, which is bound to result in bloodshed and lynch-law if it is not quickly checked. The Greater Iowa Association boasts in its monthly publication that it has already spent $20,000 in helping to put down the Bolsheviki of Iowa (its usual expression for the loyal and conservative farmers of this state) and that it will spend $180,000 more (a total of $200,000) for this purpose if necessary. Its sentiments are approved and applauded by its sycophant organizations, such as the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, in its official monthly bulletin, which it proclaims is "the mouthpiece for Des Moines."
Tut, tut! Obviously, Mason City leads directly into a pretty political mess. Willy-nilly, friends of the A. P. L., if not members of the Non-Partisan League, are pushed into ranks assigned to enemies. We may mildly animad- vert on the fact that it is the members of the Non-Partisan League who largely buy the journal from which the fore- going quotation is made. It has had a long and honorable history, but is perhaps not so disinterested as the A. P. L. It does not, however, go to war with the A. P. L. so much as with the Greater Iowa Association, which presently
GERMAN PROPAGANDA gl
voted the editor out of membership. The American Pro- tective League might have been drawn into politics if it had lived much longer — perforce would be and ought to be drawn. One thing is sure, if a man must cater in business to a class which has disloyalty inborn and ingrained, that man is not catering to America and a great future for her.
It is all a question of the high heart of the gentleman unafraid— individual courage, clear-headedness, honest self-searching. That is as true for the native born as for the naturalized citizen. Perhaps for all these w^arring lowans, some of whom were zealous and interested, there might very well, in these grave, troubled days of our country and of all the world, be put on the w^all of our house the old Bible motto: ''Blessed are the pure in heart."
You ask, indeed, what shall we do with all these chame- leon propagandists, these foreigners? How shall we clas- sify them — as Americans or as enemies? Who is the American?
It is simple to answer that. It is he who himself knows in his own soul w^hether or not he is done with the damn- able hyphen which has almost ruined America, and yet may do so. Liberty Bonds and public speaking do not prove Americanism. Not even service stars in a window make a man American. Blessed are the pure in heart, of Mason City or of Des Moines, of the Greater Iowa Associa- tion or the Non-Partisan League, of the Peoples' Council, of the A. P. L., or of German or American birth. And when individual American courage is common enough to make a man fight pro-Germanism until it is dead forever, one thinks we shall indeed see God manifested again in the great civilization which once w^as promised for America. It can be had now in only one way, and that way will cost dear. If you are interested in your son's future, see to it that he — and you yourself — shall be pure in heart. We want and will have no others for Americans to-day or to- morrow.
CHAPTER VII
THE GERMAN SPY CASES
The Great Spy Cases — Details of German Propaganda — Finances and Personnel of German Forces in America — The Diplomatic Fiasco — Notorious Figures of Alien Espionage Uncovered — The Senate Judicial Investigation.
To gain any adequate idea of the amount of the activi- ties which centered in New York would mean the following out of countless concealed threads leading all over the world and covering the United States like a net. We never knew until we were well into this war that, long before we dreamed of war, our country was infested by vast numbers of the paid spies of Germany ; that these worked under a well-established, andj now well-known, organiza- tion; that the highest German diplomatic representatives were a part of the system ; that leading financial figures of New York were figures in it also, and that the whole intri- cate machine was differentiated like a great and well- ordered business undertaking. It was an elaborate organi- zation for the betrayal of a country; and that organiza- tion, like the armed forces of Germany in the field, was beaten and broken only by the loyal men of America, re- solved once more that a government of the people should not perish from the earth.
Let the scene shift from New York — whose defensive organization has been outlined — to the national judicial center at Washington, the seat of our intelligence system and of those courts of law which have in charge the national affairs. There, for many months, a few men have sat and watched pour into their offices such proofs of human perfidy and depravity as can never have been paral- leled in the most Machiavellian days of the Dark Ages.
The daily press of the United States acted under a volun- tary censorship during the war, even while it saw pass
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THE GERMAN SPY CASES 83
by such news as never before had it seen in America. Now
and again something of this would break which obviously was public property and ought to be known — the notorious transactions of von Bemstorff, von Papen, Dr. Albert, Boy- Ed, Bolo; such crimes as the blowing up of the inter- national bridge in Maine; the mysterious fires and explo- sions whose regularity attracted attention; the diplomatic revelations regarding Dumba and Dernburg and their col- leagues, which finally resulted in the dismissal of the clique of high German officials whose creed had been one of diplomatic and personal dishonor.
The stories of German attempts to control several New York newspapers; their efforts to buy or subsidize some thirty other journals in all parts of the country ; the well- known subsidizing of certain writers to spread propaganda in the press— all these things also necessarily got abroad to such an extent that the United States Government could not fail to take cognizance of it. At length, charges came out linking up a Washington daily with wealthy commer- cial interests of a supposedly pro-German nature, and a great deal of acrimonious comment appeared in all parts of the country. Washington resolved to investigate these charges. The process took the form, in the late fall of 1918, of the appointment of a sub-committee of the great Senate Judiciary Committee, which popularly was known as the Overman Committee.
The work of this committee, which summoned before it officers of the Attorney General's establishment in New York, agents of the Bureau of Investigation in Washing- ton, of Military and Naval Intelligence in Washington, and all the larger figures of the accused or suspected persons implicated in what now had become a wide-reaching national scandal, was continued over many weeks. The proceedings were made public regularly, and at last the readers of America began to get, at first hand, authentic ideas of what menace had been at our doors and inside our doors. It was before this Overman Committee that many of the great New York cases in which A. P. L. assisted passed to their final review.
