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.