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
“There was one old German in my district,” says the report of a New
York state chief, “who had spent thirty years in our region, surveying.
He had been an officer in the Franco-German war, and was a recognized
expert in real estate values, appraisals, etc. When we went into the
war, he made public a little statement telling of his German origin
and of his American citizenship. He came under the suspicion of some,
and I looked into the matter. One of his men remembered hearing the
German say, twenty years ago, when under the influence of liquor, that
he had been a German spy in the war with France; he also remembered
the German’s story of a horse he had used, which he had trained to
run, trot or walk at certain definite paces. By keeping track of the
different gaits, as he jogged along in his buggy over France, he would
measure certain localities and compute distances—information which
proved valuable later. It was need of such information that made
Germany send out secret surveying forces when she was preparing to
attack France. We put this man under surveillance but could get nothing
on him except that he tried to learn when transports sailed. Apparently
he had done all his work before the war began, just as he had in France
before the other war.”
An ingenious and dastardly instance of spy work and sabotage was
recently uncovered in Detroit. Anton G——, a skilled workman employed in
a factory making airplane fuel tanks, deliberately planned an aviation
accident. He took a tank which had been condemned because the bottom
sump casting had been riveted into the wrong position, cut the rivets,
properly adjusted the casting and soldered it in place, replacing the
cut rivets so that the tank appeared O. K. for use. It passed the
plant’s inspection, and was installed in a plane before its dangerous
character was detected. G—— has given up the making of airplane tanks
for the duration of the war—and longer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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