THE WEB
THE WEB
CHAPTER ITHE AWAKENINGThe “Neutral Cases”—First Realization of the German Spy System in America—Overcrowding of the Department of Justice—The Birth of a New Idea—Formation of the American Protective League, Civilian Auxiliary—Astonishing Growth of the Greatest Semi-Vigilante Movement of the World.We Americans have always been disposed to peace. We have not planned for war. Our Army has never been a menace to ourselves or to any other nation; our Navy, though strong and modern, never has been larger than a country of our extent in territory and industry admittedly ought to have. No one has feared us, and there has been none of whom we have had any fear. We have designedly stood aloof from entangling alliances. The two great oceans traditionally have been our friends, for they have set us apart from the world’s quarrels. An America, far off, new, rich, abounding, a land where a man might be free to grow to his natural stature, where he might be safe at his own fireside, where he might select his own rulers and rest always secure under his own form of government—that was the theory of this country and of this form of government. That was the reason why this country, naturally endowed above any other region of the world, has grown so marvelously fast.There was reason for America’s swift stature. She was a land not of war, but of peace. Rich, she threw open her doors. Frank, free, honest, generous, she made welcome all who came. She suspected none, trusted all, and toprove this, offered partnership in her wealth to any man of the world, under a system of naturalization laws whose like, in broadness and generosity, does not exist. Peace—and the chance to grow and to be happy. Peace—and a partnership in all she had. Peace—and a seat free at the richest table of the world. That was what America offered; and in spite of the pinch and the unrest of growing numbers, in spite of problems imported and not native to our long-untroubled land, that was the theory of American life up to a date four years earlier than this.In that four years America has changed more than in any forty of her earlier life. But yesterday, young, rich, laughing, free of care, Homerically mirthful and joyous, America to-day is mature, unsmiling, grave, dignified—and wise. What once she never suspected, now she knows. She has been betrayed.But America, traditionally resourceful, now suddenly agonized in the discovery of treachery at her own table, has out of the very anguish of her indignant horror, out of the very need of the hour, suddenly and adequately risen to her emergency. She always has done so. When the arms of the appointed agents of the law ever have wearied, she has upheld them. She has done so now, at the very moment of our country’s greatest need.The story of how that was done; how the very force of the situation demanded and received an instant and sufficient answer; how the civilians rallied to their own flag; how they came out of private life unasked, unsummoned, as though at spoken command of some central power—that is a great and splendid story of which few ever have known anything at all.It is a great and splendid story because it verifies America and her intent before all the high courts of things. These men did obey the summons of a vast central power. But it was no more than the soul of America that spoke. It was no more than her theory of the democracy of mankind which issued that unwritten order to assemble the minute men, each armed and garbed in his own way and each resolved to do what he could in a new and tremendous day of Lexington.It was not autocracy which gave the assembly call tothese silent legions. They mobilized themselves, so rapidly as to offer one of the most curious psychological problems of history. Why did these men leave their homes almost all at once, each unknown at first to the other, in large part each unknown to the other even now? How did it come about that an army of a quarter of a million men enlisted themselves and then offered their services to a government which needed them but never had asked for them? How did it come that—contrary to all European traditions—this tremendous striking-power began at the bottom in our democratic war-born instinct, and worked upward into the Government itself, as a new institution, wholly unrecognized in the constitution of state or nation? Usually the Government issues the order for mobilization. But here the greatest band of minute men ever known in the world mobilized as though unconsciously, as though to some spiritual trumpet call. Having done so, it offered itself to the Nation’s heads, saying, “Here we are. Take us and use us. We ask no pay.We enlist till the end of the war.”It was the spirit voice of anguished America which mobilized the American Protective League. There never was a time when America could lose this war. The answer was always written in the stars. Somewhere, high up in the heavens, blind Justice let fall her sword in a gesture of command; and that was all. The issue of the war was determined from that moment. It was certain that Germany, brutal, bloody, autocratic, destructive, would be defeated beyond the sea. Yes, and on this side of the sea.On this side, much was to be done, more than we had dreamed. Troubled but unparticipating, we stood aloof and