Perhaps the most important single witness called before this Senate committee was Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief
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of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Jus- tice at Washington. Mr. Bielaski was on the stand for days at a time, and his testimony came as a distinct shock to those of us who heretofore had known little or nothing about the way in which our covert forces of espionage were combating those of Germany. It will not be needful to follow the records of the committee from day to day throughout the long period of its sittings, but some of the more important revelations made by Mr. Bielaski first may be brought to notice.
It was brought into the record, for publication later by the State Department, that there was a regular system of secret messages between Count von Bernstorff of the Im- perial German Embassy at Washington, and the Berlin Foreign Office, by way of South America and Stockholm. All this time the Imperial German Ambassador was posing as a great friend of America, while in reality he was the chief of the German spy system in America — an example of all that a nobleman should not be.
It was shown by Mr. Bielaski that the German consul in Chicago, Reiswitz, suggested as long ago as 1915 that Ger- man interests ought to buy the Wright aeroplane fac- tories in Dayton, Ohio, in an attempt to stop the shipment of aeroplanes to the Allies. Something stopped the ship- ment— let us suppose that it was not the efficiency of Ger- biany so much as our own inefficiency, deplorable as that admission must be.
Nothing came of this attempt, nor of the attempt to control the Bridgeport Projectile Works, in any very con- clusive and satisfactory fashion for Germany. A year later von Bernstorff begins to complain that German propa- ganda has not been producing much result. He cuts free from the German publication, ''Fair Play," and declares that he w^ould be glad to be well quit of George Sylvester Viereck's ''Fatherland." He asks his imperial government to give him $50,000 more, with which he would like to start a monthly magazine in the United States. This was the beginning of those general revelations which exposed alike the clumsiness of German diplomacy, and the endeavor of German espionage as against our own.
Reiswitz was declared by Mr. Bielaski to have advised
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 85
the continuance of the ''American Embargo Conference," which was set on foot to create opposition to our shipment of munitions to the Allies. He signified that this ought to be used as an influence to swing German voters in presi- dential elections. Mr. Bielaski brought into the record the ''Citizens' Committee for Food. Shipments," which was supported by Dr. Edmund von Mach of Cambridge. It had been organized in the home of a prominent New York citizen.
There was brought in the record also the name of a newspaper correspondent — more is the pity for that — who had letters from Count von Bernstorff and Captain von Papen, military attache, declaring that this man was in the service of Germany and Austria. The sj^idicate em- ploying this man, as is well known, cancelled his contract as soon as his real character and his pro-German attitude were revealed.
The record also declared that a former correspondent of the Cologne Gazette in Washington, notified by the State Department to leave this country, had been in close wire- less communication with a German paper in Rotterdam. All of these revelations began to implicate certain Americans prominent in business and in politics, so that at once the transaction by the Senate Committee became the biggest news of the time, one recrimination following another and one explanation another in rapid sequence. The Committee, none the less, ground on, and produced original papers which proved German methods beyond a doubt. Two code dispatches from von Bernstorff to the Berlin Foreign Office were put into the evidence, one of which was dated November 1, 1916, and stated: "Since the Lusitania case, we have strictly confined ourselves to such propaganda as cannot hurt us if it becomes known'.. The sole exception is perhaps the peace propaganda, which has cost the least amount, but which also has been the most successful."
Again von Bemstorff states that it would not seem de- sirable for him to be held responsible for any articles in the subsidized newspaper, "when, as now, we are in a campaign of the bitterest character which is turning largely upon foreign policy."
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Mr. Reiswitz of Chicago was on hand with estimates for his excellent master at all times. In regard to the Em- bargo Conference, he wrote in the first year of the war: **It would require an estimated amount of $6,000 or $7,000. The contemplated continuation of the enterprise would, in accordance with my opinion, be favorable to the entire German vote, and would facilitate influencing German voters." So we have at once the first indication of the truth that the great German population of America is to be handled for the particular purpose of advancing Ger- many's interests, not only in America but all over the world.
Mr. Bielaski read into the record documents alleging that the American Press Association was contemplated as desirable for German control. A memorandum by Dr. Al- bert, financial expert, stated that he would obtain a thirty day option on the American Press Association for the price of $900,000, with an additional $100,000 for news s.ervice. The memorandum in full was introduced before the Com- mittee.
Professor von Mach was stated by Mr. Bielaski to have been active in behalf of interned prisoners, largely by way of his press agent, whom he supplied with inspiration. Von Mach was later brought before the Committee to ex- plain in person as best he might certain publications which he had put out in other form.
Mr. Bielaski stated that German interests advanced to the Bridgeport Projectile Company $3,400,000, and that these interests got back $1,000,000 of this money by selling a large part of the company's product to Spain.
Mr. Bielaski mentioned a society known as the ** Ameri- can Truth Society," organized in 1910 and reported to have been financed by the German government, to what extent was undetermined. One record of a transfer of $10,000 was shown.
Records which had been taken from the office of Wolf von Igel showed that scarcely a ship sailed for a neutral country which did not carry a German agent. There were at least two American newspaper men who had been bought outright by Germany. Blackmail was not above the consideration of some of these fellow-conspirators.
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 87
Amounts of $1,000 to $5,000 had been paid to subsidize one paper which was dropped by the embassy. The owner then threatened the embassy that if he did not get any more money he might allow the paper to go into bank- ruptcy, and the ensuing publicity would show the subsidy. Dr. Albert was authorized to settle with this man to keep him quiet — he paid something over $3,000 in this instance. Continually there rose a loud wail from Dr. Albert and von Bernstorfe,' ''Stung!"
