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 CHAPTER III

THE STORY OF PHILADELPHIA

Splendid Record of a Ship-Shape Office—A Model Organization and the Way it Worked—Stories of the Silent Soldiers—A Banner Report.

The City of Brotherly Love gives us pause. Is it indeed the truth that Americans do not know their own country? The story of the American Protective League, covering some millions of typewritten words, some hundreds of thousands of pages of typewritten copy, might be called one of the largest and one of the best histories of America ever written. It offers no pretense at deductions, but only an abundance of facts, objective and not subjective, concrete and not abstract. Popular impression hath it that the city founded by good William Penn is a simple and quiet sort of community, where life goes on lawfully and all is ease and comfort, peace and content. The facts do not seem to bear out this supposition. Philadelphia was as lawless as the next city during war times, possessed of as many undesirables and offering as many urgent problems in national defense. Tucson, Arizona, reports peace. Philadelphia is bad and borderish!

Among the many hundreds of reports coming in during the closing days of the American Protective League, there are some which run forty, fifty, or seventy-five pages of single space type. A very few of such reports would make a book the size of this one in hand. It has been, let it be repeated, with a most genuine regret that such work had to be condensed by the press. The Philadelphia report, for instance, covers ninety pages, and is an absolute model in every way. Indeed, a visit to the Philadelphia A. P. L. offices would have left any visitor certain of the high level of efficiency which has been attained by that division in every phase of its work. There was not a neater, better