The Untold Story of Following Jesus During World War 1 - Part 3

Well, good morning.

For those of you who are visiting today, I am doing a series of messages on World War I and how it affected the followers of Jesus. My introduction message was an introduction to World War I, a little bit about what happened, some of the things that happened, some of the laws that were passed in the United States, a brief introduction.

The part two was we talked about the conscious objectors in the different camps, some of the laws again, and some of their experiences. Today, we're going to change gears from the conscious objectors, and we're going to look at how the United States and other states—I'm going to specifically focus on the state of Montana—passed laws that curbed our freedom of speech.

You might not be familiar with that, but it did happen.

We're going to look at this message in three parts. We're going to do a brief history of some of the events that led up to these laws being passed. We're going to look at the laws themselves, what they said, what their punishment was, and then we're going to conclude with a few examples of how these laws were applied to regular people, the everyday citizens of the United States. Today, I'm not going to be focusing on how these laws were affected those who followed Jesus. That will be my next message. I want to just give a history because it helps me, and I think it will help you make more sense of the overall history of the overall spirit that was in the United States at that time period that led to those laws and why they, like I said, were applied to normal citizens and to those of us who were following Jesus.

We're going to look at this first slide. It's very telling. This is from a newspaper, April 23rd, 1917, in the state of Montana. "We are done with the days of a divided allegiance in this broad land of liberty. With our sacred honor and our liberties at stake, there can be but two classes of American citizen, a patriot and a traitor. Choose you the banner beneath which you will stand in this hour of trial."

That's a pretty strong statement coming from that newspaper.

We're going to look briefly at just some of the verses about those who followed Jesus, how we were persecuted, then I'm going to go into the history. This is kind of a refresher of memory. This is from Matthew chapter 5. "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

And a similar verse found in 1 Peter 3, verses 15 through 16. "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear, having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good works in Christ may be ashamed."

I'm going to give a brief description of one of the things that helped cause this spirit that led to these laws. And this thing was the organization called the Industrial Workers of the World. It was a radical labor union that was started in 1905. It still exists today in the United States and around the world, but in the United States, it's much smaller.

It promoted fiery rhetoric, daring tactics, and advocated a revolutionary industrial unionism. Their goal was to call one big strike that would shut down the whole economy where then they could usher in a new economy where the workers ruled. They had some communist Marxist leanings. It's estimated that between 1905, when they started, to 1920, approximately 400 strikes were directly or indirectly associated with this organization called, like I said, the Industrial Workers of the World.

And these industries affected everything. During the war, they even affected some of their vital industries, which got people in the United States extremely mad and furious. If you remember my thing, there's a patriot and a traitor. You are striking. You are affecting our war supplies, our war preparations. We're going to just look at three of their pamphlets. These are their writings from themselves from this time period.

The last writing is a little, I would say, anti-Christian, slightly blasphemous, hate-filled. I hope that doesn't offend anybody, but it shows what they were saying. This is what got people very mad. The first one is just a brief thing. It was by one of their leaders. His name was Bill Haywood, and he published this pamphlet called The General Strike. Just this is a brief summary. There are three phases of a general strike. They are general strike in a specific industry, general strike in the community, and a nationwide general strike. Like I said, their idea is if you do this nationwide, you can overthrow.

And that's what he says. "That is what I want to urge upon the working class, to become so organized in the economic field that they can take and hold the industries in which they are employed. Can you conceive of such a thing? Is it possible? What are the forces that prevent you from doing so? You have all the industries in your own hand at the present time. There is this justification for political action, and that is to control the forces of capitalist that they use against us, to be in a position that controls the power of the government so as to make the world of the army ineffective, so as to abolish totally the Secret Service and the force of the detectives."

This was their goal. Like I said, they spoke in it, and this is one of the things that led to, like I said, those laws being passed. This is one of their things they talked about war. They said, "General Sherman said war is hell. Don't go to hell in order to give a bunch of radical plutocratic parasites a bigger slice of heaven." We're referring to the capitalists, the capitalists "making profit by you going to war" in their industries.

