Congress Has Two Bills to Strangle Liberty
Among the merry bills now pending in Congress there are two clamoring for fang and claw: the "military disaffection" bill and the Kramer sedition bill.
Both of them have one purpose in common: to strangle that fundamental liberty of utterance and ink upon which our very existence as a free people is predicated. In plain English, the GAG!
The first of them, a hybrid, ostensibly intended to insulate the army and navy lambkins from all subversive wiles and blandishments, contains vast search and seizure privileges which would in effect put the civilian population under military domination. Although Senator Tydings, one of the original authors, has dropped it, some strong force keeps it alive.
The Kramer bill, introduced by Representative Charles Kramer, Democrat, of Hollywood, makes it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. That sounds very patriotic, but there is something else in the woodpile.
Such suppressive laws were tried just after the Revolution, but with little success. It has been only since the World War and particularly since the depression that really strong efforts have been made to end political democracy by the gag.
Now let us examine the forces behind these present bills. To begin with, there is the dear old Chamber of Commerce of the good old U. S. A.! The United States Chamber of Commerce promotes edition bills and gag legislation under a pretense of "fighting the communists." But it also campaigns lustily against "government regulation" and says the government should "let business alone." In effect, while fulminating against government in business, it favors interference by the government in the newspaper business. Some of my liberal friends, always searching avidly for some deep and sinister reason, say the Chamber expects to win the next election. And, if it does, they continue, there will be a law all ready, passed by foolish Democrats, that will enable it to start persecutions under the new fascist state.
This line of reasoning is a little too complicated for the Chamber brethren. They do, however, represent Big Business and Big Industry; and the leaders go at it shrewdly enough to know just what they are after. And what they are after is to put a gag on the American people, so that Big Business, including shipbuilders and munitions makers, can go unmolested. And of course they want to suppress criticism of the status quo.
Secretary of Navy Drugged by Admirals
The Secretary of the Navy favors the military-disaffection bill and the Kramer sedition bill, lock, stock, and barrel. This is understandable. For the Secretary has long been a complacent promoter of big appropriations for the navy; and he is the doting grandfather of his little boys, the admirals. When an admiral talks, he sits and beams and bows assent. He is surrounded by salty gentlemen with hermetically sealed brains, men who have been calked down and insulated intellectually since they went on work relief at seventeen years of age—automatons in thought; suave, pleasant fellows. The Secretary of the Navy is drugged and lying for dead on the banks of the Potomac, while they take the wheel.
Many of the "patriotic" societies are for the gag bills. That is also understandable. The members themselves are used by such upper groups as the United States Chamber of Commerce. Through the espionage department of the navy they are constantly being given "secret information," marked CONFIDENTIAL. All this appeals to their vanity.
Secretary of War Knows Bill of Rights
The Secretary of War is not for the sedition bills. He is a reasonably liberal fellow. He has really read the Bill of Rights and he does not let his generals push him around in an intellectual wheel chair. Secretary of War Dern was fooled about the military-disaffection bill in the beginning. The uniforms behind the Secretary of the Navy, in a circuitous way, worked Secretary Dern into signing a letter approving the gag bill. Dern was outraged and has since let it be known that he is not for the bill.
The Chamber of Commerce is still using the same old tiresome stuff about communists and the Red Menace. Liberals-who-hate-the-Chamber and those-who-think-they-are-communists come back by calling the Chamber boys fascists.
Both sides in this squabble err. But in all this inaccurate, sometimes vicious, false, and violent talk there are several important points. The first and most important is that talk is guaranteed to be free by the Constitution, with no limitation and no exception. The laws of libel and slander are still in effect, as also are laws against criminal conspiracy, treason, overt acts, and dozens and dozens of others protecting the army and navy, the country, and the Constitution.
Yes, the Bill of Rights Is Still In Effect
Also, the Bill of Rights is still in effect. Navy people seem to forget this. They forget, as well, that freedom of speech and press is guaranteed in the very first amendment to the Constitution. That amendment says that there shall be no abridgment to the freedom of the press, or of speech or of religion—and says so forcefully. There are no ifs or provides in it. And the fourth amendment to the Constitution says that the government must stay out of our homes and that we have a right to our papers. It doesn't say, in either amendment, that VIOLENT TALK is prohibited. Nor does it say that the communists, fascists, or Liberty Leaguers cannot say what they like. Nor does it say that our door can be knocked in and our houses ransacked because we might say something about fraud in a navy contract or because our papers happen to be red, white, blue, or yellow jackets. Nor does it say that we should be put in jail for having in our possession some print which offends the aesthetic sense or moral or political ideas of some official or picayunish naval officer.
