We searched the deserted house. Except for the stove it was devoid of furniture, and we found nothing in the way of a clue.
We arranged for a strict patrol of the route of the parade. Each man was given a “beat.” If any man saw anything suspicious, and particularly a suspicious package, he was to investigate and report at once.
The parade was crossing the Houston Street bridge, where I happened to be, when I saw a negro man elbowing his way to the front of the crowd along the curb. In his right hand, held high over the heads of those about him, was a package wrapped in newspaper! He seemed in the act of hurling it into the street when I sprang forward and grabbed the upraised arm, dragging the negro back to the railing of the bridge.
“What have you got in that package?” I demanded.
“My Gawd, boss, you’se the fou’th man to ast me about ma lunch in the last five minutes. If it’s worrying you white folks so much, guess I’d better git shet of it!”
Before I could prevent him, he threw it into the river, and turned to view the parade with a muttered opinion on my interference with his personal liberties. All we succeeded in accomplishing was scaring a poor negro out of his lunch, but whether or not we thwarted others in a worse plot, we never knew.
But that was much our story in San Antonio. We did the best we knew. Had we not been there, and were it not known that we were there, matters might have been worse. The makings of trouble were around us all the time.
Laredo, Texas, on the Mexican border, was organized for business. The Chief says: “We have very few alien enemies resident here. Before we organized, there was some talk of a disloyal nature, but this situation changed at once when it got out that we had seventy-five or eighty members whose identity was unknown to the public but who would be pretty sure to be out for business. For the six or eight months before the Armistice we heard scarcely a word unfavorable to the United States or her Allies. We think we did something in the way of prevention if not of cure.”
Yoakum, Texas, has ten cases of disloyalty and a like number of word-of-mouth propaganda. A good local chief of a fighting family says: “We were ready at all times to meet any emergency regardless of distance or difficulty.”
Beaumont, Texas, is in the oil country, and such centers quite often attract alien population. The Beaumont report covers sixty-three cases of alien enemy activities, eighteen cases of disloyalty, and ninety cases under the selective service regulations.