What America did

by Florence Finch Kelly

For measuring forces with an enemy of this sort the United States, when it entered the war, was inadequately equipped with laws. A friendly people, believing in square and open dealing between nations as between individuals and trusting those to whom it had given citizenship and business and professional hospitality, as it would expect to be trusted in another land, had never thought it necessary to enact such laws as this emergency demanded. The only weapon of consequence which the Government had ready for conflict with the underground enemy was a statute which had been in force more than a hundred years permitting the arrest and internment by executive order of an alien enemy believed to be a menace to the public safety. Advantage was taken of this at once and some of the most dangerous agents of Germany were soon under guard and innocuous for the duration of the war. This internment statute was a powerful weapon in putting down enemy activities, while the severity with which it was enforced from the very beginning was effective in discouraging the continued hatching of plots.

An espionage law enacted two months after our declaration of war and strengthened later on and a sabotage bill dealing with injury to property gave the needed means for dealing with a difficulty the nation had never before encountered. The espionage act was effective against organized or deliberate enemy or disloyal propaganda, but it was not intended to curtail the rights of free speech or of a free press and in its enforcement the courts made every effort to protect these rights as the basis of our political institutions. In the emotional tensity of the time it was inevitable that there should be bitter charges of excessive leniency on one side and, on the other, of unnecessary severity from those who feared the undermining of our principles of freedom. But in the end there were few who did not recognize that substantial justice had been meted out in most of the many cases. German alien enemies were required to register and 480,000 men and women were thus listed. A system of permits governed their movements and debarred them, without special permission, from the District of Columbia and from specified zones surrounding fortifications, docks, piers, wharves, warehouses, and other places important for war purposes. They were forbidden also to enter or leave the United States.

Much more lenient treatment was given to the subjects of Austro-Hungary, upon whom the only restriction was that of not leaving the country, although they were also subject to arrest and internment if guilty of dangerous activities. They proved to be worthy of the trust placed in them, for, although there were seven or eight times as many of these enemy aliens as of those of German citizenship, they gave little trouble of any sort, their labor helped importantly in much of our war production and throughout the war they were quiet, industrious and law-abiding.

Germany’s spies and agents were of several nationalities and in order to keep an effective watch upon their movements a stringent passport system was instituted which made impossible the departure from this country of any one whose purpose was not clear and proper. Private persons were forbidden to carry mail out of or into the country, as a means of preventing enemy agents from sending reports by others. Officers and crews of neutral ships were not allowed to land at United States ports without permits from the Department of State. A large force of picked and trained men, numbering several hundreds, scrutinized every ship coming into or going out of the important ports, her cargo and her passengers, to make sure that no enemy agent was among them or material of any sort intended for the enemy secreted in hold, or quarters, or cabins.

Supplementing the six secret service agencies of the Government, all of which were immediately and very greatly increased to enforce these provisions and deal with enemy activities, there sprang into life, almost over-night, the American Protective League. An organization of citizen volunteers, it was a unique development of the situation and in spirit and methods thoroughly characteristic of the American people. The League was born out of a realization of the danger the country faced, overrun as it was with enemy agents directed by some of the most skillful intriguers and spy captains that a nation specializing in spying and intrigue had been able to train, and out of the loyal wish to serve.

The American Protective League, which had its beginning almost simultaneously with our declaration of war, was a volunteer auxiliary of the Department of Justice. Its organizer, a private citizen who saw the necessity of such service and the possibility of securing the effective coöperation of selected persons everywhere, had it in operation within a few weeks, with several thousand members. It grew rapidly and within a year had 250,000 members working for it in their own communities. The organization was established in every state in the Union, the country being cut up into divisions, each under a chief, and each division into districts with a captain in command of each one, while each captain recruited his own working squads and put them under lieutenants. This organization by territory was reënforced by another whose divisions were along the lines of important industries, trades and professions, the two bureaus working constantly in coöperation. In the membership of the League was represented every section and phase of American life—college professors and day laborers, bank presidents and mechanics, journalists, lawyers, janitors, ministers, carpenters, judges. The very great value of its service was due to this variety and to the intelligence and character of its membership, for it was able to penetrate into all circles, to be on the watch everywhere in city, town and country and to follow a suspect through the most devious of wanderings. It investigated pro-German propaganda of every sort, sabotage cases, suspected spies and their activities, seditious speeches and printed matter, efforts to evade the selective service act, lying reports circulated by the “whispering propaganda” method about American organizations or individuals, and suspected treasonable conspiracies.

The members of the League, undertaking its work in addition to the duties of their regular occupations, served without pay and without rendering expense accounts. It carried on 3,000,000 investigations upon which it made reports, a great many resulting in the uncovering of serious disloyalties or enemy activities. So efficient was the organization that it won the warmest praise from the Attorney General of the United States, who declared that not only were its active services of very great value but that its passive effect was of equal importance, because the knowledge that its eyes and ears were everywhere had a most discouraging influence upon enemy and disloyal intentions.

Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, passed early in our war progress, an Alien Property Custodian took charge of properties and businesses belonging to enemy aliens in this country or operated for the benefit of enemy subjects elsewhere. The investigations which uncovered these business operations, many of them deeply and cleverly concealed, revealed startling facts as to the extent to which German subjects had gained commercial and industrial footholds in the United States, the methods which they had used and the purposes to which they had applied their resources and their knowledge of the nation’s business and industrial life. More than thirty thousand cases of enemy owned business were handled by the Custodian, while enemy owned stock, ranging in the several cases from fifteen to one hundred per cent of the total, was found in nearly three hundred corporations. He seized enemy owned property in the first year of his work to the value of more than $700,000,000, the businesses in which it was engaged running the whole gamut of American industry in mining, manufacturing, buying and selling. Frequently the enemy ownership was so cleverly and persistently concealed that months of investigation were necessary to uncover the truth. A great many of these German owned industrial establishments were used as spy centers and were filled with the agents of Germany plotting for political and industrial domination. In order to protect the country in the future and prevent a repetition of this attempt to conceal a knife meant for her heart, the Alien Property Custodian was authorized by Congress to sell to American citizens all enemy owned businesses, the proceeds to be deposited in the United States Treasury to await decision concerning it by the Peace Congress which should settle the problems growing out of the war.

Not only did the volunteer organization of the American Protective League undertake to uncover and stop enemy and disloyal activities, but a large percentage of the American people individually endeavored to aid the authorities in the same way. So intense was the general indignation against Germany and the Germans because of their insidious methods and the extent to which they had abused the friendly attitude of America and so high was the spirit of loyalty that young and old, rich and poor, were everywhere on the watch for signs of disloyal sentiment. Sometimes this eagerness overstepped common sense and degenerated into unthinking persecution of people of German birth or extraction who were good and loyal citizens. It resulted also in the circulation of many wild rumors of spy activity without basis of truth. But it also had undoubted good result in the discouraging of the underground activities of the enemy.

Germany expected confidently that her well organized and richly provided spy service, her extensive propaganda and her hold upon business would enable her to undermine and palsy America’s war effort. But all her careful preparations and the huge sums of money she expended profited her scarcely at all. The great majority of American citizens of German blood or birth proved to be loyal to the United States. The swift hand of justice at once grasped and put under guard so many of Germany’s agents that the rest were unwilling to run the risk of continued activity. Over 6,000 enemy aliens were arrested under warrants and 4,000 were interned in army detention camps for the period of the war. Systematic disloyal propaganda failed so completely to produce its desired results, was everywhere so frowned upon and was so likely to be fraught with danger for those behind it that it dwindled rapidly. By the end of our first year of war pro-German and anti-American propagandists had realized the futility of their attempts.