Page:The web (1919).djvu/274

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of evidence was sufficient to bring a unanimous report from the Grand Jury, charging everyone involved with conspiracy against the Government.

This was the first real big work successfully undertaken by Cincinnati Division of the American Protective League. It was carried out with thoroughness and dispatch, and nothing was left undone that was necessary to make the cases complete. It was wonderful training for the men who had come from their business to the work of the League, and it developed some of Cincinnati Division's best operatives, who from that time on approached every assignment with enthusiasm and understanding.

Cincinnati Division supervised the parole of enemy aliens from Fort Oglethorpe and the Federal jail in this district. These paroled men, being released from prison, were ordered to report at the office of Cincinnati Division once each week. The day selected for them to report was Saturday morning. Failure on the part of a paroled man to report on the date set resulted in a prompt investigation. So thorough was this supervision that Cincinnati Division could at any time put its hands on these paroled men, whose ranks included actors, draughtsmen, electrical engineers, art glass designers, chefs, waiters, barbers, bakers, auto experts, laborers, machinists, farmers, and merchants.

Only one man refused to mend his ways and live up to the regulations. He is now at Fort Oglethorpe. When he first was released, he tried to induce the Federal authorities to give him permission to talk pro-German so he could "find others who were against this country," as he put it. He was informed by the Special Agent in charge of the Cincinnati office, Department of Justice, that he could do better work by telling all his former associates how foolish they were, trying to work for the Kaiser in this country. He had claimed that his prison term had changed his opinion and that now he was "for the United States." He was instructed to tell this to his friends as he would thereby be doing more good. His term of freedom did not last long, for he was soon at his old tricks again. He was interned for the "duration of the war."

After the German campaign against conscription in this country had fallen flat, the active propagandists looked for new fields for their malicious and insidious work. The notorious German propaganda alliance known as "The People's Council," newly formed in New York, was in its infancy when word of its activities was brought to Cincinnati by an advocate of the single tax, who up to that time had been