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The Abuse of Civil Liberties in World War I
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 September 2023
Abstract
Wartime pressures to protect national military and security interests inevitably create threats to civil liberties. This essay reviews the abuses of the period, carried on by public officials as well as citizens who saw themselves as acting on their behalf. There was a remarkable range of targets—with few spies to find, broadly defined disloyalty sufficed. The attempt to create a unified, loyal culture extended to wide areas of the culture, such as the teaching of history, aided by volunteers. The public and private efforts brought ruined reputations, imprisonments, public shaming, murders, and awful behavior on the part of courts and citizens. These were bad times for civil liberties. This essay reviews the history and explores the legacies.
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- Type
- Article
- Information
- Journal of Policy History , Volume 35 , Issue 4: Special Issue on Free Speech in America , October 2023 , pp. 505 - 523
- Copyright
- © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2023
References
NOTES
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2. “$27,000,000 Spent Here By Kaiser?” New York Times, December 5, 1915; “Attaches ‘Objectionable,’” New York Times, December 4, 1915.
3. “Congress Cheers As Wilson Urges Curb on Plotters,” New York Times, December 8, 1915.
4. Gregory quoted in Harry N. Scheiber, The Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties, 1917-1921 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1960), 12; Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 1914-1917 (New York: Algonquin Press, 1989).
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20. Hochschild, American Midnight, chap. 8; Chafee, Free Speech in the United States, 58; Scheiber, Wilson Administration and Civil Liberties, 47.
21. Peter Stehman, “Lynching of Robert Prager (1918),” in Madison Historical: The Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive for Madison County, Illinois, last modified February 5, 2019, https://madison-historical.siue.edu/encyclopedia/lynching-of-robert-prager-1918/.
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23. James R. Mock, Censorship 1917 (repr. ed. New York: De Capo Press, 1972), 142–45.
24. Chafee, Free Speech in the United States, 42–51; Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You, 152–55; Murphy, World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties, 99–101, 196–98.
25. “Why is Roosevelt Unjailed?” The Nation 107, no. 2784 (1918): 546.
26. New York Times, May 11 and 26, 1918; Chicago Daily Tribune, May 20 and 26, 1918; The Outlook, March 20, 1918, 434.
27. Gilbert E. Roe, “Repeal the Espionage Law” (address delivered before the Civic Club of New York, December 3, 1918), The Dial 66, no. 7, January 11, 1919.
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