Page:The web (1919).djvu/352

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All the defendants, excepting two incidentally connected with the case, were convicted of violation of the Espionage Act. The wealthy pacifist millionaire was fined $27,000. The vitriolic clergyman first mentioned, and his ally, the clergyman of the second part, were fined $5,000 apiece. Two lesser fines of $500 and $100 were imposed also. The second reverend doctor was arrested on information furnished by Santa Barbara A. P. L. to the Los Angeles office. Other persons of ultra-pacifist tendencies in Santa Barbara have been kept constantly under surveillance. So it would seem that in peaceful Santa Barbara all is not always peace—unless it is the right sort of peace.

Santa Barbara made twenty-three arrests and secured fifteen convictions. Fines were collected by the Government through A. P. L. investigations amounting to $37,100. Santa Barbara had the usual percentage of flivver cases, especially as to mysterious signal lights. One of these proved to be nothing more dangerous than a night watchman on a railroad track, signalling with his lantern. The operatives uncovered one rather tragic case. A Franciscan monk wrote to the draft board that his own brother claimed exemption falsely, that he was living with another man's wife, and had been guilty of forgery. The couple were found making their confession. They confessed further before the draft board that they both were married but had separated from their respective mates. They fell in love and began living together within two weeks after they had met, and they had lived together as man and wife for some time. The woman was released; the man was inducted into the service and sent to camp.

A Santa Barbara operative evinced a certain sleuthing ability in a case which reached its climax when someone blew up an old barn at the rear of the place belonging to the complaining couple. There was a box containing a setting hen, malignantly maternal over thirteen eggs. This box was within six feet of the place where the explosion occurred—but there was not a mark on the box, although the barn door had been blown to bits. It seemed that something was wrong. Matters simmered down to a spite case of a middle aged couple against some neighbors, who finally had determined to get their kind of justice by blowing up their own