Everybody already knows this. Everything I have said is obvious. We all know liberty is supposed to work in both ways, equally for the benefit of top, low-down, and under-dogs.
But still the sedition bills come on. And that seems surprising, because never before in peacetime since the alien and sedition acts of the Adams administration has a serious effort been made to pass a sedition act. What happened to those laws is well known.
If we review the question of freedom of speech and press historically, preceding the Revolution, we find that our forefathers—and we had forefathers of all kinds—demanded and got the Bill of Rights, the right of civil liberties. But it is also true that Oriental countries and Africa have never enjoyed such a thing. When Russia suffered the communist revolution, the people lost nothing so far as freedom of speech and press was concerned. Passing from the old order to communism meant merely changing the gag to other mouths.
Advocacy and Overt Act
For a long time before the American Revolution, western Europe and England enjoyed more freedom of expression than any other portion of the world. And such freedom was greater in England than any part of western Continental Europe. There, at an early date, a distinction was made between the right of the government to prohibit in advance printed matter and the right to slander and libel suits, by individuals, afterwards. The general Anglo-American concept has been that a newspaper can print what it please and take the consequences afterwards for civil libel and slander. But, as for general advocacy of anything by word of mouth, print, or symbol—including advocacy of violence against the government—this has been considered a right in England, as well as here.
Let us compare advocacy and overt act. Mere advocacy of "overthrowing" the government, violent talks, words, not deeds: thee are within the limitations of freedom. Overt act, however slight, criminal conspiracy: these are both against the law now.
Those who proposed the Bill of Rights, having recently endured bitter oppression and a bitter revolution knew that the most extreme speech, including all manner of violent talk and all manner of blowing off steam, would help prevent revolutionary measures and would aid in the maintenance of free and orderly government.
These men wanted to form a government in perpetuity. They put no limit whatever on freedom of speech and press. In spite of this, soon after our Revolution, the alien and sedition acts were passed. They rightly became so grossly unpopular with the people that the latter upheld President Jefferson when he declared:
At this session of Congress the military-disaffection and the Kramer bills were for a time regarded as dead. Suddenly they popped up and might have passed; at any rate, they are still actively before Congress and should be watched by all who do not want to be gagged or jugged for using their own brains. Each of them is worse than the alien and sedition acts. With the navy-Chamber of Commerce lobby behind it, either may be pushed to the floor at any time. This in spite of the fact that the newspapers of the country—radical, reactionary (including the Wall Street Journal), liberal, and conservative, with the exception of the Hearst papers, strongly oppose the bills. Likewise, the army is sick of the whole sedition business. "Patriotic" and veterans' organizations have announced their support, but many of those which are bona fide are becoming suspicious. The usual perfunctory support of such organizations does not as a rule impress the opposition with either the bills or the motives behind the support.
Anyhow, these bills strike directly at the veteran and should be fought by all the veterans' friends. Usually at a veterans' convention, any resolution which damns the "communists" is passed with a whoop—although it might well work grievous harm to the veterans themselves. Yet many veterans' leaders embrace this program as a stock in trade. The average veteran functions automatically on a vague emotional mania to gag those who he thinks are communists. Seeing red, he is blind to the consequent garroting of the liberties of the average citizen and his own oral suicide. He does not realize he is throwing a boomerang that will, sooner or later, fly back in his own mouth.
The Kramer bill, introduced by Mr. Kramer of Hollywood, gives a man a five-year rest in a federal prison for advocating the "overthrow" of the government. This bill, like the military-disaffection bill, sound innocent enough, but in the light of decisions on the sedition act during the World War pretty nearly anything could be construed as a violation of it. The author of the bill, for instance, gave as one of his passionate reasons the fact that in the San Francisco strike a cartoon had been printed of the President of the United States! He recently defended this point of view on the floor of the House. All that I could see about the cartoon was that it was an excellent one, and I'm sure that President Roosevelt would laugh at it himself.
Both Bills Legally Unnecessary
Both the naval-military gag and the Kramer bills violate the first amendment (freedom of speech, press, religion) and the fourth amendment (search and seizure) to the Constitution.
