LEARNED HAND, District Judge
It must be remembered at the outset, and the distinction is of critical consequence
throughout, that no question arises touching the war powers of Congress.... It may be that the peril of war, which goes to the very existence of the state,
justifies any measure of compulsion, any measure of suppression, which Congress
deems necessary to its safety, the liberties of each being in subjection to
the liberties of all. The Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wall, 457. It may
be that under the war power Congress may mobilize every resource of men and
materials, without impediment or limitation, since the power includes all means
which are the practice of nations in war. It would indeed not be necessary,
perhaps in ordinary cases it would not be appropriate, even to allude to such
putative incidents of the war power, but it is of great consequence at the present
time with accuracy to define the exact scope of the question at bar, that no
implication may arise as to any limitation upon the absolute and uncontrolled
nature of that power. Here is presented solely the question of how far Congress
after much discussion has up to the present time seen fit to exercise a power
which may extend to measures not yet even considered, but necessary to the existence
of the state as such. Every one agrees that the exercise of such power, however
wide it may be, rests in Congress alone, at least subject to such martial law
as may rest with the President within the sphere of military operations, however
broadly that may be defined. The defendant's authority is based upon the act
of Congress, and the intention of that act is the single measure of that authority.
. . . [Section 3 of Title 1] contains three provisions. The first is, in substance,
that on one shall make any false statements with intent to interfere with the
operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or
to promote the success of its enemies. The defendant says that the cartoons
and text of the magazine, constituting, as they certainly do, a virulent attack
upon the war and those laws which have been enacted to assist its prosecution,
may interfere with the success of the military forces of the United States.
That such utterances may have the effect so ascribed to them is unhappily true;
publications of this kind enervate public feeling at home which is their chief
purpose, and encourage the success of the enemies of the United States abroad,
to which they are generally indifferent. Dissension within a country is a high
source of comfort and assistance to its enemies; the least intimation of it
they seize upon with jubilation. There cannot be the slightest question of the
mischievous effects of such agitation upon the success of the national project,
or of the correctness of the defendant's position.
All this, however, is beside the question whether such an attack is a willfully
false statement. That phrase properly includes only a statement of fact which
the utterer knows to be false, and it cannot be maintained that any of these
statements are of fact, or that the plaintiff believes them to be false. They
are all within the range of opinion and of criticism; they are all certainly
believed to be true by the utterer. As such they fall within the scope of that
right to criticise either by temperate reasoning, or by immoderate and indecent
invective, which is normally the privilege of the individual in countries dependent
upon the free expression of opinion as the ultimate source of authority. . .
. To modify this provision, so clearly intended to prevent the spreading of
false rumors which may embarrass the military, into the prohibition of any kind
of propaganda, honest or vicious, is to disregard the meaning of the language,
established by legal construction and common use, and to raise it into a means
of suppressing intemperate and inflammatory public discussion, which was surely
not its purpose.
The next phrase relied upon is that which forbids any one from willfully causing
insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval
forces of the United States. The defendant's position is that to arouse discontent
and disaffection among the people with the prosecution of the war and with the
draft tends to promote a mutinous and insubordinate temper among the troops.
This, too, is true; men who become satisfied that they are engaged in an enterprise
dictated by the unconscionable selfishness of the rich, and effectuated by a
tyrannous disregard for the will of those who must suffer and die, will be more
prone to insubordination than those who have faith in the cause and acquiesce
in the means. Yet to interpret the word "cause" so broadly would,
as before, involve necessarily as a consequence the suppression of all hostile
criticism, and of all opinion except what encouraged and supported the existing
policies, or which fell within the range of temperate argument. It would contradict
the normal assumption of democratic government that the suppression of hostile
criticism does not turn upon the justice of its substance or the decency and
propriety of its temper. Assuming that the power to repress such opinion may
rest in Congress in the throes of a struggle for the very existence of the state,
its exercise is so contrary to the use and wont of our people that only the
clearest expression of such a power justifies the conclusion that it was intended.
