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
It was alleged that the activities of Wessells had to do with “ways
and means of secretly placing explosives, or securing other persons
secretly to place explosives, on wharves located in the United States,
on ships and vessels in ports of the United States, and plying between
ports of the United States and other countries; to blow up, injure,
and destroy the same, and cause fires thereon, and thereby hinder and
hamper the prosecution of the war by the United States against Germany.”
The final overt act charged was that in July, 1917, Wessells requested
“information as to ways and means of importing toy blocks from
Switzerland,” his purpose being to find “ways and means of secretly
and clandestinely introducing into the United States explosives and
ingredients of explosives concealed in toy blocks.”
Had any of these toy blocks come into the hands of innocent children,
what matter to a mind which would regard the Lusitania sinking as
justifiable war? What difference would it make to a man hiding T. N. T.
in a child’s toys whether he killed babies in Flanders or on the high
seas or in American homes? Such men are unmoral. One would call treason
one of their lesser crimes.
There was in New York City a certain German whom we will call von S——.
He was an inventor of a machine called an aeromobile, which, however,
he said he would not sell to any government but that of Germany. He was
arrested by agents of the Department of Justice, charged with uttering
disloyal, scurrilous and profane remarks against the Government and
military forces of the United States. He is a German-born citizen of
the United States. Enter now another citizen of the United States who
spoke as good German as von S—— did and who posed as “an official
representative of the German Imperial Government in the United States.”
This latter gentleman said he wanted to buy the S—— invention for the
Fatherland. S—— turned himself inside out, saying among other things:
“Everything is fair in war—gas, poison, the bomb, the knife—we must
stop at nothing. Germany must triumph over her enemies. I would not
hesitate to destroy a whole city for the good of the German cause.”
After S—— had been allowed to talk sufficiently, his new friend, who
proved to be an A. P. L. operative in disguise, caused his arrest by an
agent in the Military Intelligence Division. S—— was struck speechless
when he found he had been trapped. He was held in ten thousand dollars
bail at the examination and committed to the Tombs in default of
surety. Would he have been admitted to any bail at all in Germany in
similar circumstances?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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