Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/33

 to a democratic and just settlement. I do not make these assertions about my change of mood without support. I call your attention to a circular of May 25th, which Mr. Barnes introduced into the testimony, in which I published a reprint of my editorial "Advertising Democracy" (and in order to save time I am not going to ask him to find this) and in that circular I reprinted only the first half of it. That half is devoted entirely to posing those four questions, saying to the President: "If this is a war for democracy, will you do so and so. If it is a war for democracy, will you do so and so." And the circular ends with the statement, "I call for some proof that this is a war for democracy." Now, if I had been engaged on May 25th in this intrigue, which has been imputed to me, to obstruct the military enterprise of the United States by getting people not to register and to be conscientious objectors and to riotously resist conscription, would I have happened to omit from my circular, of which I had twenty-five or thirty thousand sent out—the part of my article which alone has anything to say about going into the war or not going into the war? I assert that I would not.

I have produced evidence here also to prove that before the conscription law was passed, but when its passage seemed to be assured, I was publicly advising people that they should register—people whom I believed might be going to be concientious objectors—that even if they were, they should register and comply with the provisions of the law to the limit that they were able.

I advised Merrill Rogers not to be a conscientious objector, and I did not do this because he has something the matter with his eye-sight. I may have to inform the District Attorney that this is a selective draft, and that people are drafted