CHAPTER III
EARLY DAYS OF THE LEAGUE
“D. J.” and “A. P. L.”—The Personal Statement of the Chicago Division Superintendent of the U. S. Bureau of Investigation—Early Days of the League—The Nation Unprepared—Swift Rallying of the Minute Men.
“Without exaggeration, I think the Chicago Division of the American Protective League did seventy-five per cent of the Government investigating work of the Chicago district throughout the period of the war. It seems to me that this one sentence covers the situation.”—Hinton G. Clabaugh, Chicago Agent, U. S. Department of Justice.
In previous pages a general outline of the birth and growth of the American Protective League has been given, with a general statement also as to its wide usefulness in the exigencies of the tremendous days of the world war. There will be, however, many thousands of the members of the League, and a like number of the lay public, who will be curious as to the specific and more personal facts surrounding the early days of the organization. Such facts are part of the country’s history as well as that of the League, and therefore ought to be recorded, and recorded accurately and indisputably.
Mr. Hinton G. Clabaugh, division superintendent of the Bureau of Investigation of the U. S. Department of Justice, was asked for a written brief, historically covering the joint activities of the Department of Justice and its A. P. L. auxiliary in Chicago during the early period of the war. The admirably comprehensive record which Mr. Clabaugh has furnished appears in this volume as Appendix A.
No statement of facts and figures, however, or of dates and details, can really cover the story of the American Protective League. It has a character and a history which refuse to classify or to run parallel with other organizations. It was an idea born out of a vast necessity, and its growth seemed to be a thing apart from ordinary business methods. Indeed, it sprang into such rapid stature that in large part its officers followed it rather than led it. It was almost sporadic in a thousand towns, so quickly did the achievement of organization follow the realization of the need. Thereafter came the days of national organization, of system, patience, perseverance, and efficiency, which made it a well-knit power in all parts of the country.
It was Mr. Clabaugh’s privilege to have lent aid and encouragement in the days when the League was not yet a reality, the early days when all was nebulous, when no one knew anyone else, and when cases were pouring into D. J. that had to be handled in the best way possible and at the first moment possible.
The A. P. L. has always served the regular organization of the law, has always worked with or under the supervision of the D. J. bureau chief nearest at hand, and, indeed, never pretended to do more than that. But this coöperation and interlocking of forces was an easier thing for D. J. superintendents elsewhere, later in the game, after A. P. L. had become an accepted success all over the country.
It was at the very beginning that the greatest difficulties had to be met, and it was during these early troubled days of the League that its history became inseparably linked with that of the Chicago bureau of the Department of Justice. Set down in a seething center of alien activity—for so we may justly call Chicago in the early days of this war—with only a handful of men to rely on, with no laws, no precedents, no support, no help, no past like to the present, and no future that could be predicated on anything that had gone before, Mr. Clabaugh’s bureau was the first to get swamped with the neutrality cases—and the first to be offered counsel, friendship, support, help, money, men and methods, all in quality and amount fitted to win the day for him at once. The Clabaugh story, therefore, is the most important one told by any bureau chief, and it is historically indispensable.
It is all very well to have confidence in our government and to believe in a general way that it cannot err and cannot fail, but government in peace and government in war times are two distinct and separate propositions. The sheer truth is that there was absolutely no arm or branch of our government which was prepared for war. In part, we never did get prepared for it, so far as essential equipment of a military sort is concerned. In artillery, in aeroplanes, in various sorts of munitions and of equipment, we were not ready for war when the Armistice was signed. We had no adequate military or intelligence system, and the splendid force built up as M. I. D. was built after the war was begun and not before. In the same way—although, of course, we had the American faith and respect for our courts, believing them to be in some way supernal institutions which could not err and which needed no attention on the part of the people—our judiciary also was unprepared for war. It never would have been prepared for war—never in the world—had it not been for the American Protective League. It is certainly a most curious, almost an uncanny story, how the Minute Men of America once more saved the day, responding instantly to a great national need, not knowing overmuch of this new game, but each resolved to fight—each, if you please, resolving in unheroic and undramatic way—in much the same frame of mind of those men at Verdun who wrote on the page of martial history the clarion phrase, “They shall not pass!”
