Soon after, he moved to France and was publisher of the Paris-based journal The Liberator, which in late 1910 printed an article about King George V that led to the 1911 criminal libel conviction of Edward Mylius.

Hence, early one morning before daylight, disguised as a day laborer and pushing a bicycle, but carrying still the two violins, he walked past a drunken sentry on the Belgium frontier and got back to Berlin.

As one reporter expressed, "Before Governor Fuller granted a respite to Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti the streets of Boston contained a number of persons who annoyed the police.

Smartly dressed, neatly barbered, looking more like a distinguished professor emeritus than a boisterous radical nephew, James shouted: 'Down with the police!,' assaulted a bluecoat, was promptly arrested.

In the 1940s, influenced by the ideas of American fascist writer Lawrence Dennis, James headed a nationalist group called the Yankee Freemen.

As remembered by his nephew Vaux: Having very short fingers, he decided that he would develop a whole new system of music for the violin, and therefore cut down the necks of all his instruments, thereby shortening them materially so his fingers could reach the strings more easily…The music which he then subsequently played consisted of very high squeaks and he would practice for hours in his room on these principles which he developed.