Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/39

 national interests,: and he heard other people say other things, and he drew a picture of all these excited people, each of whom had his own pet hobby, and each of whom is saying that this whole conflict of the world is for the purpose of his particular hobby. And he made fun of them. And he was free to do that with extreme vigor, because he is a pacifist, because he does not believe in any war, as he has very frankly stated.

And then he drew a picture of big business saying, "Run along," to Congress, "we got through with you when you declared war." And he added the words "For us," because he has echoes in his mind of a socialist philosophy which asserts that absolutely everything is caused and regulated and dominated by business, and it was just as natural for him to add "for us" to that, as though he were a Presbyterian theologian and that were part of his theology. It is the regular socialist doctrine. None of us believed that big business had been the exclusive cause of this war. And we did not say so in The Masses.

Finally, Mr. Barnes brings in here a couple of military men that he did not have at our last trial—and he felt it was the one thing lacking—to show that our magazine circulated among military men. He has not been able to bring in a single man liable to the draft who ever read it, to prove that it influenced him in any degree, except to be sincere and honest and go ahead according to his convictions. He has not been able to prove that anybody liable to the draft ever even read it, although that is freely conceded. But he brings two officers in here, and one of them was a Lieutenant when he began taking The Masses and he has been elevated to the position of a Captain, and he confesses with a genial smile on his face that he wrote this letter, and gave us $18 to help this