The enemy did not pass in Chicago, nor in New York, nor in San Francisco, nor in any place between. Not prepared—a whole nation in shirtsleeves at the plow—we became prepared. We fought with one hand, while, with the other, we buttoned on the new tunic for which we had not yet been measured, and in Army, Navy, Aviation, Intelligence, Supply, Motor Transport and Department of Justice, we learned as we fought—and won. The organization of the American Protective League reveals a curious phase of life in this republic. It could not have taken place in any other country of the world.
“A word as to the Chicago organization is in order,” says the writer of this first report of D. J. on A. P. L. “The work of the League was presumed to be to report matters of a disloyal nature that came to the attention of the members and to see that they were brought to the attention of the proper Government officials. However, the work of the agents of the Bureau itself increased so rapidly at this time that it was a physical impossibility for the small number to handle the same, and by degrees members of the League who showed aptitude for the work were called upon to assist the agents of the Bureau. Gradually, more and more work was thrown on the League until practically all complaints coming to the Bureau by mail were turned over to the League for them to investigate.”
If, during the later months of the war, you had visited the Department of Justice in the Federal Building in Chicago, you would have found extensive and well-equipped offices, ably manned and humming with activity. Yet the Chicago department, though large in personnel and efficient in administration, was greatly overworked in this hotbed of pro-German and enemy spy activity.
After leaving the Federal Building, let us say, you had also decided to visit the headquarters of the volunteer organization in Chicago. Less than a block away from the federal offices, in a stately building given over entirely to the housing of organizations whose sole aim and purpose was the winning of the war, you would have found a set of offices as large, as well equipped, as full of filed records, and of as able a personnel as those of the U. S. bureau. There would be this difference: the latter offices—those of the American Protective League—were run by men who got no pay—and there were almost one hundred times as many of them as there were of the D. J. workers. Yet the two great organizations are parts of the same system, and have worked together in perfect harmony and mutual benefit. Together, they have held German crime and espionage helpless in Chicago all through the war.
Of course, the tremendously expensive operations of so large a secret service organization could be met only by large-handed voluntary giving on the part of private citizens. For instance, the office rent alone of the A. P. L. in Chicago ran into thousands of dollars monthly. It was all carried by one public utility concern, the Commonwealth Edison Company, which turned over the needed space in a building which formerly housed its own offices. It is a part of the private history of the Department of Justice, scarcely if ever mentioned, that long before the idea of the American Protective League was broached—indeed, at the time when we had just severed diplomatic relations with Germany—Mr. Samuel Insull, afterward Chairman of the State Council of Defense for Illinois, called on Mr. Clabaugh and offered financial aid to the Bureau of Investigation. He said: “I know how meager your resources are, and I believe there is a lot of trouble not far ahead. Let me know if you need men or money, and I’ll see that you get both.” This, of course, had nothing to do with the later organization of the League, nor with the idea on which it is based, but Mr. Clabaugh always has said that Mr. Insull was the first private citizen to his knowledge to offer financial aid to the U. S. Government.
The public has heard more of “D. J.” than it has of “A. P. L.” for obvious reasons. Of the two great office systems, one has been running for many years as a known part of the Federal Government. The other was two years old, and was always secret in its work and personnel. If it ever were a question of credit or “glory,” the palm must go and has gone to the Federal arm, because that is where the dénouements of cases had their home, and where publication of the printable facts originated. A. P. L. carried the evidence to the door of D. J. and stopped. It started cases, but did not finish them.
The public never had more than a very vague idea of the workings of the vast duo-fold machine which held life and property in America so safe in the dangerous days of the war. For instance, the average man reading newspaper mention of Mr. Clabaugh’s activities as bureau head, usually thought of him as public prosecutor. He was not that. It was his duty, as it was the League’s duty, only to procure testimony. His work was not of the legal branch, and he himself never has been admitted to the bar, although he—with his auxiliary, A. P. L.—has won the largest and most stubbornly fought criminal cases in the history of the country, and is devoutly feared to-day by countless I. W. W.’s not yet arrested.
The story of all these curiously interactive agencies, official and amateur, is indeed the greatest detective story in the world, and it is very difficult to measure it in full, or to visualize it in detail, so simply did it all happen, so naturally, so swiftly and so much as a matter of course. There is no like proof in history of the ability of the American people to govern itself and to take care of itself. Mr. Clabaugh’s vivid and accurate story will bear out all these statements, and it is requested that it be read by all who wish a clear and consecutive acquaintance with the history of the American Protective League. Attention is again called to it as printed in full in Appendix A.