And like I said, that's a real tract that they published about 1911. And this last one was a real song. They had a songbook that, like I said, full of songbooks. This is a song they said. It was a parody, but if you read these things, unfortunately, there's a little truth in their statement because, as we know, "the Christian world goes to war against the Christian world. Honored Christian soldiers, do these ways plain. Slay your Christian neighbors or by them be slain.

Pulpitaries are spouting ever-viscant swill. God above is calling you to rob and rape and kill. All your acts are sanctified by the Lamb and high. If you love the Holy Ghost, go murder, pray, and die." Like I said, I agree. It's very anti-hate. It's very blasphemous. Unfortunately, there's a little truth in that statement because World War I, as World War II, virtually everybody said they were a Christian, fighting another Christian.

So this was one of the things that was in that atmosphere that led to those laws. Now we're going to skip over. Here's the last one. This was a Los Angeles Times article specifically about the IWW. "On our own soul as an enemy, preaching revolution and invoking anarchy, the IWW, from Butte to Bisbee, from Seattle to Leadville, that international organization filled with foreigners, officered by convicts and attempting vaguely to guide that sabotage behind the spacious title of industrial workers of the world, is an open warfare against our government." And that's obviously truth. Now we're going to skip a little bit to another side of the atmosphere that helped lead to these laws being passed. We all remember President Woodrow Wilson, elected in 1912, re-elected in 1916.

In his State of Union speech, December 7th, 1915, this is what he says. I think this speech is specifically probably talking about the IWW, but just look at the words. I have them on my slide as I read it. Just look at the words and see how they could be twisted to go against almost anybody. "There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags, but welcomed under our generous natural relations laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life, who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue.

I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so, I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. They are not many, but they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once.

They have formed plots to destroy property. They have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the government. They have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of government in order to serve interests alien to our own. It is possible to deal with these things very effectively. I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with."

That's a pretty powerful speech. And if you take it the way he says, who defines what is disloyal? I mean, I think he's specifically talking about the IWW, but if you read that, anybody who's disloyal needs to be crushed.

If we remember, the United States declared war on April 16th, 1917, against Germany. A week later, April 13th, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information, which I usually will be calling CPI as we talk a little bit about that, when there's an executive order 2594.

This person, Elizabeth said, looks a little creepy, and I do agree with her. He was the head of the CPI.

The CPI was the first state bureau covering propaganda in the history of the United States. We're going to look at a lot of things they did here. Just like I said, this attitude was to promote loyalism, patriotism, not allow a dissenting voice. It pervaded everywhere.

They used the newspaper. They used posters, radio, telegraph, and movies, as I pointed out. They recruited about 75,000 minute men where they would go into a movie theater during the intermission and give a three to four-minute speech about why the United States was doing something, a liberty bond, the draft, why Germany was wrong, food rationing.

And they gave in the thousands of these little four-minute men things. I'm going to just show you some of their slides. A few of them are familiar from last time, but some of them are new. We remember this one, "Beat back the Hun with the liberty bond." Look how they describe a German soldier making him look subhuman like an ape or a gorilla.

Or this one, "If you can enlist, invest, buy a liberty bond. Defend your country with your dollar." Again, showing the Germans there in the foreground. And then this last one is just, I think, slightly funny, making the Kaiser look with that green head. "Defeat the Kaiser and his U-boats. Victory depends on which fails first. Food or frightfulness. Eat less wheat." But it doesn't stop there. I found some other ones.

This is one that they put in a national teacher's magazine, the History Teachers Magazine. And the title says, "What Can History Teachers Do Now?" And this is what they told in that article news advertisement in the magazine, what a teacher can do to help.

Read it. You can help people understand what German autocracy has in common with the autocracy of the Grand Mogul. You can help people understand that failure of the past to make the world safe for democracy does not mean that it cannot be made safe in the future. You cannot do these things unless you inform yourself and think over your information.

Propaganda. And who do they ask you to get the information from? Let me show you. You can help yourself by reading the following: History in the Great War, Bulletin of the Bureau of Education, a series of articles published throughout the year in the History Teachers Magazine.

