Americans take great pride in their country’s commitment to the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. At the top of that list are the rights enumerated in the first ten amendments to the Constitution — the Bill of Rights. Americans are fond of contrasting the protections that freedom of speech, due process of law, equal protection of the law, and other fundamental rights enjoy in the United States, with their absence in many other nations. The historical record shows, however, that U.S. political leaders and much of the public have been extremely quick to sacrifice such liberties during apparent national-security crises. Three episodes over the past century illustrate that unfortunate tendency.
The weak commitment to liberty during times of stress became glaringly apparent during World War I. Although a majority of Americans probably supported U.S. entry into that conflict when Woodrow Wilson sent his war message to Congress in April 1917, most initially seemed to do so with reluctance. Sizable pockets of anti-war sentiment remained among certain ethnic (especially German-American and Irish-American) communities and committed socialists. Only 73,000 men enlisted in the military during the first six weeks of the war, which caused a worried Wilson to embrace conscription. The president also created the Committee on Public Information to promote the war effort and discourage dissent. Denver journalist George Creel led that effort, immediately establishing a “voluntary” censorship code for the press. Frank Cobb, editor of the New York World, later described the overall mission of the Creel Committee:
Government conscripted public opinion as they conscripted men and money and materials. Having conscripted it, they dealt with it as they dealt with other raw materials. They mobilized it. They put it in the charge of drill sergeants. They goose-stepped it. They taught it to stand at attention and salute.
The Wilson administration’s propaganda strategy stressed two themes. One was glorification of the U.S. war effort as an idealistic crusade to advance freedom, democracy, and peace throughout the world. The other theme was the caricature of Imperial Germany as a loathsome menace to all of those values. U.S. propaganda personalized that threat by focusing on the “Beast of Berlin,” Kaiser Wilhelm II. The German people became “the Hun,” despoiling Europe and threatening the Western Hemisphere.
Espionage and sedition
And woe to anyone who dared publicly to challenge that narrative. Rumors of espionage and sabotage (mostly unfounded) swept the country, and “patriotic” groups, such as the National Security League and the National Protective Association, which the Wilson administration supported and encouraged, formed to deal with the imaginary menace. The vigilantes demanded a display of “100 percent Americanism” from all members of their communities. Suspect persons were threatened, forced to publicly kiss the American flag, and subjected to beatings. In some cases, they were literally tarred and feathered.
The harassment of groups considered potentially disloyal sometimes reached ludicrous proportions. Several states passed legislation prohibiting the teaching of German or the conduct of religious services in that language. Statues of prominent Germans, including Revolutionary War hero Friedrich von Steuben, were removed from parks, and the Cincinnati government even banned pretzels from free-lunch counters in local saloons. Such episodes indicate that more-recent silly displays of jingoism, such as the congressional drive to rename French fries “freedom fries” to express displeasure with Paris’s lack of support for the U.S.-led Iraq War, had a long, embarrassing history.
Threat inflation and war hysteria produced especially nasty results during World War I. Wilson’s initial answer to opponents of the war was the Espionage Act of 1917. Although Congress passed that measure in the heat of wartime, the administration had contemplated imposing censorship even before the United States entered the war. As early as August 1916, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker urged Congress to enact a censorship statute regarding the war in Europe. Two months before the declaration of war, Rep. Edwin Webb (D-N.C.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the administration’s closest legislative allies, introduced such legislation. Webb’s measure authorized life imprisonment for anyone who circulated or published military information, false statements, or reports “likely or intended to cause disaffection in, or interfere with the success of, the military or naval forces of the United States.”
With some modest differences in language and a reduction of the life imprisonment penalty, the Espionage Act was strikingly similar to the earlier Webb bill. Such premeditation suggests that the Espionage Act was not merely a wartime overreaction. Instead, it reflected a troubling desire by Wilson administration officials to silence anyone who disagreed with their conduct of foreign policy. They exploited a crisis to implement their pre-existing intolerance.
It soon became evident that authorities would use the statute’s vague provisions to suppress the mere circulation of anti-war literature. But the Wilson administration still was not satisfied. Just months later, it proposed amendments to the Espionage Act, and Congress passed them in May 1918. Those amendments were informally called the Sedition Act. At least theoretically, the Espionage Act required the government to prove that injurious consequences to national security would result directly from prohibited utterances. The Sedition Act dispensed with that obstacle and extended the power of the federal government over verbal and printed expressions of opinion regardless of consequences. Moreover, the substantive provisions in the statute were so vague as to seem calculated to exert the maximum chilling effect on freedom of expression. The act forbade “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive” remarks about the form of government or military forces of the United States. Such language was so broad that it could mean virtually anything prosecutors wished it to mean. And there was soon an abundance of prosecutions.
The World War I experience was appalling on several levels. There was more freedom of expression in France, although the front lines of the invading German army were sometimes less than 50 miles from Paris, than there was in the United States, more than 3,000 miles from the carnage. Worse, the repression underscored an authoritarian streak in the Wilson administration and the overall Progressive movement. Implicitly, officials feared that unless the country was regimented and dissenters silenced, the public might come to regard the Wilsonian crusade to “make the world safe for democracy” as a bloody fraud.
Journalist Walter Karp documents how Wilson personally fostered the atmosphere of intolerance, and he argues that it betrayed a frightening character flaw.
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