Supreme Court was handed down on March 10, 1919. In the words of a Socialist work, Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, page 102, "The Court held that the law was not contrary to the Constitution and affirmed the sentence imposed upon Debs by the lower court. The decision was unanimous that the nature and intended effect of his speech was to obstruct recruiting and enlistment in the army."
Yet this same Year Book, in its account of "The Emergency Convention of the Socialist Party" at Chicago in August-September, 1919, says, page 409: "The Convention went on record offering the presidential nomination of the party to Eugene V. Debs, the nomination to be ratified at the 1920 Convention."
On March 5, 1920, at Albany, in the final argument for the five suspended Socialist Assemblymen, according to the "New York Times" of March 6, 1920, Seymour Stedman said of Debs: "He represents in a sense the Socialist movement. Perhaps he represents it more completely than any other man in this country."
In order that the reader may understand the extreme way in which lawbreakers like Debs and Victor L. Berger were justified by those defending the five suspended Socialists at Albany, we give an extract from the testimony of Morris Hillquit on February 19, 1920, as reported in the "New York Times" of the next day: