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The Authorized History of The American Protective League

BY

Emerson Hough

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 shouting, 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 Government, the sacredness of our flag, the safety of American lives and property. Here sat the authorized agents of the Army, emploj^ed 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 Division ' daily felt also the touch of this great, silent, smooth-

12 AUTHOR'S PREFACE

running machinery of the Department of Justice, whose governmental 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 Expeditionary 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, thenselves 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 phenomena 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 espionage and propaganda. More often seen than any other initials 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 questionnaire 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, department, 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, Bureau of Investigation." These are its credentials.

A, P. L., the mysterious 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 demobilization. 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 million 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 responsible 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 fragment of the total due.

The American Protective League was the largest company of detectives the world ever saw. The members serYed 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 absolutely to defeat, the vast and highly trained army of the German espionage system, which in every country of the globe flooded the land 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 Vesle 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 Protective League disbanded, it had no money in the treasury. It had spent millions of dollars, and had brought to judgment three million cases of disloyalty. There, obviously, unwritten 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 st0!3 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 quarter of a million friends I have never seen, who never have seen one another, who never otherwise would know the identity of one another, I began to do something which most obviously and certainly ought to be done. This book is written 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 astonishing 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 op the League 38

IV The League in Washington 44

V The Law and Its New Teeth 55

YI German Propaganda 62

VII 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 op 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 op Philadelphia 210

IV The Story of Newark 226

V The Story of Pittsburgh 239

VI The Story op Boston 246

VII The Story of Cleveland 256

VIII The Story of Cincinnati 267

IX The Story of Dayton 276

X The Story op Detroit .\. 285

XI The Story op St. Louis , 293

XII The Story op Kansas City 303

XIII The Story of Minneapolis 310

XIV The Story op 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

Chapter I

The "Neutral Cases" — First Realization of the German Spy System in America — Overcrowding of the Department of Justice — The Birth of a New Idea — Formation of the American Protective League, Civilian Auxiliary — Astonishing Growth of the Greatest Semi- Vigilante Movement of the World.

We Americans have always been disposed to peace. We have not planned for war. 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 an-d industry admittedly ought to have. No one has feared us, and there has been none of whom we have had any fear. We have designedly stood aloof from entangling alliances. The two great oceans traditionally have been our friends, for they have set us apart from the world'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 own form of government — that was the theory of this country and of this form of government. That was the reason why this country, naturally endowed above any other region of the world, has grown 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 prove this, offered partnership in her wealth to any man of the world, under a system of naturalization laws whose like, in broadness and generosity, 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 world. That was what America offered ; and in spite of the pinch and the unrest of growing numbers, in spite of problems imported and not native to our long-untroubled land, that was the theory of American 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 how that was done ; how the very force of the situation demanded and received an instant and sufficient answer; how the civilians rallied to their own flag; how they came out of private life unasked, un^ummoned, 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 tremendous day of Lexington.

It was not autocracy which gave the assembly call to 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? Usually 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 offered 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 tJie war."

It was the spirit voice of anguished America which mobilized 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 Germany, brutal, bloody, autocratic, destructive, would be defeated beyond the sea. Yes, and on this side of the sea.

On this side, much was to be done, more than we 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.

And, quite aside from the idea of material profit, we tried to be fair and impartial in a fight that was not yet onrs, though every American heart bled with France and Belgium, 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 own forces.

Whether or not we all wished to be neutral so many years, we officially and nationally were neutral. Therefore 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 munitions had she wished to do so. Great Britain had something 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 sportsman — 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 Ijeen planning many years for "diesen aufunsangehangten

Krieg" — "this war forced on us!" We did not have any idea that she had Counted upon two million German- Americans 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 organization of spies who had learned every vulnerable point of the American defenses, who were better acquainted with our Army than we ourselves were, and who had extended their covert activities to a degree which left them arrogantly confident of their success at war, and contemptuous of the best that America ever could do against her. Germany never doubted that she would 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 Eussia, 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 shoul-d 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 twoheaded 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 William HohenzoUern to the accredited representative of this country in his court — ^William HohenzoUern, 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 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 hissing 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 v/ail, * ' Germany is my mother, America my wife ! How can I 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' would live as we would not live. It would be wrong to call them all bad, and folly to call them all good. As a class they were clannish beyond all other races coming here. Many who at first were openly pro- German became more discreet ; but of countless numbers of these, it is well known 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 were of this ''loyal German- American citizenship." They really had not earned even the hyphen.

Open and covert action was taken by Germany on both sides of the Atlantic to bring America into line. Not fearing America, nor knowing the real America a!t all, Germany did much as she liked. Outrages on the high seas began. All international law was cast aside by Germany as fully as in her invasion of Belgium. She coiuited so surely on success and world-conquest that she was absolutely arrogant and indifferent alike to law and to humanity. The militaristic Germany began to show — brutal, crafty, bestial, lacking in all honor, ignorant of the word "fair play," callous to every appeal of humanity, wholly and unscrupulously selfish. "We began now to see the significance of that ''efficiency" of which our industrial captains sometimes had prated over-much. Yes, Germanywas 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 advertisements not to sail on the Lusitania — as though she owned us and the sea. After the deed, she struck medals in commemoration of it. German church bells rang to glorify it. A German holiday was created to celebrate it. German preachers there an>d 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 war. The daily page of red horrors fresh from Europe taught us what war meant at this day of the world.

"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, forgettmg 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 sympathy 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 country. The war was on, on both sides the Atlantic now.

And still America did not know, 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 Washington, 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 flooded and submerged with work in the Bureau of Investigation, collecting evidence against German spies and German lawbreakers. 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 handle covert and hidden war as G-ermany 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 "Neutrality 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 success of ruthless submarine warfare, told us when we could vsail, how we must mark our ships — said, sneeringly, ''Yell, 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 staggering 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 the 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, millions in lives. So much for hesitancy.