Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/47

 and recruiting. To me it is absolutely inconceivable. And it is absolutely false.

Gentlemen, that is the end of my defense. I do not ask anything more of you than what would spring out of your natural sense of justice toward the most humble of men. I ask of you four things. First, that you will diligently employ your imaginations, in order to go back to the time when these articles were written, and fully realize that they were written before this country had begun to fight. They were written before a single United States soldier had gone down in a ship or put his foot in the trenches of Europe. They were not written now, when thousands of our own friends and dear fellow-citizens are over there, and have given up their lives, and when our own hearts are quivering with admiration for those that are brave and with pity for those that are stunned. They were not written now, and you must go back to those earlier and lighter times in your imagination, if you intend to render a verdict that will be just.

That is the first thing that I ask of you. The second is that you will diligently employ your reason, in order to distinguish between a sly and underhand intrigue and intention to use our opinions about public policy, in order to promote trouble and resistance to the draft, and refusal of duty in the army—distinguish between that and a vigorous and satirical, and sometimes rather light, and always very reckless, statement of our opinion about public policies from a Socialist point of view. You must make the distinction between an effort to put out into the general flow of public opinion our attitude toward the policies of the Government, and an attempt to obstruct the military operations of the Government. The principle of free speech is always involved in such cases