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To an Anxious Friend
This editorial won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923
------YOU TELL ME that law is above freedom
of utterance And I reply that you can have no wise laws nor free enforcement
of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people -
and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of
its own poison, and the wisdom will survive. That is the history of the race.
It is the proof of man's kinship with God. You say that freedom of
utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that
only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger. No one questions
it in calm days, because it is not needed. And the reverse is true also;
only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed,
it is most vital to justice. Peace is good. But if you are interested in
peace through force and without full discussion - that is to say, free
utterance decently and in order - your interest in justice is slight.
And peace without justice is tyranny, no matter how you may sugar-coat it
with expediency. This state today is in more danger from suppression than
from violence, because, in the end, suppression leads to violence. Violence,
indeed, is the child of suppression. Whoever pleads for justice helps to
keep the peace; and whoever tramples upon the plea for justice temperately
made in the name of peace only outrages peace and kills something fine in
the heart of man, which God put there when we got our manhood. When that is
killed, brute meets brute on each side of the line.
------So, dear friend, put fear out of
your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly
business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way
given them to utter what their hearts hold - by voice, by posted card, by
letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and repression
have made the wrecks in the world.
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