The great average intelligence of the League members alone made the extraordinary results possible. These were no ordinary hired sleuths of the mysterious detective type, gum-shoe artists with a bent for masks and false eyebrows. On the contrary, the officers and operatives were men of standing, of great personal intelligence and sober good sense. They dropped their private affairs, in which they had been successful, to obey the League call at any time. They studied their new duties regularly and faithfully, as best they could—and they learned them.
The methods of such men varied widely. They had attended no outside school, had no special governmental training. Their success depended on the natural alertness of the American character. For instance, one gentleman prominent in the work, we will say in New York, was sent after a draft evader whose name, racially considered, did not tally with his personal description. The operative found his case originated in a foreign part of the city. His man had originally lived in a certain flat. Some boys played ball near by. The operative strolled by to watch, engaged two or three in conversation. Yes, a dark man—some said he was a Turk—had lived there. He had moved, they didn't know where. He used to work in a laundry, they thought. Very well, a Turk and a laundry-man would naturally be found in some other laundry, possibly near his own people. The case was carried on until, in a laundry in another part of the same city, a new man was found—he had a new name, but the same face. Eventually he was put where he belonged.
The psalmist of old voiced his complaint that there were three things in the world which he did not know, three things which he could not find out: the way of a ship upon the sea, the way of the serpent on a rock, and the way of a man with a maid. The trouble with Solomon was that he seems not to have owned either a geometry, a microscope or a dictagraph. These used respectively in connection with the problems described above might have helped him out considerably.
A. P. L. operatives at Nyack, New York, had Solomon beaten by a city block. They installed a dictagraph in a room frequented by one A. L, who was impersonat-
