Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/29

 absurd than for this Constitution to have said that to secure the great blessings of liberty it gave to Government an uncontrolled power of military conscription?"

And again, "A free Government with arbitrary means to administer it is a contradiction; free Government without adequate provision for personal security is an absurdity; a free Government, with an uncontrolled power of military conscription, is a solecism at once the most ridiculous and abominable that ever entered into the head of man."

And he not only denounced this law as unconstitutional in and out of Congress, but he invited the American people to view the horrors of the war, and he brought forward everything that his imagination and his eloquence could produce to persuade people to stay out of it, if the country adopted the principle of conscription.

":Sir," he said, "I invite the supporters of the measures before you to look into their actual operation. Let the men who have so often pledged their own fortunes and their own lives to the support of this war, look to the wanton sacrifice which they are about to make of their lives and fortunes. They may talk as they will about substitutes, and compensations, and exemptions. It must come to the draft at last. If the Government cannot hire men voluntarily to fight its battles, neither can individuals. If the war should continue, there will be no escape, and every man's fate and every man's life will come to depend on the issue of the military draft. Who shall describe to you the once happy villages of this country? Who shall describe to you the distress and anguish which they will spread over those hills and valleys, where men have heretofore been accustomed to labor, and to rest in security and happiness. Anticipate the scene, sir, when the class shall assemble to stand its draft,