Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/6

 I was rather shocked at what seemed to be the "flip" character of Jack Reed's caption to that clipping from the Tribune. I am older than Jack Reed, and I think I was sobered a good deal more quickly than some of the editors of the Masses to a realization of the fact that the United States had really got into a world war, and could not get out except by carrying it forward in a diplomatic and military way to some sort of conclusion. But at the time when most of these articles were published, none of us, and not half of the American people, had taken into their breasts the full sense and tragic significance of the fact that we are in this war, and that thousands of our friends are going to die.

HE District Attorney has made some point, although not so much in this trial, of the charge of conspiracy. I think we have demonstrated by exhibiting to you the purpose for which we started the magazine, and the policy under which we conducted it, that there was never in the world anything less like a conspiracy than the way in which the articles and cartoons were contributed to this magazine, and the magazine brought out. Our one principle was that we would not "conspire," we would not agree, we would not try to agree, and we would not give anybody the power to tell anybody else what he should do. To that principle we clung throughout all the diversities and all the changes in our editorial board.

With all the detectives in the Department of Justice, and the Navy Department and the Treasury Department if he wants them—a good many thousands of men at his service—with all of our letter-files for as long as he wanted them in his office—for almost a year—and he has dug through them all—the District Attorney has never produced one let-