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
The daily press of the United States acted under a voluntary
censorship during the war, even while it saw pass by such news as never
before had it seen in America. Now and again something of this would
break which obviously was public property and ought to be known—the
notorious transactions of von Bernstorff, von Papen, Dr. Albert,
Boy-Ed, Bolo; such crimes as the blowing up of the international
bridge in Maine; the mysterious fires and explosions whose regularity
attracted attention; the diplomatic revelations regarding Dumba and
Dernburg and their colleagues, which finally resulted in the dismissal
of the clique of high German officials whose creed had been one of
diplomatic and personal dishonor.
The stories of German attempts to control several New York newspapers;
their efforts to buy or subsidize some thirty other journals in all
parts of the country; the well-known subsidizing of certain writers to
spread propaganda in the press—all these things also necessarily got
abroad to such an extent that the United States Government could not
fail to take cognizance of it. At length, charges came out linking up
a Washington daily with wealthy commercial interests of a supposedly
pro-German nature, and a great deal of acrimonious comment appeared
in all parts of the country. Washington resolved to investigate these
charges. The process took the form, in the late fall of 1918, of the
appointment of a sub-committee of the great Senate Judiciary Committee,
which popularly was known as the Overman Committee.
The work of this committee, which summoned before it officers of the
Attorney General’s establishment in New York, agents of the Bureau of
Investigation in Washington, of Military and Naval Intelligence in
Washington, and all the larger figures of the accused or suspected
persons implicated in what now had become a wide-reaching national
scandal, was continued over many weeks. The proceedings were made
public regularly, and at last the readers of America began to get, at
first hand, authentic ideas of what menace had been at our doors and
inside our doors. It was before this Overman Committee that many of the
great New York cases in which A. P. L. assisted passed to their final
review.
Perhaps the most important single witness called before this
Senate committee was Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski, Chief of the Bureau of
Investigation of the Department of Justice at Washington. Mr. Bielaski
was on the stand for days at a time, and his testimony came as a
distinct shock to those of us who heretofore had known little or
nothing about the way in which our covert forces of espionage were
combating those of Germany. It will not be needful to follow the
records of the committee from day to day throughout the long period of
its sittings, but some of the more important revelations made by Mr.
Bielaski first may be brought to notice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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