We may be content to close the story of California, ragged and incomplete as it has been, with this report from a little mountain community of California. It is what the author is disposed to call incontestably the best report that has been found in all the great Golden State, if not, indeed, in all the United States.

Only three men, away out in the hills—but all of them Americans and all of them ready to work for America—that is why this League was great; because it had men such as these ready to do its work, as best they could, in whatever form it came to hand for the doing. One fancies that in all the stories of the many different towns reported in these pages, there will not be one better received by the great brotherhood of the A. P. L. than this one from Orleans, 102 miles from the nearest rails, with no telegraph and no telephone. The author of this book hopes to see Orleans some time. He believes it may be American.

BOOK III
THE FOUR WINDS

How Manufactures, Munitions and Agriculture were Protected—Briefs of Cases from All Over the Country—Chips from the Little Fellow’s Axe—Odds and Ends from the Files—The Far-Flung Work of the A. P. L.

I The Story of the East
New York—Pennsylvania—New Jersey—Connecticut—Massachusetts—Delaware—Rhode Island—New Hampshire—Maine—Vermont.
II The Story of the North
Ohio—Indiana—Michigan—Illinois—Wisconsin—Minnesota—Missouri—Iowa—South Dakota—North Dakota—Kansas—Nebraska.
III The Story of the South
Maryland—Virginia—West Virginia—North Carolina—South Carolina—Georgia—Alabama—Mississippi—Florida—Kentucky—Tennessee—Louisiana—Texas—Arkansas—Oklahoma.
IV The Story of the West
Colorado—Montana—New Mexico—Utah—Arizona—Wyoming—Idaho—Nevada—California—Oregon—Washington—Alaska.

CHAPTER I
THE STORY OF THE EAST

In deplorably skeletonized fashion, we have offered a brief story of the League’s growth, its purposes and its methods, and the stories of some of its great centers. But how about the country-wide achievements of the League, its field story? How can it be told? It is matter of regret that in no possible way can that ever be put within the compass of book publication. The records of these millions of cases, as has been said, runs into tons.

If you should visit the division offices, for instance, of New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, or any other large A. P. L. center, you would see in each city a room full of filing cabinets, with indexed drawers, carrying in permanent form the story of the League’s work in that given locality. Mass all these from the hundreds of cities engaged in the work, and you would have a pile of filing cabinets as high as a tall building. Go to the National Headquarters and you would find more rooms full of cabinets, covering the national work—an enormous total, painstaking, exact, correct. Go over to the Military Intelligence and you see more of the League’s work there. Go to the Department of Justice and look at the vast accumulations there at hand from the reports of this auxiliary.

Now, in imagination, pile all this uncomprehended assemblage of records into the middle of some park or square and have a glance at it in mass. In that mountain-pile of written and printed material, thousands of brains have recorded their soberest and most just conclusions, and have told why they concluded thus or thus. Thousands of stenographers have worked long days and nights on these tons of millions of pages. Be sure, in this mass of a nation’s story in counter-espionage, there is to be found, ticketed and tabulated, filed and cross-indexed under name and number, as part of the archives of the United States, the life and actions, the birth, derivation, antecedents, convictions, assertions and beliefs of practically every man and woman of German name in America. But close to the foot of this mass of the archives, lay down upon the ground a book, a volume of ordinary size; let us say, this book now in your hand. How small it seems! It is small. It is no more than a fraction, a mite. It is not enough. Some man’s loyal, unpaid, patient labor went into every one of these records.

There came, curiously, cumulatively, the feeling that this was not merely a mass of quasi-public documents, but an assemblage of the most valuable human documents ever collected in America. This was massed proof, not of work, but of patriotism. Then we did have, we do have, a country; there is a real America? Yes, and let no man doubt it ever again. It is a great and splendid country. These hundreds of thousands of pages which have been read—and every report sent in has been read—make the greatest reflex of America it ever has been the privilege of any man to know. Talk no more of a merely material America—it is not true. The real America at least is a noble, a splendid, a patriotic country, eager to do its share, determined to take its place.