No one realized better than the judges who sentenced him how inadequate these punishments to expiate his crimes. But the laws under which Rintelen was convicted—and they were the only laws under which his acts (all committed before our entry into the war) could be questioned—were enacted in times of peace, when no one dreamed of the world conflict or could have imagined how it would affect us when it came.
Rintelen has completed serving time on the first of his three sentences, and has the other two still to serve. The Tiger of Berlin is securely caged, and not likely soon to be again at large.
[CHAPTER IX]
The American Protective League
On going to war with the great masters of spy craft last year, the United States had only a handful of secret service men to guard its internal frontier. Within our borders were a million and a half men and youths who were enemy aliens. Not all of them hostile, it is true; but all potentially dangerous because great national organizations existed—even shooting societies—through which German influences might reach in a few hours or days. And in every centre of population there were captains and field marshals of German intrigue, supplied with unlimited money, to appeal to their feelings and to lead them should a chance come to strike.
Yet America, during the first year of war, has been singularly peaceful. No serious disturbance has hampered war preparations conducted on a gigantic scale. Even the Selective Service Act, inconsistent with all our volunteer traditions and pride, was accepted almost without opposition. Instead of a red reign of conflagration and civil strife, there have been no outbreaks worthy of the name; and, according to the Underwriters’ Association, not a single fire in our munitions plants of a clearly established incendiary character.
Attorney-General Thomas W. Gregory, in fact, had solid grounds for declaring to the executive committee of the American Bar Association recently: “I do not believe that there is to-day any country which is being more capably policed than is the United States.” He added that for every man engaged in detecting and investigating violations of federal laws in April, 1917, there are at least one thousand to-day; while reports on new cases are coming in at the rate of fifteen hundred a day!
That sounds like a miracle of organization, doesn’t it? Even the army, with its pride-compelling record of expansion, is a slow coach beside these legions of “plain-clothes” soldiers who hold our inner lines. Let’s see how it happened.