“Many aliens resident in this country are absolutely loyal to its institutions and its laws, and many individuals having the legal status of alien enemies are not only conducting themselves with due respect to our laws, but are of great value in industry and business. Great care must be exercised by members to avoid unnecessary alarm to aliens and to avoid causing apprehension upon their part as to the fairness and justice of the attitude of the Government toward them. In this regard members will be called upon for the exercise of judgment and discretion of a high order. They should protect citizens and aliens from unjust suspicion, but must fearlessly ascertain and report treason and disloyalty wherever found.”
All this has to do with the investigation of specific cases after they have been brought to the League’s attention by the report of a member, an outside complaint, or a request from the Department of Justice for an inquiry into the facts. Quite as important in discouraging disloyalty or pro-German activities is the service of League members as eyes and ears for the Government in detecting and making first reports on offenses or intended offenses against the war code of the United States.
This means that every League member is always on the lookout for any word or act that smacks of sedition or espionage. It is here that the classified organization by industries, trades, professions, and individual business establishments develops its full value. When a factory making munitions, clothing, motor trucks, or any other war necessity has been organized as a League unit, the members are on the alert for signs of disturbance. They can quickly report to their supervisor what they have seen or heard, and, after comparing notes, can take precautions against the threatened trouble. If they need outside help in checking up a suspect after working hours, the territorial organization is ready to coöperate. The suspect need never know that he is under suspicion until his guilt or innocence is pretty well established.
Such a factory unit is typical of the League organization in the larger cities. Besides the strictly industrial group, there are usually eight broad divisions, any one of which may be important enough to have an assistant bureau chief, and several captains, lieutenants, and individual units. These divisions take in the real estate, financial, insurance, and professional groups, the hotels, transportation companies, public utilities, and merchandising interests—wholesale, retail, and mail-order. And the industries alone may be numerous and powerful enough to call for separate divisions—munitions, packers’ products, food stuffs, war equipment, metal trades, lumber, motor cars, electrical machinery and supplies, chemicals and paints, and so on. It all depends on how numerous and how large are the establishments in each line. Outside the larger cities territorial organization is the rule. When the district is identified with some industry of special value in war, like mining, lumbering, or cattle raising, protection of that industry may be the chief function of the League.
Not only does the classified method of organization help each trade and profession to police itself; it greatly facilitates important inquiries. For example, suppose that the Government wants to find and learn the local errand of a visiting electrical engineer with a German name and considerable cash whom it has had under surveillance elsewhere. On being asked for a report, the League’s local Chief assigns the case to one of his deputies. The latter notifies the supervisors of the various hotel units to watch out for the stranger, report his arrival, and keep watch of his letters and telephone calls. He also communicates with the head of the professional division and asks that an electrical engineer be detailed on the case.
When the suspect has been located and the hotel supervisor has transmitted any other information he has been able to get, the engineer member begins work. Going to the hotel he finds or makes a way to become acquainted with the stranger, offers him the usual professional courtesies, and gives him a chance to suggest why he is in town or whom he wants to see. Direct questions are not asked, of course, since they would put the stranger on his guard. After he has carried the inquiry as far as he can, the engineer member quietly and casually goes his way, unless the stranger has accepted his offers of help or hospitality.
If the suspect has “covered up” more than an honest engineer should, he is systematically shadowed by other League operatives during the remainder of his stay. Walking out or staying in his room, travelling in taxicabs or in street cars, making business calls or social calls, one or more of his two “shadows” would probably keep him in sight and make memoranda regarding every person he met and spoke with and every significant circumstance that took place. Only when in a private house or in his hotel room would he escape observation—and even then a fairly close tab would be kept on what he was doing.
A record would be made of every telephone call, every telegram, every letter received, with particular reference to the postmark, dates, and the return cards on the envelopes. His baggage would be inventoried and described, even to its hotel labels, its character, and its probable price and origin. When he finally departed, if the porter bought his tickets for him or whether he purchased them himself at the station, his route, and his first destination—all would be matters of history. One of his “shadows” would even see him safely past the last suburban stop from which he might double back to the city or to a waiting confederate.
This seems a mighty pother to make about an apparently innocent traveller. But the League prefers to work overtime and play safe. The narratives of some of the “tailings” would make marvellous reading if they only led up to the proper dramatic climax. Many of them do—but those are not to be talked about yet awhile. And the others are significant only because they are the records of uninteresting tasks as faithfully executed as though the sheltering doorway or hotel lobby chair were a listening post in France.
Remember that these tasks were made both complex and difficult by the lack of laws defining espionage, disloyalty, and sedition as punishable crimes. That ancient act of 1798 could be invoked for the internment of dangerous enemy aliens. But an American citizen, native or naturalized, could spit treason and plot trouble unchecked so long as he did not run foul of the civil or the criminal code. That is all changed now; the amended Espionage and Sedition Law, signed by the President in June, 1917, is so broad and has such a fine set of serviceable teeth that no disloyal citizen or unfriendly alien can escape the penalty if his guilt can be proved.