There were some recriminations between journals in America as to the nature of the ''news" sent in by Ameri- can foreign correspondents located in Germany. It w^as sometimes offered in explanation of the pro-German atti- tude of certain of these correspondents that it was natural that a man resident in Germany should hear one side only of the case. Others, more especially after the Senate reve- lations, were disposed to think there might be other valu- able considerations moving correspondents thereto. Indeed, names and dates and prices of perfectly good correspond- ents are now on record with the Overman Committee.
The Bielaski testimony was strengthened by that of Major Humes and Captain Lester of Military Intelligence. Incidentally, the attempts of Germany to embroil us with Mexico were shoAvn. Very interesting testimony was brought out from Carl Heinen, an interned German, for- merly a member of the Embassy staff, and a former consul general at Mexico City. Major Humes of M. I. D. put in the record the relations of Felix A. Somerfeld, an alien enemy who was an alleged Villa agent in New York, showing that in eight months Villa had received nearly $400,000 worth of rifle cartridges from Somerfeld, who was closely associated with the German agents, Carl Rintelen and Friedrick Stallforth, a prominent German banker in Mexico. The drafts on certain trust companies were pro- duced as part of the evidence.
Heinen 's deposition was subscribed to by F. A. Borger- meister. Dr. Albert's confidential secretary, before he was interned at Fort Oglethorpe. This disclosed the disposition of $33,770,000 that passed through German hands. This money was obtained in loans from New York banks, or through the American agents of banks in Germany.
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Secretary of War Baker had commanded Captain Les- ter of Military Intelligence to make public some of the secrets of this division which heretofore had been repos- ing in the silence of the tomb. Captain Lester testified to the confession of a former German officer, who admitted having been sent here as a propagandist. This man told the federal officials that in June, before the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated, the Ger- man government was plotting the war. Captain Lester quoted this man as saying that in the middle of June, 1914, Bethmann-Holweg sent out inquiries to various sci- entists, professors and other intellectual persons to learn w^hether they were ready for foreign service in the event of war. There were one hundred and thirty of these who were told to be ready for instant call to service in North and South America, Japan and China, as directors of pro- paganda. They met in the Foreign Office in Berlin, July 10, 1914, and three weeks later sailed from Copenhagen for New York under charge of Dr. Heinrich F. Albert. In order not to arouse suspicion, most of them traveled steerage.
Captain Lester, after a long day of testimony, referred to the '' Golden Book " — a book in which German-Amer- icans w^rote their names after they had contributed to a German War Belief fund. This book was to have been presented to the Kaiserin. The purpose of this book, in the belief of Captain Lester, was to get certain prominent German-Americans signed up as loyal to the fatherland, without letting them know they were doing it.
Captain Lester, in later testimony before the Overman Committee, said that of the one hundred and thirty trained and educated German propagandists sent out nearly a month before the war started, thirty-one landed in the United States two weeks after hostilities had started in Europe. They became the starting point of an organiza- tion comprising between 200,000 and 300,000 volunteers, in large part German- Americans, who were secret spies in this country and who reported regularly to German con- suls and agents in widely scattered centers of the German spy system in the United States.
It may cause a certain horror and revulsion in the hearts
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 89
of the American public when they realize that a quarter of a million secret German agents were working here in America all the time against us — just about as many as existed of loyal Americans under the unseen banner of the American Protective League. The American public now can begin to understand something of the bitter battle which was fought between these two secret organizations — the quarter million German spies who lived here, and the quarter million loyal American citizens who made this their home and this their country.
Captain Lester showed that the group sent to America had definite instructions. One was to deal with commer- cial matters, another with political, and a third leader was to take up the South American and Mexican relations. General headquarters in New York were at 1123 Broad- way, arrangements having been made for these quarters in advance. The Hamburg-American Company, whose status toward us in the war is now notorious, took charge of the first work of the German Press Bureau. The origi- nal artist in this labor was replaced by a newspaper man, whose salary from Germany was later discovered to have been $15,000. A former major of the United States, once a newspaper man, was declared to have been hired at $40 a week to report to these German headquarters any con- fidential interviews he might have with Washington offi- cials.
The Lutheran church propaganda was brought definitely before the Overman Committee. Dr. Albert and Dr. Puhr had this form of propaganda in charge. Captain Lester said that there are about six thousand Lutheran congre- gations in the United States, with a membership of nearly 3,000,000, and that the propaganda was directed through pastors who had been born in Germany, or were alien enemies, or were of German parentage. There were over one thousand two hundred individual cases investigated. Readers of these pages will recall a few instances of the work of the American Protective League in looking into these many instances of disloyalty. Captain Lester said: '* We have found in localities that the word had gone down the line to groups of clergymen that they were to preach sermons in favor of Germany, and that this had
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been done. I investigated a ease in New York where the clergyman admitted to me he had received instructions to preach such a sermon. From August, 1914, to April, 1917, in hundreds of Lutheran churches, the continuous preaching was in favor and hope of German victory."
It transpired that British Military Intelligence had in possession a great mass of documents taken by General Allenby in the capture of Nazareth. These were found among the effects of that Major Franz von Papen who once had been military attache in Washington, and whose name has become more or less familiar through some of the dis- closures regarding von Bernstorff and his activities.
These papers, added to those taken by our own Intelli- gence officers from prominent Germans this side the water, go to build up the tremendous and tragic story of a nation's shame. Germany had a widely spread and elabo- rate plan to ruin this country. She failed. The proofs of her failure are now before the public, and they run very wide. They do not leave us feeling any too comfortable or any too sure regarding our own country. It is not pleasant to have listed, as part with the German records, those of our great newspapers which, in the German belief, might be classed as " neutral or favorable to Germany.'* It is not pleasant to see the names of newspaper men once held honorable and loyal, but now condemned to have had the itching palm and to have received German gold. There is nothing pleasant about the whole sordid, abominable story, nothing clean, nothing satisfying, nothing honor- able. But it shows that when we had this sort of work to do, we did it thoroughly and accomplished the mission on which our men were sent out.
