Page:North Dakota Law Review Vol. 1 No. 10 (1924).pdf/1



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Possibly the following information will give you an answer to the question. Just about the time that the final contests were being held in the Bar Association oratorical contests on the Constitution, one Carl Haessler spoke before the Liberal Club of the University of Chicago. Haessler served time in federal prisons from June 1918 to August 1920. His subject was, “Dissenting Youth in War Time,” and the lecture was publicly advertised by the university in the weekly calendar of the school. These were some of the statements made in the course of the talk:

“I would fight in the infantry or in the chemical warfare service or in any combatant branch in a war to overturn the present government.”

“I was not a conscientious objector because I was afraid to fight or because I would not kill other men, but because I would not fight for a capitalist government. I would kill if I had to and would be glad to do it in a war to overturn a capitalist government.”

“The law says we shall not advocate the violent overthrow of the Government, but we get around it by predicting it, and it is not against the law to prophesy. We say it is inevitable that armed revolution shall come and we are preparing for the day.”