For measuring forces with an enemy of this sort the United States, when it entered the war, was inadequately equipped with laws. A friendly people, believing in square and open dealing between nations as between individuals and trusting those to whom it had given citizenship and business and professional hospitality, as it would expect to be trusted in another land, had never thought it necessary to enact such laws as this emergency demanded. The only weapon of consequence which the Government had ready for conflict with the underground enemy was a statute which had been in force more than a hundred years permitting the arrest and internment by executive order of an alien enemy believed to be a menace to the public safety. Advantage was taken of this at once and some of the most dangerous agents of Germany were soon under guard and innocuous for the duration of the war. This internment statute was a powerful weapon in putting down enemy activities, while the severity with which it was enforced from the very beginning was effective in discouraging the continued hatching of plots. An espionage law enacted two months after our declaration of war and strengthened later on and a sabotage bill dealing with injury to property gave the needed means for dealing with a difficulty the nation had never before encountered. The espionage act was effective against organized or deliberate enemy or disloyal propaganda, but it was not intended to curtail the rights of free speech or of a free press and in its enforcement the courts made every effort to protect these rights as the basis of our political institutions. In the emotional tensity of the time it was inevitable that there should be bitter charges of excessive leniency on one side and, on the other, of unnecessary severity from those who feared the undermining of our principles of freedom. But in the end there were few who did not recognize that substantial justice had been meted out in most of the many cases. German alien enemies were required to register and 480,000 men and women were thus listed. A system of permits governed their movements and debarred them, without special permission, from the District of Columbia and from specified zones surrounding fortifications, docks, piers, wharves, warehouses, and other places important for war purposes. They were forbidden also to enter or leave the United States. Much more lenient treatment was given to the subjects of Austro-Hungary, upon whom the only restriction was that of not leaving the country, although they were also subject to arrest and internment if guilty of dangerous activities. They proved to be worthy of the trust placed in them, for, although there were seven or eight times as many of these enemy aliens as of those of German citizenship, they gave little trouble of any sort, their labor helped importantly in much of our war production and throughout the war they were quiet, industrious and law-abiding.