You can obtain aid and advice by writing to the National Bureau for Historical Service, United States Bureau of Education, Division of Civic Education, the Committee on Public Information, Division of Educational Cooperation, the Committee on Patriotism through Education of the National Security League.

I don't think you're going to be getting any unbiased information from any of those people.

Here's some other brochures they made. German War Practices, Conquest and Culture. See how they spell culture with a K, purposely slamming the German culture. Aims of the Germans in their own words. The next one, the President's flag they address with evidence of Germany's plans. The German Whisper. Like I said, they had dozens and dozens of these little tracks they would pass. You could get them for free. I think you paid a little bit for postage.

This one I found in the newspaper. It was in the Daily East Oregonian. This was an advertisement about this. The moral aims of the war will be discussed by Dr. Baton, Dr. Naismith, Dr. Klinsberg tonight at Happy Canyon. Three speakers of national prominence sent out by, guess who, the Committee on Public Information, are bringing a big war message to the people of Pendleton. Don't miss it.

Like I said, these ads were everywhere. If you look at old stuff, when I was looking at a newspaper when the war was declared to Philadelphia, one of the Philadelphia newspapers, every day of the newspaper had something, an ad like this in it. They were doing their utmost to persuade the American people about this patriotism and the loyalism.

I found this one. Little Americans, do your bit. Eat oatmeal, cornmeal, mush, hominy, other corn cereal, and rice with milk. Save the wheat for your soldiers. Leave nothing on your plate. By the United States Food Administration. We actually did have cornmeal mush yesterday for lunch after we made this. But I said it went down to the children too.

They were wanting to make they didn't want people to think different. They wanted everyone to think patriotic loyalism. We remember these from my first message. These are pretty horrifying if you think about it. Billy Sunday was a prominent evangelist. But let's read what he says. "I tell you it is Bill against Woodrow," referring to that Billy Sunday was for the war, and it took President Wilson about three years later. "Germany against America, hell against heaven, and these days one either is a patriot or a traitor in the cause of Jesus Christ and the cause of the country." And this one. "We have no use for the shirker. No use for the man between 21 and 31 who did not register.

As for the fellows who knock registration or conscription, which would be the draft, or buying war bonds, if I had my way, I would line them up against the wall and shoot them like any other traitor." This is coming from a prominent pastor. Like I said, this was persuasive. They were wanting to say, "You cannot think different. Otherwise, you're considered a traitor."

Some other pictures I just showed of different things. This is not a comprehensive list of pictures from that time period. A picture of World War I veterans with the American flag, their army flags, their uniforms, their guns, and the crowds of people on both sides honoring them.

Here is a it's at the end of the war, which was November 1918, but we still had the spirit. This is a victory parade of the armistice. But if you probably can't notice, and I will point out, Elizabeth helped me on this. Look at that picture. It's an effigy showing of them hanging a German soldier. Obviously, it's not a real person, but it's an effigy. See it with the little cross on the back? This is what I'm saying. This spirit. These are traitors. They must be taken care of.

It's there. Here's a recruiting parade. Again, the soldiers marching down with all the crowd. It's like I said, it's everywhere. And it's just one of these last two pictures. Remember the liberty bonds. Liberty bonds were sold to provide funds for the war. Here is a crowd of all the people, hearing the people speaking about the liberty bonds. And there's a zoom in of the Liberty Loan Clock. Make your dollars fight for liberty.

One last statement just regarding this last little thing, and then we'll switch gears a little bit. This is what President Wilson said, May 18th, 1917.

"It is not an army that we must shape and train for war. It is a nation. To this end, our people must draw close in one compact front against a common foe. But this cannot be if each man pursues a private purpose. All must pursue one purpose. The nation needs all men, but it needs each man, not in the field that will most pleasure him, but in the endeavor that will best serve the common good."

