automatically ended many things. But the American Protective League had money. It can have all the money it may need in any future day.
It was not until fall of 1917 that, in answer to the imperious demands of the swiftly grown association, now numbering thousands in every State of the Union, and in order to get into closer touch with the Department of Justice, the League moved its headquarters from Chicago to Washington. Mr. Charles Daniel Frey of Chicago, who had worked out with his associates the details of a perfectly subdivided organization, was made Captain U. S. A. and liaison officer for the League's work with the Military Intelligence Division of the Army, a division which itself had known great changes and rapid development. The three National Directors were now A. M. Briggs, Chairman; Captain Charles Daniel Frey, and Mr. Victor Elting, the latter gentleman, an attorney of Chicago, having before now proved himself of the utmost service in handling certain very tangled skeins. Mr. Elting had been Assistant Chief in Chicago, working with Mr. Frey as Chief. Then later came on, from his League duties in Chicago, Mr. S. S. Doty, a man successful in his own business organization and of proved worth in working out details of organization. Many others from Chicago, in many capacities, joined the personnel in Washington, and good men were taken on as needed and found. It would be cheap to attempt mention of these, but it would be wrong not to give some general mention of the men who actually had in hand the formation of the League and the conduct of its widely reaching affairs from that time until its close at the end of the war. They worked in secrecy and they asked no publicity then or now.
One thing must be very plain and clear. These men, each and all of them, worked as civilian patriots, and, except in a very few necessary clerical cases, without pay of any sort. There was no mummery about the League, no countersigns or grips or passwords, no rituals, no rules. It never was a "secret society," as we understand that usually. It was—the American Protective League, deadly simple, deadly silent, deadly in earnest. There has been no glory, no pay, no publicity, no advertising, no reward