The defendant's position, therefore, in so far as it involves the suppression
of the free utterance of abuse and criticism of the existing law, or of the
policies of the war, is not, in my judgment, supported by the language of the
statute. Yet there has always been a recognized limit to such expressions, incident
indeed to the existence of any compulsive power of the state itself. One may
not counsel or advise others to violate the law as it stands. Words are not
only the keys of persuasion, but the triggers of action, and those which have
no purport but to counsel the violation of law cannot by any latitude of interpretation
be a part of that public opinion which is the final source of government in
a democratic state. The defendant asserts not only that the magazine indirectly
through its propaganda leads to a disintergration of loyalty and a disobedience
of law, but that in addition it counsels and advises resistance to existing
law, especially to the draft. The consideration of this aspect of the case more
properly arises under the third phrase of section 3, which forbids any willful
obstruction of the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, but,
as the defendant urges that the magazine falls within each phrase, it is as
well to take it up now. To counsel or advise a man to an act is to urge upon
him either that it is his interest or his duty to do it. While, of course, this
may be accomplished as well by indirection as expressly, since words carry the
meaning that they impart, the definition is exhaustive, I think, and I shall
use it. Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it
engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of law. Detestation of
existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority
which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal
relation between the two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with
direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all
methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free
government.... If one stops short of urging upon others that it is their
duty or their interest to resist the law, it seems to me one should not be held
to have attempted to cause its violation. If that be not the test, I can see
no escape from the conclusion that under this section every political agitation
which can be shown to be apt to create a seditious temper is illegal. I am confident
that by such language Congress had no such revolutionary purpose in view.
It seems to me, however, quite plain that none of the language and none of
the cartoons in this paper can be thought directly to counsel or advise insubordination
or mutiny, without a violation, of their meaning quite beyond any tolerable
understanding. I come, therefore, to the third phrase of the section, which
forbids any one from willfully obstructing the recruiting or enlistment service
of the United States. I am not prepared to assent to the plaintiff's position
that this only refers to acts other than words, nor that the act thus defined
must be shown to have been successful. One may obstruct, without preventing,
and the mere obstruction is an injury to the service; for it throws impediments
in its way. Here again, however, since the question is of the expression of
opinion, I construe the sentence, so far as it restrains public utterance, as
I have construed the other two, and as therefore limited to the direct advocacy
of resistance to the recruiting and enlistment service. If so, the inquiry is
narrowed to the question whether any of the challenged matter may be said to
advocate resistance to the draft, taking the meaning of the words with the utmost
latitude which they can bear.
As to the cartoons it seems to me quite clear that they do not fall within
such a test. Certainly the nearest is that entitled "Conscription,"
and the most that can be said of that is that it may breed such animosity to
the draft as will promote resistance and stengthen the determination of those
disposed to be recalcitrant. There is no intimation that, however hateful the
draft may be, one is in duty bound to resist it, certainly none that such resistance
is to one's interest....
The text offers more embarrassment. The poem to Emma Goldman and Alexander
Berkman, at most, goes no further than to say that they are martyrs in the cause
of love among nations. Such a sentiment holds them up to admiration, and hence
their conduct to possible emulation.... Since I must interpret the language
in the most hostile sense, it is fair to suppose, therefore, that these passages
go as far as to say:
"These men and women are heroes and worthy of a freeman's admiration.
We approve their conduct; we will help to secure them their legal rights. They
are working for the betterment of mankind through their obdurate consciences."
.... That such comments have a tendency to arouse emulation in others is
clear enough, but that they counsel others to follow these examples is not so
plain. Literally at least they do not, and while, as I have said, the words
are to be taken not literally, but according to their full import, the literal
meaning is the starting point for interpretation. One may admire and approve
the course of a hero without feeling any duty to follow him. There is not the
least implied intimation in these words that others are under a duty to follow.
The most that can be said is that, if others do follow, they will get the same
admiration and the same approval. Now, there is surely an appreciable distance
between esteem and emulation; and unless there is here some advocacy of such
emulation, I cannot see how the passages can be said to fall within the law.
...
When the question is of a statute constituting a crime, it seems to me that
there should be more definite evidence of the act. The question before me is
quite the same as what would arise upon a motion to dismiss an indictment at
the close of the proof: Could any reasonable man say, not that the indirect
result of the language might be to arouse a seditious disposition, for that
would not be enough, but that the language directly advocated resistance to
the draft? I cannot think that upon such language any verdict would stand....
The defendant's action was based, as I understand it, not so much upon the
narrow question whether these four passages actually advocated resistance, though
that point was distinctly raised, as upon the doctrine that the general tenor
and animus of the paper as a whole were subversive to authority and seditious in effect.
I cannot accept this test under the law as it stands
at present. The tradition of English-spaking freedom has depended in no small
part upon the merely procedural requirement that the state point with exactness
to just that conduct which violates the law. It is difficult and often impossible
to meet the charge that one's general ethos is treasonable; such a latitude
for construction implies a personal latitude in administration which contradicts
the normal assumption that law shall be embodied in general propositions capable
of some measure of definition. The whole crux of this case turns indeed upon
this thesis. I make no question of the power of Congress to establish a personal
censorship of the press under the war power; that question, as I have already
said, does not arise. I am quite satisfied that it has not as yet chosen to
create one, and with the greatest deference it does not seem to me that anything
here challenged can be illegal upon any other assumption....