Again, they are pushing. We all think the same. We cannot have any varying opinions. I'm not sure about this. We want you to think the war is right. Patriotism is right. Being loyal is right. Now we will so we have at least I know it's a brief history of this, a little bit of the things behind it. So we're going to just jump over to the first federal law that was passed against that started to limit our freedom of speech. It was the original Federal Espionage Act passed on June 15th, 1917. Not going to read very much of it, but I'm going to just read a little bit. "Whoever when the United States is at war shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with the intent to interfere with the operations or success of the military or naval forces of the United States."

Talking about false reports, speech.

"Whoever when the United States is at war shall willfully cause or attempt to cause or incite or attempt to incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military." Again, with our speech or our actions. The punishment for this oh, here's the last one. "Whoever shall willfully obstruct or attempt to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States." More or less telling someone they shouldn't voluntarily join the army or making a big deal about being drafted such as the conscientious objectors. "They shall be fined by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for more than 20 years or both." It's a pretty big fine if you got a if you were yes.

And the $10,000 is not quite $200,000 in today's dollars. It's about $196,000 to $197,000 fine. So it's a pretty big fine.

So we had this law passed. But then since things started happening in late summer 1917 that people pushed for more than just this generic espionage law, which is not generic, but they wanted more. And this is one of the events, not the only thing, but one of the things that caused this was this person named Frank Little, who was one of the leaders of the industrial workers of the world.

He was lynched or murdered in Butte, Montana, August 1st, 1917. They never found out who did it, so there was nobody ever charged. But shortly before he was murdered, this is what he said, one of his things that he said when he was speaking there. And it's not obvious you can't say this causes, but just what he said. "The IWW don't have trouble enlisting soldiers. We enlist 100 to Wilson's one. The only the IWW refused to go to war is to organize into one big union and fight the capitalists. The IWW did not object to the war, but the way they wanted to fight was to put the capitalists in the front trenches. And if the Germans did not get them, the IWW would.

Then the IWW would clean the Germans. The capitalists are our worst enemies. Like I said, some of the rhetoric they were saying, like this guy was murdered. They never found out who did it. But shortly after his murder, like a day or two later, this is what one of the newspapers in Montana said. "There is no place in these United States today for disloyalty such as is preached by the IWW. And if the constituted authorities cannot cope with the menace, it will have to be stamped out by other means."

As I said, people started getting sick and tired, not just of the IWW, but other people who were speaking out. And unfortunately, people took the law into their own hands, and this was one of those situations.

This will be my longest slide of anything I read, and I will give a brief explanation at the end just in case you don't understand what I'm saying. Because when this happened, it more or less pushed everybody over the edge to make further laws restricting freedom of speech.

This was a United States decision in the United States District Court of Montana on January 26th, 1918. And because I will read it, because it took me a second or two to read it, but when I understood what it was saying, it made perfect sense why they made those laws. And I will just give that explanation.

This is what the federal judge Berkman said, the United States judge, referring to and was referring to this case, United States versus Vess Hall. That was the defendant.

"The indictment charges that the defendant violated Section 3 of the Espionage Act and that he did make and convey false reports and false statements with the intent to interfere with the operation and success of the military and naval forces of the United States and to promote the success of its enemies." That was what his indictment was, that he said this. This is what he said. This was what he was being charged for. "The defendant declared that he would flee to avoid going to war, that Germany would whip the United States. And he hoped so that the president was a Wall Street tool using the United States forces because he was a British tool, that he was the richest man in the United States, that the president brought us into the war by British dictation, and that the United States was only fighting for Wall Street millionaires and to protect Morgan's interest in England."

That's what he said, and he was charged with the Espionage Act for interfering with the military. This is what the judge said. "The defendant's beliefs, opinion, and hopes are not within the statute, but his slanders of the president and nation are false reports and false statements and are within the Espionage Act.

However, the Espionage Act does not create the crime of attempting to obstruct, but only the crime of actual obstruction and when causing injury to the service. The Espionage Act is not intended to suppress criticism or denunciation, truth or slander, oratory or gossip, argument or loose talk, but only false facts will willfully put forward as true and broadly with the specific intent to interfere with the army or navy operations.

