ever available, at all hours of the day and night, and with his assistants is entitled to the credit for making the Chicago Division what it is.
Without exaggeration, I think the Chicago Division of the American Protective League did seventy-five percent of the Government investigating work throughout the war. It seems to me that this one sentence covers the situation.
When Captain Charles Daniel Frey was Chief of the Chicago Division, there was never a more active, energetic worker, and while I am not personally familiar with his work at Washington, I feel sure it was in keeping with what I know he did at Chicago.
In addition to working for all Government bureaus, and helping in thousands of investigations, the League conducted a famous so-called "Slacker Drive" in Chicago during the period July 11 to 15, inclusive, 1918, and apprehended, or caused to go to the local boards to straighten out their records, 40,167 delinquents. The total number of deserters and delinquents apprehended during the period of the war, or taken to the local boards and inducted into the service, or permitted to file their questionnaire, or register, totaled approximately 67,000. Not one word of criticism was heard of the Chicago raid. During the four days, approximately 200,000 persons between the ages of 21 and 31 were questioned. Hotels, cafés, saloons, baseball parks, moving-picture theatres, railroad depots, and other places where people are wont to congregate, were visited systematically and simultaneously throughout the district. A few who were unnecessarily detained, or believed they should not have been detained, instead of filing a protest, congratulated the Department and stated that their slight inconvenience was nothing to compare with the duty they owed to the community in aiding the authorities in apprehending those who had not complied with the law. The press, throughout the period of the war, aided the League and the Bureau of Investigation in every possible way.
In addition to the automobile service rendered free of charge to the Government by the American Protective League, there grew out of this idea an organization known as the Emergency Drivers of Chicago, composed exclusively of women who devoted their entire time and machines, without cost to the Government, to driving the agents around this vicinity. They maintained, from the beginning of the war down to the present time, an office in the Rookery Building, and furnished this Bureau with an average of fifteen to twenty automobiles per day. Mrs. Frederick D. Countiss, whose husband, Mr. Frederick D. Countiss, was also active in the American Protective League work, was responsible for this organization, and subsequently Miss Florence Spofford was Chairman of the Chicago Division. The organization was