They also have another vicious quality in common: they are legally unnecessary. The army and navy need no additional military legislation. They are protected by enough military and naval statutes to choke an admiral. Our services also have the Court Martial Manual, which puts a soldier or sailor practically at the mercy of his superiors but which, in any event, has always maintained discipline. Both services have dozens of laws protecting them from outsiders or civilians, and the navy has additional laws by which the President of the United States can set up so-called defensive areas and make practically any kind of regulation he wants for the protection of the minds of his admirals and the sailor boys, including necessary penalties.
Any competent naval or military officer will tell you further legislation is not needed. A few officers in the espionage department of the navy, who do nothing but draw their pay, manufacture propaganda for so-called patriotic organizations, and agitate against and libel and slander decent taxpayers, have worked themselves up to such red heat that they really believe there is some danger. In their officially libelous documents they solemnly include the twenty million Protestants of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ! They get violent hysterics about such persons as Jane Addams! They proclaim their fear for the patriotism of their gobs through the blandishments of handsome gals of the Sex Squad of Red Russia! In their distorted imaginations every person who does not agree with them is a paid spy of the U.S.S.R.!
Civil Population Loses Liberties
The great danger of the navy gag, as well as the Kramer bill, is of course to the public, the civil population. The army and the navy are in no danger of being "overthrown," nor is there danger of any sedition; and both services will know it. The cute little point involved in all this "patriotic" hullabaloo is that, should the navy gag bill be passed, the navy and army will be given almost supreme power over all the American people. The impatient gaggers know this. They have counted on it.
It is true that the military must ask for search warrants under the law. But it would be easy enough, upon the vaguest type of suspicion, to ask for a search warrant, have one federal deputy carry the warrant and a squad of soldiers or sailors assist the deputy by carrying along their guns, bayonets, and tear-gas bombs. A great job could be done by kicking in our doors, as the dragoons of Louis XIV did; presses of newspapers and periodicals could be destroyed; in fact, a peach of a time could be had by all—except any citizen of the United States who talked or thought differently from our naval or military officers.
Such power could be used in strikes. It could be used in ordinary times against the critics of large government appropriations. It could be used for anything which might remotely "disaffect' any soldier or sailor or disturb the imagination of any military or naval man. During the War the sedition act meant nearly anything that might be called criticism; and, as for the press, it was not even necessary for the soldier to have seen any printed criticism to brand the publisher guilty. This navy gag law goes further—it gets everybody from the printer or through the publisher to the newsboy!
Chamber! Heil the Commander in Chief!
And, strangely enough, the proponents of this legislation have forgotten that the President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the United States Army and Navy! It would be swell to clamp our friends of the Liberty League in jail for yammering about our Commander in Chief. During the latter part of January our admirals, after accepting an invitation to talk before an organization, refused to talk, and Secretary Swanson let the Assistant Secretary of the Navy order the band to walk out because a Liberty Leaguer had "insulted the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States" before this group. It is lucky for the speaker that the proposed legislation was not then in effect: he would have been carried, free of charge, to the nearest jail. Nevertheless I am not in favor of such gag legislation, for the reason that another Commander in Chief might put me—or you—in a federal prison for expressing my own opinions. Though, for that matter, the situation would have its amusing side if the United States Chamber of Commerce should find itself in a federal juzgado for criticizing the President—i.e. the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States of America!
Sedition Bills Destructive of Military Discipline
From a military viewpoint, any such legislation will injure discipline, because a soldier will naturally resent the slur cast on his patriotism and integrity. Moreover, he will naturally become inquisitive of the actions of the so-called subversive element. As a soldier and former officer, I know the whole affair is nonsense. Forbid a soldier to read, and he will read. Denounce communism, and he may swallow the Red Russian, beard (if any) and all. Treat him like a human being with self-respect, and he'll go to hell for you.
At any rate, these suppressive and oppressive laws are a stupid and unkind reflection on the soldier and sailor of America—and, of course, on the average American. Russia's and Germany's soldiers and sailors revolted when their conditions became intolerable—not-withstanding the strictest types of sedition and repressive laws. In this country sedition laws will do no good—wore, they will cause a spirit in our military forces directly contrary to good order and military discipline.