watched the soil of all Europe redden with the blood of men—and of women and children. Even we still stood aloof, hands clenched, gasping in an enraged incredulity, watching the sea also—the free and open highway of the world, redden with the blood of men—and of women and children. But still we took no part, though indeed some of our young men could no longer stay at home and so enlisted under some Allied flag.We held in mind our ancient remoteness from all this. We heard still the counsel against entangling alliances.And, quite aside from the idea of material profit, we tried to be fair and impartial in a fight that was not yet ours, though every American heart bled with France and Belgium, ached in pain with that of Britain, locked in death grapple in her greatest war—that which must name her still free or forever enslaved. And from Washington came admonition to be calm. President Wilson’s appeal went out again and again to the people, and whether or not it ever once seemed to all of us a possible thing for the United States to keep out of this war, at least we sought to do so and were advised and commanded to do so by the chief of our own forces.Whether or not we all wished to be neutral so many years, we officially and nationally were neutral. Therefore we retained our commercial rights under neutrality. Doing no more than Germany always previously had done, we made and sold arms and munitions in the open markets of the world.But Germany could not come and get her arms and munitions had she wished to do so. Great Britain had something to say about that. Wherefore Germany hated us, secretly and openly—hated us for doing what she once had done but could no longer do.The enforcement of blockade made Germany hate us. Germany’s psychology has always been double-faced—one face for herself and one for the rest of the world. The Austrian double-headed eagle belongs of right also on the German coat of arms. “What I do not wish to have done to me is Wrong; what I wish to do to others is Right!” That is the sum and substance of the German public creed and the German private character—and now we fairly may say we know them both. The German is not a sportsman—he does not know the meaning of that word. He has not in his language any word meaning “fair play.” Nothing is fair play to a German which does not work to his advantage. The American neutrality in combination with the British blockade did not work to his advantage. Hence—so he thought—it was all wrong.The Germans began to hate America more and more. We did not know, at that time, that Germany had been planning many years for “diesen aufunsangehängtenKrieg”—“this war forced on us!” We did not have any idea that she had counted upon two million German-Americans to help her win this war; that she knew every nook and cranny of the United States and had them mapped; that for years she had maintained a tremendous organization of spies who had learned every vulnerable point of the American defenses, who were better acquainted with our Army than we ourselves were, and who had extended their covert activities to a degree which left them arrogantly confident of their success at war, and contemptuous of the best that America ever could do against her. Germany never doubted that she would win this war. It was charted and plotted out many years in advance, move by move, step by step, clear through to the bloody and brutal end which should leave Germany commander of the world.Now, in the German general plan of conquest, America had had her place assigned to her. So long as she would remain passive and complaisant—so long as she would furnish munitions to Germany and not to England or France or Russia, all well, all very good. But when, by any shift of the play, America might furnish supplies to Germany’s enemies and not to Germany—no matter through whose fault—then so much the worse for America! It never was intended that America should be anything but expansion ground for Germany, whether or not she remained complaisant. But if she did not—if she began in her own idea of neutrality to transgress Germany’s two-headed idea of “neutrality”—that meant immediate and positive action against America, now, to-day, and not after a while and at Germany’s greater leisure.“I shall have no foolishness from America!” said William Hohenzollern to the accredited representative of this country in his court—William Hohenzollern, that same pitiable figure who at the final test of defeat had not the courage of Saul to fall on his sword, not the courage of a real King to die at the head of his army, but who fled from his army like a coward when he saw all was lost—even honor. His threat of a million Germans in America who would rise against us was not ill-based. They were here. They are here now, to-day. The reply to that threat, made by Gerard, is historic. “Majesty, let them rise. Wehave a million lamp-posts waiting for them.” And this herein tells the story of how the million traitors at America’s too generous table were shown the lamp-posts looming.The German anger at America grew to the fury point, and she began covertly to stir herself on this side of the sea. The rustling of the leaves began to be audible, the hissing grew unmistakable. But America, resting on her old traditions, paid no attention. We heard with