in the American Protective League, except as each man's conscience gave him his best reward, the feeling that he had fulfilled the imperative obligations of his citizenship and had done his bit in the world's greatest war.
By the time the League was in Washington, it had a quarter-million members. Its records ran into tons and tons; its clerical work was an enormous thing.
The system, swiftly carried out, was unbelievably successful. An unbelievable artesian fountain of American loyalty had been struck. What and how much work that body of silent men did, how varied and how imperatively essential was the work they did, how thrillingly interesting it became at times as the netted web caught more and more in its secret sweeping, must be taken up in later chapters.
As to the total volume of the League's work, it never will be known, and no figures will ever cover it more than partially. It handled in less than two years, for the War Department alone, over three million cases. It spent millions of dollars. It had a quarter million silent and resolute men on its rolls. These men were the best of their communities. They did not work for pay. They worked for duty, and worked harder than a like number in any army of the world. Some of the things they did, some of the astonishing matters they uncovered, some of the strange stories they unearthed, will be taken up in order in the pages following, and in a way more specifically informing than has hitherto been attempted.
The League totals are tremendous, but the trouble with totals is that they do not enter into comprehension. A million dollars means little as a phrase, if left barren of some yard-stick for comparative measurement. Thus, when we say that long ago the number of suspect cases investigated by the American Protective League had passed the three-million mark, we hail the figures as grandiose, but have no personal idea of what they mean, no accurate conception of the multitude, the nature and the multiplicity in detail of the three million separate and distinct cases. It is when we begin to go into details as to the work and its organization from unit to block, from operative to chief, that we begin to open our eyes.
