He was a spy, or boll-weevil, a creature who bores from within.

In other words, he was a human bug.

He had telephoned that he was a junior in Harvard, and that he would be interested in joining Yankee American Action. Two days later, in his room at Lowell House, he told me that he had learned about our movement from Mr. Dennett, the director of Phillips Brooks House, an institution that had offered us one of its rooms for our meetings.

The Lowell House candidate for membership in Y.A.A. was of a pallid countenance, of a languid manner and with an eye in which there was a dreamy, furtive expression. He presented no appearance whatever of having any red blood in him, but he was a student of Aristotle, which seemed to be a hopeful sign.

He came to our next meeting at Phillips Brooks House, and with the air of a professional newspaper reporter whipped out a pencil and notebook. ten of us were seated at the round-table. Our Harvard junior manipulated his pencil. He never spoke. The function of a boll-weevil is not to speak but to bore. After the meeting members remarked to me that they were not being favorably attracted to the Harvard student. The impression which his notebook had made on me had not been entirely pleasant, but I reasoned that here was a student accustomed to take notes at his lectures, and that probably he could not break away from that excellent habit.

He came to several meetings, punctually whipping out his pencil and notebook. His monumental silence, continued, from meeting to meeting, promised no help to a movement based chiefly on language. We tried to be human towards him, learned to call him by his first name, but we never overcame our repugnance to the notebook.

Externally he was a Harvard junior. Internally he was a boll-weevil in full operation. It seems that every movement has its Judas.

I gave him the button of our group, which bears upon it our motto, "Hero or Zero". I gave him the Y.A.A. armband. He took them, but never wore them. Once he cuddled up to me and asked, "When are we going to have our first parade?" A suggestion from me that he get ready for the parade by putting on a red shirt made him look sick. When I saw how green he turned I gave up hope of marking a storm-trooper out of him. I had been looking for a hero, and I had found a bug.

Finally, with the force of an exploding bomb, the work of the bug was given to the world by the "Harvard Crimson". The newspaper offices of the "Hub" rocked with the force of the explosion, and the people of Boston learned about Y. A. A.

Here we see the work of a vampire, the Roman Catholic Church, which through the work of a bug, thought to destroy us. Edward Holton James   Y.A.A. Leaflet No. 11