sympathy for a time the classic two-faced German-American’s wail, “Germany is my mother, America my wife! How can I fight my mother?” The truth is that all too many German-Americans never cared for America at all in any tender or reverent way. Resting under their Kaiser’s Delbrueck injunction never to forget the fatherland, they never were anything but German. They used America; they never loved her. They clung to their old language, their old customs, and cared nothing for ours. They prospered, because they would live as we would not live. It would be wrong to call them all bad, and folly to call them all good. As a class they were clannish beyond all other races coming here. Many who at first were openly pro-German became more discreet; but of countless numbers of these, it is well known that at their own firesides and in supposed secrecy they privately were German, although in public they were American. Of Liberty bond buyers, many of the loudest boasters were of this “loyal German-American citizenship.” They really had not earned even the hyphen.Open and covert action was taken by Germany on both sides of the Atlantic to bring America into line. Not fearing America, nor knowing the real America at all, Germany did much as she liked. Outrages on the high seas began. All international law was cast aside by Germany as fully as in her invasion of Belgium. She counted so surely on success and world-conquest that she was absolutely arrogant and indifferent alike to law and to humanity. The militaristic Germany began to show—brutal, crafty, bestial, lacking in all honor, ignorant of the word “fair play,” callous to every appeal of humanity, wholly and unscrupulously selfish. We began now to see thesignificance of that “efficiency” of which our industrial captains sometimes had prated over-much. Yes, Germany was efficient!The strain between the two countries increased as the blockade tightened, and as the counter-plot of the German submarines developed. Then came the Lusitania.... I can not write of that. I have hated Germany since then, and thousands of loyal Americans join in hatred for her. All of good America has been at war with her at heart from that very day, because in America we never have made war on women and children. We are bound by every instinct to hate any nation that does, Turk, German or ignorant savage.The Lusitania was Germany’s deliberate action. She arrogantly commanded us in a few newspaper advertisements not to sail on the Lusitania—as though she owned us and the sea. After the deed, she struck medals in commemoration of it. German church bells rang to glorify it. A German holiday was created to celebrate it. German preachers there and in America preached sermons lauding it. It was a national act, nationally planned, nationally ratified. From that day we were at war. Let those who like, of whatever station, say “We are not at war with the German people.” That is not true. The German people, the German rank and file, not their leaders alone, were back of all these deeds and ratified them absolutely on both sides of the Atlantic.From that day, too, the issue might really have been known. I went into the elevator of a building in my city, a copy of a newspaper in my hand with the black headline of the Lusitania across the page. The German operator of the elevator saw it as I turned it toward him silently. “Vell, they vere varned!” he said, and grinned.That incident shows Germany in America, then and now, covert, sinister, sneering, confident, exultant. You could not find an answer you would dare speak to such a man. There is no deed that you could do. I pulled together, and only said, “It will cost Germany the war.” And so it did.But we did not go to war; we tried to keep out of the war. The daily page of red horrors fresh from Europe taught us what war meant at this day of the world.Women naturally did not like the thought of casting their sons into that brutal hell. And then arose the female-men, the pacifists, forgetting their sex, forgetting their country, forgetting the large and lasting game of humanity’s good, which cannot count present cost, but must plan for the long game of the centuries.With the pacifists suddenly and silently rose the hidden army of German espionage and German sympathy in our own country, quick to see that here was their chance! Millions of German gold now came pouring across to finance this break in America’s forces. Her high ministers to our Government began their treachery, forgetful of all ambassadorial honor, perjuring themselves and their country. The war was on, on both sides the Atlantic now.And still America did not know, and still America did not go to war. We dreaded it, held back from it, month after month—some, as it seems to many, wrongly and unhappily even did what they could to capitalize the fact that we were not at war. But the hidden serpent raised its head and began to strike—to strike so openly, in so long a series of overt acts, that now our civil courts and the great national machinery of justice in Washington became literally helpless in their endeavors at resistance.We were not at war, but war was waged against us in so many ways—against our lives and property—that all sense of security was gone. We offered as our defense not, as yet, our Fleet or our Army, but our