Mr. Jourdain’s Note on the War [excerpt]

     Liberty of speech as it exists in England, so humorously characterized by Mr. Jourdain in the permission given a violent orator to have his say in Trafalgar Square, is being tried in all Germanic countries, but there is a most serious other side, and England has naturally been forced now and then to restrict free speech, while Germany has learned to allow it. Yet have not the violent speeches of reckless orators caused much harm in the world? I will only remind our readers of the assassination of President McKinley, who was shot by a Slav that had been incited by violent anarchistic speeches to commit the deed. Who is the real criminal, the inflammatory orator who put the idea into the degenerate brain of Czolgosz, or the assassin himself? [15][16]
     Considering such incidents I do not blame a government for restricting free speech under certain conditions, and I remember that this was done in England at the time of the Boer war. At that time I was passing through London and attended a meeting of protest held in the club rooms of a liberal society, where the British government was denounced in the most violent terms. I tried to speak up for England and England’s glory in preserving the ideal of liberty of speech, when I was hooted at and could not finish. The audience shouted, “There is no freedom in England!” and informed me that mass meetings had been broken up by the police; members of the club declared they had been ejected from meeting halls and bodily injured.