Congress has not denounced as crime any mere disloyal under it, nor any slander or libel of the president or any officer of the United States." Meaning that, in his opinion, the United Congress did not give them authority to restrict your speech. You can speak out against the president, and that's not against the law.

And he did declare not guilty for that, Vess Hall. Well, of course, that got the politicians, the "patriots," furious that he gutted the Espionage Act being used against what you say. So here, that was, like I said, January 1918. Skipping over about a week here, and these are two articles from Montana because we're going to have a special session to deal with freedom of speech and some other things as well. This is the first thing they said. "There will be satisfaction to the patriotic people of Montana that in the coming session of the legislature, there is a promise of effective means for the punishment of loud-mouthed traitors." There we go. Suppression of freedom of speech. "Legislation that is made necessary by a recent court decision of Judge Berkman."

And this one is about the same. Talking about Montana. "Let not the state be made a place of refuge for those who wish in safety to desecrate the flag of our country, for those who would revile our president and our government, who would slander the boys who are fighting the battles of this nation. They are not wanted in Montana. And if they utter seditious expressions in this state, they should be punished with utmost severity."

So Montana, like I said, had a special session. They didn't have very many, but this was on their first one, February 14th, 1918. They convened for about a week. One of the things they looked at was the Montana State Sedition Act, restricting our freedom of speech. And they passed it unanimously in Montana. No dissenting vote. They passed it in a week. It was signed into law February 23rd, 1918, and it went into effect immediately.

This is what it said. When you're not this is about a long run on sentence, but this was just the first little section. "Whenever the United States shall be engaged in war, any person or persons who shall utter with their mouth, write or publish any disloyal, profane, violent, scurrilous, contemptuous, slurring, or abusive speech about the form of government of the United States shall be guilty of sedition."

Comment I would have to you, who defines what is disloyal? Some of those I can see, profane, violent, but disloyal, how do you define disloyal? That's a very subjective word.

And this is the punishment for that. In Montana, this is like I said, this law was passed in Montana. The United States does not have a federal sedition law yet. "Every person found guilty of the crime of sedition shall be punished by each offense by a fine of not less than $200, nor more than $20,000, or by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than one year, nor more than 20 years, or by both fine and imprisonment." Pretty strong virtue identical to what the Espionage Act. They have a little bit less, $200, but the same idea.

So you might have asked what happened between this. This was passed February 20 signing law, February 23rd, 1918. Well, what happened is there was a tragedy in Collinville, Illinois that pushed, was I think the final impetus for this passage of the Federal Espionage Act. And it was this man named Robert Paul Prager.

He was the only German-American murdered, actually lynched in the United States during World War I. It happened shortly after midnight on April 5th, 1918. He had immigrated to the United States. He tried to join the coal mine union.

They didn't let him. He wrote a letter to them, which was probably not a very wise idea, and said, "I want to be a" here's what he said. "I am of heart and soul for the good old USA. I am of German birth, of which accident I cannot help." He probably shouldn't have done that, but he did because he, like I said, was excluded from the union. Of course, when the miners found the letter, they were furious. And so they found him at his more or less shack and told him he had 10 minutes to get out of town. But instead of letting him get out, they started parading him through town. They wrapped the United States flag around him.

The little town would be like Shippensburg or Chambersburg or a small rural town. The police, the mayor saw him. They rescued him and brought him to the police station. The mob grew bigger. They were scared. The mayor thought they had let him escape. Instead, the police had hidden him under some type of sewer tile. After two searches, the mob found him and started parading him again. They led him out of town. And they said, "Let's tar and feather him." But they didn't have any tar, but they had a rope. They gave him a chance to pray, and he wrote a little letter to his parents before they hung and murdered him.

Besides the sadness of the crime, 12 people were charged with his murder, and they were found not guilty because of, again, this spirit of the loyalty, the patriotism. They said they couldn't even get an unbiased jury. But this, like I said, this one murder, then this was, I think, the final impetus for the United States to make a federal sedition law. These are some of the comments made in the United States Congress like the day after his murder from the congressional record.

