Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/48

 as this, and its true scope and generosity is really for the jury to determine. That is the second thing.

And the third. I want you to exercise a very judicial poise and restraint in a few minutes, when the District Attorney gets up and begins to attack us, and tries to paint us as a red and bloody bunch of "Bolsheviki," who are trying to introduce anarchy and overthrow civilization, and who have not any respect for the institutions of popular government, and when he says that we have been calling American soldiers and sailors "blackguards," which is absolutely false, and all the other things it is necessary for him to say. I don't want you to fail to give him your utmost attention, but I want you to judge us by what you remember that we have actually said, and not by his description of what we said.

And fourth, I ask you to believe implicitly that every word I have uttered in this court room is true. I am not afraid to spend the better part of my life in a penitentiary, if my principles have brought me to it. I have decided, after experimenting a little in the inside of my own mind and heart, that I am more afraid to betray my principles.

I want to thank you in behalf of myself and my co-defendants for your very courteous and very intelligent attention.