It is enough. And now comes Dernburg and believes that Americans will hail the “new understanding” between Germany and America! He believes that we shall be very good friends, now that the war is over.
CHAPTER IX
HANDLING BAD ALIENS
Dealing with Dangerous Propagandists—High and Low Class Disloyalists—The Alleged Americanism of the Kaiser’s Kultur-Spreaders—A Few Instances of A. P. L. Persuasions.
In the early days of the A. P. L., Mr. Bielaski, Chief of the Bureau of Investigations of the Department of Justice, issued an explicit letter of warning and advice to all League members as to their conduct regarding aliens. The Attorney General often publicly denounced lynchings. The Bureau of Investigation always counseled prudence and full justice to all. Surely, the aliens, the unnaturalized, the strangers and visitors of other races than our own, caught in this country with or against their will by the declaration of war, can offer no complaint regarding the fairness and generosity of the treatment accorded them. These enemies of ours, these spies, propagandists and pro-Germans, had better treatment than they deserved then and better than they deserve now. We have been too temperate, too fair, too lenient with them. The moderation of the A. P. L. work, indeed, all our Government work, with traitorous persons living in America, has been a matter of astonishment to all the European nations, who perhaps knew more of the alien enemy type than we did ourselves.
A reference to the table of reports of all division chiefs will show that investigations for “disloyal and seditious utterances” far outnumber those under any other head. The truth is that Germans and pro-Germans generally were mighty cocky in their talk in this country. Arrogant and assured that Germany was going to win this war—for which, as most of her amateur and all of her special spies knew, she had been preparing for many years—they talked as though they owned America and might say or do what they liked at any time or place they pleased. As against this offensive conduct, the A. P. L. showed two phases. First, it saved many a German life, perhaps of little worth, by preventing large and free-handed lynchings; and in the second place, it exercised so potent an influence on openly sneering and boasting pro-Germans that very soon they ceased to talk where they might be heard. That any such persons ever changed very much in loyalty, that they ever gained any more love for our institutions or felt any less love for those of Germany, the author of this book, after reading some thousands of A. P. L. reports of investigations, frankly does not believe. That it was fear of justice in one or another form which quieted them, this author frankly does believe. And that fear only is going to hold down such citizens in the future, he believes with equal frankness. In their hearts, these people have learned no new principles, although in their conduct they may have learned new counsels.
America handled her racial war problem as though she were afraid of it. There is small ultimate benefit in that. The only reconstruction policy—political, commercial or industrial—by which America really can gain, is one which is going to say: “This country is America. It has but one flag.” It is time we laid aside our old vote-catching methods, our old business timidities, and quit ourselves like men. Indeed, it is impossible to get in touch with the mass of the A. P. L. testimony and not to feel bitter and more bitter toward the traitors who have been left immune under our flag—not to feel sure and more sure that we have handled them too gently and to our own later sorrow. All this is written in absolute deliberation, with a certain feeling of authoritativeness. It has been given to few men to read the mass of testimony which the writing of this book necessitated. To do so was to sit in touch of the greatest reflex of the real America that perhaps ever has existed. We deal here not with theories, but with actual, concrete facts.
We do not give authorized figures as to the alien enemies interned, but it is sometimes said that we interned only about five thousand aliens, that we paroled a very large number, deported a few, and revoked citizenship for only two. It was said that the close of the war would set free a great many of these persons who will resume their residence, if not their former activities, in America. It is true that we have not executed a single German spy. That is an astonishing commentary on our laws and our Government in times such as these. Let those who are wiser than the writer of this book can claim to be after the extraordinary experience of studying the real America, pass on the wisdom of such leniency in its bearing on later Bolshevism in America. Other nations certainly have acted otherwise. Sometimes they have smiled at us as the easy mark of all the nations.
Certainly, however, whatever may be the personal belief of many citizens of this country, our public documents prove the wish of our Department of Justice, all its Bureaus and all its auxiliaries, to be just and more than just, generous and more than generous, to those not in accord with our laws and institutions,—a strange contrast for the reflection of those “simple and kindly” folk who for four years have exulted in the outrages Germany has wrought upon the world, and who for four years have given the world the most detestable examples of treacherous espionage.
At times we did teach some of those gentry that there was a God in Israel. If as yet we have deported few or none of those interned aliens—all of whom, and a hundred thousand more, surely ought to be deported—if we have received back into our tolerant friendship those who have been for some time warned out of our Government zones, at least we have trailed down certain of the more active cases of Kultur spreading in America. Space confines us to very few of those, chosen almost at random from the thousands at hand in the records.
The chief centers of alien enemy activity in this country, as might have been expected, were the great industrial towns and cities. It was in these places that the A. P. L. fought its hardest fights and achieved its greatest triumphs.