A man by the name of M—— came from Chicago, and closely following him came a report that he was wanted by the Chicago police. Operatives located the man and thought he would look well in the uniform of the United States Army, but the recruiting office, inquiring into the reason for the Chicago telegram, found that the man had served a term in the penitentiary. He was not, therefore, classified even as a slacker and he did not get into the Army, which will not receive anyone who has served a prison sentence.
Los Angeles had considerable to do with the stoppage of propaganda by means of motion pictures, that city being the capital of filmdom. Newspaper reports of the cases of the film “Patria” and of “The Spirit of 1776” are familiar to the reading public. A. P. L. was always on hand for film censorship purposes.
A case which attracted considerable attention was known as the von H—— case. The subject was a native of Germany, fifty-three years of age, a resident in the United States for thirty-two years. He never had become a citizen, although once employed in the California post office. Von H—— was a movie actor who did spy parts. He fraternized with the soldiers and sailors in propria persona, and liked to ask them to his room for conversations over the war. At length he was arrested. His rooms turned out a mass of evidence, including four hundred snap shots and some forty letters of the vilest nature. He had intended to send this material over to Germany to show the lack of morale of the American soldiers and sailors. He had an oil painting of the Kaiser, a picture of von Hindenburg and one of the German flag. He was sentenced to five years, but it is not thought that he will live out his sentence. Perhaps we can struggle along without him.
There is no character in whom the public more naturally reposes confidence than in the tried and true negro Pullman porter, but this is the story of one such porter accused of draft evasion. He was confined in jail but was offered release if he would go into the Army. He told the operative that he would go all right, but that his check for forty dollars was not on hand and that he needed about five dollars to “float himself.” The operative loaned him the five dollars and the Pullman porter is still floating. Neither Army nor anyone else has heard of him since.
Most of the more groundless suspicions and imaginings of Americans regarding German spies arose among the women of the country. Their apprehensions at times would lead them to report almost anything. One small demure little woman once applied to the headquarters of the A. P. L. in Los Angeles and said that she knew parties—German spies—who received money from Germany and who had no resources other than the funds of the German Government. The chief asked her upon what she based her information. The little lady looked carefully around the room, under the table and out of the window, and then came close up to the chief before she gave him the real basis of her charge. She said that the parties referred to were the possessors of a cuckoo clock which she was sure was made in Germany; hence they must be pro-Germans, and therefore spies!
The German ministers, it seems, infest the Pacific slope as well as the northwestern part of the United States. Herewith the case of Emile K——, minister of a German Methodist church. An operative went into his church and took his seat in the last pew. He reports:
A broad shouldered man in a frock coat sat down beside me, introduced himself as Rev. K—— and asked me if I was one of the Liberty Bond salesmen. I denied any such impeachment, saying this to him in German. This seemed to please him very much, and Mr. K—— thawed out. He told me after a while that he was born in Wisconsin but that his heart was in the right place, like most people that were born there in “Little Germany.” He said he had been in Mexico, where he had spent four years “very profitably.” He smiled at me—rather meaningly, I thought. He wanted to know how the Irish were behaving toward our people in New York. He also said that it was too bad the Americans did not want to fight. He thought that if the Japanese were to come over, it might arouse our manhood. He asked me to be sure and call again, as he enjoyed my company very much. There was something cold-blooded about this man that made me think he would look better in a German uniform than in a preacher’s coat. What worries me about him—and I hope the A. P. L. will square it—is that I had to put a quarter in the collection plate to keep up appearances. I demand that two bits back if the A. P. L. ever puts him in the jug!
An operative was sent out to get a deserter who seemed to be rather of an inventive turn of mind. He found his man in a barn, and when the suspect came out, the operative ran up and called him by name. The suspect turned and asked him if he was arrested. When the operative asked him, “Arrested for what?” he replied, “You know, all right.” He then admitted that he was a deserter from the Navy at San Francisco. He wanted to go into the house after some letter paper, but the operative would not let him. Afterwards he said he wanted to go in to get a gun, and would have shot the operative rather than go with him. Returned to San Francisco from Los Angeles jail.
A carload of A. P. L. men went out to a deserted spot in the San Fernando Valley near the Los Angeles aqueduct. A mysterious German had been seen about, possibly with evil intent. Operatives surrounded a small cabin which was occupied by a very arrogant German and two women. The man on the case reports: “I noticed a big revolver on the dresser, secured it and put it in my pocket before we went on with the investigation. We went through all his letters, mostly in German, but discovered nothing in the way of evidence. We told him why we had come and warned him to keep away from the aqueduct. He took it all very submissively, so I thought it would be all right to leave the revolver which I had captured. When I took it out of my pocket to look it over, I found that it was empty, the hammer had been knocked off and it could not have been fired.” But “you will note,” writes the operative with an exultant note, “that I responded fully to the demands of the occasion in the way of bravery!”
A case came down from Seattle to Los Angeles, having to do with an itinerant slacker who came from Pennsylvania and who, since then, had lived in Idaho, Washington, and California. The suspect’s physical description was that of a man six feet tall, weight about 220 pounds, health apparently the best, appearance very shabby, an additional circumstance being that he had a pronounced aversion to the use of water which was very evident at close range. It was stated that the man owned at least nine different properties, and although indolent, was apparently well to do. He was found in possession of Socialist literature, and declared that he would not buy bonds or assist the Government or have anything to do with the Red Cross. He was asked how he would like to join the Army. Since he did not like the proposition, he was arrested for violation of the Selective Service Act, found within the age, and indicted September 20, 1918, by the Federal Grand Jury for failure to register for the draft.