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
We do not give authorized figures as to the alien enemies interned,
but it is sometimes said that we interned only about five thousand
aliens, that we paroled a very large number, deported a few, and
revoked citizenship for only two. It was said that the close of the
war would set free a great many of these persons who will resume their
residence, if not their former activities, in America. It is true
that we have not executed a single German spy. That is an astonishing
commentary on our laws and our Government in times such as these. Let
those who are wiser than the writer of this book can claim to be after
the extraordinary experience of studying the real America, pass on the
wisdom of such leniency in its bearing on later Bolshevism in America.
Other nations certainly have acted otherwise. Sometimes they have
smiled at us as the easy mark of all the nations.
Certainly, however, whatever may be the personal belief of many
citizens of this country, our public documents prove the wish of our
Department of Justice, all its Bureaus and all its auxiliaries, to be
just and more than just, generous and more than generous, to those not
in accord with our laws and institutions,—a strange contrast for the
reflection of those “simple and kindly” folk who for four years have
exulted in the outrages Germany has wrought upon the world, and who
for four years have given the world the most detestable examples of
treacherous espionage.
At times we did teach some of those gentry that there was a God in
Israel. If as yet we have deported few or none of those interned
aliens—all of whom, and a hundred thousand more, surely ought to be
deported—if we have received back into our tolerant friendship those
who have been for some time warned out of our Government zones, at
least we have trailed down certain of the more active cases of Kultur
spreading in America. Space confines us to very few of those, chosen
almost at random from the thousands at hand in the records.
The chief centers of alien enemy activity in this country, as might
have been expected, were the great industrial towns and cities. It
was in these places that the A. P. L. fought its hardest fights and
achieved its greatest triumphs.
The great city of Seattle was no exception. The report of the splendid
work it did all through the far Northwest ought by every right to
appear in full. We must be content, however, to extract from the
Seattle record a couple of interesting incidents of trailing aliens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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