All the cowardly arguments generally used in campaigns of this kind are now being used by those who are trying to restrict the freedom of speech and press. There are three kinds of gaggers and alarmists. One is the weak but in-offensive, honest person, who believes that the country is in grave danger. It is a sort of a gratification of his inhibitions, a sort of self-importance complex, whereby he can assume the worries of state—and harass other citizens. For the last seventeen years the Communist Menace has been chronically on the verge of overthrowing the government. The government still stands, which surely is proof enough that, from a governmental viewpoint, we do not need any militaristic gag legislation. I have been hearing of the Red Menace until I am blue in the face. There is always voting "Present," in a loud, hoarse voice, a menace of some kind, and I am getting tired of the Red Peril.
Average citizens, either singly or in organizations, are continually prodded by selfish groups into making "protests" and "demands" for the protection of "Americanism." Here in Washington, mustered into claques, they plant themselves to cheer Congressmen as they make "home consumption" and "patriotic" speeches, wherein the communist and the foreigner are deported forthwith out of the country, with jobs and a return of prosperity for all good Americans thereby guaranteed.
There is another class of tom-tom beater, and that is the group interested strictly from a business viewpoint. I mean the shipbuilders and munitions interests, money patriots and agitators, and the real minds which control such organizations as the United States Chamber of Commerce. These men do not care personally about the right of freedom of speech or press, because they hardly expect it to be restricted for them and because of their economic power. Conversely they are not interested in the right of freedom of speech for those who lack the economic power. They have not sense enough to realize that the government may change and may take liberty from them.
There are also the army and navy groups and the men who have been on the payroll of the government since they were seventeen or eighteen years old, professional "patriots" and professional guests of the government, who knew very little besides their narrow military or naval life and practically nothing about the general welfare of the American people. Also, I may add, less than nothing about political democracy.
Composite Picture of an Idiot
All told, the picture is far from pretty. It is a composite portrait of mixed motives—of honesty misled, of low shrewdness, stupidity, vanity, ignorance, broken nerves, fear, cruelty, and credulity—and this can be seen in the full face, as well as in the twitching eyes. All we can do about it is to give that ugly face a punch and change the expression—or knock it out for all time.
Maury Maverick, Forum and Century, May, 1936
Both of them have one purpose in common: to strangle that fundamental liberty of utterance and ink upon which our very existence as a free people is predicated. In plain English, the GAG!
The first of them, a hybrid, ostensibly intended to insulate the army and navy lambkins from all subversive wiles and blandishments, contains vast search and seizure privileges which would in effect put the civilian population under military domination. Although Senator Tydings, one of the original authors, has dropped it, some strong force keeps it alive.
The Kramer bill, introduced by Representative Charles Kramer, Democrat, of Hollywood, makes it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. That sounds very patriotic, but there is something else in the woodpile.
Such suppressive laws were tried just after the Revolution, but with little success. It has been only since the World War and particularly since the depression that really strong efforts have been made to end political democracy by the gag.
Now let us examine the forces behind these present bills. To begin with, there is the dear old Chamber of Commerce of the good old U. S. A.! The United States Chamber of Commerce promotes edition bills and gag legislation under a pretense of "fighting the communists." But it also campaigns lustily against "government regulation" and says the government should "let business alone." In effect, while fulminating against government in business, it favors interference by the government in the newspaper business. Some of my liberal friends, always searching avidly for some deep and sinister reason, say the Chamber expects to win the next election. And, if it does, they continue, there will be a law all ready, passed by foolish Democrats, that will enable it to start persecutions under the new fascist state.
This line of reasoning is a little too complicated for the Chamber brethren. They do, however, represent Big Business and Big Industry; and the leaders go at it shrewdly enough to know just what they are after. And what they are after is to put a gag on the American people, so that Big Business, including shipbuilders and munitions makers, can go unmolested. And of course they want to suppress criticism of the status quo.
Secretary of Navy Drugged by Admirals
The Secretary of the Navy favors the military-disaffection bill and the Kramer sedition bill, lock, stock, and barrel. This is understandable. For the Secretary has long been a complacent promoter of big appropriations for the navy; and he is the doting grandfather of his little boys, the admirals. When an admiral talks, he sits and beams and bows assent. He is surrounded by salty gentlemen with hermetically sealed brains, men who have been calked down and insulated intellectually since they went on work relief at seventeen years of age—automatons in thought; suave, pleasant fellows. The Secretary of the Navy is drugged and lying for dead on the banks of the Potomac, while they take the wheel.
