world-wide emulation. Let us, like them, scorn and repudiate the
cowardly compromisers within our ranks, challenge and defy the
robber-class power, and fight it out on that line to victory or
death."

This favorite leader of the radicals of America was convicted by jury of
violation of the Espionage Law on September 12, 1918, and two days later
sentenced to serve ten years in the penitentiary. The case was appealed
on the ground that the Espionage Act was an unconstitutional abridgment
of the right of free speech. The decision of the United States Supreme
Court was handed down on March 10, 1919. In the words of a Socialist
work, Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, page 102, "The Court
held that the law was not contrary to the Constitution and affirmed the
sentence imposed upon Debs by the lower court. The decision was
unanimous that the nature and intended effect of his speech was to
obstruct recruiting and enlistment in the army."

Yet this same Year Book, in its account of "The Emergency Convention of
the Socialist Party" at Chicago in August-September, 1919, says, page
409: "The Convention went on record offering the presidential nomination
of the party to Eugene V. Debs, the nomination to be ratified at the
1920 Convention."

On March 5, 1920, at Albany, in the final argument for the five
suspended Socialist Assemblymen, according to the "New York Times" of
March 6, 1920, Seymour Stedman said of Debs: "He represents in a sense
the Socialist movement. Perhaps he represents it more completely than
any other man in this country."

In order that the reader may understand the extreme way in which
lawbreakers like Debs and Victor L. Berger were justified by those
defending the five suspended Socialists at Albany, we give an extract
from the testimony of Morris Hillquit on February 19, 1920, as reported
in the "New York Times" of the next day:

"The testimony leading up to Mr. Hillquit's admissions was given
after Martin Conboy of counsel for the Judiciary Committee had read
into the record a speech and a signed article by Victor L. Berger.
In the speech, delivered at the Socialist National Convention in
1908, Mr. Berger said:

"'I have no doubt that in the last analysis we must shoot, and when
it comes to shooting, Wisconsin will be there.'

"In the signed article which appeared in a Socialist newspaper
published in Milwaukee the following year, h