Page:The web (1919).djvu/411

 dodgers and deserters. Two companies of State guards and Spanish war veterans, organized into thirty-five squads, carried out the League's orders to perfection.

Berlin, Wisconsin, reports: "Berger carried this county for Congress. We had some German propagandists who said that America could not win the war. We quieted them. Most of our work had to do with Liberty Bond campaigns, Red Cross, exemption claims, and Food Administration matters."

Eau Claire, Wisconsin, makes a clean-cut report on the activities of that division, being in touch constantly with the Agents of the Department of Justice and ready to act at once at all times. D. J. complimented this division on its compilation of evidence. The Chief says: "Among our cases are several which proved vexatious. We succeeded in silencing such disloyalists as we had. Notwithstanding the fact that the war is over, we know there yet lies ahead of all good citizens an enormous work of education in righting and keeping right the obligation of the individual to the Government."

MINNESOTA

The City of Duluth, at the head of the Great Lakes, lies close to the edge of the great Northern wilderness whose fastnesses might well beckon the evader as well as the explorer or the discoverer. Her geographical situation makes Duluth a sort of Mecca for dodgers, drifters and deserters, and a good part of the A. P. L. work at that point—and hard work it often was—consisted in running down these unwilling patriots who preferred the seclusiveness of a logging camp, trapper's shack, or even a logging drive, to bearing arms under their country's flag.

Olsen is a name somewhat indefinite in the upper Minnesota country, but it was claimed by a deserter from Camp Dodge who originally registered from Ely, Minnesota. The entire Olsen genealogical tree was combed over, and many shacks housing Olsens here and there in the woods were examined, but the right Olsen was not found. At last an operative hit upon the expedient of spreading word that this particular Olsen was wanted to sign a receipt for some