In the spring of 1918, the National Directors began, under the editorship of Daniel V. Casey, the issue of a League organ or confidential bulletin, called “The Spy Glass.” The first number of the publication, in June of that year, took up the amended Espionage Act, which was the base of practically all of the A. P. L. and D. J. work during the war. This amendment rebuilt and stiffened the original Espionage Act of June 15, 1917, which had been found insufficient, and “put teeth in the law,” as the Attorney General’s office phrased it. “The Spy Glass” printed a digest of the new enactment, which is of essential interest at this point of the League’s story as it determined the whole character of the League’s later activities. This summarization of the Espionage Act is printed as [Appendix C] in the present volume.
Up to the close of 1917, we had had, duly amended, many national statutes covering treason and sedition, foreign and hostile connections, pretending to be an officer, enticing to desertion or strikes, trespassing at military places, falsely claiming citizenship, aiding or counseling offense, wearing uniform unlawfully, conspiracy, neutrality, counterfeiting seals, use of mails, trading with the enemy, censorship, foreign language news items, sabotage, etc., as well as many specific enactments controlling persons liable for military service, and covering the increase of the army, the questions of evasion, desertion, etc. These powers, broad as they were already, were extended under the blanket power of the Articles of War, to cover fraud, desertion, mutiny, insubordination, misbehavior before the enemy, traitors and spies, murder, rape and other crimes, and the general conduct and discipline of those in military service.
Not even all these laws, however, were found to stand the extreme demands put on the country by thousands of new and wholly unforeseen exigencies. As a matter of fact, one of the most useful of all our laws against enemy aliens and spies was one not up-to-date at all, but dating back to Revolutionary times; that is to say, July 6, 1798![1]
This old law was unearthed by the agents of the Department of Justice. It gave almost blanket powers to the President of the United States, and it was under the President’s proclamations, based on that old law, that most of the early internment arrests were made. The old law, long disused, was found to work perfectly still! It was extended in force by the regulations controlling enemy aliens.[2]
It became the duty of the newly organized League to take on the accumulation of testimony under all these new laws; and what that was to mean may be forecast from the comment of the Attorney General of the United States in his annual report for 1918:
The so-called Espionage Act contains a variety of provisions on different subjects, such as neutrality, protection of ships in harbor, spy activities, unlawful military expeditions, etc. Most of the cases which have arisen, however, presenting the most complex problems, have been under the third section of Title I of this act, which is aimed at disloyal and dangerous propaganda.
This section 3 was amended by a law which became effective May 18, 1918, commonly called the Sedition Act, which greatly broadened the scope of the original act and brought under its prohibitions many new types of disloyal utterance. The use which our enemies have made of propaganda as a method of warfare is especially dangerous in any country governed by public opinion. During the first three years of the war, the period of our neutrality, the German Government and its sympathizers expended here a vast amount of money in carrying on different types of propaganda, and these activities are a matter of public knowledge. During our participation in the war, section 3 and its later amendment have been the only weapons available to this Government for the suppression of insidious propaganda, and it is obvious that no more difficult task has been placed upon our system of law than the endeavor to distinguish between the legitimate expression of opinion and those types of expression necessarily or deliberately in aid of the enemy. The number of complaints under this law presented to the Department of Justice has been incredibly large.
Such, then, was the ultimate machinery of our national laws when, late, but with such speed as a willing Congress could give after the gauntlet was flung and the issue joined, we began to face in dead earnest the peril of the times. We now had at last a full set of laws with teeth in them. But it was a tremendous burden that the older institutions of our administrative machinery had to carry. In sooth, the load was too much. The machinery buckled under it. We could not do the work we had to get done.
That work was more than ever had been asked of any nation of the world. We had a mixed population of wholly unknown disposition. Some said we delayed going to war for so long because we were not sure our people would back the Government. That, surely, could be the only reason for the delay. All the races of the world were seething in rage and jealousy. We had racial war within our borders. We could not count on our own friends. We could not predict as to what percent of men would be loyal to our flag. We had two million men of German blood inside our borders, guaranteed by their Kaiser to be loyal to Germany. And long before we had gone to war, we had had abundant proof of their disloyalty to us, of their hatred for Britain and France, and their discontent with our own neutrality. We had openly been warned by the German Kaiser that he counted on the loyalty to Germany of many or most of these men. Fear alone held the average pro-German back. But it did not hold back their seasoned spies and the agents who worked under cover. The sudden cessation of pro-German talk which fell when we declared war deceived none but the pacifists. The boasts of German-Americans as to their holdings in Liberty Bonds deceived not at all the men who had sat and listened on the inside; for even at this time the records were piling up—records of private acts and words of treason to America which had been noted by the A. P. L. The full record of German craft and duplicity, of treachery and treason to America, never will be made public. It was alike a loathsome and a dangerous thing.
Obviously, the hands of our Government sorely needed upholding. Who was to do that? Who would apply all these laws now that we had them? Who should watch two million tight-mouthed men whose homes were here but whose hearts were still in Germany? Who could cope with 300,000 spies, in part trained and paid spies, many of whom were sent over to America long before Germany declared the war which was “forced” on her?