Part 27

The activities of the men under investigation assumed many forms. First in importance, of course, though not in numbers, were those enemy agents who had entered the army for the express purpose of acquiring information for transmission to the enemy. These were, in plain language, spies, and had they been caught “with the goods,” they would have been subject to court martial and execution. In order to silence the countless stories and rumors which have been circulated, I will avail myself of this opportunity to state that _not a single American soldier or civilian was executed for espionage during the entire course of the war_. The bulk of the cases which were investigated concerned men who, because of their foreign birth, or antecedents, or sympathies, _might_ have been willing to impart information of military value to enemy agents. The most difficult class to deal with, however, was the man who was spreading stories, with or without thought as to their effect, which would tend to lower the morale of the army. The reports upon which investigations were initiated varied greatly in definiteness, ranging all the way from specific statements as to a man’s utterances or acts to a vague rumor that in such and such a place there was a man, name not given, who should be investigated. It was the policy of the section, however, to pursue any clew, no matter how vague, until the guilt or innocence of the suspect was definitely established. Where the original information was anonymous, that point was always sharply emphasized, so that the suspect’s reputation might not be injured should the allegations prove to be unfounded, for it was found that anonymous charges were very frequently made from motives of spite or revenge or because of some real or fancied injury. In such cases it was the policy of the section to push the investigation only far enough to show their character and then drop them promptly, without burdening the field intelligence officers or other investigating agencies with useless work.

The converse of this policy was followed in cases where the charges appeared to be well grounded, the man then being kept under surveillance until something, no matter what, was picked up which would place him where he could do no harm.

One of the commonest problems was the one presented by the officer of German extraction who had been born and bred amid Teutonic influences, and who was naturally pro-German in sympathy and utterances before the United States entered the war, but who had been guilty of no act or utterance since that date which could be construed as in any degree disloyal, and who, from a military point of view, was extremely efficient. Such cases, in the last analysis, always resolved themselves into the question: “Is he fit to go across?” Each case was, of course, considered on its own merits. While it was obviously impossible to lay down a rule-of-thumb applicable to all, two considerations in the main governed the decision. In the first place, an effort was made to obtain the opinions of the officers serving with the man in question and to learn whether they would be satisfied to go into action against German troops with him. If his fellow officers felt that they could trust him under such circumstances, it was a fair judgment in his favor. The second consideration was to ascertain whether his name, lineage, or appearance would make him unacceptable to our French allies. If such were likely to be the case, international courtesy, if nothing else, made it inadvisable to send him overseas. Surveillance of these men naturally was continued in France, but the Intelligence Division of the A. E. F., in reporting that such a case could be considered closed, frequently said in effect that any taint of disloyalty which might once have existed had been burned away by the fire of battle.

The process of having an officer discharged from the army by authority of Paragraph 9, War Department Bulletin No. 32 (“The President is hereby authorized to discharge any officer from the office held by him under such appointment for any cause which, in the judgment of the President, would promote the public service”), was the easiest and most satisfactory manner of dealing with cases of individuals against whom it was impossible to obtain sufficient evidence for conviction by court martial but whose presence in the army was regarded as constituting a menace to the national safety. This will explain in some measure, perhaps, the curt announcements which appeared from time to time during the course of the war in Army Orders: “Lieutenant (or Captain, or Colonel) So-and-So has been discharged for the good of the Service.” The great drawback, however, to this method of ridding the army of undesirables was that it could not be applied to officers of the regular establishment, as the terms of the Act restricted its application to Reserve officers and those holding commissions for the term of the emergency. The policy pursued by Military Intelligence in the cases of regular officers suspected of disloyalty—for all suspected officers were not confined to the National Army or the Reserve Corps—was to have them assigned to posts where their opportunities for mischief would be reduced to a minimum. An officer ordered to duty in the heart of Alaska, say, was considered about as safe, from the point of view of Military Intelligence, as though he were in a cell at Leavenworth.

Among the nearly 700,000 men swept by the first draft into the cantonments to be fused into a national army were thousands upon thousands of men of alien birth, many of them but recently arrived in this country and all but ignorant of its tongue. It speedily became apparent that the fusing process was failing to produce in many of these men, perhaps in the majority of them, the change necessary to make them into soldiers. Instead of melting and flowing like the rest of the metal from which was forged the weapon which halted the Huns at Château-Thierry and beat them back in the Argonne, these men of alien birth remained a hard, unyielding mass, not only obdurate in itself, but threatening to leave in the finished weapon flaws that would be fatal when it was subjected to the test of battle. By the fall of 1917, therefore, the military authorities had awakened to a realization of the fact that they were confronted by a serious and difficult problem—what to do with the foreign-speaking element of our new armies.

