Chapter I: Front Matter

THE WEB

_The Authorized History of The American Protective League_

The Web

By

Emerson Hough

Author of “The Mississippi Bubble,” “54-40 or Fight,” “The Magnificent Adventure,” etc.

_A Revelation of Patriotism_

_The Web is published by authority of the National Directors of the American Protective League, a vast, silent, volunteer army organized with the approval and operated under the direction of the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation._

The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago

Copyright, 1919 By The Reilly & Lee Co.

_Made in U. S. A._

_The Web_

_To THE UNKNOWN AMERICANS unnamed, unhonored unrewarded who made this history possible_

THE CALL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES

“It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts.... To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

THE ANSWER OF THE CONGRESS OF THE
UNITED STATES

“WHEREAS, The Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the People of the United States of America; therefore be it

“_Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled_, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.”

STATEMENT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE
UNITED STATES

_February 1, 1919_

On the occasion of the dissolution to-day of the American Protective League and the final termination of all of its activities, I take the opportunity to express to its National Directors and all other officers and members my personal thanks for their assistance to me and to my Department during the period of the war. I am frank to say that the Department of Justice could not have accomplished its task and attained the measure of success which it did attain without the assistance of the members of the League.

Your reward can only be the expressed thanks of your Government. As the head of the Department of Justice, under which the American Protective League operated, I render you such thanks with sincere pleasure. Upon the occasion of a request from a member of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives for an expression of opinion by me as to the adoption of a joint resolution by the Congress of the United States, extending the thanks of Congress to the members of the League, I have urged in strong terms the adoption of such a resolution, as one justly earned by the organization during an extended period of devoted and effective service.

The work of your organization will long be an inspiration to all citizens to render their full measure of service to their country according to her need, without reward, and with abundant zeal.

Respectfully,
T. W. GREGORY
_Attorney General_

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

“Signed!”

The one word, spoken by a young officer of the U. S. Army, a strip of paper in his hand, confirmed to his associates the greatest news the world has ever known. It was the corrected foreword of peace. The armistice had validly been signed by Germany.

In these first days of peace, the streets were full of shouting, laughing, weeping men and women gone primitive. The sane and sober population of America, engaged in sending a third of a million men a month to join the two millions on the front in France, turned into a mob. Their frenzy was that of joy. The war was over.

On the day following the confirmation of the armistice, some who had sat together in a certain room in Washington were scattered. Six thousand resignations of Army officers were handed in within twenty-four hours. The room in which the news of the war’s end was thus received was one in the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff in Washington. There lie the secrets of the Army. All in that room were officers of the Army, or soon to be such. All were volunteers. I may with propriety say that for a time I had sat with those who had ear to the secret voices of the world, in the tensest atmosphere I ever knew.

It was whispers that “M. I. D.” heard—the whispers of perfidious men, communicating one with the other, plotting against the peace of America, the dignity of our Government, the sacredness of our flag, the safety of American lives and property. Here sat the authorized agents of the Army, employed to hear such whispers, enlisted to catch the most skilled and unscrupulous spies the world has ever known, the agents of a treacherous and dishonorable enemy.

All those connected with the Military Intelligence Division daily felt also the touch of this great, silent, smooth-running machinery of the Department of Justice, whose governmental mission it was to do detective work on the largest scale this country ever knew. We heard the voice of the War College through the official liaison therewith; also those of the General Staff, the War Department, the Post Office Department, the cable censors, the censors of the Expeditionary Forces. It all worked as an interlocking, vast, silent machine—a solemnly, almost mournfully silent machine, of which America knows almost nothing, the rest of the world nothing at all.

Day by day, in ghostly silhouette, passed sinister figures, themselves silent; those who plotted against America. All the deeds that can come from base and sordid motives, from low, degenerate and perverted minds; all the misguided phenomena of human avarice and hate and eagerness to destroy and kill—such were the pictures on the walls of “M. I. D.”

I have spoken of certain essential liaisons against espionage and propaganda. More often seen than any other initials in the desk algebra of “M. I. D.” were three initials—“A. P. L.” This or that information came from A. P. L. This was referred to A. P. L. for more light. Every questionnaire of a man applying for a commission in the Army was referred back to A. P. L., and A. P. L. took up the question of his unswerving and invincible loyalty. A. P. L. found slackers and deserters in thousands. A. P. L. found this or that spy, large or little. A. P. L., obviously, had a busy mind and a long arm.

Yet if you should look in the Governmental Blue Book for this powerful branch of our Government, you could not find the initials there at all. Very many Americans never heard the name of this wholly unofficial organization which passed on so many governmental questions, was of so much aid in so many ways to the Government. A. P. L. is not and never was a part of any state or national arm, service, department, or bureau. But openly and proudly it has always been definitely authorized to carry on all its letter-heads, “Organized with the Approval and Operating under the Direction of the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation.” These are its credentials.

