HORRENDOUS CATALOG
Hesseltine, William B.
Horrendous Catalog t Opponents of War, 1917-1918, by M. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite. University of Wisconsin Press. 399 pp. $6. Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine THERE is a difference, even...
...Sometimes the material with which a historian deals puts a heavy strain Pt his obligation to be objective...
...The historian, on the other hand, must concern himself with the analysis of the past, an explanation of its phenomena, and an evaluation of its effects...
...Before his death H. C. Peterson had compiled the horrendous catalog of the outrages against liberty, freedom of speech, and ordinary justice which the oppressors inflicted on the opponents of World War I. Gilbert C. Fite has edited and rewritten the manuscript...
...On various charges the prosecutors hailed opponents of the war before judges, and the judges imposed outrageous sentences and lashed the victims with tongues of hatred...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine THERE is a difference, even though many alleged historians do not seem to know it, between polemics and history...
...He is the judge of the evidence, but he does not bring in a simple verdict...
...With even more insubstantial charges, hysterical citizens subjected opponents of the war to beatings, torture, and murder...
...The authors brought indignation rather than perspective to their story and failed to point out that this is but one chapter in the long decline of ancient and traditional freedom...
...Unfortunately, however, the volume must be classified as polemics rather than history...
...Both the polemicist and the historian reach into the record of the past for their material, but the polemicist, like a lawyer drawing up a brief, is concerned with winning a case for the client, in advancing a point of view, or in making propaganda for a cause...
...Sitth, certainly, is the case of those 1»fto would study the treatment ac-*&rded by governments and selfE>us civic groups to those who he temerity to question the , the rightness—even the holiness—of American participation in World War I. Against I. W. W.'s, pacifists, Socialists, Progressives, religious people who took the commandment against murder literally, and even people who could not afford to buy bonds, the courts, the Army, the Wilson Administration, and voluntary "citizens" committees of varying names marshaled a host of persecutions...
...The cases mounted into the thousands—and a pattern ran through them: it was clearly the intention of the "better" citizens and the business groups to use the patriotic hysteria to stamp out all radicalism and nonconformity...
...The historian is concerned with the truth that lies behind the facts...
...The historian is concerned with the causal relationships between events, with establishing perspective, with seeing Ae things that happened in the past in their relationships with the other things in the same time and place...
Vol. 21 • September 1957 • No. 9
