Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/23

 that a person with a hot head is an "easy mark," and it proves that I had a hot head on that day. I was mad, and I expressed my emotions in a telegram, and I have been duly humbled before my more prudent and self-contained friends in the city by the publication of that telegram in the newspapers. But I don't believe that any man of warm feeling will really think that this expression of emotion proves that I was entering upon an intrigue to create riots at the time when the United States should conscript soldiers for the army. And if it did prove it, would not that proof be absolutely disestablished and overthrown by the evidence of Norman Thomas, who came on the stand and said that before the conscription law was passed I told him over the telephone that I was advising all my friends to register and submit to physical examination in due course, and that he was at liberty to use my name publicly to that effect wherever he wished to?

The second thing that the District Attorney advances which seems to me of great importance is this article "Advertising Democracy," and particularly the last half of it in which I say—"we want them to resist the war fever—resist, etc.; resist conscription if they have the courage." I think I have abundantly and candidly acknowledged what was my purpose in writing that article at that time. My friends told me after I was cross-questioned by Mr. Barnes that I had admitted a good deal more than was true, under the stress of his peculiar way of putting questions. I think he asked me whether I wanted at that time to obstruct the plans of the Government—to oppose the formation of an army, and perhaps I said, "Yes." If I did, I did not mean quite that. What I meant to say was that I intended to persuade socialists, in accordance with the Socialist philosophy, to stay out of the war, to withhold their money, their bodies, from the