forefathers framed for us in the Bill of Rights. We hold with all the passion of our hearts and minds to those commitments of the human spirit."
In June, 1920, Charles Evans Hughes, in an address at Harvard Law School, referring to hysteria that followed the last war, asserted: "We may well wonder, in view of the precedents now established, whether constitutional government as heretofore maintained in this republic, could survive another great war even victoriously waged."
The noble utterances of President Wilson at the beginning of our war with Germany are clearly recalled:—"An unwillingness even to discuss these matters produces only dissatisfaction and gives comfort to the extreme elements in our country which endeavor to stir up disturbances in order to provoke governments to embark upon a course of retaliation and repression. The seed of revolution is repression."
Referring to prosecutions under the Espionage Act of 1917, Judge Amidon said: "Only those who have administered the Espionage Act can understand the danger of such legislation. When crimes are defined by such generic terms, instead of by specific acts, the jury becomes the sole judge, whether men shall or shall not be punished. Most of the jurymen have sons in the war. They are all under the power of the passions which war engenders. For the first six months after June 15, 1917, tried war cases before jurymen who were candid, sober, intelligent business men, whom I had known for thirty years, and who under ordinary circumstances would have had the highest respect for my declarations of law, but during that period they looked back into my eyes with the savagery of wild, animals, saying by their manner, 'Away with this twaddling, let us get at him.' Men believed during that period that the only verdict in a war case, which could show loyalty, was a verdict of guilty."
Madison once remarked, in discussing tendencies of governmental encroachment:—"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and
