Page:The web (1919).djvu/238

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Northern New Jersey has heard nothing about Mr. K——. With a couple million others, he has been allowed to sink back to our citizenship—just as poisonous, just as unregenerate, just as little fit to remain in this country. It was understood that D. J. laid down a rule that testimony secured in conversations such as the foregoing was not a basis of prosecution. Perhaps it would have been better to wait until Mr. K—— had really shot somebody or blown up a ship or so.

Of active sympathizers with the enemy, Northern New Jersey did not lack. A thousand cases could be given. One will serve. In July, 1918, the office learned of suspicious activities on the part of some of these sympathizers. A Mr. E—— was told by Miss G——, a young woman of foreign birth, that the people she lived with had active connections with the enemy. Especially was this true in the case of one S——, who had Central and South American relations. This latter man was found to be of American birth and German parentage—which, in a good many cases, would leave him German. He had been a traveler, and a son of his had been born in Kingston, Jamaica, although this son was at present in the U. S. Army. This Mr. S—— was found to be identified with a New York concern which had sent him to Jamaica to get the release there of a man jailed by the English authorities for alleged implication in the coaling of German raiders at sea. That did not look any too good for Mr. S—— of itself. He also had in his employ a stenographer whose husband, a Mr. W——, had been employed in an alleged poisoning of the reservoir at Kingston, Jamaica.

These things led up to the case of the subject, who will be called P——. This man had lived with S—— for a time. P—— came to this country from Germany in 1907, and applied for his first naturalization papers—please note the date—August 1, 1914. He was thirty-five years of age, well educated, unmarried, and without dependents. He had served in the German Army, but was not a reservist. In his alien enemy questionnaire, he left out the name of one of his previous employers, which was found to have been an importing concern with a German name, with connections in Kingston, Jamaica, doing busi-