Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/4

 struct the military enterprise of the United States? And I shall answer that question in complete and candid detail, that we did not have such an intention. On the contrary, our intention was to issue into the general current of public opinion our satirical and argumentative and poetic and pictorial comments upon the general policy of the Government from a socialist point of view.

In order that you should fully understand our "intent" in publishing these articles, it is necessary for you to take into consideration two underlying conditions: One is that we were artists and literary men in a state of revolt from the commercial magazines. The other is that we were socialists. We had created this magazine, which belonged to us jointly, because we all of us desired to have one place in which we could say exactly what we wanted to, in exactly the tone of voice that we wanted to, and no editor and no owner of a publication could tell us to say anything else or to say it in any different way. On the inside cover of the magazine it is stated exactly what the policy of this magazine was, and there can be no dispute about this. It is stated in every issue that we ever published. Our policy was, to do as we pleased—each of us—and conciliate nobody, not even our readers. That is what we had the magazine for. That is what we were doing. That was our policy.

And what was our mood? Our mood was the mood that accords with that policy. It was a mood of extreme and proud and rather obstreperous individual expression. We were most of us young, and most of us enthusiastically dissatisfied with the present state of affairs in art and politics and society. And we had this one place in which to say so, and we were accustomed from the beginning to say so in extremely vigorous and sometimes extravagant language. That was our