Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/44

 exactly as we had in the matter of our principle of editorial freedom—with one exception, and that was that I considered the cartoon of Glintenkamp under the circumstances so extremely crude and raw, that I sent it back to him. I took that extraordinary step to keep it out of, the magazine. Aside from that, both of these issues were published under the influence of Judge Learned Hand's decision, sustaining us in our thought that we had this right to criticize the policies of the Government at war.

So we brought out the September issue. And that was held up in the mails, and then I sent another letter to Mr. Burleson, and subsequently a telegram, and got no answer to these either.

And then I went into the courts again, and asked another Judge to tell me what my rights were in this matter—that I could not get any statement from the Postmaster or the Government at Washington, and that I believed I had rights—at least I had a right to find out what rights I had. And that Judge decided on September 12th, after both these issues in the indictment were published, that I was not within my rights—no; he decided that the Postmaster General was within his rights in declaring that he would not circulate this magazine through the mail. He decided, not that I had violated the law, but that the Postmaster General had not violated the law—that he had discretion about it. And after that I brought out the November issue of The Masses, in which there is not a thing which could possibly be made the basis of an indictment, and you will notice that it was I and not Mr. Barnes who introduced that into the testimony here.

And further, at that same time, I again wrote to the President, congratulating him as you will remember on his letter to the Pope, but also alluding to this matter of the exclusion of