The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective League — John Shaqi
The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective LeagueHough, Emerson
History
The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective League
Hough, Emerson
American Protective League; Propaganda, German; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- United States
This section 3 was amended by a law which became effective May 18,
1918, commonly called the Sedition Act, which greatly broadened
the scope of the original act and brought under its prohibitions
many new types of disloyal utterance. The use which our enemies
have made of propaganda as a method of warfare is especially
dangerous in any country governed by public opinion. During the
first three years of the war, the period of our neutrality, the
German Government and its sympathizers expended here a vast
amount of money in carrying on different types of propaganda,
and these activities are a matter of public knowledge. During
our participation in the war, section 3 and its later amendment
have been the only weapons available to this Government for the
suppression of insidious propaganda, and it is obvious that no
more difficult task has been placed upon our system of law than
the endeavor to distinguish between the legitimate expression of
opinion and those types of expression necessarily or deliberately
in aid of the enemy. The number of complaints under this law
presented to the Department of Justice has been incredibly large.
Such, then, was the ultimate machinery of our national laws when, late,
but with such speed as a willing Congress could give after the gauntlet
was flung and the issue joined, we began to face in dead earnest the
peril of the times. We now had at last a full set of laws with teeth in
them. But it was a tremendous burden that the older institutions of our
administrative machinery had to carry. In sooth, the load was too much.
The machinery buckled under it. We could not do the work we had to get
done.
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