The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective LeagueHough, Emerson
History
The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective League
Hough, Emerson
American Protective League; Propaganda, German; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- United States
A certain Mrs. L—— called the Red Cross a bunch of grafters and
crooks, said Ambassador Gerard was a traitor and a liar, said the
President was the greatest traitor since Jefferson Davis and made other
interesting remarks. She repeated these statements before a U. S.
Marshal and was held in $5,000 bond. Then she became more abusive and
was held in $5,000 additional. She kept on until her bond amounted to
$25,000, and was then asked if she did not think it was time to stop
talking. She did. As she could not raise the bail, she was sent to Cook
County jail, where she remained till the Armistice was signed.
Chicago at times handled other live stock than that commonly seen in
the stockyards. On August 5, 1918, the sixth enemy alien special to
Fort Oglethorpe carried fifteen persons for internment. The train was
to pick up eight more at Indianapolis. On the following day, it seems,
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had seven members who groaned while
they were playing the Star Spangled Banner. They explained their frame
of mind before a judge, who taught them very much better manners. On
August 7, Lieutenant Friederick Walter S—— of the German army, who
for a month had worn a United States uniform at Camp Grant, had his
naturalization papers revoked, and got interned for the period of the
war. On September 1, among ten aliens shipped to Fort Oglethorpe, one
was a munition manufacturer who had been just at the point of receiving
a very fat United States order. He had been filling contracts for
Germany before we went to war.
On November 17, 1918, the radicals and socialists of Chicago held a
great meeting in the Coliseum. There were about 12,000 present. It is
not necessary to go into details regarding their action beyond saying
that they gave over the Chicago Socialist party, body and breeches, to
Bolshevism. Here in Chicago, one of our centers of the civilization
of America, these men declared themselves in sympathy with Russian
anarchy. In America, the land of hope, they declared themselves in
sympathy with hopelessness, despair and destruction. Some of the
speeches were made in the German language—a tongue which we ought to
forbid to be used in public, on our streets, in our printed pages, and
over our telephone wires to-day. These speakers, in the Hun tongue,
openly deplored contributions to our War funds. They hailed with
much applause such speakers as Victor Berger, who publicly gloried
in the four indictments pending over him. In short, the meeting came
dangerously close to being disloyal. We shall be so mild as this in
comment, since being a member of the Socialist party is not _per se_ a
disloyal act, and not all Socialists are of the radical wing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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