Department of Justice. Day and night that department at Washington, and its branches in all the great cities, in New York, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, San Francisco, labored to clear the constantly increasing dockets, to keep down the constantly increasing heaps of suspect cases. It was evident that America was hearing from the Kaiser’s million Germans in America. But where were the lamp posts?The Department of Justice found itself flooded and submerged with work in the Bureau of Investigation, collecting evidence against German spies and German lawbreakers. It was plain what efforts now were making to undermine America. But the truth was, the grist was too much for the mill. We had never organized a system tohandle covert and hidden war as Germany had done. We had fought in the open when, rarely, we had fought at all. The great mill of Justice clogged up and broke down, not from any inefficiency or inadequacy in average times, but because it never could have been predicted that “Neutrality Cases” such as these ever would be known in our history. In this war, giant figures only have ruled. The world was not prepared for them.The outrages went on. Germany, confident of the success of ruthless submarine warfare, told us when we could sail, how we must mark our ships—said, sneeringly, “Vell, you vas varned!”It had very early become plain to all Americans that we could not always submit to this. More and more now we were browbeaten and insulted. More and more also our hearts were wrung at the sight of splendid France, fighting gamely and proudly and silently for her life; at the lists of the gallant British dead; the whole story of the staggering lines of Liberty. It was plain that the great prize of free institutions, of human liberty itself, was about to be lost to the world forever. It became plain that the glorious traditions of America must perish, that her answer to humanity must be forever stilled, that she, too, must be included in the ruin of all the good things of the world. It began also to be said more and more openly that America would come next—that we must fight; if not now, then at some later day, and perhaps without these Allies.So our war spirit began in the total to outweigh and overtop our peace spirit and our pacifist spirit and our hesitant spirit. We knew we would be at war. Many of us deplored and do still deplore the fact that we waited so long in times so perilous. We lost two precious years; billions in treasure, and what is immeasurably worse, millions in lives. So much for hesitancy.But now, as bearing upon the purpose of this account of the American Protective League, it is to be kept in mind that for months and years the Department of Justice had been at war with the hidden German army here. And, as the Germans were pushing back the Allies over there, they were pushing us back here, because we were not ready for so unforeseen a situation.What saves a country in its need? Its loyal men. What reinforces an army called on for sudden enlargement? Its volunteers. What saved San Francisco in its days of riot and anarchy in 1850? Its Volunteers for law and order. What brought peace to Alder Gulch in 1863 when criminals ruled? Its Volunteers for law and order. America always has had Volunteers to fight for law and order against criminals. The law itself says you may arrest without warrant a man caught committing a felony. The line between formal written law and natural law is but thin at best.There was, therefore, in the spring of 1917 in America, the greatest menace to our country we ever had known. Organized criminals were in a thousand ways attacking our institutions, jeopardizing the safety, the very continuity of our country. No loyal American was safe. We did not know who were the disloyal Americans. We faced an army of masked men. They outnumbered us. We had no machinery of defense adequate to fight them, because we foolishly had thought that all these whom we had welcomed and fed were honest in their protestations—and their oaths—when they came to us.So now, we say, an imperious cry of NEED came, wrung from astounded and anguished America. It was as though this actual cry came from the heavens, “I need you, my children! Help me, my children!”That cry was heard. How, it is of small importance to any member of the American Protective League, whose wireless antennæ, for the time attuned, caught down that silent wireless from the skies. No one man sent that message. Almost, we might say, no one man answered it, so many flocked in after the first word of answer. No one man of the two hundred and fifty thousand who first and last answered in one way or another would say or would want to say that he alone made so large an answer to so large a call. None the less, we deal here with actual history. So that now we may begin with details, begin to show how those first strands were woven which in a few weeks or months had grown into one of America’s strongest cables of anchorage against the terror which was abroad upon the sea.
The “Neutral Cases”—First Realization of the German Spy System in America—Overcrowding of the Department of Justice—The Birth of a New Idea—Formation of the American Protective League, Civilian Auxiliary—Astonishing Growth of the Greatest Semi-Vigilante Movement of the World.