Some of the most sensational testimony was that brought out by Alfred L. Becker, Deputy Attorney General of New York, who had in charge a great many of the big espionage and treason investigation^ in that city, which was the American home and headquarters of the German spy army.
Mr. Becker told of his own investigations, at the instance of the French Government, in the case of Bolo Pacha. The latter was executed as a French traitor, but Avas shown to have gotten Germany money in this country to the extent of $1,683,000. As is well known, Bolo had raised
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 91
this money to purchase the Paris Journal. This paper, however, did not change its loyalty to France, so there was a loud wail on the part of Germany's headj spies that they had been swindled once more.
Mr. Becker produced many British secret service docu- ments showing the elaborate governmental arrangements in Berlin to establish and maintain spy systems, both before and after the war. These documents listed, as agents, journalists, college professors, bankers, business men, con- sular attaches, and others of all ranks. Mr. Becker showed that a former German reservist, later an auditor of accounts in New York City, was told as early as 1909 that he would be valuable in case of war as a German propagandist in the United States. It was intended to get a good system of distribution of German *' kultur " established in Amer- ica. Then there could at once be put before American readers such stories as that systematic attempt made in 1917 to advance the idea that Germany was on the verge of revolt and that the Kaiser soon would be overthro^^Ti. The German censor was back of the dissemination of these reports, it being maintained to paralyze the prosecution of the war in this country, where we had the pleasant theory that the German Kaiser and the German people were not at one as to the war.
Mr. Becker also went into many transactions of Ambas- sador von Bernstorff, showing him to have been quite willing to buy the Paris Journal with German money if need be. He placed in the record correspondence which showed that when Dr. Dernburg left Germany for the United States in August, 1914, the German government deposited 25,000,000 marks with M. M. Warburg & Com- pany of Hamburg, which Mr. Becker stated was for pro- paganda purposes in the United States. Dr. Dernburg brought to this country a power of attorney from the Imperial Secretary of the Treasury, which gave him the distribution of the fund. Of this fund, $400,000 was turned over to Dr. Albert, head of German finances in New York, by Dr. Dernburg.
Mr. Becker gave a long list of banks which had partici- pated in the sale of German bonds in this country, these banks being located in the principal cities of the east and
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west. He named as well the chain of banks in which the German government opened accounts for certain purposes. He showed the credentials brought from the German chan- cellor by Dr. Dernburg to large financial institutions in New York, which were made repositories of German funds. The letter to one such banking firm in New York, from Warburg & Company of Hamburg, establishing the Ger- man credit of 25,000,000 marks, was made a part of the record, also the power of attorney enclosed by Dr. Dern- burg to the New York repository.
Mr. Becker mentioned the underwriting of German bonds by a New York concern to a total amount of $9,908,- 000. The proceeds were deposited with a trust company in New York to the order of the Imperial German Govern- ment, and were checked^ out by von Bernstorff and Albert for deposit in the chain of banks above referred to. It was the intention to make these banking institutions favor- able to the German ideas, and unfavorable to the American bond sales. An initial deposit was made with the Equita- ble Trust Company of $3,350,000; the Columbia Trust Company had an initial deposit of $750,000; the Chase National Bank was alleged to have had an initial deposit of $125,000. As the proceeds of the German war loan notes accumulated, the deposits in certain of these New York financial institutions were increased. In order to avoid any legal complications, the German government openedj a blind account so that Dr. Albert could go on with his operations without any fear of detection by any- one desiring to bring legal action against him. These figures will give the reader some idea of the extent of the German finances. All this money — and many times tJie amounts above mentioned — ivas spent for tlie one and only purpose of German propaganda and spy work in tJie United States.
Major Humes took Dr. E-dmund von Mach over the jumps in his cross-examination before the Overman Com- mittee. Von Mach came in for a gruelling by Senator Nelson and others of the Committee when he attempted to speak in justification of German practices in war. He did his best to carry water on both shoulders, but had a very unhappy quarter of an hour. He was followed and
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 93
preceded on the stand by certain literary gentlemen, col- lege professors and others, who undertook to explain to the Committee utterances they had made in print or else- where which were charged to show disloyalty to the inter- ests of the United States. It is impossible to give in any sort of detail the vast extension of the testimony before this Committee, or to mention the many widely extended forms of the German activities that ran in this country during the war. Perhaps we may summarize the German attitude, as well as in any other way, by citing the opinion of that delectable gentleman, the Count von Bernstorff, ambassador of the Imperial German Government at Wash- ington, in his communication to the Foreign Office in Ber- lin, in explanation of his activities in the United States:
It is particularly difficult in a hostile country to find suit- able persons for help of this sort, and to this fact, as well as the Lusitania case, we may attribute the shipwreck of the German propaganda initiated by Herr Dernburg. Now that opinion is somewhat improved in our favor, and that we are no longer ostracized, we can take the work up again. As I have said before, our success depends entirely upon finding the suitable people. We can then leave to them whether they will start a daily, weekly, or a monthly, and the sort of sup- port to be given. In my opinion, we should always observe the principle that either a representative of ours should buy the paper, or that the proprietor should be secured by us by continuous support. The latter course has been followed by
the English in respect of the New York , and our
enemies have spent here large sums in this manner. All the same, I do not think that they pay regular subsidies. At least, I never heard of such. This form of payment is more- over inadvisable, because one can never get free of the recipients. They all wish to become permanent pensioners of the Empire, and if they fail in that, they try to blackmail us.
