big Biedermacher offices are closed. Biedermacher's wife says her husband has gone south for his health. He has—to Oglethorpe.
You think this case imaginary, far-fetched, impossible? It is neither of the three. It is the truth. It shows how D. J. and A. P. L. worked together. This is a case which has happened not once but scores and hundreds of times. It is espionage, it is spy work, yes, and it has gone on to an extent of which the average American citizen, loyal or disloyal, has had no conception. It was, however, the espionage of a national self-defense. It was only in this way that the office and the mail and the home of the loyal citizen could be held inviolate. The web of the A. P. L. was precisely that of the submarine net. Invisible, it offered an apparently frail but actually efficient defense against the dastardly weapons of Germany.
It must become plain at once that secret work such as this, carried on in such volume all across the country—three million cases, involving an enormous mass of detail and an untold expenditure of time and energy, were disposed of—meant system and organization to prevent overlapping of work and consequent waste of time. It meant more than that—there was needed also good judgment, individual shrewdness and of course, above all things, patience and hard work.
For instance, John Wielawski is a deserter reported to National Headquarters missing from Camp Grant, Illinois, possibly hiding in Chicago. The order goes to the Chief in Chicago, who hands it to the right district lieutenant. The latter finds in his cards the name of an operative who speaks Wielawski's native tongue. The latter goes to the neighborhood where Wielawski lived, inquires especially in regard to any sweetheart or sweethearts Wielawski may have had. It is certain he left some ties somewhere, that he has been seen, that he has written at least a line, or will write. His running down is sure. The League has found thousands of deserters, located thousands of men who had refused to take out their second naturalization papers, thousands who were skulkers and draft evaders. They could not escape the Web which reached all across America, unseen, but deadly sure.