This first one is made April 15th, 1918 by Mr. King. I put US Senator in there because this is the unit who I'm referring to. He doesn't specifically say IWW. That's my note. But if you read what he's saying, you can tell that's specifically written against the IWW. "But that organization aims at the destruction of all government, the dislocation and destruction of all industrial and economic system. Its members do not strike for higher wages or improved conditions of labor. They strike for the purpose of absolutely destroying government. And it is an artistical organization, a murderous, wicked, destructive organization." It's one of the first things I saw. Then another reference from the congressional record. This is the next day by the Department of Justice. "Till the federal government is given power to punish persons making disloyal utterances, Department of Justice officials fear more lynchings such as that at Collinville, Illinois last night.

At the same time, it was pointed out that as soon as Congress passed the pending bill making it a federal offense to speak or write obviously disloyal criticism of the United States in war, the government can punish these acts and reduce the danger of mob action."

When I see that, I think, "We're going to pass a law against these disloyal acts instead of talking about how wicked it was to murder somebody." I don't quite see the connection myself, but that's what obviously they saw a connection in their mind.

This is another senator. This is Mr. Nelson, the senator. "The senator must observe that the object of this proposed law is to prevent people from taking the law into their own hands. If the senator from Illinois will read this provision of the bill, he will find that it is intended to meet the gospel of the IWWs." What is their gospel? It is to denounce our government, our flag, our army. Does the senator want that to prevail?

Oops. "Does he want men of that kind to go abroad with a tendency to create riots and disturbances so that the good people, losing all patience, will resort to such violence as took place in the senator's own state a few days ago in reference to a coal miner? We ought to remember that the object of this passage of this legislation is not altogether to stop disloyalty, but to prevent conduct such as will tend to create and promote breaches of the peace, riots, and other lawlessness."

This is what the mayor of Collinville said in the congressional record about a week later, April 15th, 1918. "The lynching was a direct result of a widespread feeling in this community that the government will not punish disloyalty. And although I deprecate the existence of this feeling, it is nonetheless not without some foundation. We have repeatedly reported to the federal authorities cases of disloyalty where no action has been taken and probably could not be taken by reason of the inadequacy of the law." I think he's referring to the Espionage Act.

Now I'm going to show a picture. This is another person who was in the same time period. The attorney general at this time period of the United States. His name was Thomas Watt Gregory. And this is what he said in the congressional record the same day, April 15th, 1918. "Most of the disorder throughout the country is caused by the lack of laws relating to disloyal utterances.

I need not say that so long as the federal government is impotent to suppress industrial treason and disloyal utterances, just so long there will be a danger of disorder, and there will be a steady increase in the feeling among the irresponsible of disrespect for legally constituted authority." Again, the same thing. We need to have a law to suppress these disloyal utterances.

So the Espionage Act, this was April 15th, 1918, was passed and signed in law May 16th, 1918, about not well, it is officially called Espionage. Thanks. Sorry. May 16th, 1918. The reason I said that is they passed an amendment to the Espionage Act which restricted our freedom of speech. It was called the Sedition Act. But it was incorporated into the original Espionage Act of 1917. So if I say from this point forward, when I say Espionage Act, I'm including both the original and the amendment.

We're going to look at this what the amendment said. It's a repeat of that. So we refresh our memory. One of the things they said, "Whoever shall obstruct the sale of the United States bonds of security is guilty of sedition."

So you could not speak out against the sale of those liberty bonds. "Whoever shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any language intended to incite, provoke, or encourage resistance to the United States shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for more than 20 years or both." And as I said, it's approximately 196,000, 198,000.

Something I learned is the Sedition Amendment gave this provision, and this provision was used. I did not realize that until I studied. "When the United States is at war, the postmaster general may instruct the postmaster of a local post office or post offices to return the mail that came through with a stamp, mailed to this address, undeliverable under the Espionage," and you would have stamped on it plainly written. So that would mean in our case, if we wrote a letter from our church and they said it was seditious, we couldn't mail it. And that was before the time of the internet and all that. So it would get returned to us. You couldn't mail something they determined as seditious or treasonable, disloyal.