I, therefore, request your Excellency to sanction the pay- ment in question.
By way of general summary, it may be said" that a well- defined organization long existed in our country, districted with the usual German exactness. German Naval Intelli- gence had charge of destruction of our shipping, naval sabotage, etc. Boy-Ed, naval attache at Washington, was
94 THE WEB
to have handled this. The notorious Rintelen, who seemed to have operated independently in New York, confined his activities rather to the making of bombs to be concealed on ships, to the incitement of strikes, munition embargoes, etc. Dr. Scheele, one of the three most prominent spies in America, was relied on to devise means of burning ships at sea. His method of bomb manufacture is spoken of later.
What is equivalent to our Military Intelligence Depart- ment in Germany, in turn took up the question of sabotage in our ammunition works, and of getting contraband stuff into Germany. Scheele, who was taken in custody by the United States, declared that this country was divided into military districts, and that supplies of arms and ammu- nition were gotten together. He even declared at one time that he knew of 200,000 Mauser rifles stored in a German club in New York City. He was taken there by Govern- ment officials and located the place where the rifles prob- ably had been stored, although they hadj in the meantime been removed.
Von Papen, military attache at "Washington, had much the same work for the army that Boy-Ed had taken on for the navy. He often appears in the revelations of the German spy system, as in the plot against the Welland Canal, and the Vanceboro bridge, for which Werner Horn was arrested. Von Papen had the charge of the Bridge- port Projectile Company, which was intended to disor- ganize our manufacture of munitions. He had some sort of charge of Scheele, the German chemist spy, who is, per- haps, the best known example now remaining on American soil of the German espionage system.
Special commissions to spread disease germs were sent to this country, as perhaps A. P. L. reading will have indi- cated. A good deal of this work failed because so many of the German spies were interned early in the war, and there has been no good opportunity since to replace these men properly, the war having traveled too fast when once America was in it.
But what, perhaps, has shocked andj horrified Americans more than anything else (and it cannot be too often iter- ated) was the knowledge that long before this war Ger-
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 95
many had a vast system of spies all through America. This system of international spies was originated almost a gen- eration ago by the Prussian War Office. There were sup- posed to have been about 30,000 spies in France before this war was declared. England also was well sown with such persons in every rank of life. We had our share.
Dr. Scheele told the Department of Justice when he was taken in charge that for twenty-one years before the out- break of the European war he had been stationed in Brook- lyn as a representative of the German government. His *' honorarium," as he called it, was $125 a month. He had been a German major, yet o^vned a drug store in Brooklyn. A couple of months before war was declared by Germany, he was told to get rid of his drug store — that is to say, to mobilize in America for the German purposes in the coming war. He said the drug store was doing very well. Others of these fixed spies got salaries about like that of Scheele, a retainer of $1,000 nominal salary being more frequent. In charge of all these lesser regular spies, who had been absorbed in the American citizenship, were the consuls and the high diplomatic offi- cials of the Imperial German Government in our country. It would be a very great deal to hope that this system has been actually extirpated. That it did exist is true with- out any doubt or question.
Any A. P. L. man whose work was identified with the larger eastern cities will note many points of contact of the A. P. L. with D. J. and M. I. D. in the testimony brought before the Overman Committee. It is, of course, not too much to say that A. P. L. was at the foundation of much of that testimony itself. Many of the facts above brought out are of record in the A. P. L. files.
In yet another line of Government work, the League has been very useful — that of cooperating with Mr. A. Mit- chell Palmer, Custodian of Alien Property, whose state- ments, made elsewhere than in the committee, constitute a rather valuable extension of the committee's information.
Reference was made before the committee to the Bridge- port Projectile Company. Mr. Palmer some time ago announced that he had taken over 19,900 of the 20,000 shares of the capital stock of that concern, and that there
96 THE WEB
had been reported to him other property of approximate value of $500,000 held by it for and in behalf of Germany.
In a statement accreditedi to him, Mr. Palmer again bared the efforts of that malodorous quartet. Count von Bernstorff, Dr. Albert, Dr. Dernburg and Captain von Papen. It was the obvious intent of these to use the Bridgeport Projectile Company to prevent the manufac- ture and shipment of arms and ammunition to the Allies. The taking over of the stock of the Bridgeport Projectile Company, and the report by the company of the property owned by the German government, with the disclosures incident thereto, followed many months of persistent investigation.
It was planned to have this corporation buy up all the available supplies of powder, antimony, hydraulic presses, and other supplies and materials essential to the manu- facture of munitions. The plan also involved the negotia- tion of contracts with the alliedi Governments to supply them with materials of war, apparently in good faith but in reality with no intention of fulfilling them. The ulti- mate expenditure of approximately $10,000,000 for this purpose was contemplated.
