The government of this country had had thrown on it all at once a burden a thousand times as great as that of times of peace. We had to raise men and money, munitions, food, fuel for ourselves and all the world. We were not prepared. We had to learn all at once the one and hardest thing—one which America never yet had learned—economy. We had to do all the active and positive material things necessary to put an Army in the field across seas—build ships, fabricate ordnance, arm large bodies of men, train them, feed them, get their fighting morale on edge.
Yes, all these things—but this was only part. Our negative defense, our silent forces also had to be developed. We had to learn economy—and suspicion. That last was hard to learn. Just as delay and breakdowns happened in other branches of the suddenly overloaded government, so a breakdown in the resources of the Department of Justice—least known but most valuable portion of our nation's governmental system—was a thing imminent. That was because of the swift multiplication of the list of entirely new things that had to be looked into with justice, and yet with speed. It is not too much to say that without the inspired idea of the American Protective League, its Web spread out behind the lines, there could not long have been said in the full confidence of to-day, "God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives."
Besides being an auxiliary of the Department of Justice, the League was the active ally also of the Department of War, of the Navy, of the State, of the Treasury. It worked for the Shipping Board, the Fuel and Food Administrations, and the Alien Property Custodian. It ran down, in its less romantic labors, sugar-allowance violators, violators of the gasless-Sunday laws, the lightless-day laws, violators of the liquor laws, as well as the large offenders—the spies who got internment or the penitentiary as the penalty of getting caught. All these large and small activities may be understood by a glance at the report-sheet of any division chief. The heads and sub-heads will show the differentiation. The chart following this chapter will show the method of organizing the League's personnel which was used in practically all the great cities. The table of dates which
