Page:War Prisoners (Darrow).djvu/8

 experience; and he will be here probably long after all constitutions die. He and his life are the fundamental things, and nothing can get in the way of man and his life; nothing can get in the way of it that does not meet with a catastrophe. The people, if you get enough of them, are supreme. I am not obsessed with the people. They are cruel; they are unimaginative; they are unintelligent to the last extreme. Long ago I stopped passing panegyrics on the people. But this is true about them, when you get enough of them thinking the same way on any subject they have their way! And, the last thing they stop to inquire about is whether their way is "constitutional" or not!

I know there are lawyers of more or less integrity and scholarship who say there have been no convictions during this war, on account of freedom of thought and speech; that there have been no restrictions on constitutional liberty. I do not wish to cloud this issue in any such way. Men have been sent to prison during the last two years for expressing their honest conviction. They have been sent to prison for speaking freely the things they could have spoken before the war started. Everybody knows it, whatever they say. There is one excuse the government had, and only one, and to my mind this excuse is quiet sufficient. And that is, that we are engaged in something that was deep and fundamental, and whether everybody agreed with the government or not, there were enough who agreed, who thought war was necessary, to carry it on at the time. And no matter who the majority is, however liberal or radical, or what it sought, this majority would have done exactly the same thing. So, the question is not whether we have violated the constitution; the question is, what should be done now?

All these things are easily understood by one who, for a few moments will forget his point of view, and try to look the facts in the face. I do not ask anybody to believe that this war was just. If you can imagine a war, as most of you can, which you would think was just, as for instance, a class war, you know you would do just the same as the others did. And you know just the same thing has been done in Russia. And nobody can say it was right or that it was wrong. It was just in the nature of things, like a glacier plowing its way across the continent, nothing else. I have talked with a good many pacifists who said they did not believe in war; but I have noticed how their eyes kindled and their cheeks reddened when they heard of a victory of the Bolsheviks! Nobody 8