other great city of the Union throughout the war. That it was active may be seen by a glance at the totals. In D. J. work, forty-five cases of alien enemy activities, 1,237 cases of disloyalty and sedition, and eight cases of propaganda cover the list. The War Department offered more work, the selective draft alone involving under its several heads 3,182 cases. There were 410 investigations connected with character and loyalty; 227 cases of investigation of civilian applicants for overseas service. Raids to obtain evidence for illegal sale of liquor to soldiers brought visits to fifty-three doubtful saloons, and twenty-five convictions of violators. Kansas City is dry, so far as the Army is concerned, as may be witnessed by an editorial of September 17, 1918, in the Kansas City Star—which also shows why it is dry:
The sale of liquor to soldiers has been going on in Kansas
City for months. Officers at Leavenworth and Funston have
complained of it. The consequences have been apparent to
everybody. Yet the police—Governor Gardner's police—did
nothing. It took a voluntary organization to get the evidence
and force the arrests. The law-breakers whom the police—Governor
Gardner's police—could not find, were run down by
the volunteers of the American Protective League. They
discovered the most open and flagrant violation of the law. It
was no trick for amateurs to get evidence and find the people
who deserved arrest.
A tough North-end colored saloon was visited by A. P. L.
operatives late one Saturday evening. A large crowd was
encountered. Most of them had been drinking heavily and
were in rather a noisy condition. The A. P. L. men first
encountered a large colored fellow. He explained that he
was past the age, but that he had served in the 21st Kansas
(colored) in the Spanish War, and produced his papers to
prove his assertion. A colored fellow was encountered who
refused to show his card. He said he had one, but stated
he would not go to headquarters and that it would take a
fight to get him there. Whereupon this ex-colored soldier
stepped up and informed him that if there was to be any
threshing done, he asked the first opportunity, and that no. 2
would show his card or he would take it off him. He was
supported by two or three other colored men, with the result