They didn't obviously catch everything, but they caught a lot of things. Now I will give some examples of this in my next message.

Why you might ask why I talked about Montana. As I was studying this, I determined the Montana law was what was used to make the federal law. That's where the federal law came from. The Montana senators and with the others is what it was introduced it. And here's a comparison of the Montana law on the left and the United States law on the right. And it's virtually word per word. And that's why I started with the Montana law. Montana's law got incorporated into the United States. There's a few differences, like the Montana law doesn't say about the bonds and stuff, but it's like a word per word. And I said, "Okay, that makes sense."

Here's Montana. There's United States. Montana says, "Whenever the United States shall be engaged in war, any person or persons who shall utter, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, violent, scurrilous, contemptuous, slurring, or abusive language about the form of the government of the United States."

If you look at the other one, obviously a slight variation. They said whoever instead of whenever, and they took out the word violent. There's like three or four words they took out, but it's virtually word per word. And this helped me just as I was learning this kind of understanding a little bit of the history.

So we've looked, like I said, a little bit at the history. And this, like I said, that spirit of that extreme spirit of patriotism, I don't think we've ever, we as people in our experience that we're just, like I said, everywhere you go, you're just having to be bombarded by the patriotism, the loyalty.

And then I looked just a little bit about the original Espionage Act, the Montana Sedition, and then how the Montana Sedition got incorporated in the Espionage Act. We're going to look briefly at just a little bit of how the Espionage Act, which includes both the Espionage and Sedition, was applied to, like I said, citizens, organizations, and. Yes. And then we're going to conclude with three examples of the Montana Sedition Act. There's a picture of that Bill Haywood. He was, like I said, one of the leaders of the industrial workers of the world. He was the one who wrote that tract called The General Strike.

And he was one of their, like I said, leaders in and out from like 1905 and throughout. So this is what happened to the IWW. Started on September 5th, 1917, under a nationwide action coordinated by the Chicago US Attorney Frank Nebeker and Fitz in the US Department of Justice. Federal marshals operating under search warrants raided 64 IWW halls from Seattle to New York.

One of the interesting things I found out about those raids is that just from Chicago alone, they took about 5,000 tons of material from the Chicago office. The note said they took everything from office furniture, including paperclips when they raided the IWW offices. Took everything. And that's what they said they had five tons of material just from the IWW Chicago office. That's a lot of records I have in your office. Five tons of whatever, I guess, 10,000 pounds of material. Later in September, a federal grand jury at Chicago indicted 166 officers, organizers, and members of the IWW for conspiracy to obstruct the war by committing various acts of sabotage and by speaking and writing against the war and against the draft.

Obviously, this would fall under the Espionage Act. Speaking against the war, speaking against the draft. The trial of the IWW leaders at Chicago finally began appropriate enough on April Fool's Day, 1918. By that time, there was only 101 defendants. Many of them, the charges were dropped. One of them who spoke out against the war was actually drafted. So obviously, he wasn't there. The IWW leaders were charged with over 10,000 violations of federal law. And the jury found all 101 defendants guilty on every charge.

And this is their sentence. The federal judge in the case in Chicago handed the accused their sentences. 15 received the legal maximum of 20 years in jail. 33 received 10 years. 31 received 5. 18 received lesser. Together, they incurred more than $2 million of fines.

Another famous example of the federal Espionage law and prosecution is with this person. His name was Eugene Chadevs, who is the Socialist Party of America presidential candidate in the year 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920, actually while he was in jail for being convicted under the Espionage Act. And this is how he got convicted.

He was in Canton, Ohio, and he gave an anti-war speech on June 16th, 1918. I looked up his speech, and I just clipped a few things he said.

These are his words. "They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourself slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world, you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war. And strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people." Then skipping way further down, this is another paragraph. "They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their, but your patriotic duty they are concerned about.

There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches." He gave that speech, as I said, June 16th, 1918. On June 30th, 1918, he was arrested and indicted under the Espionage Act for unlawfully, willfully to cause an attempt to cause and incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty in the military and naval forces of the United States.

