Fighting Germany's Spies

by French Strother

When the war broke, the only secret service work done by the Government was handled by five small organizations. The Department of Justice had its Bureau of Investigation, charged with the discovery of offenses against the federal statutes—not a large force, but quite adequate to its peace-time job. The Treasury Department maintained a secret service with two definite functions—to protect the President’s life and person, and to prevent counterfeiting. The Army and Navy had each a few officers detailed to its intelligence service—the gathering of military and naval information and the protection of our own plans and operations. And finally the State Department possessed a small intelligence section of its own. But by comparison with the territory to be covered and the number of active German and Austrian agents in the country, there were few experienced men available for counter-espionage. And there in the background were that million and a half enemy aliens who would bear a lot of watching.

The declaration of war, then, instantly brought an emergency. Part of it the Department of Justice met by striking swift and hard at all who were unquestionably enemy agents. Because of their propaganda and other activities against the Entente Allies, these agents had been under observation for some time. Within forty-eight hours the more dangerous had been rounded up—under the hoary old act of 1798, which gave the President power to intern enemy aliens when their being at liberty might constitute a menace to the public safety.

There remained the urgent need of an immense increase in the Government’s counter-espionage forces. It would take thousands of trained and intelligent operatives to keep watch of the German agents and German sympathizers who swarmed throughout the country. As a class, such operatives did not exist: to draft the right kind of raw material from civil life would involve delays, great personal sacrifices on the part of the men drafted, and an enormous yearly budget. Thousands of business and professional careers would be interrupted at critical stages. Most of the men who accepted the call would be risking after-the-war failure in their chosen callings. The work simply couldn’t be done that way.

Then it was that the American Protective League found a way to do it.

The League is a volunteer body of 250,000 patriotic Americans, organized with the approval and operating under the direction of the Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation. It cross-cuts every commercial, industrial, professional, social, and economic level in American life. Bank presidents and bell hops, judges and janitors, managers and mechanics—all ranks meet on its common platform of loyalty and service. It has woven a net of discreet surveillance across more than a thousand American cities and towns; and the meshes are so small that few active German agents slip through. It reaches out into the country as well. More than 52,000,000 people—about half the population of the United States—live in communities where the League has active and effective organizations; where too, propaganda, or sedition, sabotage or plain slacking are neither popular nor healthy.

The League was born in March, last year, two weeks before we declared war. The idea originated with Mr. A. M. Briggs of Chicago. Mr. Briggs is now Chairman of the National Board of Directors of the American Protective League. He secured authority to establish it as a volunteer auxiliary of the Department of Justice on March 22, 1917. Within a month he had the League in operation with several thousand members. With him, Captain Charles Daniel Frey and Mr. Victor Elting were responsible for its development and the organization of the work. Mr. Frey is organizer and First Chief of the Chicago District, the original working unit of the American Protective League. The plan, the policies, and the methods developed in the Chicago District, which includes 280 cities and towns, were approved by the Department of Justice, and have been generally followed throughout the country as the model and standard for subsequent organizations. Mr. Elting, as Assistant Chief at Chicago, has from the inception of the League been active in the development of its policy. These three, now national directors with headquarters at Washington, are modest about taking any credit for the amazing extension of the League and its extraordinary present usefulness. They insist that the first great response was due to the general recognition of a national crisis, the impulse to do something to meet it, and the patriotic and unselfish coöperation of every local chief and individual operative in the country.

At all events, it was knowledge of how widespread and unscrupulous was the German spy system, and how seriously it was affecting the temper and loyalty of aliens and naturalized citizens, that launched the League. Proposal was made to the Department of Justice that a volunteer auxiliary of simon-pure Americans be formed to keep watch for the Government in every neighbourhood and to make most of the Department’s investigations for it. The service would be without pay. No inquiries would be undertaken without reference of the case to the Department first. And no expense accounts would be presented for money spent. Doubts may have existed regarding the feasibility of the plan. Such men as were needed would be hard to interest in the drudgery of police investigation. But Mr. Briggs was confident that there were thousands of business and professional men past service age and necessary to their families and communities who still were fired with patriotism and filled with wrath at the progress of German propaganda and plotting in this country. They were successful men of affairs—men of proved judgment, intelligence, initiative, and energy. The Department could not buy their full time at any price, but it could command their spare time, plus as many work-hours, on occasions, as were necessary to complete any task. There were also men of service age, eager to fight but held at home by obligations or other causes, who would not stint either time or energy in the League’s service.

Given authority to go ahead March 22, 1917, the League was organized on military lines. The plan was that each city and its tributary country should be broken up into divisions, in charge of inspectors. Divisions were cut up into districts, with captains in command. And each captain recruited as many working squads, under lieutenants, as the size and character of his district demanded. Reinforcing this territorial organization was another which treated every important industry, trade, and profession, and even large business establishments and office buildings as individual organization units. The territorial organization was known as the Bureau of Investigation; the classified trade, professional, and industrial force as the Bureau of Information. As a matter of fact, they were just the right and left arms of the League. Each had its specialized work to do, but the big jobs in each case were the same.

From the start, the two main functions of the League stood out boldly. The first was “to make prompt and reliable report of all disloyal or enemy activities and of all infractions or evasions of the war code of the United States.” The second followed naturally: “to make prompt and thorough investigation of all matters of similar nature referred to it by the Department of Justice.” Close coöperation with the local agent of the Department was essential in both instances.

Because the plan had been carefully worked out, the League made a flying start in a great Western city. Inspectors, captains, lieutenants were commissioned and assigned to their units. “Operatives,” picked with equal caution, were sworn in and given their credentials. By May first, there were a thousand men engaged in the absorbing new game.