Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1918 — Unnamed Alien Against Whom Proof Has Been Obtained Disappears [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Unnamed Alien Against Whom Proof Has Been Obtained Disappears

By GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON.

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The mysterious disappearance of a man without a name. In the sentence lies the true solution of the spy problem. The morning newspaper laconically announces that during the preceding night an unnamed man was seized by operatives from the department of justice. A curt, sinister line completes the story: “He will never be seen nor heard of again.” ’No comment. No putting forward of the name or deeds of the man for friend or foe to praise or curse.

No long, detailed account for the curious or the morbid to read. Nothing more than the paragraph: “Last night an unnamed alien against whom conclusive proof has been obtained was taken into custody by operative* from the department of justice. He will never be seen nor heard of again.” Complete obliteration. A man mysteriously missing from the circles in which he moved; a man for whom some will inquire at first and then grow silent with dread and awe; a man whose name will never be mentioned, whose fate will never be known, whose evil will remain forever unheralded. The world will never know what has become of him. His friends will know that he is gone from their midst. His wife and his children, his father and mother and brothers and sisters will know that he no longer walks among them. They will wonder and they will whisper his name. But they will never know the length nor the nature of the journey he has taken. They will never know whether he lies dead ma® unmarked grave, buried in quicklime, or alive in a cell from which no word may ever issue forth. Alive or dead, the silence of death enshrouds him. The world' only knows that last night a traitor, a spy, was token; it will never know anything more about him. No account of his trial, no mention of his deeds, no grewsome tale of the firing squad or sombre picture of prison walls—nothing but the blackness of oblivion! Wiped out I Gone! Unrecorded! That is all. A spy has passed.