A. P. L., the mysterious power behind our Government, was no baseless fabric of a vision, as hundreds of Germans and pro-Germans can testify through their prison bars; but it passes now and soon will “leave not a wrack behind.” As these pages advance, the word issues for its official demobilization. It was honorably encamped on a secret and silent battlefield, but now, once more to use a poet’s word, it has “folded its tents like the Arab, and silently stolen away.” It was, and is not. You never have known what it was. You never will see its like again.

“A. P. L.” means the American Protective League. It means a silent, unknown army of more than a quarter million of the most loyal and intelligent citizens of America, who indeed did spring to arms over night. It fought battles, saved lives, saved cities, saved treasures, defended the flag, apprehended countless traitors, did its own tremendous share in the winning of the war. It saved America. It did protect. It was a league.

It did all this without a cent of pay. It had no actual identification with the Government. Yet it has won scores of times the written and spoken thanks of our most responsible Government officials. Its aid in the winning of the war can not be estimated and never will be known. Not even its full romance ever can be written. May these hurrying pages save all these things at least in part, though done in the full consciousness that their tribute can be but a fragment of the total due.

The American Protective League was the largest company of detectives the world ever saw. The members served without earlier specialized training, without pay, without glory. That band of citizens, called together overnight, rose, grew and gathered strength until able to meet, and absolutely to defeat, the vast and highly trained army of the German espionage system, which in every country of the globe flooded the land with trained spies who had made a life business of spying. It met that German Army as ours met it at Chateau-Thierry, and in the Argonne, and on the Vesle and on the Aisne. Like to our Army under arms—that Army where any of us would have preferred to serve had it been possible for us to serve under arms—it never gave back an inch of ground. Growing stronger and better equipped each day, it worked always onward and forward until the last fight was won.

A. P. L. has folded its unseen and unknown tents. It will bivouac elsewhere until another day of need may come. Then, be sure, it will be ready. On the day that the American Protective League disbanded, it had no money in the treasury. It had spent millions of dollars, and had brought to judgment three million cases of disloyalty. There, obviously, unwritten and unknown, scattered in every city and hamlet of America, was a tremendous story, one of the greatest of all war stories, the story of the line behind the guns.

When the men of long or of transient connection with M. I. D. had shaken hands and said good-bye, the National Directors of the American Protective League asked me to stop on and write the history of the American Protective League. And so, in large part, as a matter of loyalty and duty, with millions of pages of records at hand, with a quarter of a million friends I have never seen, who never have seen one another, who never otherwise would know the identity of one another, I began to do something which most obviously and certainly ought to be done. This book is written alike that these quarter million unpaid soldiers may know of one another, and that a hundred million Americans may also know of them accurately, and thank them for what they did.

Before I had done the last page of the strange history, I knew that I had felt an actual reflex of the actual America. I knew that I had been in touch with one of the most astonishing phenomena of modern days, in touch also with the most tremendous, the most thrilling and the most absorbing story of which I ever knew.

EMERSON HOUGH

_Washington_
_District of Columbia_
_United States of America_
_February 14, 1919._

CONTENTS

BOOK I: THE LEAGUE AND ITS WORK

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE AWAKENING 19

II THE WEB 29

III EARLY DAYS OF THE LEAGUE 38

IV THE LEAGUE IN WASHINGTON 44

V THE LAW AND ITS NEW TEETH 55

VI GERMAN PROPAGANDA 62

VII THE GERMAN SPY CASES 82

VIII THE SPY HIMSELF 107

IX HANDLING BAD ALIENS 120

X THE GREAT I. W. W. TRIAL 133

XI THE SLACKER RAIDS 141

XII SKULKER CHASING 148

XIII ARTS OF THE OPERATIVES 163

BOOK II: THE TALES OF THE CITIES

I THE STORY OF CHICAGO 179

II THE STORY OF NEW YORK 199

III THE STORY OF PHILADELPHIA 210

IV THE STORY OF NEWARK 226

V THE STORY OF PITTSBURGH 239

VI THE STORY OF BOSTON 246

VII THE STORY OF CLEVELAND 256

VIII THE STORY OF CINCINNATI 267

IX THE STORY OF DAYTON 276

X THE STORY OF DETROIT 285

XI THE STORY OF ST. LOUIS 293

XII THE STORY OF KANSAS CITY 303

XIII THE STORY OF MINNEAPOLIS 310

XIV THE STORY OF NEW ORLEANS 324

XV THE STORY OF CALIFORNIA 332

BOOK III: THE FOUR WINDS

I THE STORY OF THE EAST 363

II THE STORY OF THE NORTH 381

III THE STORY OF THE SOUTH 418

IV THE STORY OF THE WEST 438

BOOK IV: AMERICA

I THE RECKONING 453

II THE PEACE TABLE 473

APPENDICES 483