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1

Read the section in the text entitled "A War for Democracy," paying careful attention to the discussion of the Zimmermann note. The following document is the official dispatch in which Walter Hines Page, the American ambassador to Great Britain, informed the State Department that the British had intercepted Germany's invitation to Mexico to join in war against the United States. Unknown to the Germans, the British had broken the German diplomatic code. Read the dispatch, and consider the following questions: How did the Zimmermann communication combine with other events early in 1917 to impel the United States to declare war? Why did Germany have reason to believe that Mexico might be receptive to a proposal to wage war against the United States? Why did the British government give a copy of the Zimmermann note to the United States? How does Zimmermann's note reveal that Germany expected the United States to enter the war soon?

Walter Hines Page

2

Read the section in the text under the heading "Selling the War and Suppressing Dissent." The following excepts are from the official opinions of the United States Supreme Court in two cases involving the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917. In the first--Schenck v. United States-- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes formulated the famous "clear and present danger" test, and in the second--Debs v. United States-- he applied it to the specific case of Eugene v. Debs, the nation's most prominent socialist. Read the opinions and consider the following questions: Why did Schenck and Debs oppose the war and, particularly, the draft? Was theirs a widespread view? Is Holmes saying that the First Amendment means one thing in peacetime and quite another in wartime? If the staid Supreme Court found that speeches and pamphlets opposing the war effort could be declared illegal, how might the general public be expected to react to such dissent? Later in the year, Holmes used the "clear and present danger" reasoning to dissent from the Court's upholding of another espionage conviction (Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616). In this case, the leaflet was equally inflammatory. But only 5,000 were printed, they were casually distributed, and they were aimed more at American intervention in Russia than at the war against Germany. Holmes argued that there was no "present danger of immediate evil." In light of this, does it appear that the potential success of opposition can be as important as the precise words?

Supreme Court Rulings






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