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
Among matters which called for constant vigilance, the
Non-Partisan League came in for a share of our attention. At the
time of the entry of the United States into the war, Iowa was
being covered with literature for and against this movement,
the leading force against the Non-Partisan League being the
Greater Iowa Association. The State Council for National Defense
considered that it was not for the good of Iowa for this fight
to continue, and passed resolutions asking both factions to
discontinue their efforts until after the war. The Greater Iowa
Association readily acceded to the request, but the Non-Partisan
League persisted in its propaganda, and the Council for Defense
deemed it wise to take a hand in fairness to the Greater Iowa
Association.
But the foregoing mild report does not tell the full story in all of
its acrimonious vehemence. A local agricultural journal came out in
red head-lines across its cover page, “Iowa’s Reign of Terror!” The
editor, in that and subsequent issues, printed perhaps 50,000 words
of condemnation of those not included among his own constituents,
sidetracking alfalfa and Holsteins wholly for the time. He says:
To-day in Iowa there is a veritable reign of terror, which has
been encouraged among ignorant and irresponsible people, by men
and organizations who should and do know better, but who are
playing upon passion and prejudice for ulterior purposes. More
harm is resulting from this assumption of authority by private
individuals, without the shadow of moral or legal right, than by
all the pro-German propaganda or real disloyalty in the state.
And the worst of it is that it defeats the very purpose which
is used to excuse it—the purpose of uniting all our citizens
whole-heartedly and sincerely behind the Government’s war aims.
Already this rule of passion, freed from legal restraint, has
resulted in the excess of mob violence, of injustice and wrongs
towards loyal and patriotic citizens, whose whole lives will be
embittered by the brutal intolerance of a few. Our boasted freedom
and liberty and love of fair play are being made the victims of
methods no better than those of the despoilers of Belgium, from
which they differ not in quality but only in degree.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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