Many of the "patriotic" societies are for the gag bills. That is also understandable. The members themselves are used by such upper groups as the United States Chamber of Commerce. Through the espionage department of the navy they are constantly being given "secret information," marked CONFIDENTIAL. All this appeals to their vanity.
Secretary of War Knows Bill of Rights
The Secretary of War is not for the sedition bills. He is a reasonably liberal fellow. He has really read the Bill of Rights and he does not let his generals push him around in an intellectual wheel chair. Secretary of War Dern was fooled about the military-disaffection bill in the beginning. The uniforms behind the Secretary of the Navy, in a circuitous way, worked Secretary Dern into signing a letter approving the gag bill. Dern was outraged and has since let it be known that he is not for the bill.
The Chamber of Commerce is still using the same old tiresome stuff about communists and the Red Menace. Liberals-who-hate-the-Chamber and those-who-think-they-are-communists come back by calling the Chamber boys fascists.
Both sides in this squabble err. But in all this inaccurate, sometimes vicious, false, and violent talk there are several important points. The first and most important is that talk is guaranteed to be free by the Constitution, with no limitation and no exception. The laws of libel and slander are still in effect, as also are laws against criminal conspiracy, treason, overt acts, and dozens and dozens of others protecting the army and navy, the country, and the Constitution.
Yes, the Bill of Rights Is Still In Effect
Also, the Bill of Rights is still in effect. Navy people seem to forget this. They forget, as well, that freedom of speech and press is guaranteed in the very first amendment to the Constitution. That amendment says that there shall be no abridgment to the freedom of the press, or of speech or of religion—and says so forcefully. There are no ifs or provides in it. And the fourth amendment to the Constitution says that the government must stay out of our homes and that we have a right to our papers. It doesn't say, in either amendment, that VIOLENT TALK is prohibited. Nor does it say that the communists, fascists, or Liberty Leaguers cannot say what they like. Nor does it say that our door can be knocked in and our houses ransacked because we might say something about fraud in a navy contract or because our papers happen to be red, white, blue, or yellow jackets. Nor does it say that we should be put in jail for having in our possession some print which offends the aesthetic sense or moral or political ideas of some official or picayunish naval officer.
Everybody already knows this. Everything I have said is obvious. We all know liberty is supposed to work in both ways, equally for the benefit of top, low-down, and under-dogs.
But still the sedition bills come on. And that seems surprising, because never before in peacetime since the alien and sedition acts of the Adams administration has a serious effort been made to pass a sedition act. What happened to those laws is well known.
If we review the question of freedom of speech and press historically, preceding the Revolution, we find that our forefathers—and we had forefathers of all kinds—demanded and got the Bill of Rights, the right of civil liberties. But it is also true that Oriental countries and Africa have never enjoyed such a thing. When Russia suffered the communist revolution, the people lost nothing so far as freedom of speech and press was concerned. Passing from the old order to communism meant merely changing the gag to other mouths.
Advocacy and Overt Act
For a long time before the American Revolution, western Europe and England enjoyed more freedom of expression than any other portion of the world. And such freedom was greater in England than any part of western Continental Europe. There, at an early date, a distinction was made between the right of the government to prohibit in advance printed matter and the right to slander and libel suits, by individuals, afterwards. The general Anglo-American concept has been that a newspaper can print what it please and take the consequences afterwards for civil libel and slander. But, as for general advocacy of anything by word of mouth, print, or symbol—including advocacy of violence against the government—this has been considered a right in England, as well as here.
Let us compare advocacy and overt act. Mere advocacy of "overthrowing" the government, violent talks, words, not deeds: thee are within the limitations of freedom. Overt act, however slight, criminal conspiracy: these are both against the law now.
Those who proposed the Bill of Rights, having recently endured bitter oppression and a bitter revolution knew that the most extreme speech, including all manner of violent talk and all manner of blowing off steam, would help prevent revolutionary measures and would aid in the maintenance of free and orderly government.
These men wanted to form a government in perpetuity. They put no limit whatever on freedom of speech and press. In spite of this, soon after our Revolution, the alien and sedition acts were passed. They rightly became so grossly unpopular with the people that the latter upheld President Jefferson when he declared:
The sedition law is no law, and I will disobey it if it comes in the way of my functions.This temporary bill ran out, and no one dared attempt to renew it. Its constitutionality was never passed upon. It has always been universally regarded, however, as directly in violation of the Constitution, as any similar law must be.
