ng
order of government, there is no appeal from this decision, except an
appeal to arbitrary executive clemency.

2. THE CANTON SPEECH

The Debs Case arose over a speech made by Debs in Canton, Ohio, June
16th, 1918. The speech was made before the State Socialist Convention,
where Debs was talking to his comrades in the Socialist movement. The
main parts of this speech, as printed in the indictment under which Debs
was convicted, are as follows:

"I have just returned from a visit from yonder (pointing to workhouse)
were three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty for their
devotion to the cause of the working class. They have come to realize,
as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the
constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make
democracy safe for the world. I realize in speaking to you this
afternoon that there are certain limitations placed upon the right of
free speech. I must be extremely careful, prudent, as to what I say, and
even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to
say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think. And
I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than a sycophant
or coward on the streets. They may put those boys in jail and some of
the rest of us in jail, but they cannot put the Socialist movement in
jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls
are here this afternoon. They are simply paying the penalty that all men
have paid in all of the ages of history for standing erect and seeking
to pave the way for better conditions for mankind.

"If it had not been for the men and women who, in the past, have had the
moral courage to go to jail, we would still be in the jungles.

"Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest
triumph of all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that
these are anxious, trying days for us all, testing those who are
upholding the banner of the working class in the greatest struggle the
world has ever known against the exploiters of the world; a time in
which the weak, the cowardly, will falter and fail and desert. They lack
the fibre to endure the revolutionary test. They fall away. They
disappear as if they had never been.

"On the other hand, they who are animated with the unconquerable spirit
of the social revolution, they who have the moral courage to stand
erect, to assert their convictions