The “Neutral Cases”—First Realization of the German Spy System in America—Overcrowding of the Department of Justice—The Birth of a New Idea—Formation of the American Protective League, Civilian Auxiliary—Astonishing Growth of the Greatest Semi-Vigilante Movement of the World.
We Americans have always been disposed to peace. We have not planned for war. Our Army has never been a menace to ourselves or to any other nation; our Navy, though strong and modern, never has been larger than a country of our extent in territory and industry admittedly ought to have. No one has feared us, and there has been none of whom we have had any fear. We have designedly stood aloof from entangling alliances. The two great oceans traditionally have been our friends, for they have set us apart from the world’s quarrels. An America, far off, new, rich, abounding, a land where a man might be free to grow to his natural stature, where he might be safe at his own fireside, where he might select his own rulers and rest always secure under his own form of government—that was the theory of this country and of this form of government. That was the reason why this country, naturally endowed above any other region of the world, has grown so marvelously fast.
There was reason for America’s swift stature. She was a land not of war, but of peace. Rich, she threw open her doors. Frank, free, honest, generous, she made welcome all who came. She suspected none, trusted all, and toprove this, offered partnership in her wealth to any man of the world, under a system of naturalization laws whose like, in broadness and generosity, does not exist. Peace—and the chance to grow and to be happy. Peace—and a partnership in all she had. Peace—and a seat free at the richest table of the world. That was what America offered; and in spite of the pinch and the unrest of growing numbers, in spite of problems imported and not native to our long-untroubled land, that was the theory of American life up to a date four years earlier than this.
In that four years America has changed more than in any forty of her earlier life. But yesterday, young, rich, laughing, free of care, Homerically mirthful and joyous, America to-day is mature, unsmiling, grave, dignified—and wise. What once she never suspected, now she knows. She has been betrayed.
But America, traditionally resourceful, now suddenly agonized in the discovery of treachery at her own table, has out of the very anguish of her indignant horror, out of the very need of the hour, suddenly and adequately risen to her emergency. She always has done so. When the arms of the appointed agents of the law ever have wearied, she has upheld them. She has done so now, at the very moment of our country’s greatest need.
The story of how that was done; how the very force of the situation demanded and received an instant and sufficient answer; how the civilians rallied to their own flag; how they came out of private life unasked, unsummoned, as though at spoken command of some central power—that is a great and splendid story of which few ever have known anything at all.
It is a great and splendid story because it verifies America and her intent before all the high courts of things. These men did obey the summons of a vast central power. But it was no more than the soul of America that spoke. It was no more than her theory of the democracy of mankind which issued that unwritten order to assemble the minute men, each armed and garbed in his own way and each resolved to do what he could in a new and tremendous day of Lexington.
It was not autocracy which gave the assembly call tothese silent legions. They mobilized themselves, so rapidly as to offer one of the most curious psychological problems of history. Why did these men leave their homes almost all at once, each unknown at first to the other, in large part each unknown to the other even now? How did it come about that an army of a quarter of a million men enlisted themselves and then offered their services to a government which needed them but never had asked for them? How did it come that—contrary to all European traditions—this tremendous striking-power began at the bottom in our democratic war-born instinct, and worked upward into the Government itself, as a new institution, wholly unrecognized in the constitution of state or nation? Usually the Government issues the order for mobilization. But here the greatest band of minute men ever known in the world mobilized as though unconsciously, as though to some spiritual trumpet call. Having done so, it offered itself to the Nation’s heads, saying, “Here we are. Take us and use us. We ask no pay.We enlist till the end of the war.”
It was the spirit voice of anguished America which mobilized the American Protective League. There never was a time when America could lose this war. The answer was always written in the stars. Somewhere, high up in the heavens, blind Justice let fall her sword in a gesture of command; and that was all. The issue of the war was determined from that moment. It was certain that Germany, brutal, bloody, autocratic, destructive, would be defeated beyond the sea. Yes, and on this side of the sea.