These immigrants, particularly the more recent, tend to congregate in the industrial centres of the country, in New York’s teeming “East Side,” in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, in the manufacturing cities of New England, and in the Pacific Northwest. Here they live in swarming communities, speaking their own languages, reading (if they can) their own newspapers, attending their own churches, their wants ministered to by their own doctors, lawyers, bankers, and tradesmen. From such colonies the drag-net of the draft drew into the army tens of thousands of foreign-speaking men. Here, then, was the first and greatest source of difficulty in transforming these aliens from many lands into American soldiers—ignorance of the English language. Unable to understand the orders which were given them, they were set down as stupid and surly, and through a lack of judgment in the selection of the commissioned and non-commissioned officers put in charge of them, they were frequently the victims of misunderstanding and ill-treatment. Four illustrations are typical of a hundred or more similar incidents in the Depot Brigade at Camp Gordon:

Private Sobolowski, failing to spell his name, was struck in the jaw by his sergeant, so successfully that the jaw was broken and a few teeth were knocked out. The private went to the hospital and the sergeant to the guard-house, pending court-martial proceedings.

Private Pagarzelski replied to his corporal in Polish, which the corporal considered highly abusive. The private was court-martialled and sixty dollars of his pay was forfeited. As a consequence the man was not only unable to help his aged mother but was left without a penny for himself.

Private Sznyder, being on guard duty, misunderstood the orders repeated to him by the corporal of the guard, and naturally did not comply with them. As a result he was arrested and put in the guard-house, fifty-seven dollars being taken from him by a corporal, of which only thirty-five dollars was returned. The corporal took advantage of his ignorance of English to appropriate a part of the money.

A Russian was arrested for evasion of military service. After he had spent six weeks in the guard-house it was discovered (through an interpreter) that the man was arrested before he had received notification of being drafted.

From a counter-espionage point of view such conditions were distinctly dangerous. The foreign-speaking soldiers, if not actually affiliated with the enemy, were, because of their ignorance and credulity, especially susceptible to the advances of enemy agents and propagandists. When herded together in a depot brigade, made surly by the inconsiderate treatment they received and chafing under the compulsion of being set at manual labor in this country when their ambition was to go overseas, they were potentially, if not actually, ripe for mischief.

Early in 1918 Mr. D. Chauncey Brewer, of Boston, president of the North American Civic League for Immigrants, was appointed by the Secretary of War to take the situation in hand. Under his direction a corps of field agents commenced operations both in the camps and cantonments and in the large cities and industrial centres, collecting information about the non-English-speaking men taken by the draft. These agents, who were carefully picked men of foreign extraction and generally linguists of ability, observed the general and special influences affecting the foreign-born groups and investigated propaganda, suspects, complaints regarding draft evasion, draft boards, soldiers’ allotments, insurance, and the like. They reported on conditions existing in the camps from information contained in soldiers’ letters, for many men who were prevented by their lack of knowledge of English or other reasons from complaining to their military superiors, would recite their troubles in their letters to the folks at home. These agents accounted in various ways for their presence in the camps, most of them announcing that they were working for the Associated Charities or for the North American Civic League for Immigrants. They established connections with leaders of the foreign colonies in the larger cities as well as with the poor. The foreign-language press, its editors and its influence, good or bad, also demanded their attention. They reported loyal citizens of integrity and ability who were later induced by means of correspondence to volunteer for this kind of service and who could keep Military Intelligence informed on conditions in their respective cities when the agent had finished his work or found it advisable to withdraw. Thus was built up a large volunteer organization composed of loyal citizens of foreign birth or extraction, who kept the Intelligence Division advised of conditions among their respective groups or races, and to whom the division could apply for assistance or information in individual cases or localities. These volunteer assistants included men in all lines of business and in all professions. The Boards of Health of cities having large foreign-speaking populations vouched for loyal foreign-speaking doctors who, because of the peculiarly confidential relations they enjoyed with their patients, were able to obtain information of great value to the section. The same was true of clergymen of many denominations. The editors of foreign-language newspapers frequently rendered highly effective co-operation, and correspondence was started with a dozen or more school superintendents in the larger cities with a view to enlisting the aid of the high-school boys in promoting the morale of the foreign-speaking colonies.

