Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/21

 It is either the most beautiful and courageous mistake that hundreds of millions of mankind ever made, or else it is really the truth that will lead us out of our misery, and anxiety, and poverty, and war, and strife and hatred between classes, into a free and happy world. In either case, it deserves your respect.

OUR HONOR and Gentlemen: I have outlined to you in the first half of my summing up what was the underlying intention of our publication throughout this period—the intention to publish a free, vigorous, satirical, humorous and somewhat reckless magazine, with poetry and picture and argument addressed to the people from the socialist point of view.

I want to take up now the question of our more specific intent as it is shown in the evidence that has been produced here. First, let me call your attention to the fact that we are accused of violating a law which was passed on June 15, 1917, and in order to establish an intent upon our part to violate that law, the District Attorney has gone back to a point a good deal more than two months before the passage of the law. And again, one of the chief acts of which he is accusing us, relates to the provisions of another law which was passed on May 18th, and he goes back to a time more than one month before the passage of that law, when a violation of either one of these laws would have been physically impossible. From the things that we said at that time—two months before one law was passed, and one month before the other, he tries to establish our intent to violate the law.