Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-06-25
PANIC AND COWARDICE DRIVE
THE SEDlTIoN BILL FORWARD
5olshevists May Claim at Least One Vic-
tory When They View the Pennsyl-
Vania Legislature PROSTATE
n Funk


= ENlSIONS made in the anti-sedition
bill. passed today at Harrisburg Nave
not served to make that fantastic meas
ure any less distastefu to those who re-
sent the motive as well as the letter of
the proposed law.
Governor Sproul has given his support
to bill which makes new sort of polit-
cal crime out of ordinary msdemeanors.
He has done more. The influence of his
administration has been thrown to the
support of measure drawn in a futile
effort to control mems minds and their
habits of thought.
Under the one clause which remains to
give the sedition bill purpose and mean
ing, courts and juries are given a right to
punish any one whose utterances tend"
to discredit the government, and it is fair
to assume that in some instances judi
cial Interpretation would include govern
mental officers under this general head
ing.
In its original form the bill was NOR
bid legislative atrocity. Pressure Of criti-
cism has caused It to be reduced to
clumsy yet perilous makeshift plainly de-
signed to limit advanced or liberal discus
sions of public affairs. 1t is for this rea-
son that the Governors determined ad-
vocacy of the measure must be regarded
as the first great mistake of his period in
Office.
Mr.. Sproul has yet time to change his
mind, to veto the bill and to advise his
advisers. Should he sign the anti-sedition
bill he will make the state ridiculous be-
fore the whole country.
Boshevism is passe elsewhere. At
Harrisburg it is triumphant. Your reds
may point gleefully to the panic that they
have created in the Legislature and on its
fringes.
! Some handbils and few bombs made
of junk were sufficient to bring about a
complete collapse of intelligent opinion
at the seat of government in great
state. For the anti-sedition bill is at
bottom furtive and cowardly. 1t is cheap.
It is shabby. And it is tragic because it
has always revealed an utter lack of
faith in the order of our government and
a dismal ignorance of the true strength
of those institutions which it assumes
| to protect.
The bill is patriotic as the lamentable
piff1e of a campaign Grafton is patriotic.
It's Americanism is the Americanism of
the tenth rate political word faker. 1t is
essentially the work of political litter
ates. A few spiders have appeared on the
fortifcat tions and the garrison has turned
loose poison gas and heavy artillery to
repel the assault.
Does Governor Sproul believe in his
secret heart that the institutions of
American government are so shaky that
| thew will not bear the weight of free
criticism? Have the men close to him
belief that they can stop by repression
| the processes of evolutionary thought?
They might as well command the seas
and the rains of heaven.
Free governments have always thrived
by the free expression of opinion. Every
where in the world where men are seek
ing earnestly to establish enlightened
popular administrative systems, free dis
cussion is the driving power behind their
efforts and, often enough, the source of
their inspiration.
Yet it is in a time like this that the
Pennsylvania Legislature proposes to
put restraint upon those agencies of critiHt
cism that always have been and always
will be the hope, strength and ultimate
safeguards of the republic.
Into the hands of politicians; to the
occasional bigot who arrives upon the
bench; to tinhorns and ward heelers who
achieve Office, we are to give the right to
decide what free men may say and think
of the processes and aims of their own
government.
No one who has nothing to hide has
ever feared criticism. Just governments
do not and need not fear it. Criticism
that is unjust becomes futile when it is
uttered. Criticism that is not unjust is
the beginning of progress. 1t is cleans
ing, like daylight.
Law and life are progressive together
and nothing can stop them.
If there are those at Harrisburg who
have fear of what theycall social unrest,
thew might as we'll remember now that
social unrest must be dealt with ration
ally at its source. 1t cannot be trampled
out of sight from overhead. That expert
ment has been tried on a thousand Occa.
sions and it has always ended in disaster.
If such laws as this had been in exist
ence hundred years ago our govern
ment would not now exist in its present
form. If they were on the statute books
sixty years ago most of the great abol-
tionists might have been sent away for
life terms in jail. If we had "anti-
sedition" bills like this one on the statute
books twenty years ago the political re-
forms that have been brought gradually
about since Rooseyelt's day would not