To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In the last week Messrs, Mason, and MeNaughton have written your paper urging that a friend of mine be kept in jail. The points for the pardon of Debs fall into three main groups.

Group 1, is, from the conservative viewpoint, concerned with prudence. If it is desired to prove the point that our Government has become unfortunately somewhat class-biased of late, nothing could do it better than the continued imprisonment of a kindly old man like Debs, while men of the stripe of Franz Von Rintelen, German spy and bomb-plotter, are released. Nothing is better calculated to arouse the desire to shake the control of the owners of the means of production over our public life than such a spectacular example of the results of this control.

Group II is legal. Professor Chafee, of the Law School, in his recent book, Freedom of Speech, states: "The true boundary-line of the first amendment can be fixed only when Congress and the Courts realize that the principle on which speech is classified as lawful or unlawful involves the balancing against each other of two very important social interests, in public safety and in the search for truth." "In war-time, therefore, speech should be unrestricted by the censorship or by punishment, unless it is clearly liable to cause direct and dangerous interference with the conduct of the war." Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes says, in his famous decision: "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger, that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." "The point is, that Judge Westenhaver did not instruct the jury according to the Supreme Court test (as voiced by Justice Holmes) at all, but allowed Debs to be found guilty, in Justice Holmes' words, because of the natural tendency and reasonably probable effect of the speech--so that the defendant could have been and probably was, convicted for an exposition of Socialism." It is a sad day for America when we stand for this sort of stuff, so different from the principles to preserve which is the reason for our nation individuality, and our pride in it.

After discussing the very doubtful constitutionality of the law under which Debs was convicted. Professor Chafee continues: "Whatever be decided as to constitutionality, the Espionage Act prosecutions break with a great tradition in English and American law. Only once before has the United States tried to punish political crimes, and the Sedition Act of 1789"--there was a national emergency then, you remember--"with its maximum of two years' imprisonment wrecked the Federalist Party."

The third issue is moral. We can discuss the point best comparatively. The Imperial German Government sentenced Karl Liebknecht, a young man, not to ten, but to seven years, for saying "This war is Imperialistic and it will be a good thing for us if we are defeated." The British Empire gave Bertrand Russell, the distinguished mathematician, two years or thereabouts for interfering with conscription, a treason Debs was not guilty of.

Debs was a man of such outstanding integrity and kindliness that it is safe to say that all who knew him loved him. As a part of the propaganda for his release, twenty-five celebrated literary men have contributed to a volume in his honor. When all is said and done, we usually consider creative thinkers best qualified to judge human motives. These writers range in variety from the undoubted Americanism of Percy McKaye and James Whit comb Riley to men of the fame of Barbusse and Wells. Again, about a million American citizens thought enough of him to vote for him for the highest office in their gift. Now we reach a question of Americanism. Personally, my Americanism is of such a kind that I prefer to think that these million citizens were not disloyal, were not friends of a felon, and followers of a mischief maker, but that they were friends of a fine old man and believers in a type of collectivism, which is not popular in this country, but towards which all the tendencies of modern political and industrial development seem to point.

The trouble with all this hating is that there is no place to stop. If Debs is disloyal, so are his million friends, and America is shot through with rottenness, and one voter in thirty or so is a traitor. At this rate, soon we shall all be spying and whispering on back stairs.

So much of this hatred is ignorance. I venture that none of our busy letter-writters has ever heard him talk, read his speeches, or even read the Canton speech which was the cause of his imprisonment.

"But he's not repentant!" Come, frankly, what should we think of him if he were? The Roman Empire was governed by men of the highest respect for justice and the law, but as a matter of governmental necessity they were compelled to see to it that members of that idle and dangerous sect of agitators the Christians, burn a little just a little incense on the alter of the Emperor. They didn't do it, and some of us are inclined to admire them for it. JOHN F. SIMS, Jr., 1G.