A part, only a small part, of the work of the American Protective League is done. We who silently pass back yet further beyond recognition, are not disbanded at all. The flung torch is especially in our own hands. We have been only pretenders in this League, we have been only mummers and imposters in this League, if we do not individually carry on the work for the future. That work, as we take it, is to make America safe for Americans, and to leave each man safe in his own home, in a country of his own making, at a table of his own choosing.
When work on this book was first begun, it seemed to all concerned that the great matter was to accumulate instances of shrewdness in catching criminals; stories of plots foiled and villains thwarted. We all of us wanted to see stalk by with folded arms a tall, dark, mysterious stranger in a long cloak, with high boots, and a wide hat pulled low over his brow. We wanted him, in the final act, to pull off his hat with the sweeping gesture of one hand, his false moustache with the other, and stand revealed before us, smooth-faced and fair of hair, exclaiming "It is I—Clarence Hawkshaw, the young detective!" We shared the American thirst for something exciting.
It became obvious, as the great masses of sober, conscientious revelations from the very heart of America came rolling in and piling up in cumulative testimony, that what had at first seemed the most desirable material was the least desirable. If this record is to have any ultimate value—and it should have great historical value—that must be, not because of a few flashy deeds, but because of a great, sober, underlying purpose. Our final figure of the A. P. L. man is not to be a Hawkshaw, but—an American.
When the time came to call a halt and to disband, there was not a member of the League who did not lay down his work sober and grave of heart. The sum of the reaction of all these reports, large and small, from the hundreds of centers where the League was active, leaves any man acquainted with the facts convinced that America has done her part splendidly, here at home, in the war. It is splendid—what America has done. Far more splendid, what America is. Still more splendid, what America is to be.
The best reading for any American in these days is the
