The Jews in America Trilogy (138 page)

“I do not oppose the war, or its prosecution, in any sense,” she said. “I can see, at present, no way in which
it can end except by the defeat of Germany. I believe the government of the United States should have the unqualified support of every citizen in its war aims. My misgivings are that, whatever the outcome of the war, the capitalistic interests of the world may use it to further their commercial exploitations of undeveloped and under-developed countries.”

Certainly the
Star
reporter had got her to say a number of contradictory things—that she was both for the war and against it—with the result that the reader might conclude that she was a very confused woman. All might yet have been well, however, if Rose Stokes had been content to let the matter go at that. But she was not, and, carrying things farther, dashed off a letter to the managing editor of the
Star
, further clarifying her position, which was received the following afternoon, March 19:

To the Star:

I see that it is, after all, necessary to send a statement for publication over my own signature, and I trust that you will give it space in your columns.

A headline in this evening's issue of the Star reads: “Mrs Stokes for Government and Against War at the Same Time.” I am
not
for the government. In the interview that follows I am quoted as having said, “I believe the government of the United States should have the unqualified support of every citizen in its war aims.”

I made no such statement, and I believe no such thing. No government which is
for
the profiteers can also be for the people, and I am
for
the people, while the government is for the profiteers.

I expect my working class point of view to receive no sympathy from your paper, but I do expect that the traditional courtesy of publication by the newspapers of a signed statement of correction, which even our most Bourbon papers grant, will be extended to this statement by yours.

Yours truly,

Rose Pastor Stokes

The managing editor of the
Star
, one Mr. Stout, ran the Stokes letter the following morning, March 20. He also sent a copy of it to the office of the United States district attorney because, as he put it later, “I felt it was a matter the government should have.”

On June 15, 1917, the Congress of the United States had passed an act known as the Espionage Law. Based on the statements in her letter to the editor, and the fact that the
Star
had a circulation of 440,000, and was read by servicemen stationed in nearby military camps and cantonments who might presumably be subverted by Mrs. Stokes's views, Rose Pastor Stokes was promptly arrested and charged with three counts of sedition under Section 3, Title I, of the Espionage Law. Specifically, it was charged that she “did unlawfully, wilfully, knowingly and feloniously at Kansas City … attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces of the United States, in that she did, then and there prepare, publish and cause to be printed, published, distributed, circulated and conveyed in and by means of a certain newspaper … a certain communication,” and so on. When the dismaying news reached Graham Stokes in New York, he hurried to his wife's side in Missouri, where she had been continuing her lecture tour.

In the trial that followed, two of the government's most important witnesses were the ladies of the Dining Club who had been most opposed to inviting Rose Stokes as a speaker. The more hostile of the two was Maude Flowers. Mrs. Flowers was asked by the prosecution to recall what Mrs. Stokes had said at the March 16 meeting, and she was quite specific:

She said that no thinking or well-informed person really believed that we were in this war for the sake of world democracy; that if we were sincere in our belief we would have entered the war when the neutrality of Belgium was violated, and we would most certainly have gone in when the Lusitania was sunk, but we did not enter the war until the U-boat became a menace to world trade, and threatened to isolate the Allies and threatened to cut off the munitions and our over-production that we sent to the Allies, and to threaten the vast loans the
capitalists had already made to the Allies.

She said our men were in this war for what they believed was world freedom or world democracy; that in order to send our men, American men, into battle, they must have a principle to fight for, an ideal, and the capitalists and profiteers knew this and for this purpose the phrase was coined, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” She said further that while our men entered the war in this belief, that they would become undeceived finally and that when they returned to this country it would be with a different belief and they would never take up life again on the old system. She said they would learn while they were abroad that they were not fighting for democracy but for the protection and safeguarding of Morgan's millions. That when they came back, or perhaps before, this country would be plunged into a revolution that had been for a long time pending, that we had been drifting towards an industrial revolution for a long time and this would most certainly bring it about.

She said further that the activities of the Red Cross, the activities of the Food and Fuel Administration and other war-created activities, were mere war camouflage. That is all, I believe, she said as directly bearing on the war.

Mrs. Flowers had brought along a friend, Miss Gertrude Hamilton, to attend the Stokes lecture, and Miss Hamilton was also called as a witness for the prosecution. Miss Hamilton repeated essentially what Mrs. Flowers had told the court, but added one small detail that was new. Miss Hamilton was certain that Rose Stokes had mentioned a poem that she had written, but that Miss Hamilton was quite sure Rose had not read to her audience, in which she had said that she was “thrilled by the sight of soldiers marching down the street.” But now, Rose had said, after second thoughts, she regretted having written the poem and that “if she had the power to recall the poem she would do so.”

Graham Stokes hired two prominent Kansas City attorneys, Seymour Stedman and Harry Sullivan, to handle his wife's
defense in the case of
United States of America v. Rose Pastor Stokes
. Most of the trial work was done by Mr. Stedman. When Mrs. Florence Gebhardt was called to the witness stand for the prosecution, it began to seem as though she had heard an entirely different speech. Instead of a lecture that was anticapitalist, Mrs. Gebhardt had come away from the event convinced that she had heard a lecture that was pro-Russian. Asked to describe the talk, Mrs. Gebhardt stated:

She said that in Russia everything was free, that the land there being occupied was divided and the people were going to live on it as long as they wished, or could move off whenever they were ready; that the vaults and the banks were being broken into and the contents divided among the people to whom they rightfully belonged.

THE PROSECUTION:
Did she say whether or not she approved of that?

There was an objection to the question from Mr. Stedman, which was overruled, and Mrs. Gebhardt was directed by the court to answer.

MRS. GEBHARDT:
From her remarks I would say she approved of that.

