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Eugene V. Debs leaves prison on Christmas Day 1921, after his 10-year sentence for opposing the draft was commuted. (Library of Congress)
Eugene V. Debs leaves prison on Christmas Day 1921, after his 10-year sentence for opposing the draft was commuted. (Library of Congress)
On June 30, 1918, perennial Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in jail for opposing the draft. (In 1920, he won nearly a million votes while in prison; he was freed in 1921.) During the war, Cincinnati outlawed the sale of pretzels; Iowa made publicly speaking German a crime.
On August 1, 1917 in Butte, Montana, a mob seized Frank Little, who was trying to unionize copper miners for the anti-war Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In Over Here, his wonderful book about America's wartime home front, the historian David Kennedy recounts what happened next. "Pummeled into the street, Little was tied to the rear of an automobile and dragged through the streets until his kneecaps were scraped off, then hanged from the side of a railroad trestle." While calling the lynching regrettable, the New York Times insisted that, "the IWW agitators are in effect, and perhaps in fact, agents of Germany."
Comment: If the results of war were so great for the home society, why is it that the "proposed benefits," as stated by these idiots, are so illusive? Because there are none? Instead, the wool of war is once again pulled over the public's eye and another manipulation for power and conquest takes place with few the wiser. War, a deceptive balance of "fear and protection," is the ultimate distraction for an inside power grab of rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, the grandest scheme is the one that takes place at home, the hardest to spot and the most difficult to reverse.