Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1918. GERMAN AGENTS IN AMERICA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LII, Issue 50, 28 February 1918, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1918. GERMAN AGENTS IN AMERICA.

/AMERICA'S task in the war is not an easy one, for, as is well known, the enemy is well entrenched in all American cities, and even in influential circles. It is only the firm stand taken by the Government and the great bulk of the people that has prevented internal turmoil of a very serious nature. As it is the agents of the Hun have not been inactive. Several munition works have been destroyed by fire or blown up, it is practically certain by German agents, who have also been responsible for fires by which food supplies valued at an enormous sum, have been destroyed. Over 600 persons have been convicted of crimes in the German interest on or near the Great Lakes, through which millions of tons of war material pass every week. The result of all this has been a pretty general conviction that America could get on with the business of prosecuting the war much better if all German sympathisers, known or suspected, were interned. It would be a vast job, but' safety may yet demand it. Meanwhile all German subjects over the age of fourteen have been forbidden l To approach any place of military importance. To reside in the capital or in the Panama Canal zone. To change their residence without permission. To take passage in any steamboat, excepting public ferries.To ascend in any balloon, airplane, or airship. To stir out without their registration cards, which they must produce upon demand. ■'-• This, it is reckoned, affects about 600,000 men—l3o,ooo in Now York pione—but, in the opinion of many, it does not go far enough to stop "the carnival of incendiarism." In this connection there is a remarkable tribute in a recent issue of -the. "World's Work" to the services rendered to the United States by an American newspaper man, John R. Rathorn, editor of the now famous "Providence Journal," of Rhode Island, who is, as a matter of fact. not an American at all, but a good Australian, born in Melbourne, and was educated there and at. Harrow, returning to Melbourne to begin a journalistic career in which he has been of great service to his adopted country. The Press in summarising the article says that Mr Rathorn is described as the man who discovered and exposed the German plots, in America. He is the man who forced the recall of the precious von Papen, notorious Boy-Ed. He vmeartned Dr Heinrich Albert and his 40,000,000d01. corruption fund, and sent him back to Germany. He proved that the Lusitania warning was sent out by the German" Embassy on orders direct from Berlin.- He sent Consul-General Bopp, at San Francisco, to prison for two years for conspiracy. He warned the Government that the Canadian Parliament Building tfi, Ottawa was to be fired, three weeks before it was burned by German agents. "In brief, he is the man who (without official authority) was for-three years the eves of the nation, guarding it against the treachery of the German Government. He has been a patriot of the highest order in the face, first of early unbelief and ridicule on the part of the Government,, and then of slandei and abuse on the part of the whole proGerman element." The mass of data, accumulated in three years of ceaseless search, and stored in triplicate in vaults in Providence, New York, .and Washington, "is literaly the foundation stone upon which has been erected the whole structure of America's present enormous secret service, and it is the cause of the awakening of the American people to the hideous menace of Germany's cold-blooded assaults on their very existence as an independent nation."