Reports received from Camp Gordon in April, 1918, indicated serious trouble with the unnaturalized Russians and Poles, and, in some instances, with the Italians, all of whom were perfectly willing to fight for the lands from which they came but not for this one. Camp Gordon was a replacement camp, and as such had become a dumping-ground for divisions having men that they wished to get rid of, a large proportion of whom were foreigners. Of the 1,500 men of all nationalities who were transferred to this camp by the 82d Division on the ground of suspected disloyalty, nearly 1,000 did not speak English. In order to remedy this dangerous condition, a memorandum was drawn up by M I 3 and was adopted by the War Department. This memorandum recommended that foreign-speaking draftees not having sufficient knowledge of English to understand the commands be segregated by nationalities in companies, both the commissioned and non-commissioned officers of which should be of the same nationality as their men, or should at least be familiar with their language, habits, and psychology. In support of the plan the words of Napoleon were quoted:

“If I had enough humpbacks in the Army to make a regiment, enough Negroes to make a battalion, enough dumb men to make a company, I would so organize them. No stimulus is more potent than the pride of men who have a common bond either of race, nationality, color, or even affliction. Men thus put together want to show the rest of the Army their extreme capability.”

The work at Camp Gordon was put in charge of an officer of Military Intelligence, who had had considerable experience in social-service work among the foreign-speaking soldiers at Camps Grant and Custer. Upon his arrival at Camp Gordon he found that those soldiers (most of them foreigners) who had been left behind when troops were sent overseas had been placed in the 5th and 10th Training Battalions of the Depot Brigade. Forty-one nationalities were represented in this group of foreigners, classified as Allied Aliens, Neutral Aliens, and Enemy Aliens, 80 per cent of them being Italians, Slavs, and Russian Jews. The officer immediately initiated a study of each nationality and of each individual, the process of personally interviewing each man, 976 in all, occupying two weeks. Thousands of questions and complaints were answered and explanations made to the men in their native tongue, every man being recorded and classified according to his nationality, loyalty, intellect, citizenship, and military fitness. This done, two companies were formed, one composed of Slavs—the majority of them Poles—and the other of Italians. Three officers of Polish extraction and one of Russian were procured for the Slav company and two of Italian extraction for the Italian company. The first week of training and lectures on discipline resulted in an amazing impetus of spirit and enthusiasm. Between the Slavs and the Italians arose the keenest competition for proficiency in drill. So startling was the change that the battalion commander and the American officers in charge of the two companies passed rapidly from discouragement and pessimism to extreme enthusiasm. An elaborate plan was worked out for giving the men a working knowledge of English and a series of lectures were given in their own tongues, thus acquainting them with the requirements necessary for service overseas. Special religious services were arranged for the Italians and the Slavs, their spiritual needs being ministered to by priests of their own faiths. The camp diet was modified in order to give them food which was racially acceptable. Social entertainments were planned, so that prominent citizens of Atlanta could meet the foreign-speaking soldiers and make them feel that they were as dear to the country whose uniform they were wearing as though they were American-born. The immediate result of this interesting experiment was the conversion of potentially dangerous malcontents into loyal, enthusiastic, and efficient soldiers. Furthermore, the reaction upon the families of the soldiers and upon the colonies from which they came was highly gratifying, for their letters from the men, filled with their suddenly awakened enthusiasm for army life and with glowing accounts of the kindness and consideration which were being shown them, did much to counteract any latent disloyalty among the foreign-speaking population. To each new group of foreigners who entered the battalion the question was put: “How many of you men are willing to go abroad and fight?” In most cases the affirmative responses were pitifully few. In fact, the Slavs practically all refused to put on identification tags, asserting that should they be sent abroad they would be as willing to help the Germans as the Allies. But when, after a few weeks’ stay in the battalion, the question, “How many of you men are willing to go abroad and fight?” was again put to them, the response was as remarkable as it was thrilling, for practically the whole battalion stepped forward as one man. Properly treated, the metal had fused at last. They were all Americans now.

