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 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 immediate danger of dynamite outrages. Many plants agreed to present to the League monthly a considerable checque to aid the work of safeguarding. Many wealthy individuals gave additional amounts. A very considerable sum was raised 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 went 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 reputation—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 automatically ended many things. But the American Protective 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 perfectly 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, Chairman; 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 Assistant 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 in the American Protective League, except as each man’s conscience gave him his best reward, 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 Washington, 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 successful. 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 known, 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 communities. They did not work for pay. 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 way more specifically informing than has hitherto been attempted.