At this session of Congress the military-disaffection and the Kramer bills were for a time regarded as dead. Suddenly they popped up and might have passed; at any rate, they are still actively before Congress and should be watched by all who do not want to be gagged or jugged for using their own brains. Each of them is worse than the alien and sedition acts. With the navy-Chamber of Commerce lobby behind it, either may be pushed to the floor at any time. This in spite of the fact that the newspapers of the country—radical, reactionary (including the Wall Street Journal), liberal, and conservative, with the exception of the Hearst papers, strongly oppose the bills. Likewise, the army is sick of the whole sedition business. "Patriotic" and veterans' organizations have announced their support, but many of those which are bona fide are becoming suspicious. The usual perfunctory support of such organizations does not as a rule impress the opposition with either the bills or the motives behind the support.
Anyhow, these bills strike directly at the veteran and should be fought by all the veterans' friends. Usually at a veterans' convention, any resolution which damns the "communists" is passed with a whoop—although it might well work grievous harm to the veterans themselves. Yet many veterans' leaders embrace this program as a stock in trade. The average veteran functions automatically on a vague emotional mania to gag those who he thinks are communists. Seeing red, he is blind to the consequent garroting of the liberties of the average citizen and his own oral suicide. He does not realize he is throwing a boomerang that will, sooner or later, fly back in his own mouth.
The Kramer bill, introduced by Mr. Kramer of Hollywood, gives a man a five-year rest in a federal prison for advocating the "overthrow" of the government. This bill, like the military-disaffection bill, sound innocent enough, but in the light of decisions on the sedition act during the World War pretty nearly anything could be construed as a violation of it. The author of the bill, for instance, gave as one of his passionate reasons the fact that in the San Francisco strike a cartoon had been printed of the President of the United States! He recently defended this point of view on the floor of the House. All that I could see about the cartoon was that it was an excellent one, and I'm sure that President Roosevelt would laugh at it himself.
Both Bills Legally Unnecessary
Both the naval-military gag and the Kramer bills violate the first amendment (freedom of speech, press, religion) and the fourth amendment (search and seizure) to the Constitution.
They also have another vicious quality in common: they are legally unnecessary. The army and navy need no additional military legislation. They are protected by enough military and naval statutes to choke an admiral. Our services also have the Court Martial Manual, which puts a soldier or sailor practically at the mercy of his superiors but which, in any event, has always maintained discipline. Both services have dozens of laws protecting them from outsiders or civilians, and the navy has additional laws by which the President of the United States can set up so-called defensive areas and make practically any kind of regulation he wants for the protection of the minds of his admirals and the sailor boys, including necessary penalties.
Any competent naval or military officer will tell you further legislation is not needed. A few officers in the espionage department of the navy, who do nothing but draw their pay, manufacture propaganda for so-called patriotic organizations, and agitate against and libel and slander decent taxpayers, have worked themselves up to such red heat that they really believe there is some danger. In their officially libelous documents they solemnly include the twenty million Protestants of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ! They get violent hysterics about such persons as Jane Addams! They proclaim their fear for the patriotism of their gobs through the blandishments of handsome gals of the Sex Squad of Red Russia! In their distorted imaginations every person who does not agree with them is a paid spy of the U.S.S.R.!
Civil Population Loses Liberties
The great danger of the navy gag, as well as the Kramer bill, is of course to the public, the civil population. The army and the navy are in no danger of being "overthrown," nor is there danger of any sedition; and both services will know it. The cute little point involved in all this "patriotic" hullabaloo is that, should the navy gag bill be passed, the navy and army will be given almost supreme power over all the American people. The impatient gaggers know this. They have counted on it.
It is true that the military must ask for search warrants under the law. But it would be easy enough, upon the vaguest type of suspicion, to ask for a search warrant, have one federal deputy carry the warrant and a squad of soldiers or sailors assist the deputy by carrying along their guns, bayonets, and tear-gas bombs. A great job could be done by kicking in our doors, as the dragoons of Louis XIV did; presses of newspapers and periodicals could be destroyed; in fact, a peach of a time could be had by all—except any citizen of the United States who talked or thought differently from our naval or military officers.
