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Exhibition Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I

Editor Max Eastman to Woodrow Wilson, September 8, 1917. Woodrow Wilson Papers Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [093.00.00]
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Editor Max Eastman to Woodrow Wilson, September 8, 1917. Woodrow Wilson Papers Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [093.00.00]
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Editor Max Eastman to Woodrow Wilson, September 8, 1917. Woodrow Wilson Papers Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [093.00.00]
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Editor Max Eastman to Woodrow Wilson, September 8, 1917. Woodrow Wilson Papers Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [093.00.00]
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Editor Max Eastman to Woodrow Wilson, September 8, 1917. Woodrow Wilson Papers Manuscript Division, Library of Congress [093.00.00]
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Back cover of The Masses, August 1917. Vol. 9, no. 10 (issue no. 74). Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (094.00.00)
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Suppression of The Masses

Editor of the socialist journal The Masses Max Eastman openly opposed the U.S. entrance into World War I. During one anti-war speech in Fargo, North Dakota, Eastman narrowly escaped a lynching for expressing his views. Relating his experiences, Eastman wrote to President Wilson: "Is there not grave danger to our civil liberties in these hundreds of thousands of armed men, if in the name of patriotism they are allowed with impunity to degenerate into gangs of marauders?" Under the provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917, Postmaster General Albert Burleson declared the August 1917 issue of The Masses could not be mailed, effectively cutting off the magazine's distribution.