instance, the case card would be buff in a case of a "commission" investigation, green in an "overseas" investigation and pink for special cases. The card is kept clipped to its cover sheet until a case is assigned. When it has been assigned, notation is made on the card and cover sheet, and the individual record card of the man to whom assigned. The case is then sent to the operative, and the case card filed alphabetically under his name in the "out" box. A separate record card is maintained for each investigator or district officer. It is thus possible to locate a case at once, by looking up a name of the subject in the "out" box of case cards, and to locate what cases are in the hands of any investigator by looking up his record card. An equally thorough system was employed in the handling of reports as they came in.
Without a most efficient system for transacting the business of the League, the most hopeless confusion must have obtained among that seething mass of conflicting human activities. Mere bulk of paper is an incomprehensible thing, and no one who has not seen the masses of reports coming in, even to the minor offices of the League, can understand what the handling of the three million A. P. L. investigations really meant in office work alone.
The Army is divided into the Staff and the Line; otherwise, the Office and the Field. A similar division may be made in the American Protective League. The men handling the records in the central office are more or less unhonored and unsung. Upon the other hand, the operative who puts on false eyebrows and a beard and goes out to stalk a suspect is apt to seem far more the heroic figure, although what he really is doing is no more than getting something for the office to file. Neither branch of the activity ought to be overlooked.
The New York A. P. L. conducted investigations for the Department of Justice under three heads; the State Department under two heads; the War Department under five heads; and also the Navy Department, the Alien Property Custodian, the Civil Service Commission, the War Trade Board and the U. S. Shipping Board, as well as the Treasury Department under three different heads.
When one pauses to reflect on these different classifica-
