Page:The web (1919).djvu/342

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this country. An A. P. L. man heard him and asked a constable to arrest him at once. He was taken to the county jail, where his remarks were so abusive that the Department of Justice immediately took him into custody for internment.

The hilly, wooded and mountainous character of Marin County, bordering on the ocean, made it a favorite resort for hikers, hunters, fishermen and the like, and it has many locations which would afford excellent rendezvous. It kept the A. P. L. operatives busy in all their spare time walking and driving through the country. On one such trip along the sea shore, in a very remote place, a Navy torpedo was found. It proved to be only a practice one, having no war head, but it might have been worse.


The A. P. L. in Los Angeles

The sun-kissed Southwest handled its A. P. L. work in a wholly modern way, as perhaps some of the sidelights will show. How quaint and curious some of these chuckle-making anecdotes—and how grave some of the serious ones—will seem fifty years from now, when California will be looking back on another generation of her large and swift history!

The report from the city of Los Angeles is one entirely consistent with the reputation of that busy community, and as usual the totals ran large. Los Angeles handled 2,136 cases of alien enemy activity; 5,275 selctive service investigations; 1,494 examinations for disloyalty and sedition; 289 cases of propaganda by word of mouth and 61 by means of the printed page. There were 289 investigations of radicals and pacifists, and 648 of all other natures, not mentioning those which had to do with food hoarding, waste, etc., which made a formidable total of themselves. There are not many sections which report a wider or more interesting range of experiences.

As in the case of practically all our cities, at the time the war broke out, the Deparment of Justice for Los Angeles was inadequately equipped with men, motor cars and data-chasers to deal with the numerous alien enemies, German sympathizers and non-patriotic citizens. Los Angeles frankly says that this species of the human fauna seem to