In a cable from London printed in the American press on the morning of January 15, 1919, a statement was given from a German newspaper quoting Dr. Dernburg, the Ger- man propagandist who was expelled from America some years ago. Now Dr. Dernburg comes out in the Vienna Neiie Freie Presse and states that Germany is depending upon ^' a certain drawing together of Germany and the United States." He believes that nothing should be done which will '' give foundation for a lasting alienation of the two peoples. ' ' He finds the Allies in victory somewhat difficult in their terms, so that Germans turn their eyes and expectations toward America, *' and feel sure that their expectations will not come to grief." He goes on to say that Germany needs raw materials for the revival of her industries, needs credit, and also a market. He looks to America for all these, and says: *' A fear of German competition does not exist in America in the same degree as in France and England. The hatred against the German people does not exist since the dynasty has
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 97
been overthrown, and it is quite possible that America will transfer English and French debts to Germany in order to give her money, for America seeks not destruc- tion but justice. Our two countries will be brought together, and as rivalry is out of the question, this coopera- tion will take a more tolerable form than in the case of our neighbors." He goes on to say: ''A careful eco- nomic policy, I think, will secure Germans sympathy, thereby providing economic help for our German indus- tries, now in collapse, and possibly awaken stirring echoes in two million Americans of German origin. . . . Amer- ica will have other interests in Germany allied with her by interest and by service rendered to Germany ; so taking all these points of view together, one may well consider that the earliest possible reconciliation between (jrermany and America will be good for the future of the world and will be welcomed by the German people."
The human mind with difficulty can conceive of any- thing indicative of more brazen effrontery than the fore- going. That is the statement to-day of one of the arch- traitors planted in this country by Germany. No doubt, it may awaken a ^' stirring echo " at least in the hearts of the quarter million of German spies who worked with Dernburg here.
The great danger to America is her unsuspiciousness. Having lived half a century cheek by jowl with these men, although in ignorance of their real quality, we are expected to go on living with them on the same terms that existed before the war. Great Britain, sterner than we, definitely has announced her intention of deporting German aliens — she intends to take no chances. What the French will do is a foregone conclusion. German '* kul- tur " is begging at the doorsteps of the world.
Mr. Palmer, custodian of alien enemy property, can complete the story. For instance, there was loose talk around New York in the early days of the war that under one tennis court in New Jersey there was a gun emplace- ment from which New York could be bombarded. It was said that a German-OA\Tied factory building had a gun emplacement built into its floor with the same amiable intention. Custodian Palmer points out that there really
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was a concrete pier in the port of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, with a concealed base suitable for heavy gun mounts. That pier now belongs to the United States Gov- ernment. Before the war it was the property of a steam- ship company organized by wealthy Germans, of whom Emperor William was one. Its office was in the headquar- ters of the German spies in New York. After the United States went to war, the pier was sold to a Dane to cover the ownership. The Dane could not meet his note when it came due, andj Mr. Palmer confiscated the pier immedi- ately as German property.
Mr. Palmer stated, long before the Overman Committee began its testimony, that Germany, years before she started this war, had undertaken to plant on American soil a great industrial and commercial army. She believed she could keep America out of the conflict, for she had her organization in every state of the Union. It reached across the Pacific to Hawaii and the Philippines and up to Alaska ; in the Atlantic it was found in Porto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Panama. Industry after industry was built up, total- ing probably two billion dollars in money value, and.' bill- ions more in potential political value.
** Germany had spies in the German-owned industries of Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York and the West," says Mr. Palmer. " She fought the war when we were neutral on American soil by agents sent here for that purpose. ' '
St. Andrew's Bay, not far from Pensacola, Florida, is a very fine harbor, the nearest American harbor, indeed, to the Panama canal. Mr. Palmer shows that this was wholly controlled by Germans, who were organized in the form of a lumber company and who had purchased thou- sands of acres of timber nearby. The wealthy owner of the German property never saw it. A concealed fort had been constructed there, and right of way on the shore had been purchasedj. Not even the Government of the United States could have obtained a terminal on St. Andrew 's Bay unless it did business with the owner in Berlin. Such being the case. Custodian Palmer did not buy it at all — he simply took it in and added it to his list of more than two billion dollars' worth of German-owned property taken over since the war began.
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 99
There were German spies in our chemical works, metal industries, textile concerns, and in every line of our com- merce. They had a fund, mentioned at different times in the Overman Committee testimony, which was somewhere between thirty millions and sixty millions of dollars — all of it to be used in propaganda, subsidizing, subornation and destruction.
There were three or four German firms in America w^hich had much to 'do with the German declaration of war. They were instrumental in piling up the gigantic quanti- ties of American metals, to prepare that country for its onslaught in 1914. There were great stocks of copper accumulated in America to be sold to Germany after the close of the war. The actual ownership of these things was so very carefully concealed by a masquerading inter- changeable personnel that it required months of investi- gation to get at the real facts and to discover that the real owner was Germany itself. In taking over these metal businesses. Alien Property Custodian Palmer broke the Ger- man control of the metal industry of America. It has been intended to wipe out these industries so completely that they cannot get a start again.
The New York Times of November 3, 1918, printed a quarter-page story in regard to some of these revelations which should be made not only a part of the record of the Senate Committee but of the records of America itself :
When on April 6, 1917, America declared war on Germany, there was in New York as American representative of the Deutsche Bank of Berlin, a German by the name of Hugo Schmidt. As the world now knows, it was the Deutsche Bank which financed the von Bernstorff-Bolo Pacha plot to debauch France, which formulated a scheme to corner the wool market of the world, a plot the object of which was to gain control of the after-the-war trade in South America, and which, through its agents in this country and South America, was keeping tab on the political situation in this hemisphere for the Foreign OflBce in Berlin. How these plots and numerous others were planned and how they were to be carried out, was disclosed In a great mass of documents which will go down in history as the "Hugo Schmidt Papers."
Despite the fact that he was one of the first of the Kaiser's subjects to be arrested after this country entered the war, and
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despite the fact that he knew the all-important nature of the papers, Schmidt failed to destroy the documents. He acted on the theory that the United States Government would not take them, and so he catalogued them and stored them away in his private office at Broadway and Rector Street, and in his living quarters in the old German Club in West Fifty-ninth Street.