It follows that the plaintiff is entitled to the usual preliminary injunction.
A. [The passages from the Masses relied upon by the postmaster are
reprinted below:]
A Question.
Often I wish we had a continuing census bureau to which we might apply, and
have a census taken with classifications of our own choosing. I would like to
know to-day, how many men and women there are in America who admire the self-reliance
and sacrifice of those who are resisting the conscription law on the ground
that they believe it violates the sacred rights and liberties of man. How many
of the American population are in accord with the American press when it speaks
of the arrest of these men of genuine courage as a "round-up of slackers"?
Are there none to whom this picture of the American republic adopting towards
its citizens the attitude of a rider toward cattle is appalling? I recall the
Essays of Emerson, the Poems of Walt Whitman, which sounded a call never heard
before in the world's literature, for erect and insuppressible individuality,
the courage of solitary faith and heroic assertion of self. It was America's
contribution to the ideals of man. It painted the quality of her culture for
those in the old world who loved her. It was a revolt of the aspiring mind against
that instinctive running with custom and the support of numbers, which is an
hereditary frailty of our nerves. It was a determination to worship and to love,
in the living and laughing present, the same heroisms that we love when we look
back so seriously over the past.
I wonder if the number is few to whom this high resolve was the distinction
of our American idealism, and who feel inclined to bow their heads to those
who are going to jail under the whip of the state, because they will not do
what they do not believe in doing. Perhaps there are enough of us, if we make
ourselves heard in voice and letter, to modify this ritual of contempt in the
daily press, and induce the American government to undertake the imprisonment
of heroic young men with a certain sorrowful dignity that will be new in the
world.
B.
A Tribute.
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
C.
Conscientious Objectors.
We publish below a number of letters written last year from English prisons
by conscientious objectors. It is as yet uncertain what treatment the United
States government will mete out to its thousands of conscientious objectors,
but we believe that our protestors against government tyranny will be as steadfast
as their English comrades. It is not by any means as certain that they will
be as polite to their guards and tormentors, but we hope they will remember
that these are acting under official compulsion and not as free men.
Some discussion has arisen as to whether those whose objection to participating
in war is not embodied in a religious formula, have the right to call their
objection a "conscientious" one. We believe that this old-fashioned
term is, however, one that fits their case. There are some laws which the individual
feels that he cannot obey, and which he will suffer any punishment, even that
of death, rather than recognize as having authority over him. This fundamental
stubbornness of the free soul, against which all the powers of the state are
helpless, constitutes a conscientious objection, whatever its original sources
may be in political or social opinion. It remains to be demonstrated that a
political disapproval of this war can express itself in the same heroic firmness
that has in England upheld the Christian objectors to war as murder. We recommend
to all who intend to strick it out to the end, a thorough reading of the cases
which follow, so that they may be prepared for what is at least rather likely
to happen to them.
D.
Friends of American Freedom.
Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman have been arrested, charged with advocating
in their paper, Mother Earth, that those liable to the military draft, who do
not believe in the war, should refuse to register. That they would be arrested,
on some charge, and subjected to bitter prosecution, has been inevitable ever
since they appeared as the spokesmen of a working class protest against the
plans of American militarism. Whatever you may think of the practicability of
such a protest, you must, with their friends, pay tribute of admiration for
their courage and devotion.
Alexander Berkman is one of the few men whose character and intelligence ever
stood firm through a quarter of a lifetime in prison. Emma Goldman has followed
her extreme ideal of liberty for 30 years, up and down, in better places and
worse than the federal penitentiary. They can both endure what befalls them.
They have more resources in their souls, perhaps, as they have the support of
a more absolute faith, than we have who admire them. But let us give them every
chance for acquittal that the constitution of the times allow. Let us give them
every chance to state their faith. The Masses will receive funds for this purpose.
Are in prison,
Although the night is tremblingly beautiful
And the sound of water climbs down the rocks
And the breath of the night air moves through multitudes and multitudes of
leaves
That love to waste themselves for the sake of the summer.
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
Are in prison tonight,
But they have made themselves elemental forces,
Like the water that climbs down the rocks;
Like the wind in the leaves;
Like the gentle night that holds us;
They are working on our destinies;
They are forging the love of the nations;
Tonight they lie in prison.