New Britain herald., 1918-04-16
M LENIENCY FOR
THE kAISERR'S Spies
Gregory Makes Sweeping Denial
Of Hitting With Velvet Fist

General gregory says lIldl lGpOIlS "a
enemy activities in the United States
are grossly exaggerated and that while
the dangers from such activities is
! great, the Department of Justice is do
ing everything possible to combat II,
although hampered by the lack OF
federal statutes providing adequate
punishments.
Mr.. Gregory stamps as "unQuallhed-
ly false in every PARTICULAR the stories
that dangerous spies have been pa
rolled by the department from INTERN
ment camps.
He calls attention to the Sabotage
and Passport bills, drawn by his de-
partment and now before congress-
and urges their speedy enactment into
law to enable the government to deal
more effectively with dislOyalists and
alien enemies.
The text Of the attorney-gen s
letter, which was made public last
night is as follows:
IT have the honor to acknowledge
the receipt Of your letter to the De-
partm ent Of Justice under date Of the
I'd inst, in which you refer to certain
alleged activities Of spies and state
that there exists a strong feeling
throughout the country that our gov
rrnment authorities are dealing toe
leniently with spies and dangerous en-
cmies within Our Confines
No Paroles Granted
If such q feeling does exist it is
because of lack Of statutes and not by
any lack of activity upon the part of
the prosecuting officials; for I am gead
to assure you that the Department of
Justice has Investigated, and, so far
as the present laws warrant, vigorous
ly prosecuted every case Of enemy &C
tiVity Of which it has acquired infor-
nation. The stories that dangerous
spies have been paroled by this de-
partment from internment camps are
unquauhedIy false in every particular.
The power of internment vested in ma
by the president has been exercised
carefully, but unsparingly, and as rap
! Idly as really dangerous enemy aliens
have come to the attention of govern
ment officials they have been appre-
hended and interned.
Long before we entered the war
! this department recognized the ne
! cesslty of an efficient system for the
/ prevention as we'll as the detection of
! enemy activities, and began at that
! time to strengthen and build up its
! Bureau of Investigation, which now,
! Tor long time, has been operated
! on war basis. In addition to this
! the department has accepted the serc-
! ices, and, to a great etent supervises
! the activities Of more than 100000
citizens of proven loyalty, systemat-
! ically organized throughout the coun-
: try as an auxiliary to the work of the
department. 1t is a fair statement to
! say that the country has never been
I so thoroughly policed in it's history
by the federl authorities as it is to-
day. You will get some idea Of the
! ma gnitude OF the work from the fact
that the Bureau of Investigation of
the Department of Justice receives
an average Of upward Of 100 COM
plants a day. While the most of
{ these complaints eventually prove I'M
founded, all of them are carefully in
/ vestigated Work of this character
necessarily has to be done with little
| or no publicity, and, as q matter Of
policy, the action by the department
in informing enemy aliens has also
( been done, so far as possible, without
| publicity. For example, on the night
| of April 6, 1917, the day of our dec
! laration of war, this department
| seized in different parts of the coun-
! try all of the German agents then
| imme diately transferred to war prison
camps-the number Of enemies for
obvious reasons being kept secret.
The public assumes that there is
! q great deal of enemy activity going
on in this country, and it is but nat
| ural that vague rumors are magni-
| fed into definite and sensational
| stories. The talk of damage done by
enemy aliens in causing incendiarv
| fires is an illustration of this. Re-
! peatedly, both in reputable newspa-
! pers and in publications gotten out
| by citizen societies, exaggerated
| statements are made as to the
amount of damage. Statistics show
| that, considering the vastly increased
value Of merchandise and plants, the
| actual gre loss to property of all de-
| scriptions in 1917 was not appreciably
| larger than that of the year of 1913.
| Likewise, the report recently made
| by the National Board of Fire I'M
| derwriters shows in substance that
| during the last year not one fire has
| been clearly proven to be the work
| Of allen enemies and at a recent con-
ference in the treasury department Of
all the men in all departments
charged with protection of plants and
supplies, it was stated without dis
sent that no instance was known of
a fire caused within the last year by
alien enemies.
Watchfulness Necessary.
This does not mean that there is
little danger to the apprehended from
| enemy alien activities. On the con-
| trarv tdoa most ooraf11I Ura r. h full ess