Patriotic Nastiness

One of the employees in John Chester's garage was a non-naturalized German immigrant named William Dolle, who was quite young — 17, if I've found the right person in the census, and the News called him as a "boy," although he seems to have registered for the draft, which suggests he was at least 21 (or could pass himself off as such). Whatever his exact age, this young man had worked for John for several years and had never been in any kind of trouble.

But trouble came for him on the evening of June 22. All we have to go by is one garbled report in the News, so we have to do some guessing about the exact nature of that trouble.

It started out as a normal afternoon at the garage. William was on the job, and John Chester too, I expect, since he ran the place, and probably some other men were hanging around as well. Everyone was in good spirits, playing practical jokes on each other. That devolved into horseplay. At some point amid the roughhousing, an American flag ended up on the floor, and William stepped on it.

That's when things got ugly. Someone — we'll never know who — got his nose out of joint and said something unpleasant to William; William probably answered back; increasingly nasty remarks were exchanged, and it all ended with someone calling the sheriff's office. Sheriff Lewis E. Barnes himself came over to escort young William to the Crown Point jail, the charge being "violating the president's proclamation."

The News never explained which proclamation that was supposed to be. But since William was technically a German citizen and hence an "alien enemy," the special regulations established by the President in Proclamation 1364 (concerning the state of war between Germany and the U.S.) would apply to him. And one with sufficient mental elasticity could interpret his stepping on the flag as a "hostile act against the United States," or some such thing.

The News came down clearly on William's side: "The boy meant nothing wrong, and from evidence the whole matter started in a joking manner." I haven't seen any follow-up report on the case, but I would not be surprised to learn that Sheriff Barnes quietly let William go the next day, figuring that by then tempers had cooled down and someone's patriotic hysteria had worn off.


Sources:
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Untitled social column. Hobart News 28 June 1917.