Such power could be used in strikes. It could be used in ordinary times against the critics of large government appropriations. It could be used for anything which might remotely "disaffect' any soldier or sailor or disturb the imagination of any military or naval man. During the War the sedition act meant nearly anything that might be called criticism; and, as for the press, it was not even necessary for the soldier to have seen any printed criticism to brand the publisher guilty. This navy gag law goes further—it gets everybody from the printer or through the publisher to the newsboy!
Chamber! Heil the Commander in Chief!
And, strangely enough, the proponents of this legislation have forgotten that the President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the United States Army and Navy! It would be swell to clamp our friends of the Liberty League in jail for yammering about our Commander in Chief. During the latter part of January our admirals, after accepting an invitation to talk before an organization, refused to talk, and Secretary Swanson let the Assistant Secretary of the Navy order the band to walk out because a Liberty Leaguer had "insulted the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States" before this group. It is lucky for the speaker that the proposed legislation was not then in effect: he would have been carried, free of charge, to the nearest jail. Nevertheless I am not in favor of such gag legislation, for the reason that another Commander in Chief might put me—or you—in a federal prison for expressing my own opinions. Though, for that matter, the situation would have its amusing side if the United States Chamber of Commerce should find itself in a federal juzgado for criticizing the President—i.e. the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States of America!
Sedition Bills Destructive of Military Discipline
From a military viewpoint, any such legislation will injure discipline, because a soldier will naturally resent the slur cast on his patriotism and integrity. Moreover, he will naturally become inquisitive of the actions of the so-called subversive element. As a soldier and former officer, I know the whole affair is nonsense. Forbid a soldier to read, and he will read. Denounce communism, and he may swallow the Red Russian, beard (if any) and all. Treat him like a human being with self-respect, and he'll go to hell for you.
At any rate, these suppressive and oppressive laws are a stupid and unkind reflection on the soldier and sailor of America—and, of course, on the average American. Russia's and Germany's soldiers and sailors revolted when their conditions became intolerable—not-withstanding the strictest types of sedition and repressive laws. In this country sedition laws will do no good—wore, they will cause a spirit in our military forces directly contrary to good order and military discipline.
All the cowardly arguments generally used in campaigns of this kind are now being used by those who are trying to restrict the freedom of speech and press. There are three kinds of gaggers and alarmists. One is the weak but in-offensive, honest person, who believes that the country is in grave danger. It is a sort of a gratification of his inhibitions, a sort of self-importance complex, whereby he can assume the worries of state—and harass other citizens. For the last seventeen years the Communist Menace has been chronically on the verge of overthrowing the government. The government still stands, which surely is proof enough that, from a governmental viewpoint, we do not need any militaristic gag legislation. I have been hearing of the Red Menace until I am blue in the face. There is always voting "Present," in a loud, hoarse voice, a menace of some kind, and I am getting tired of the Red Peril.
Average citizens, either singly or in organizations, are continually prodded by selfish groups into making "protests" and "demands" for the protection of "Americanism." Here in Washington, mustered into claques, they plant themselves to cheer Congressmen as they make "home consumption" and "patriotic" speeches, wherein the communist and the foreigner are deported forthwith out of the country, with jobs and a return of prosperity for all good Americans thereby guaranteed.
There is another class of tom-tom beater, and that is the group interested strictly from a business viewpoint. I mean the shipbuilders and munitions interests, money patriots and agitators, and the real minds which control such organizations as the United States Chamber of Commerce. These men do not care personally about the right of freedom of speech or press, because they hardly expect it to be restricted for them and because of their economic power. Conversely they are not interested in the right of freedom of speech for those who lack the economic power. They have not sense enough to realize that the government may change and may take liberty from them.
There are also the army and navy groups and the men who have been on the payroll of the government since they were seventeen or eighteen years old, professional "patriots" and professional guests of the government, who knew very little besides their narrow military or naval life and practically nothing about the general welfare of the American people. Also, I may add, less than nothing about political democracy.
Composite Picture of an Idiot
All told, the picture is far from pretty. It is a composite portrait of mixed motives—of honesty misled, of low shrewdness, stupidity, vanity, ignorance, broken nerves, fear, cruelty, and credulity—and this can be seen in the full face, as well as in the twitching eyes. All we can do about it is to give that ugly face a punch and change the expression—or knock it out for all time.
Maury Maverick, Forum and Century, May, 1936
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