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Read the two speeches and then answer the questions below *Make sure you type the question with your answer*

From Woodrow Wilson, War Message to Congress (1917)

Let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are... Our object... is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles... The menace to peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic government backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people.

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants... Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall if necessary spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its principles, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion...If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression...

It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts- for democracy, ...for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs was arrested for delivering an antiwar speech and convicted of violating the Espionage Act. in his speech to the jury, he defended the right of dissent in wartime.

Gentlemen, you have heard the report of my speech at Canton Ohio on June 16, and I submit that there is not a word in that speech to warrant the charges set out in the indictment...In what I had to say there my purpose was to have the people understand something about the social system in which we live and to prepare them to change this system by perfectly peaceable and orderly means into what I, as a Socialist, conceive to be a real democracy...I have never advocated violence in any form. I have always believed in education, in intelligence, in enlightenment; and I have always made my appeal to the reason and to the conscience of the people.

In every age there have been a few heroic souls who have been in advance of their time, who have been misunderstood, maligned, persecuted, sometimes put to death... Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and their compeers were the rebels of the day... But they had the moral courage to be true to their convictions...

William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton... and other leaders of the abolition movement who were regarded as public enemies and treated accordingly, were true to their faith and stood their ground...You are now teaching your children to revere their memories, while all their detractors are in oblivion...

The war of 1812 was opposed and condemned by some of the most influential citizens; the Mexican American War was vehemently opposed and bitterly denounced, even after the war had been declared and was in progress by Abraham Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Daniel Webster... They were not indicted; They were not charged with treason...

Isn't it strange that we Socialists stand almost alone today in upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States? The revolutionary fathers... understood that free speech, a free press and the right of free assemblage by the people were fundamental principles in democratic government... I believe in the right of free speech, in war as well as in peace.

1. What does Wilson think is the greatest threat to freedom in the world?

2. Why does Debs relate the history of wartime dissent in the United States?

3. Does anything in Wilson's speech offer a harbinger of the extreme repression of free speech that occurred during World War I?