Harold J. Laski

The case, as elsewhere, merely affords proof that liberty and violence are antithetic terms.

You become, from the nature of things, a unit of attack or defence whose personality is immaterial and insignificant.

Let me first of all make the point that if you are a citizen in a besieged town, you cannot expect a normal freedom of speech; to be within the area of actual military operations means that you must not hope to be regarded as an individual.

Executive justice, in fact, is simply an euphemism for the denial of justice; and the restoration of order at this cost involves dangers of which the price is costly indeed.

Even Lincoln supported his generals in completely indefensible attacks on civilian rights.

If it could, there would have been no Russian Revolution; and there would be no movement for Indian self-government today.

The proper protection of the individual is deliberately neglected in the belief that a reign of terror will minimize disaffection.

The fact always emerges that once the operation of justice is transferred from the ordinary courts to some branch of the executive, abuses always occur.

Whether you study repression in Ireland or Russia, Bavaria or Hungary or India, its history is always the same.

It was abused in the Civil War even under a mind so humane and generous as that of Lincoln; it was emphatically and dangerously abused in the Amritsar rebellion of 1919.

I know of no case where the state has exercised extraordinary power outside the normal process of law, in which that authority has not been grossly abused.

Here I can only express the view that the resumption of order ought always to be followed forthwith by the normal principles of judicial control; and that the military authorities ought not, save where it is quite impossible for the civil…

I can think of no revolutionary period in history when a government has gained by stifling the opinion of men who did not see eye to eye with it; and I suggest that the revolutionary insistence that persuasion is futile finds little…

Losing criticism, they do not know the limits within which they can safely operate; they lose their power because they are not told when they are abusing it.

In general, revolutions fail because those who make them deny freedom to their opponents.

I agree at once that it is entirely academic to demand freedom of speech in a time of civil war, for the simple reason that no one will pay the slightest attention to the demand; violence and freedom are, a priori, contradictory terms.

The first objective of any society must be organized security; it is only when this has been obtained, that freedom of speech is within the pale of discussion.

To suggest that it should be then bound by principles which weaken its effective striking power, is, it is said, to ask it to fight with one hand tied behind its back.

When the safety of a state is threatened it is bound to take, and is justified in taking, all action to end the crisis.

I am unable to take that view; and I am therefore anxious that they should not be able to make it prevail without finding that there are barriers in their path.

If you think of men like Lord Eldon, like Sir William Joynson-Hicks, like Attorney-General Palmer, you will realize how natural it is for them to believe that the proper place for Thoreau or Tolstoy, for William Morris or Mr Bernard Shaw…

Every state contains innumerable and stupid men who see in unconventional thought the imminent destruction of social peace.

My reason for this view is the quite simple one that I do not trust the executive power to act wisely in the presence of any threat, nor assumed threat, to public order.

You will see that my anxiety is to maximize the difficulties of any government which desires to initiate prosecutions in this realm.

With the best will in the world, their tendency is to be unduly responsive to executive opinion.