The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1918-02-02

fz@I peace; there was hardly a man
$3.50 who had ever matched wits with
the foreign government experts.
Inc story OF how this menace was met can as
yet be told only in part. But not the least in
teresting part concerns the men who have
done the work.
Chief of the weapons which were at hand was
the secret service of the department of justice.
Its agents were an unobtrusively efficient lot, but
woefully small In numbers and, for the most
part, inexperienced in international affairs.
white slaves" and predatory business had been
their chief game. The even smaller force of
the treasury secret service was almost fully oc-
cupied with Its routine duties of guarding the
currency and the presidents life. It, too. has
rendered amazing service against the spies, but
upon the department of Justice agents fell the
chief burden.
They were called upon to match the craft.
the experience and the ruthlessness of the keen
est of German spies, who were backed by a
renowned secret service organization and unlim-
tied funds.
Their chief, the man who had developed the
government detective force, who had laid the
foundation for an extensive, loosely geared. even
running mechanism, and who promptly assem-
bled 1t when the need came, is Alexander Bruce
Bielaski C"Home Run" Bielaski they called him
In his high school days). He entered the depart
ment a dozen years ago, when the development
of a bureau of investigation to handle secret
work for which no other provision had been made
was started.
This bureau was commissioned to wrestle with
violations of neutrality, with those of the nation
al banking laws, with antitrust cases, bucket
shop cases, white slave" cases; it was to prose-
cute those who impersonate an officer Of the
government, to pursue those who flee the coun-
try and seek to evade the long arm of the federal
law.
There were already several detective agencies
in the government, each created for a specific pur-
pose and limited by law in its operations. For in
ana M rms ~ 1Naro en,y;ao l., ALo t.on1
ury department. There were customs agents to
prevent smuggling, land agents to protect the
public domain, post office inspectors to make
difficult the misuse of the mails. But the special
agents of the department of justice had a field
many times as broad as that occupied by any other
detective agency. One phase of its work. alone
that of circumventing violations Of neutrality
became a herculean task when the war broke.
The department of justice refused to follow
precedent in its creation of a detective agency. 1t
built a staff OF operatives that was a new thing in
the field of detective work. In doing so 1t made
brains its first requisite of selection of men and
held that education was a developer of brains.
The youngsters of this service have succeeded
where veteran police have failed. Every case an
operative undertakes is an entirely new problem,
in which his past experience is by no means an
infallible guide. 1t needs brains and initiative.
A young agent of the bureau Of investigation,
formerly a salesman for a wholesale grocer, went
into the Aileghenies on his first case and cleaned
nm a nest of moonshiners that had defied local
authorities and United States marshals for years.
Another of these men worked as a laborer on the
docks of New Orleans and found out the meth
DDS employed by the sugar samplers In so grad
Ang imported cargoes that the loss to the govern
ment was hundreds of thousands In duties every
year. Still another "roped in" with Mexican
revolutionists In El Paso.
The importance of the work of these special
agents may be measured by an account of the
circumstances back of the seizure of the port Of
Vera Cruz in April, 1914. and the part played In
that event by one of those ingenious men. 1t
bearded Russian attracted the attention of a
house detective in a New York hotel by the dis
play of a draft for $4,000 900 signed by President
Huerta of Mexico. The house detective tele-
phonod the special agents, who watched the opera
lions of the Russian.
That individual bought firearms and ammunl-
ton in sufficient quantities to load a ship. 1t
was the business of the government to see TO
II that he did not send this to Mexico, as there
was an embargo on firearms to that country. The
shin. however, cleared for Odessa, Russia, and the
special agents traced 1t to that point ana wit
messed the refusal of the Russian government TO
allow the ammunition to be landed, because OF
n fear that it was to be used by revoluuonlsts'
They saw the ship again traverse the Mediterra-
mean and unload it's cargo at Hamburg. The,
special agents noted, however, that the RUSSIAN
had disappeared, and suspected that he was more
Iovol TO his own pocket than to the Mexican
government.
The ammunition vas r~eshipped from Hamburg
70 Vera Cruz. AS 1t approached the latter port
.he United States, under the influence of the In
formation furnished by its special agents, entered
.ns seized the mort that Huerta might not get