On this side, much was to be done, more than we had dreamed. Troubled but unparticipating, we stood aloof and watched the soil of all Europe redden with the blood of men—and of women and children. Even we still stood aloof, hands clenched, gasping in an enraged incredulity, watching the sea also—the free and open highway of the world, redden with the blood of men—and of women and children. But still we took no part, though indeed some of our young men could no longer stay at home and so enlisted under some Allied flag.
We held in mind our ancient remoteness from all this. We heard still the counsel against entangling alliances.And, quite aside from the idea of material profit, we tried to be fair and impartial in a fight that was not yet ours, though every American heart bled with France and Belgium, ached in pain with that of Britain, locked in death grapple in her greatest war—that which must name her still free or forever enslaved. And from Washington came admonition to be calm. President Wilson’s appeal went out again and again to the people, and whether or not it ever once seemed to all of us a possible thing for the United States to keep out of this war, at least we sought to do so and were advised and commanded to do so by the chief of our own forces.
Whether or not we all wished to be neutral so many years, we officially and nationally were neutral. Therefore we retained our commercial rights under neutrality. Doing no more than Germany always previously had done, we made and sold arms and munitions in the open markets of the world.
But Germany could not come and get her arms and munitions had she wished to do so. Great Britain had something to say about that. Wherefore Germany hated us, secretly and openly—hated us for doing what she once had done but could no longer do.
The enforcement of blockade made Germany hate us. Germany’s psychology has always been double-faced—one face for herself and one for the rest of the world. The Austrian double-headed eagle belongs of right also on the German coat of arms. “What I do not wish to have done to me is Wrong; what I wish to do to others is Right!” That is the sum and substance of the German public creed and the German private character—and now we fairly may say we know them both. The German is not a sportsman—he does not know the meaning of that word. He has not in his language any word meaning “fair play.” Nothing is fair play to a German which does not work to his advantage. The American neutrality in combination with the British blockade did not work to his advantage. Hence—so he thought—it was all wrong.
The Germans began to hate America more and more. We did not know, at that time, that Germany had been planning many years for “diesen aufunsangehängtenKrieg”—“this war forced on us!” We did not have any idea that she had counted upon two million German-Americans to help her win this war; that she knew every nook and cranny of the United States and had them mapped; that for years she had maintained a tremendous organization of spies who had learned every vulnerable point of the American defenses, who were better acquainted with our Army than we ourselves were, and who had extended their covert activities to a degree which left them arrogantly confident of their success at war, and contemptuous of the best that America ever could do against her. Germany never doubted that she would win this war. It was charted and plotted out many years in advance, move by move, step by step, clear through to the bloody and brutal end which should leave Germany commander of the world.
Now, in the German general plan of conquest, America had had her place assigned to her. So long as she would remain passive and complaisant—so long as she would furnish munitions to Germany and not to England or France or Russia, all well, all very good. But when, by any shift of the play, America might furnish supplies to Germany’s enemies and not to Germany—no matter through whose fault—then so much the worse for America! It never was intended that America should be anything but expansion ground for Germany, whether or not she remained complaisant. But if she did not—if she began in her own idea of neutrality to transgress Germany’s two-headed idea of “neutrality”—that meant immediate and positive action against America, now, to-day, and not after a while and at Germany’s greater leisure.
“I shall have no foolishness from America!” said William Hohenzollern to the accredited representative of this country in his court—William Hohenzollern, that same pitiable figure who at the final test of defeat had not the courage of Saul to fall on his sword, not the courage of a real King to die at the head of his army, but who fled from his army like a coward when he saw all was lost—even honor. His threat of a million Germans in America who would rise against us was not ill-based. They were here. They are here now, to-day. The reply to that threat, made by Gerard, is historic. “Majesty, let them rise. Wehave a million lamp-posts waiting for them.” And this herein tells the story of how the million traitors at America’s too generous table were shown the lamp-posts looming.
