when I become mayor." But he did not become mayor.
It is only of late that we have heard much of the Non-Partisan League in America, even in this day of leagues, societies and alliances, but it has had growth and political significance in certain of the Northwestern States. It would not be true to charge the Non-Partisan League with disloyalty as a body, but certainly it would be yet more foolish to say that all its members, in the North-European part of the United States, had been loyal to America in this war, or free of sympathy with Germany. Read the A. P. L. reports—they are not all shown in these pages—of its manifold activities in sections where the Non-Partisan League is strongest. Draw your own inferences then, for then you will have certain premises and need not jump at any conclusion not based on premises.
We may take its reports from Dakota and Iowa as fairly good proof of the accuracy of the foregoing statements. Let us, for instance, examine as a concrete proposition the report from Mason City, Iowa. It is done simply; yet it leads us directly into the heart of the problem of America's future and face to face with the basic questions of courage in business and social life which must underlie the future growth of our country. A story? It is all the story of America.
This report, quite normal in all ways, would represent the usual type of report from a nice, average agricultural city, were it not for certain phases of the work it represents. There were 24 alien enemy cases; 97 disloyalty and sedition cases; 21 cases of propaganda, and eleven I. W. W. cases and other forms of radicalism. The state of society reflected by these figures is best covered in the words of the report itself:
In ante-bellum times there existed a more or less well-grounded
opinion that in this vast western farming region the
melting pot had most nearly accomplished its task and that
here, if anywhere, was a truly American community. The
citizen might be of English, Irish, Scotch, Scandinavian, German
or French birth or ancestry, but he was primarily an
American. This belief was based upon the fact that here all
American institutions and customs received hearty support,
that the pepole encouraged to the limit the American liberty