It was the plotting of Bernstorff and Bolo Pacha, with Adolph Pavenstedt, the enemy alien banker of New York, acting as a go-between, that caused the seizure of Schmidt's papers, with the unmasking of scores of German political and trade plots, involving financial backing mounting into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The revelations which have followed the seizure of these papers have filled pages in the newspapers of the United States and the rest of the world, and yet the story has not yet been half told. The new chapters in a story, which has been pronounced by Federal officials among the most interest- ing of all the disclosures brought about as a result of the great war, will be issued by Deputy Attorney General Alfred L. Becker, the man who exposed Bolo.
The seizure of millions of dollars worth of German-owned property in this country has been made possible, to a large extent, by Mr. Becker's seizure of Schmidt's papers. But for its conclusive evidence of the true ownership of certain great properties, the Government of the United States would have had an almost impossible job in ferreting out the trade foot- holds of the Hun in America. To-day the Government is in control of great woolen mills, of huge plants now engaged in the manutacture of munitions of war, of splendid ocean-going steamships (not those of the Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd lines), which, until Schmidt's papers were studied, were supposed to be neutral or American ^Dwned ; not to mention numerous other important plants, all of which were proved to be of enemy ownership and of which a majority have already been auctioned off to bona fide American owner- ship and control.
Aside from what the future may disclose as a result of a further study and investigation of Schmidt's papers, the fol- lowing summary, prepared in the office of Mr. Becker, shows in a condensed form the results obtained to date as a result of the seizure of the German banker's books and other data:
1. Part of documents that helped in the conviction of Bolo Pacha.
2. Furnished evidence upon which Hugo Schmidt and Adolph Pavenstedt were interned.
3. Furnished evidence disclosing German plot to hoard
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 101
wools and other textiles for German account; furnislied evi- dence enabling the Government to take control of Forstmann & Huffmann Company, and proving conclusively the German ownership of the Botany Worsted Mills.
4. Furnished evidence upon which Eugene Schwerdt was interned.
5. Furnished key of the secret telegraphic code of the Deutsche Bank, which since has been used by all the intelli- gence bureaus throughout the world to decode wireless and cable messages as well as correspondence.
6. Furnished information to compile an index showing approximately 32,000 subscribers in America for war loans of the Central Powers.
7. Disclosed payments of moneys made by the German Foreign OflBce to their diplomatic representatives abroad, notably to the German Minister in Buenos Aires, about 8,000,000 marks ($1,600,000); to the German Minister in Mexico, about $178,000; to the Minister at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, $120,000, etc.
8. Disclosed the payments made by the German Foreign Oflace, through the Deutsche Bank, to its diplomatic repre- sentatives in the United States, von Bernstorff, Boy-Ed, von Papen and Albert, to carry on different methods of German propaganda and frightfulness, as well as commercial aggression.
9. Disclosed extensive plans for the control of South Amer- ican trade by German interests, and showed German methods of keeping a close scrutiny on the political situation of the several South American republics.
10. Disclosed means adopted for carrying on German busi- ness in enemy as well as in neutral countries, and gave to the authorities the names of the German agents in every neutral country in the world.
The arrest and internment of Schmidt and Pavenstedt was a direct result of the exposure of Bolo Pacha. Pavenstedt is the former head of the banking house of G. Amsinck & Co., and for years was among the best known of the Kaiser's subjects in New York. The Schmidt papers disclosed him as an intimate of von Bernstorff, Dr. Albert, Boy-Ed, and von Papen, and as the man to whom Bolo went immediately on arrival in this this country in the late winter of 1916. Pavenstedt negotiated for Bernstorff the financial part of the conspiracy which re- sulted in the payment to Bolo out of the funds of the Deutsche Bank in this country a sum totaling about $1,700,000.
It was also disclosed that immediately following the out- break of the war, Boy-Ed and von Papen hurried to New York to establish propaganda and plot headquarters as per instruc-
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tlons received from Berlin. Boy-Ed, like Bolo, first sought Pavenstedt, who found room for the German naval attache in his own oflace iUi the bank building. Later, when the news- papers began to print stories of the questionable operations of the German naval and military attaches, they moved to other headquarters, the transfer being made "for reasons of policy," at the suggestion of Pavenstedt.
The story of Bolo is known to every one, and it is not neces- sary to point out how the Schmidt papers led to that traitor's arrest and subsequently to his execution by a French firing squad.
Here is an A. P. L. o»ase which is recommended to the attention of those who write short stories of a detective nature : It has to do with a beautiful adventuress, who among other things was known as a countess. Let us not give the real name. We will call her Mrs. Jeannette Sickles, alias Countess De Galli, alias Mrs. Dalbert, alias Rose La Foine, alias Jeannette McDaniels, alias Miss Ellen Hyde, alias Jeannette La Foine — we need not give more of her names. The records of this case show that she was entangled Avith an employe of the Adjutant General's office, a night clerk, whose duties were to sort the mail. This clerk under examination admitted that he knew this lady, admitted that he had become very fond of her — was, indeed, in love with her; said she had kissed him and given him divers manifestations of her affection; said he hadj met her often at hotels in the presence of others ; said she came to him for advice about certain unfair treatment which she thought the Department of Justice had given her; said he was going to marry the lady if he had a chance, as he had found her a very congenial woman. The writer of fiction can easily fill out the details. The adven- turess was intelligent, beautiful and accomplished. She was working close to many of our Government secrets; it would be her fault if she did not learn a great many things about this country and its government.