The German anger at America grew to the fury point, and she began covertly to stir herself on this side of the sea. The rustling of the leaves began to be audible, the hissing grew unmistakable. But America, resting on her old traditions, paid no attention. We heard with sympathy for a time the classic two-faced German-American’s wail, “Germany is my mother, America my wife! How can I fight my mother?” The truth is that all too many German-Americans never cared for America at all in any tender or reverent way. Resting under their Kaiser’s Delbrueck injunction never to forget the fatherland, they never were anything but German. They used America; they never loved her. They clung to their old language, their old customs, and cared nothing for ours. They prospered, because they would live as we would not live. It would be wrong to call them all bad, and folly to call them all good. As a class they were clannish beyond all other races coming here. Many who at first were openly pro-German became more discreet; but of countless numbers of these, it is well known that at their own firesides and in supposed secrecy they privately were German, although in public they were American. Of Liberty bond buyers, many of the loudest boasters were of this “loyal German-American citizenship.” They really had not earned even the hyphen.
Open and covert action was taken by Germany on both sides of the Atlantic to bring America into line. Not fearing America, nor knowing the real America at all, Germany did much as she liked. Outrages on the high seas began. All international law was cast aside by Germany as fully as in her invasion of Belgium. She counted so surely on success and world-conquest that she was absolutely arrogant and indifferent alike to law and to humanity. The militaristic Germany began to show—brutal, crafty, bestial, lacking in all honor, ignorant of the word “fair play,” callous to every appeal of humanity, wholly and unscrupulously selfish. We began now to see thesignificance of that “efficiency” of which our industrial captains sometimes had prated over-much. Yes, Germany was efficient!
The strain between the two countries increased as the blockade tightened, and as the counter-plot of the German submarines developed. Then came the Lusitania.... I can not write of that. I have hated Germany since then, and thousands of loyal Americans join in hatred for her. All of good America has been at war with her at heart from that very day, because in America we never have made war on women and children. We are bound by every instinct to hate any nation that does, Turk, German or ignorant savage.
The Lusitania was Germany’s deliberate action. She arrogantly commanded us in a few newspaper advertisements not to sail on the Lusitania—as though she owned us and the sea. After the deed, she struck medals in commemoration of it. German church bells rang to glorify it. A German holiday was created to celebrate it. German preachers there and in America preached sermons lauding it. It was a national act, nationally planned, nationally ratified. From that day we were at war. Let those who like, of whatever station, say “We are not at war with the German people.” That is not true. The German people, the German rank and file, not their leaders alone, were back of all these deeds and ratified them absolutely on both sides of the Atlantic.
From that day, too, the issue might really have been known. I went into the elevator of a building in my city, a copy of a newspaper in my hand with the black headline of the Lusitania across the page. The German operator of the elevator saw it as I turned it toward him silently. “Vell, they vere varned!” he said, and grinned.
That incident shows Germany in America, then and now, covert, sinister, sneering, confident, exultant. You could not find an answer you would dare speak to such a man. There is no deed that you could do. I pulled together, and only said, “It will cost Germany the war.” And so it did.
But we did not go to war; we tried to keep out of the war. The daily page of red horrors fresh from Europe taught us what war meant at this day of the world.Women naturally did not like the thought of casting their sons into that brutal hell. And then arose the female-men, the pacifists, forgetting their sex, forgetting their country, forgetting the large and lasting game of humanity’s good, which cannot count present cost, but must plan for the long game of the centuries.
With the pacifists suddenly and silently rose the hidden army of German espionage and German sympathy in our own country, quick to see that here was their chance! Millions of German gold now came pouring across to finance this break in America’s forces. Her high ministers to our Government began their treachery, forgetful of all ambassadorial honor, perjuring themselves and their country. The war was on, on both sides the Atlantic now.
And still America did not know, and still America did not go to war. We dreaded it, held back from it, month after month—some, as it seems to many, wrongly and unhappily even did what they could to capitalize the fact that we were not at war. But the hidden serpent raised its head and began to strike—to strike so openly, in so long a series of overt acts, that now our civil courts and the great national machinery of justice in Washington became literally helpless in their endeavors at resistance.
