Eugene Debbs, Anthony Lewis, Ernest Freeberg, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Woodrow Wilson and freedom of speech

(Above: Eugene V. Debs).

By way of a change of pace, this is an unpaid advertisement for The New York Review of Books.

While it's vaguely disturbing - some might find it alarming - to learn that Phillip Adams is a devotee, there's such a hunk of interesting content in each issue that it's a case where there needs to be a splash of cash to ensure the content continues.

Forget free, forget the intertubes for a moment, and plunge in.

As a random sample, take Anthony Lewis's review of Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War and the Right, by Ernest Freeberg.

Under the header Justice Holmes and the 'Splendid Prisoner', Lewis does an excellent job in a couple of pages compressing down the story of Eugene Debs while evoking the interesting elements in Freeberg's work. If only the Readers Digest could manage something so compelling.

Debs was one of the founders of the Socialist Party in America back in 1901, and five times ran for president as the party's candidate.

But as Lewis notes, he was utterly American - living in a Victorian house in Terre Haute, Indiana, a small city on the banks of the Wabash - and he had great personal charm.

His rhetoric however was all you could expect of a socialist up against what at the time was relatively unbridled capitalism, and the jingoism surrounding America's entry into the first world war.

During one speech, made in Canton Ohio on June 16, 1918, Debs made the following comment about war in general:

They have always taught you that it is your patriotic duty to to to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at command. But in all of the history of the world you, the people, never had a voice in declaring war ... The working class who fight the battles ... the working class who shed the blood, the working class who furnish the corpses, the working class have never yet had a voice in declaring war.

Unexceptional enough, but for his trouble Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act, and the finding was upheld by the Supreme Court, which included the liberal jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had in other cases upheld liberal causes with dissenting opinions, but here went with the flow.

In parallel with Debs, another court case involving Charles Schenck, secretary of the Socialist Party, saw Schenck sentenced to six months prison for distributing 15,000 leaflets to men eligible for the draft (Wikipedia here Schenck v. United States).

In his opinion, Homes first used the "clear and present danger" test, and so a host of Hollywood films would benefit from his wording. But at the same time, Holmes came under fire, and the criticism generated a change of heart, which would in the end deeply impact on the way America interpreted free speech, starting with Abrams v United States (you can Wikipedia that case here, and see Holmes' dissenting opinion in summary form).

But the case of Debs was not yet complete, in terms of playing out the ironies of life. Sent to prison, he charmed his wardens, the staff and inmates his prisons, and his case became an international cause celebre (with the likes of George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Carl Sandburg and Upton Sinclair joining in the clamor).

But Woodrow Wilson, a supposed liberal, refused to bend. So while still a prisoner in 1920, Debs ran for president and collared just over nine hundred thousand votes.

Still Wilson wouldn't budge. His Christmas pardon of 180 men included a couple of dozen political prisoners, but not Debs - though physically broken by a stroke, Wilson still found the strength to scrawl denied on Attorney General Palmer's recommendation that Debs be released.

It took the arrival of conservative Warren G. Harding into the White House in March 1921 to see a change a coming. While Harding these days is hardly a poster boy for anything, Harding told his attorney general to look into cases of those involved in cases of free speech during wartime and still in prison.

Soon enough Debs was on a train to Washington to speak to Harry Daugherty (he of the Teapot Dome scandal) and soon enough Harding commuted Debs's sentence, effective Christmas Day 1921.

Debs then turned up in Washington to see Harding, at the president's invitation, and spent thirty minutes with him. While no one knows what was said or discussed, Harding later went on to release most of the other political prisoners interred during the war, and also ended the Wilson administration's band on left wing journals.

Yep, it's a funny old world, and how nice it was to read through Lewis and Freeberg, of those strange days when liberals repressed the right of free speech and conservatives understood its value, even if blessed by a time of peace following the war.

Why do I suddenly remember the thousands who marched against the war in Iraq during the time of the Howard government, and the reaction of the commentariat columnists in this fair land?

Anyhoo, Lewis leaves the last word to H. L. Mencken, who scoffed at Debs's pacifism and his "Marxian rumble-bumble", but could still find it in his heart to write:

Is his release denounced by The New York Times, the Rotary Club and the idiots who seem to run the American Legion? Then it is precisely because he is fair, polite, independent, brave, honest and a gentleman.

Now if you want you can find the actual Debs v. United States ruling online here, and of course you can always find the Wikipedia article here, but can I also recommend the New York Review of Books as one of the last decent, civilized compendiums of insights and information still available in hard copy form.

And lastly in view of the recent Rudd government's entrenched stand on gay marriage, could it now become something that a sensible decent conservative - in the Harding mould - might use to beat Chairman Rudd about the head?

Whatever, can I recommend this story by Mark Gevisser called South African Rites, which is about a gay man getting married in South Africa under the new law there. I first came across it at the back of the New York Times magazine, but you can find it here. (oops, account suspended, link not working, tough times for queerlife in South Africa. If you're NY Times registered, try this link). It's a short, amusing read and well worth the fuss.