So successful did the experiment prove at Camp Gordon that a few months later the same officer was ordered to introduce his plan at Camp Devens, where there were approximately 6,000 men who did not have sufficient knowledge of English to be effectively trained. In three days he, with proper assistance, personally examined upward of 2,000 men, and on the fourth day divided them into four companies, Company No. 1 consisting of 250 Slavs (three-fourths of them Poles), Company No. 2 of 230 Italians, Company No. 3 of 200 Greeks and Albanians, and Company No. 4 of the same number of Armenians and Syrians. A number of non-commissioned officers who could speak the necessary languages were transferred from the depot brigade and assigned to assist in the training of the new companies. The results obtained were beyond all expectations. The spirit and enthusiasm of the men advanced by leaps and bounds. They entered into competitive drills as enthusiastically as though they were schoolboys playing a game. The guard-house, which, until the introduction of the plan, had always been full of foreign-speaking soldiers, suddenly became deserted. From being the worst organization at the camp, the “Foreign Legion,” as it was called, became the model battalion.

The plan, followed both at Camp Devens and Camp Gordon, of providing the foreign-speaking organization with foreign-speaking non-commissioned officers of unquestioned loyalty served an additional purpose in that it provided the Intelligence Division with new and valuable sources of information, for the non-commissioned officers, being familiar with the language, customs, and modes of thought of their men, could easily detect any undercurrent of disaffection or disloyalty. Their common speech would at once establish a bond of sympathy that would be likely to disarm the suspicions of an enemy agent or sympathizer. Moreover, the speech and characteristics of peoples living in close proximity to each other, though divided by an international frontier, are usually so nearly identical that no one can distinguish between them save a person who himself comes from that region. Only a man who had himself lived on the Russo-German frontier, for example, would be able to say with certainty whether a certain soldier came from Russian, Austrian, or German Poland; from Galicia or Lithuania; from Transylvania, Besserabia, or the Ukraine. An incident which occurred at one of the camps illustrates this principle as applied to the Oriental races. A civilian agent of the Military Intelligence Division, who was an Armenian, noticed that a soldier who claimed to be a Syrian refused to eat pork. Being perfectly familiar with both Turkish and Syrian customs, and knowing that the Turks, who are Mohammedans, are forbidden to eat pork, while the Syrians, who are Christians, are not, the operative sharply questioned the pretended Syrian, who at length confessed that he was a Turk, and, consequently, an enemy alien. Such a slight indication would have passed unnoticed save by one familiar with Oriental customs, and a dangerous enemy agent might thus have escaped detection.

To M I 4 was intrusted the extremely important work of counter-espionage among the civilian population. It investigated the activities of the enemy in propaganda, in sabotage, and in the establishment of communications with the home country; it investigated such of his trade activities and financial transactions as might impede our successful prosecution of the war; it discovered enemy influences among political, racial, and religious groups and in labor organizations, and it watched persons throughout the nation who, though not associated with the enemy, were nevertheless engaged in pacifist, revolutionary, and similar activities which were likely to interfere with our military operations. The section operated through many agencies. As a branch of the War Department, it employed intelligence officers serving with troops in the various camps and cantonments, who furnished the section with much valuable information relative to civilian activities which reacted upon the army. Similar information was furnished by the departmental intelligence officers, stationed at the headquarters of the several geographical departments of the army, and by the military attachés in foreign countries. The Department of Justice, the State Department, and the Office of Naval Intelligence also actively co-operated with the section. By the establishment of a system of counter-espionage in foreign countries the section succeeded in frustrating many of the German plans at their source and in counteracting enemy propaganda which, had it gone unchecked, might have had the gravest results. The German method of organized propaganda was well illustrated by the operations of the Chilean-German League, which was founded in October, 1916, by Chileans of German descent, its membership including commercial agents, priests, professors, physicians, merchants, and school-teachers. In a circular dated Valparaiso, October 24, 1917, and marked “Confidential,” the management of the local branch of the league at Valparaiso announced a meeting to be held jointly with the representatives of all German societies of the city for the purpose of founding a propaganda committee. The necessity for starting a propaganda on a large scale was pointed out, and the main object of the league, that of urging the maintenance of neutrality by the Chilean Government, was described in detail. The importance to the Allies of the German ships in Chilean waters was also emphasized, the circular saying, in part: “... if we succeed in postponing the rupture of relations by this propaganda only for weeks, we have aided Germany and her allies to the extent of millions, harming the Allies at the same time by millions.” Though the league succeeded in preventing Chile from joining the Allies, the vigilance and energy displayed by the agents of our counter-espionage service in that country practically nullified the effects of the league’s propaganda in South America.