All told, eleven witnesses were called for the government's side of the case, and following Mrs. Gebhardt's testimony the prosecution concentrated on what the witnesses thought the defendant had had to say, or felt, about Russia. Another Dining Club member, for example, Mrs. Margaret DeWitt, testified, somewhat ramblingly, that:

She spoke of the Bolsheviki as having taken possession of the land and of the country and of having taken possession of the money in Russia, and having taken possession of the land and allowing the principal land holder his fair ratio such as he could till, and that the rest of the land would be divided up among the Russian people, or among the people. And that theirs was an ideal government, that theirs was a true democracy and
a pure democracy, and that they offered to the world this idea.…

I then asked a question. I asked why, if Russia were in this condition, and that she had come to this country and had profited by its institutions and developed here, why she did not return to Russia and give Russia the benefit of that—of her training. That was the time she mentioned the President. She said the President would not permit her. She said Emma Goldman had made that effort, but was not permitted, but she said, “I hope you do not class me with her.”

The next witness was male, Mr. C. M. Adams, the husband of a Dining Club member, and his impression of the evening was not that Rose Stokes had wanted to disassociate herself from Emma Goldman, but that she had identified herself strongly with, and actually extolled, the famous anarchist. Said Mr. Adams, “Well, she mentioned about Emma Goldman being one of the greatest shining lights in her belief and only wished that she could express herself along the lines in as good fashion as she did.”

The government had decided that its case would be given greater weight if an actual serviceman could be found who would testify on how Mrs. Stokes's remarks had affected him. Army Lieutenant Ralph B. Campbell, it seemed, had attended the lecture, and in his testimony he brought up the matter of the poem, which he insisted that Rose had actually read to her audience, thereby contradicting the earlier testimony of Miss Hamilton. Furthermore, Lieutenant Campbell stated, there had been a burst of applause after Rose Stokes read her poem, but that the defendant had “raised her hand to check the applause,” indicating that she no longer agreed with the poem's patriotic sentiments. There was no testimony to corroborate this.

In his cross-examination of Lieutenant Campbell, Mr. Stedman tried to make order out of the confusion of exactly what the defendant had said, or had not said, on that fateful evening at the Woman's Dining Club of Kansas City.

MR. STEDMAN:
I wish you would start out at the beginning of the address and state as much as you remember.

LT. CAMPBELL:
Mrs. Stokes started her address with a resumé of industrial life of the world—

STEDMAN:
Pardon me, state what she said. You are now giving your conclusions.

THE PROSECUTION:
Oh no, he's not! He is stating the substance of what she said. Do you want him to use the exact words she stated?

STEDMAN:
He stated the “resumé” and I assume it is a conclusion.

THE COURT:
Well, of course, Lieutenant Campbell, you may state as far as you can the substance of what she stated there. The court doesn't understand by that, that counsel requires the explicit repetition of a long speech, but the substance of the various topics considered and what the subject matter was and her expressions relating to it.

LT. CAMPBELL:
She mentioned the working conditions beginning with practically a written history; discussed the ancient guild system of workers—

STEDMAN
(interrupting): That is not what I am asking for.

THE PROSECUTION:
Yes it is.

THE COURT:
Are you asking him to attempt to repeat the speech as near as he can verbatim?

STEDMAN:
No. No man living could probably do that.… In substance what I am asking for is the language and not conclusions.

THE COURT:
You may ask him for anything you see fit as near as he can recall. We are not going to take up time here to have an hour's speech recited by the witness.

STEDMAN:
I am not trying to quarrel with Your Honor.…

THE COURT:
Very well. You are at liberty to ask him about any portion of the speech you desire.

STEDMAN:
I understand the court's ruling on this to be then that I cannot ask this witness the substance of that address?

THE COURT:
I said that you could ask the substance of it but not to the extent of having him practically repeat in substance the entire speech which would amount even though not verbatim to something like an hour or more.

Throughout this interchange, the prosecution, in the person of the United States district attorney, remained silent, allowing Mr. Stedman and the judge to become further at loggerheads, and to work each other into the position of adversaries. Mr. Stedman seems to have been principally interested in “language”—as much direct quotation from the Stokes speech as the witness could remember—and the judge seems to have taken the position that this was asking the impossible. Meanwhile, it had probably begun to be clear to Stedman that no actual language would be forthcoming from Lieutenant Campbell. Mr. Stedman stepped away from the bench, saying, “Very well, to that I wish to take an exception and I do not care to cross-examine the witness any further.”

All this testimony and cross-examination was very curious because, supposedly, the government's case against Rose Stokes was to be built upon the letter she had written and caused to be published in the
Star
on March 20, and not on the speech she had given to the Dining Club on March 16, about the content of which no two members of the audience seemed able to agree anyway. Still, there was one final, hostile witness from the Dining Club audience, Mrs. Eva J. Sullivan. Mrs. Sullivan testified that just before Mrs. Stokes had been introduced, the club's president had handed the defendant “a piece of paper”—presumably the check for her honorarium—saying, “I will have to take care of this, because it is your money,” to which Mrs. Stokes had replied, “You may not want to give it to me after you have heard my talk.” Mrs. Sullivan went on to say that the tenor of the talk had been that there were two classes of people who were interested in the war—one class for democracy, and the other for profit, and that the defendant had made the statement that she was “afraid the profiteers were getting control, and misleading the others.”

As the trial progressed, it seemed to get farther and farther afield from the “wilful, felonious” act Mrs. Stokes had been charged with committing: writing the letter. Next, the prosecution brought in a witness to testify about an entirely different Stokes lecture, which she had delivered four days after the Dining Club talk, hundreds of miles away in the little town of Neosho, Missouri, in the southwestern corner of the state. Of what he could recall of this second lecture date on her Missouri tour, Mr. Frank D. Marlow said: