That Cincinnati had a vast population of German descent and of pro-German sympathies was known throughout the United States. It would be folly to say otherwise. Had open riots or armed resistance to the draft, or to the war itself, arisen in Cincinnati, there were many who would not have been surprised. Those, however, did not really know the inherently solid quality of the city on the Ohio River. They may find that from the study of the able report of the Cincinnati Division.
Perhaps a very considerable amount of the quiet on the Rhine at Cincinnati was due to the fact that there was such an organization within its gates as the American Protective League. The members of the League were on the watch all the time for anything dangerous in the way of pro-enemy activity. That the division had a certain amount of work to do may be seen from the summaries.
There were 2,972 investigations for disloyalty and sedition; 4,232 selective service investigations; 3,004 suspects taken in slacker raids. Of propaganda by word of mouth, there were 7,000 examinations. Three hundred and seventy civilian applicants for overseas service were examined. There were eighty-one examinations made into the character of persons identified with the I. W. W., the People’s Council, and other pacifist or radical bodies. The Secret Service had fifty examinations made for it and the Post Office three. There were fourteen thousand visits made at homes and places of business of alien enemies, and twenty-eight alien enemies were required to report to the supervisor every week. Heatless Mondays required three hundred investigations and gasless Sundays one thousand, five hundred and seventeen. In 250 instances the A. P. L. rendered automobile service to various Government departments. These figures show that something was doing in Cincinnati. As to the exact nature of the activities, it is much better to give the sober and just estimate of the local chief, as gratifying as it is admirable:
From its inception the Cincinnati Division of the American Protective League was vibrant with possibilities. Cincinnati was known from coast to coast as a city settled by Germans. It was presumed, of course, to be very largely pro-German as a result of this reputation. “Over-the-Rhine” meant Cincinnati to many who lived outside of its confines. The reputation of the city was at stake. Those who knew Cincinnati, however, felt that this reputation which came to us from abroad was unjustified, and that although there was no gainsaying that German blood flowed in the veins of a very large number of its people, it was still ninety-nine per cent loyal; and the record of the war has demonstrated the truth of this statement.
Under the direction and supervision of Calvin S. Weakley, Special Agent in charge of the Department of Justice, work was carried on with quietness and despatch. He approached every matter with an open mind, and it is to his excellent judgment and his avoidance of brass-band methods that the record of the Cincinnati office of the Bureau of Investigation and its auxiliary, the Cincinnati Division of the American Protective League, has been clean of criticism. In the burglar-proof steel cabinets, however, repose documents and reports which would create a sensation in the community, and perhaps the day of reckoning is not far. While the fact that many of these acts occurred before the United States became an active participant in the world war may mean legal immunity, yet the record is made, and in many cases public opinion has been the sternest prosecutor of those individuals (many of whom enjoy the rights of American citizenship), whose sympathies as well as activities will always brand them as having been unfit for the privileges which they still continue to enjoy. It has brought to many of those individuals social isolation—a punishment incomparable with anything that can be meted out by judge or jury—and they cannot help but feel the ignominy of their unpatriotic actions. Loyalty to the country and a fine patriotism for the cause was the keynote which seemed to animate the membership.
Hardly had the ink dried upon the President’s signature to the document which made operative the original Selective Service Act, when word filtered through to the office of the Cincinnati Division American Protective League that there was an undercurrent of opposition developing which would culminate on Registration Day, June 5th, 1917. So-called Socialists, who were in fact German propagandists, were the most active in their criticism. Venomous advice was being offered to young men, who, upon that historic day, would enter their names upon the rolls of the prospective great National Army.
The preliminary information which was gathered left no doubt in the mind of Special Agent Weakley, at Cincinnati, that unless an example was made of these so-called pacifists, there was danger of an incomplete registration, and it became very apparent from the preliminary investigations made that the opposition to registration centered in a local unit of a Socialist organization known as the Eleventh Ward.
Out of four operatives who entered into this particular case, three were dropped, and one became a member of the inner circle. The open meetings of the club divulged nothing, but the secret sessions of the inner circle developed the plan which would make as ineffective as possible registration in Cincinnati and which undoubtedly would have succeeded. Circulars and posters were secretly printed, and on the night of June 1 they were to be distributed broadcast throughout the northwestern section of Cincinnati. This literature not only was seditious in character, but in the opinion of the District Attorney, treasonable.
The League plan was so carefully and thoroughly developed that not a guilty man escaped. There was quite a scene at several police stations when operatives of the League, detailed with local police detectives, brought in their men, each with his pile of circulars. A. P. L. had direct evidence of where these circulars had been placed—in letter boxes, on door-steps, or handed to individuals on the street—and thus made each case complete in itself; and when, the next day, the newspapers told in detail the story of how this plan had been nipped in the bud, anti-conscriptionists became enthusiastic registrants. Even men who were arrested asked for the privilege of registration. Cincinnati not only gave the quota estimated for it, but a percentage so much higher as to elicit surprise.
After the investigation had developed the real culprits, the printing shop also was located, the form from which the circulars had been printed confiscated, and the complete chain of evidence was sufficient to bring a unanimous report from the Grand Jury, charging everyone involved with conspiracy against the Government.