It was stated that this particular Government clerk was known to be a socialist; was corresponding with Emma Goldman. Other charges were made against him, not redounding to the credit of his moral character. He was rated as being a man slovenly in his looks and *' with no
THE GERMAN SPY CASES 103
moral and mental stamina. ' ' In short, the field was pretty good for the purposes of German espionage. Pages could be written covering the activities of this particular emis- sary. She was one of a certain type who will work any- where for money. During the Red Cross drives in Wash- ington, she was suspected by some of the operatives who were working for the United States Shipping Board. It was discovered that she was working in that department, also, as a welfare worker *' under very mysterious circum- stances.'' She was cared for. \
There was a certain gentleman by the name of Dr. Frederick August von Strensch, who was arrested by the Department of Justice on testimony furnished by opera- tives. The worthy doctor might have been regarded as practically innocent — all he planned was the invasion of Canada and Mexico by German reservists located in the United States. This man had long made America his home. He was arrested on a presidential warrant. Along with him, there was arrested a certain dazzling stage celebrity represented to have been a countess in her more private life in Europe. A mass of correspondence was taken with these people, revealing the fact that 150,000 German reserv- ists were to be sent to Canada, about the same number into Mexico. Definite plans were mentioned referring to the assemblage of 25,000 men on the Canadian border. This one plot alone, if mentioned here in detail, would give all the data necessary for a sensational thriller in detective fiction. But it is not fiction. This sort of work actually went on within our country. Not only in this instance, but in many others, a deliberate and extremely dangerous attempt was made to embroil us with other countries.
When the merchant submarine '^ Deutschland " arrived in this country on its celebrated voyage, a part of its cargo consisted of thirty-three thousand pounds of tung- sten, scarce in this country, but of value in making certain high grades of steel. After considerable sleuthing on the part of operatives, this tungsten was traced to a concern ostensibly American, but really owned altogether by Ger- mans. The way in which the identity of these steel manu- facturers was concealed is proof of the ingenuity and
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resourcefulness of the master criminal minds of the world. As showing the thoroughness with which Germany works^ one of the accused stated that when he came out of Ger- many to confer with his associates, the German censors destroyed all his papers, examined all his clothing, and stripped him and washed him with a solution of alcohol to eradicate any message which he might have painted on his skin! They w^ere not above a suspicion on their own part. The Alien Property Custodian took over, as a result of these investigations, the Becker Steel Company, whose plant was located at Charleston, W. Va. The details of this case are extremely voluminous.
The passport frauds have long been ^' old stuff " in the American journals, and need be no more than referred to here. At the time German reservists were needed in the Oldj Country (there were more than a thousand very useful officers here who were much needed in the German army), the question of passports came up. These men could not get U. S. passports, so a general system of forged passports was set on foot in which the highest diplomatic officials of Germany in America did not scorn to take a hand. It was their idea of honorable service, one supposes. Cer- tainly, von Bernstorff — whom we kept in this country long after he should have been kicked out — employed a go-between who arranged and carried on a very consid- erable traffic in foreign passports. The ordinary price was about twenty dollars, — small business, truly, for an ambas- sador, but von Bernstorff, von Papen, von Weddell, von Igel and others worked together in this thing until the Department of Justice men got too hot upon their trail. A long and intricate story hangs upon this. It is enough to say that the frauds were unearthed and the lower and middle class operatives in the frauds were put away. Von Weddell, the most important of these conspirators, took ship for Norway. However, the ship on which he sailed was sunk by a German U-boat, — tragic justice in at least one instance.
Another of the well known German enterprises against England and her Indian empire was brought to light in the so-called Hindu Plot — also very well known through newspaper publication. It came to a focus in a trial in
TH£3 GERMAN SPY CASES 105
San Francisco, in which one Hindu leader shot another and was himself shot the next instant in the court room by a deputy marshal in attendance — a fact which perhaps lingers in the public memory even in these exciting days. The Hindu plot, reduced to its simple and banal lowest common denominator, consisted in a more or less useless intrigue with certain more or less uninfluential citizens of Hindu birth. One phase of the activities was the pur- chase with German money in New York of several hundred thousand rifles and several million cartridges, which were to be shipped in a vessel from the Pacific Coast to meet a certain other vessel far out in the Pacific for transfer of the cargo. That cargo was to be delivered where it would do the most good to any Hindu gentleman disposed to rise against the British authority. It is a long and rather dull story — how everything miscarried for our friends the Germans and the Hindus. The rifles never were deliv- ered ; the conspirators were brought to trial ; the conspiracy was ended. And at the end, in a court room, and because he himself had a weapon in his hand, we got one Hindu Hun at least.
As a mere trifle, it may be mentioned that Joseph
W , an Austrian subject, was arraigned in the Enemy
Alien Bureau at New York, charged with having in his
possession a United States na\^ code book. W was
said to be a ** collector of stamps." He had in his pos- session a map of South America, and a list of warships of the Brazilian navy. He had also certain sheets of paper carrying mysterious characters made up of letters and dashes. He said he had been a piano player and was tak- ing music lessons by mail.
Lt. Christian S was before the Enemy Alien
Bureau at the same time. He was once six years in the
German army as an officer of the Uhlans. One day S
called on United States Marshal McCarthy and asked him to help him get a job. He returned to find out if the marshal had found a place for him, and when the marshal said he had not, the German showed anger and remarked : ** This is what makes us disloyal! " Marshal McCarthy arrested S and arraigned him before Perry Arm- strong, assistant chief of the Enemy Alien Bureau. Iq
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answer to questions, S said he did not approve of
German-Americans, that he approved of the sinking of the Lusitania and endorsed what the Germans had done in Belgium. He was committed to Ludlow Street jail pending further investigation.
Last May there was arrested in New York one Gustave
B. K , of whom it was said : * * Not only is he an