I WAS not for the defeat of our armies. I was not even for a separate peace. My whole argument at that time was for the possibility of getting a general democratic peace soon, by endorsing the Russian peace terms. And that is why Mr. Barnes could find nothing in all of these three issues in which there are fifteen solid pages of my writing—fifteen solid pages of earnest and vigorous socialistic writing in those three magazines included. in the indictment—he cannot find a single thing that even mentions the subject of conscription, or that he can possibly twist into a sly intent to promote resistance to the draft—except two little paragraphs. And one of them does not mention the subject of conscription at all, but is merely an attempt to secure for a couple of people for whom I had a friendly feeling, one of whom had expressly asked me to do it, a decent hearing before the courts of the United States.
Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman probably have as unsavory a reputation with average American middle-class people who believe everything they read in the newspapers, as anybody in the country. And they have a political philosophy of anarchism, with which I am entirely out of sympathy and which I have been at pains to criticize and oppose in The Masses a good many times. But I have had for three or four years a friendly acquaintance with them, and we have warm mutual friends, and I believe that they are absolutely honest and sincere, and have always been working according to their belief for the welfare of humanity. And whatever the newspapers of this community, and the people who believe everything they read in the newspapers, may choose to say and think about it, I respect Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, and I admire their courage. and devotion. And that is all that paragraph says.
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