258 F. 908 | 9th Cir. | 1919
(after stating the facts as above). The demurrer and the motion to quash raised the question whether or not either count of the indictment alleged an offense against the United States.
It is clear that an attempt to create disloyalty may be by showing a picture to the public, as well as by uttering speech or publishing a writing. The picture might be a truthful representation of an historical fact, and yet the nature of it, the circumstances surrounding the exhibition thereof, the time, the occasions when the public exhibitions are had, may well tend to show whether the picture would naturally, in the light of great events, be calculated to foment disloyalty or insubordination among the naval or military forces. In time of peace, a picture purporting to show incidents of a war fought more than a hundred years before, and exhibiting soldiers of . a foreign country bayoneting helpless American women and children, might arouse but ordinary interest. But, if it has come about that a war is being fought by the United States and in the war the cause of the United States is allied with that of the foreign country whose soldiers are pictured as murdering American women and children, and if, at the time the United States is enforcing draft laws and raising a large army and navy to fight the common enemy of the two allied countries, it seems but reasonable to say that the exhibition of such a picture is calculated to arouse antagonisms and to raise hatred in the minds of some who see it against the ally of the United States, and as a probable effect to put obstruction in the way of the necessary co-operation between the allied countries against the enemy, and to undermine an undivided •sentiment for the United States and to encourage disloyalty and refusal of duty or insubordination among the military and naval forces. Schenck v. United States, 249 U. S. 47, 39 Sup. Ct. 247, 63 L. Ed. 470.
“The act makes it an offense to willfully ‘attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States,’ or to ‘willfully obstruct the recruiting- or enlistment service of the United States,’ and its language is broad enough to include statements calculated to produce these results, when made in the presence of persons who aro not in the military or naval forces of the United States, provided they are willfully made and with the intent set out in the act.”
We believe that the issues under the counts were properly for the jury, and, as the evidence upon which the verdict was predicated is not in the record, we must accept the verdict as sustained by the evidence.
The judgment is affirmed.