Hardly had the ink dried upon the President's signature to the document which made operative the original Selective Service Act, when word filtered through to the office of the Cincinnati Division American Protective League that there was an undercurrent of opposition developing which would culminate on Registration Day, June 5th, 1917. So-called Socialists, who were in fact German propagandists, were the most active in their criticism. Venomous advice was being offered to young men, who, upon that historic day, would enter their names upon the rolls of the prospective great National Army.
The preliminary information which was gathered left no doubt in the mind of Special Agent Weakley, at Cincinnati, that unless an example was made of these so-called pacifists, there was danger of an incomplete registration, and it became very apparent from the preliminary investigations made that the opposition to registration centered in a local unit of a Socialist organization known as the Eleventh Ward.
Out of four operatives who entered into this particular case, three were dropped, and one became a member of the inner circle. The open meetings of the club divulged nothing, but the secret sessions of the inner circle developed the plan which would make as ineffective as possible registration in Cincinnati and which undoubtedly would have succeeded. Circulars and posters were secretly printed, and on the night of June 1 they were to be distributed broadcast throughout the northwestern section of Cincinnati. This literature not only was seditious in character, but in the opinion of the District Attorney, treasonable.
The League plan was so carefully and thoroughly developed that not a guilty man escaped. There was quite a scene at several police stations when operatives of the League, detailed with local police detectives, brought in their men, each with his pile of circulars. A. P. L. had direct evidence of where these circulars had been placed—in letter boxes, on door-steps, or handed to individuals on the street—and thus made each case complete in itself; and when, the next day, the newspapers told in detail the story of how this plan had been nipped in the bud, anti-conscriptionists became enthusiastic registrants. Even men who were arrested asked for the privilege of registration. Cincinnati not only gave the quota estimated for it, but a percentage so much higher as to elicit surprise.
After the investigation had developed the real culprits, the printing shop also was located, the form from which the circulars had been printed confiscated, and the complete chain
