The Unpopular Review, Vol. 2, No. 4, October-December 1914, including Vol. 2 Index

This is The Unpopular Review , Vol. 2, No. 4, October-December, 1914, including the index for Vol. 2, which consists of Issues No. 3 and 4. Issue No. 3 is posted at Project Gutenberg as EBook #15876.
No. 4 OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 1914 Vol. II

A singular phenomenon of our time is the invention of a new species of martyrdom. Resistance to wrong, real or imaginary, revolt against oppression, the endeavor to overthrow an established order, has in all ages been attended with hardship and suffering. When repression or punishment has been cruel or vindictive, and the victims have cried out against it, in the more humane ages, they have had in their protest the sympathy and support of right-minded men, however opposed to the aims of the agitation or revolt in question. Those who have suffered for their convictions, whether at the hands of a court or through the bloody judgment of the sword, have won the name of hero or martyr. The time has been when those who were known to hold opinions which were regarded as dangerous to the State, or were obnoxious to the ruling power, fell under the ban of the Government as criminals. In the last two or three centuries, among the more liberal and advanced nations, outright persecution of this kind has been unknown; but between this merely negative freedom of opinion and that positive freedom which we understand by the terms “free speech” and “free press” there is a long distance, the traversing of which has been slow and irregular. It is possible to maintain that even now, and even in such countries as the United States or England, this freedom is not absolute; there are extremely few things, either in government or in common life, that are absolute. But the remarkable thing about the outcry for freedom of speech, of which we have lately been hearing so much, is that this clamor has nothing whatever to do with the question of the absolute completeness of that freedom. What the agitators complain of is not that there are some things which they are not permitted to say or to print; it is not that their publications are censored or the circulation of them obstructed; it is not that the doctrines in which they are interested cannot be put before any assemblage, large or small, which chooses to gather together in an orderly way to hear them. Their grievance is that at certain times or places, where the speaking they wish to do would be either an invasion of ordinary private rights of others, or, in the opinion of the authorities, an incitement to disorder, the authorities intervene to prevent these results. The restrictions to which they object are not limitations as to the nature of the doctrine preached, nor yet limitations that in any way confine the general spreading of the doctrine. What they are not allowed to do is—in principle, at least; of course, there have been blundering applications of it—simply what nobody else is allowed to do. In a word, what they demand is not that they shall have the same freedom as the ordinary citizen in spite of being enemies of the established order, but that they shall have special privileges and immunities because of being enemies of the established order.