passively than actively disloyal—and all of them were young.
No announcement was made of the plans of the Government. The word was passed silently that at a certain hour the hunt would be on. Once begun, it was prosecuted with energy and system. All the current ball games were visited, and the crowds were told to file out at a gate, where each suspect was asked to show his registration card. Motion picture shows were treated in the same way, the perfect districting and subdividing of the League's force making all this synchronous and smooth. Cabarets and all-night places of all sorts were combed out. All the city parks were patrolled at night, and many a young man was taken from his young woman companion in that way. Members of the League even donned bathing costumes, and swimming out among the bathers at the beaches, plied their questions there! They took in over one hundred slackers out of the wet in that way.
At a thronged boulevard crossing in the loop district, every motor car was stopped. A. P. L. operatives met every incoming railway train and were at the gate of every train leaving the city. Countless homes and shops were visited. Sunday picnics in the suburbs were inspected, every theater and public building, every "L" road station and steamboat landing was investigated and guarded by men who made but one remark: "Show me!" On one night of the four, 7,000 men in a short time were gathered, held and taken to the police stations. Factories, stores, saloons, the open streets, all yielded up their toll—many innocent, many loyal, many negligent, many culpable and many disloyal evaders who were trying to dodge the draft.
In a vast wave, the vigilantes of Chicago, whose existence was suspected by almost none of these, swept out into the open. The guilty and the lukewarm alike, the innocent and ignorant conscript and the veiled enemy alike, got the largest and swiftest lesson in Americanism this country ever had had up to that hour. It showed a certain element that under the careless American character there are vast capacities for self-government and a stern respect for law and government. Many a pro-German has
