In his annual report, issued December 5, 1918, subsequent to the signing of the armistice, the Attorney General stated that six thousand alien enemies had been arrested on presidential warrants, based on the old law of 1798. Of these, a “considerable number” were placed in the internment camps in charge of the Army. The majority of these were German men and women, with a certain number of Austro-Hungarians. He concludes: “I do not want to create the impression that there is no danger from German spies and German sympathizers. There are thousands of persons in this country who would injure the United States in this war if they could do so with safety to themselves. However, they are no more anxious to be hanged than you are.”
The foregoing will show, to any student of the strange and complex situation which has confronted America at home these last four years, the main facts as to the emergencies we met and the means by which we met them.
The surprising thing is that we Americans have not known ourselves! A thoughtful study of the American Protective League is not a mere yawning over phrases of the law any more than it is a mere dipping into exciting or mystifying experiences. It is more than that. It is an excursion into a new and unexplored region in America—into the very heart of America itself.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See [Appendix D] for text of this law.
[2] See [Appendix E] for text of the President’s proclamation for the regulation of alien enemies.
CHAPTER VI
GERMAN PROPAGANDA
How the Poison was Spread—The Press—The Pulpit—The Word-of-Mouth Rumor—Various Canards Directed Against American Morale—Stories and Instances of the Hun’s Subtlety.
Germany made two mistakes—one in beginning the war, the other in losing it. The world has reckoned with her far otherwise than as she hoped. Now she learns what it is to feel defeat. Shrewd as the shrewdest, more patient than the most patient, not lacking courage while victory was with her—yet always showing that peculiar German clumsiness of intellect—Germany fought with trained skill on both sides the sea. The world knows the story of the battles in France. Let us now study the battles fought in silence in America.
In actual practice the various secret methods which the Germans employed in America could not always be defined one from the other. A certain confusion and over-lapping existed between the spy systems and those of propaganda and sabotage. Often one man might practice all three. The purpose of this chapter is to take the humblest form of German secret work in America, that practiced by the least skilled and most numerous branch of her spies—the sort of thing which usually is classified as propaganda.