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
Clean-Cut Work of One of the North-West’s Capitals—Straightaway
Story of a Good Division—Many Anecdotes Showing How Operatives
Worked—The Dignified and Sober Side of Saving the State and Making
Over Citizens—A Model Report.
The great city of Minneapolis is one of the foci of the agricultural
and industrial realm of the vast Northwestern country for which the
Twin Cities make the gateway. It was not to be supposed that its staid
and sober population would cause any great amount of trouble. None the
less, trouble did develop in Minneapolis as elsewhere, and A. P. L.
cases and figures mounted steadily upward, just as they did in other
large centers of industry the country over.
Alien enemy cases for the Department of Justice ran 127; disloyalty
and sedition, 1,222; sabotage, 17; interference with draft, 44;
propaganda, 392; I. W. W. and other radicals, 70. War Department cases
had 5,725 investigations under the selective draft: 997 slackers; 507
work-or-fight cases; character and loyalty, 337 cases; liquor, vice
and prostitution, 593 cases. The Treasury Department had 1,129 cases
on war risk and allowance grounds. The Fuel Administration turned over
2,356 cases for investigation; the gasoline work, 427. The grand total
of cases handled by Minneapolis division men, November 26, 1917, to
December 16, 1918, was 15,415.
Minneapolis had a very thorough organization, and has reported the
results in so thorough and explicit a fashion as to leave small option
in matter of handling the report. It could not well be amended or
improved upon, and is given in substance in the following pages.
Entries on the case cards include every conceivable offense against
the wartime laws and orders of the Federal Government. Each card
contains the condensed history of an investigation important in the
prosecution of the war, and, collectively, the 15,415 cards represent
uncountable hours, days and nights of devoted service to the Government
during a period of thirteen months. They record adventures as thrilling
as any of the detective stories of Monsieur Lecocq or Sherlock Holmes,
although these form a minority of the experiences encountered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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