We were not at war, but war was waged against us in so many ways—against our lives and property—that all sense of security was gone. We offered as our defense not, as yet, our Fleet or our Army, but our Department of Justice. Day and night that department at Washington, and its branches in all the great cities, in New York, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, San Francisco, labored to clear the constantly increasing dockets, to keep down the constantly increasing heaps of suspect cases. It was evident that America was hearing from the Kaiser’s million Germans in America. But where were the lamp posts?
The Department of Justice found itself flooded and submerged with work in the Bureau of Investigation, collecting evidence against German spies and German lawbreakers. It was plain what efforts now were making to undermine America. But the truth was, the grist was too much for the mill. We had never organized a system tohandle covert and hidden war as Germany had done. We had fought in the open when, rarely, we had fought at all. The great mill of Justice clogged up and broke down, not from any inefficiency or inadequacy in average times, but because it never could have been predicted that “Neutrality Cases” such as these ever would be known in our history. In this war, giant figures only have ruled. The world was not prepared for them.
The outrages went on. Germany, confident of the success of ruthless submarine warfare, told us when we could sail, how we must mark our ships—said, sneeringly, “Vell, you vas varned!”
It had very early become plain to all Americans that we could not always submit to this. More and more now we were browbeaten and insulted. More and more also our hearts were wrung at the sight of splendid France, fighting gamely and proudly and silently for her life; at the lists of the gallant British dead; the whole story of the staggering lines of Liberty. It was plain that the great prize of free institutions, of human liberty itself, was about to be lost to the world forever. It became plain that the glorious traditions of America must perish, that her answer to humanity must be forever stilled, that she, too, must be included in the ruin of all the good things of the world. It began also to be said more and more openly that America would come next—that we must fight; if not now, then at some later day, and perhaps without these Allies.
So our war spirit began in the total to outweigh and overtop our peace spirit and our pacifist spirit and our hesitant spirit. We knew we would be at war. Many of us deplored and do still deplore the fact that we waited so long in times so perilous. We lost two precious years; billions in treasure, and what is immeasurably worse, millions in lives. So much for hesitancy.
But now, as bearing upon the purpose of this account of the American Protective League, it is to be kept in mind that for months and years the Department of Justice had been at war with the hidden German army here. And, as the Germans were pushing back the Allies over there, they were pushing us back here, because we were not ready for so unforeseen a situation.
What saves a country in its need? Its loyal men. What reinforces an army called on for sudden enlargement? Its volunteers. What saved San Francisco in its days of riot and anarchy in 1850? Its Volunteers for law and order. What brought peace to Alder Gulch in 1863 when criminals ruled? Its Volunteers for law and order. America always has had Volunteers to fight for law and order against criminals. The law itself says you may arrest without warrant a man caught committing a felony. The line between formal written law and natural law is but thin at best.
There was, therefore, in the spring of 1917 in America, the greatest menace to our country we ever had known. Organized criminals were in a thousand ways attacking our institutions, jeopardizing the safety, the very continuity of our country. No loyal American was safe. We did not know who were the disloyal Americans. We faced an army of masked men. They outnumbered us. We had no machinery of defense adequate to fight them, because we foolishly had thought that all these whom we had welcomed and fed were honest in their protestations—and their oaths—when they came to us.
So now, we say, an imperious cry of NEED came, wrung from astounded and anguished America. It was as though this actual cry came from the heavens, “I need you, my children! Help me, my children!”
That cry was heard. How, it is of small importance to any member of the American Protective League, whose wireless antennæ, for the time attuned, caught down that silent wireless from the skies. No one man sent that message. Almost, we might say, no one man answered it, so many flocked in after the first word of answer. No one man of the two hundred and fifty thousand who first and last answered in one way or another would say or would want to say that he alone made so large an answer to so large a call. None the less, we deal here with actual history. So that now we may begin with details, begin to show how those first strands were woven which in a few weeks or months had grown into one of America’s strongest cables of anchorage against the terror which was abroad upon the sea.