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
Northern New Jersey was recognized as one of the riskiest regions of
the United States. Time out of mind, American readers have noted, with
the short-lived American anger, the many newspaper tales of Paterson
and anarchy, of New Jersey and New Thought, of socialistic ranters
hailing from this or that semi-foreign community, in one of the oldest
states in the American union, whose battlefields in our first war for
freedom are spread on many glorious pages of our country’s history.
The battlefields of Jersey are different now, and are not so glorious.
Still, a few men, as patriotic as those in Revolutionary days, have
done their best during this war to keep their country safe. The work of
the Northern New Jersey Division, which has been in charge of Mr. W. D.
McDermid, as State Inspector, is reassuring.
It is proper to point out that the Northern New Jersey Division, being
one of the first of the A. P. L. to be organized, operated on lines
different from those of almost any other territory. Its district
covers one-half of the state, including the vitally important Port
of Embarkation. Under a single central office, it combined over one
hundred municipalities, most of which would ordinarily have had a
separate headquarters organization, but which for local reasons had all
been consolidated in one division.
There was abundance to do, and there were plenty to be watched. There
could, for example, be furnished several hundred instances of sabotage
in this manufacturing district of Northern New Jersey—sabotage either
detected in advance, or thoroughly investigated afterwards. This was so
common in the hundreds of plants in that District that it became for
the Northern Division, for the most part, a matter of routine. A great
deal of the work of this character ultimately was handled by the Plant
Protection Division of the War Department.
In upper New Jersey, as in the State of New York, the Governmental
departments reached out and rather overshadowed, in glory at least, the
patient and less known efforts of the A. P. L. Newark frankly complains
that quite often sufficiently vigorous action was not to be had by the
officers of the Department of Justice, even after full evidence had
been handed to it by the A. P. L. Some A. P. L. men even go so far as
to claim that D. J. would not only crab an act, but claim a glory! Our
State Inspector voices this in occasional comment:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account