Page:The web (1919).djvu/337

 and certainly took able care of Fritz and his Boche-loving friends. But all California is divided into three parts: Northern California, Southern California—and all California! An offense to one means a fight for all, although each allows a certain amount of thumb-biting on the part of a native son. The A. P. L. in California followed precisely this ancient line of cleavage, so that there was established a Northern Division, a Southern Division—and a State Inspectorship! The State Inspector was Mr. Douglas White, who himself is a traveling man, and therefore cannot be accounted as belonging to either North or South. Mr. A. J. DeLamare had the division office in San Francisco, where the organization so closely followed the general lines already described in other cities that it perhaps is not needful to go into details here.

That California's polyglot population meant potential trouble may be seen in the heads of the Frisco reports: a total of 1,612 cases of disloyalty and sedition, 277 cases of propaganda, and 105 of radicalism, such as that of I. W. W., etc. The work for the war boards—slackers, desertion, character and loyalty, etc.—footed up 2,415 cases in all, the grand total carried on the records as actual "cases" amounting to 5,691.

The Department of Justice labors, as usual in all the great cities, meant a vast amount of time and energy expended on the part of A. P. L. men, with the usual percent of win, lose, and draw—all offered in the infinite variety afforded by the California climate. Some of the cases were odd, some mysterious, and a good many of them big. Perhaps a few from the many turned in by Frisco may be found interesting, though chosen practically by chance. One of these is a wireless case. It should not be dismissed as another "mysterious signal" flivver until read quite through to its close.

Mrs. B and her mother had moved into a flat on Williard street. The persons who occupied the flat before them came back to get some plates and other material, which looked so strange that Mrs. B thought there had been a wireless plant there, so she reported it. They refused to give up the fixture material then in their possession. The place was on a high hill overlooking the bay and would have