- ence, New York allowed her visitors to meet and march,
preach and pray, amuse themselves so long as they liked, so long as they paid for their privilege of passing through. She had long since ceased to analyze her population, but has entertained it instead, regarding it with neither fear, shame, pride nor alarm. She was truly a metropolis.
But when war came, New York realized that she was not only a metropolis but a commercial center and a place where human beings lived. She had tall buildings. A brick shot off the top of the Woolworth Building would certainly jar a man below if it fell upon him; and the Woolworth or other buildings might easily be hit by naval guns of a hostile fleet lying comfortably off shore. The funk of New York and other eastern cities was never felt at all in the central portion of the country. When the submarines began to show what they could do, New York awoke to a sense of real danger. She faced the fact that, although she was foreign in population, she must become American if America was to endure. Then New York turned her face no longer toward Europe, but toward America and since that time has been more beloved by America than ever she was before.
It was imperative that the vast protective agencies of the national Government should focus here at the gateway to the Atlantic. Military Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Cable Censorship, Mail Censorship, the Department of Justice, War Trade Intelligence—each of these and all the various war boards and branches of war activities must center in the metropolis inevitably. The machinery for protecting the invaluable shipping of men and munitions was as elaborate and perfect as the Government could make it. Every force was rushed to the danger line in New York.
In so complicated and overburdened a series of Government enterprises it early became obvious that there was need for an auxiliary such as the American Protective League. The organization was duly made and widely extended. It was natural none the less that it should be very much overshadowed by the greater volume and greater importance of the agencies of the Government's judicial and war work, which were massed in the great
