Source: Voices of Freedom, Volume Two, Eric Foner
Woodrow Wilson - April 2, 1917 Source: 65th Congress, 1st session, Senate Document No. 5
Background:
More than any individual in the early 20th century, President Woodrow Wilson articulated a new vision of America’s relationship to the rest of the world. His foreign policy is called by historians, “liberal internationalism.” (Moral Diplomacy) On April 2nd, 1917, he called on Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. His speech promised that victory would lead to a new world order based on “peace and justice” among the “free and self-governing peoples of the world.” In his most celebrated sentence, he declared, “the world must be made safe for democracy.”
Document:
Our Object…is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by an organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of the people…
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.
Eugene V. Debs, Speech to the Jury (1918) Source: The Debs White Book…pp. 37-57
Background:
Despite President Wilson’s claim that the US entered WWI to “make the world safe for democracy,” American intervention was followed at home by the most massive suppression of freedom of expression in the country’s history. The Espionage Act of 1917 prohibited not only spying and interfering with the draft but also “false statements” that might impede military success. In 1918, the Sedition Act, made it a crime to make spoken or printed statements intended to cast “contempt, scorn, or disrepute” on the “form of government” or that advocated interference with the war effort.
Eugene Debs was convicted in 1918 under the Espionage Act for delivering an antiwar speech and sentenced to ten years in prison. Before his sentencing Debs gave the court a lesson in the history of American freedom.
Document:
For the first time in my life I appear before a jury in a court of law to answer an indictment for crime…I have no disposition to deny anything that is true… I would not retract a word that I have uttered that I believe to be true to save myself from going to the penitentiary for the rest of my days…my purpose was to change the system by perfectly peaceable and orderly means into what I conceive to be a real democracy…I have always made my appeal to the reason and to the conscience of the people. I am doing what little I can to bring about change that shall do away with the rule of the great body of the people by a relatively small class and establish in this country and industrial and social democracy.
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine and their peers were the rebels of their day…when they began to sow the seed of resistance among the colonists they were opposed and denounced…but they had the moral courage to be true to their convictions, to stand erect and defy all the forces mounted against them…that is why their names shine in history. The leaders of the abolitionist movement were regarded as public enemies and treated accordingly, yet were true to their faith and stood their ground. They are all in history. You are now teaching your children to revere their memories, while all of their detractors are in oblivion.
I have criticized, If I have condemned, it is because I believed it to be my duty, and it was right to do so under the law of the land…Some of the most eminent men of their time opposed the American Revolution...The War of 1812…Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay opposed the Mexican-American War while war was being waged…they were not indicted; they were not charged with treason nor tried for a crime. They are honored today by all of their countrymen. The Democratic Party in 1864 condemned the Civil War as a failure…Yet today I am being charged with being disloyal and a traitor.
I believe in the Constitution…isn’t it strange that we socialists stand almost alone today in upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States? The revolutionary fathers who had been oppressed under King rule understood that free speech , a free press, and the right of free assemblage by people were fundamental principles in democratic government.
That is the right I exercised; and for the exercising of that right, I now have to answer to this indictment. I believe in the right of free speech, in war as well as in peace. If the Espionage Act stands the Constitution is dead…if that law is not the negation of every fundamental principle established by the constitution, then certainly I am unable to read or to understand the English language.
I am not on trial here. There is an infinitely greater issue that is being tried today in this court…American institutions are on trial here before a jury of American citizens. The future will render the final verdict.
Schenck v. U.S. (1919) Source: PBS.ORG
In Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court invented the famous "clear and present danger"test to determine when a state could constitutionally limit an individual's free speech rights under the First Amendment. In reviewing the conviction of a man charged with distributing provocative flyers to draftees of World War I, the Court asserted that, in certain contexts, words can create a "clear and present danger" that Congress may constitutionally prohibit. While the ruling has since been overturned, Schenck is still significant for creating the context-based balancing tests used in reviewing freedom of speech challenges.
The Court famously analogized to a man who cries "Fire!" in a crowded theater. In a quiet park or home, such a cry would be protected by the First Amendment, but "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."
In sum, free speech rights afforded by the First Amendment, while generous, are not limitless, and context determines the limits. "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." Against this test, the Court upheld the Espionage Act and affirmed Schenck's conviction, finding that his speech had created a clear and present danger of insubordination in wartime.
Questions:
What do you notice? (2)
Should America be responsible for “making the world safe?”
Should the Constitution’s protections be limited during war?
Should Free Speech be unlimited?
How would you define a “clear and present danger?”