Whoops.

I thought I had that. Oh, I do. Sorry. At the end of his criminal trial, the jury handed down a guilty verdict on September 20th, 1918. After days' recess, Debs returned for sentencing, and Judge David Westonhaver sentenced him to 10 years in prison. So that's why he ran as president in prison in 1920.

Now I'm going to look briefly at three examples that happened under the Montana Sedition Law. Hundreds of people were arrested in Montana after their passage of the law, and 79 were convicted. We're going to look at three just general people today, and we'll look at a couple more when we do the next message. Here's the first person, an Ernest Star. This happened March 1918. This is what he was convicted for. "He refused to kiss the flag." This is the flag of the United States. "When confronted by men at the general store pressuring him to buy liberty bonds. 'What is that thing anyway?' he asked. 'Nothing but a piece of cotton with a little paint on it and some other marks in the corner there.

I will not kiss that thing. It might be covered with microbes.'" We laugh at that, but he was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in jail for saying that and for doing that. And he had got a fine. I mean, I agree. It's kind of funny when you say that, but yeah, because he was convicted for sedition and sentenced to jail for saying that.

It's proprecias. Here's another one. This was another person. This happened about the same time period, April 1918. It was a Hermann Bausch. "A German immigrant said, 'I don't care anything about the red, white, and blue. I won't do anything voluntary to aid this war. I don't care who wins this war. We should have never entered this war, and this war should be stopped immediately and peace declared.' Convicted of sedition, he was sentenced to 48 years in prison and served 28 months at the Old Deer Lodge State Penitentiary."

That's like two years and four months just for saying that. I mean, I can't imagine if we were us, if you said that and you go to jail, I mean, that's not even that's not pro-. That wasn't like if you think of those IWW stuff who were just slamming and being very blasphemous and promoting violence and stuff. And you say that, you go to jail for two years and stuff. And this last one is kind of semi-funny as well.

It was a Ben Kahn. This happened March 1918 in Montana. "He was a traveling wine salesman from San Francisco. When he said to the owner of a Redman Lodge's hotel, Mr. Pollard, 'This is a rich man's war.' Then in response to the question about the sinking of the Luciitani, he said, 'Americans had no business in that boat. They were hauling over munitions and wheat.' He also said that wartime food regulations were a joke. Later that day, he was arrested and charged with sedition.

In his defense, Ben Kahn said, 'I meant that in large cities, rich people and others were not living up to it. I didn't intend to criticize the Hoover rules, and I don't think Mr. Pollard would stop following the Hoover rules because of what I said.'

After his conviction, he was sentenced to 7 and a half to 20 years imprisonment. His appeal was denied, and he served 34 months, almost three years for saying that. I'm not saying yes. That's three years of life just for saying that. That's a lot of time wasted.

My last slide here, again, as I said, I wanted to just help us understand some of the history, some of the, like I say, these crazy things that happened. Like I said, Montana wasn't the only state. A good portion of states had their own sedition laws passed. This suppression of free speech. Yes, they said, 'The traitor.' But who defines what is a traitor? Who defines what is something that's loyal? And this next one is just showing the different churches and other religious organizations that suffered either prosecution or threat of prosecution under the Espionage Act, which would include the Sedition Act.

Look at, oh, didn't realize that. Can't see the bottom one. We'll have to move that one. It says Church of Christ, Pentecostal, Church of the Brethren, Old German Baptist, Old Order Amish, Mennonite, Hutterite. And the bottom one, which you can't see, says International Bible Students, which is now known as Jehovah's Witnesses.

And like I said, that's why, and like I said, these ones all suffered because of these acts.

So hopefully, I did what I said I wanted to do, that we all have at least a little history in our mind what happened and why it happened. Some of the, like I said, just that extreme loyalty and patriotism that was promoted, which at least helped me understand that when these laws were passed, both at the state and national levels, how they then were misapplied because they said they took away our freedom of speech. And so if we were out there saying, 'Christians don't go to war. Christians love our enemies.