---
title: Wartime censorship in the First World War:Britain, Germany, France and the United States
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/
description: between 1914 and 1918 all four governments put the press under wartime control, by statute, by military decree or through the post office; they suspended…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a First World War field-intelligence collage of trench maps, wireless transmission logs and aerial reconnaissance photographs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwi.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Wartime censorship in the First World War:Britain, Germany, France and the United States

At a glance

Between 1914 and 1918 all four governments put the press under wartime control, by statute, by military decree or through the post office…

- **When:** July 31, 1914
- **Actor:** The governments of the United Kingdom, the German Empire, France and the United States, through…
- **Target:** The domestic press, publishers, socialist and anti-war papers, the foreign-language press, and…
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/)
- **Regime:** [Wilson administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/wilson-administration/), [Asquith government](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/asquith-government/), [German Empire under Wilhelm II](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/german-empire/)

Full details

- **Actor:** The governments of the United Kingdom, the German Empire, France and the United States, through their war ministries, military commanders, censorship offices, post offices and courts
- **Target:** The domestic press, publishers, socialist and anti-war papers, the foreign-language press, and speakers in each country

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/#sources)

On this page

**In one line:** between 1914 and 1918 all four governments put the press under wartime control, by statute, by military decree or through the post office; they suspended or excluded papers that broke the rules, and in the United States the courts upheld prison sentences for anti-war speech before the law was partly repealed and the best-known prisoner released.

![Diagram: four legal routes (a British statute and regulations, a Prussian siege law handing power to military commanders, a French press law with a War Ministry press bureau, U.S. statutes enforced through the mails and the courts) lead to suspended papers, blank columns, mail exclusions and prison terms, followed by court tests and repeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/wwi-wartime-censorship-diagram.svg)

![Cover of The Masses, August 1917, by Frank Walts: a stylised face in brown, blue and cream under the magazine's title](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/wwi-wartime-censorship-masses-august-1917.jpg)

*The August 1917 issue of* The Masses*, which the New York postmaster refused to accept for mailing under the Espionage Act. Cover by Frank Walts. Published in the United States in 1917; public domain. Scan: Brown University Library, via Wikimedia Commons.*

## What happened

**Britain**

- **8 August 1914.** Parliament passes the Defence of the Realm Act (4 & 5 Geo. 5 c. 29), four days after Britain enters the war. It lets the King in Council issue regulations "for securing the public safety and the defence of the realm". Regulation 27 makes it an offence to spread "false reports" or reports "likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty" or to interfere with the success of the forces.
- **August 1914.** The Press Bureau is set up, first under F. E. Smith and later under Stanley Buckmaster. It censors military news and cables and issues official news to the press.
- **27 October 1914.** The battleship HMS *Audacious* sinks after striking a mine off the north coast of Ireland. At Admiral Jellicoe's request the loss is kept secret: the Admiralty asks the press not to report it, the ship stays in published fleet lists, and the loss is not admitted until after the war.
- **November 1915.** The London evening paper *The Globe* is suppressed for about two weeks after printing a false report that Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, was about to resign.
- **1 January 1916.** The Glasgow socialist weekly *Forward* is suppressed and its issue seized, as is the paper *Vanguard*. *Forward* had reported meetings that the Minister of Munitions, David Lloyd George, addressed in Glasgow, including a Christmas Day meeting where he was booed; press reports of that meeting had been officially censored. The suppression is raised in the Commons on 10 January 1916. Accounts of the paper's history state that it reopened after its editor, Thomas Johnston, promised not to print material that might prejudice the war effort.
- **Letters.** The regulations also reached the mail. A 1916 Postal Censorship form returned letters with the words: "The communication returned in this cover constitutes a breach of the Defence of the Realm Regulations. The writer is warned to be more careful in future."

![A printed Postal Censorship form of 1916 stating that the returned letter breaches the Defence of the Realm Regulations and may proceed if the passages about Zeppelin raids, handwritten on the form, are omitted](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/wwi-wartime-censorship-dora-postal-notice-1916.jpg)

*Postal Censorship notice, British government, 1916; the censor has written in "Zeppelin raids" as the passage to remove. Public domain (UK Crown copyright expired; published before 1931). Imperial War Museum, Documents.8252, via Wikimedia Commons.*

**Germany**

- **31 July 1914.** Wilhelm II declares a state of war, bringing into force the Prussian Law on the State of Siege of 4 June 1851. Executive power passes to the military commanders of each army corps district, whose deputy commands at home take over press censorship and the banning of meetings. The 1851 law does not say in detail how these powers are to be used, and practice varies by district.
- **21 September 1914.** The Berlin military command (*Oberkommando in den Marken*) bans the Social Democratic Party's central paper *Vorwärts* for three days.
- **February and October 1915.** The military creates the Oberzensurstelle (Supreme Censorship Office) to make censorship uniform. In October the Kriegspresseamt (War Press Office) is set up under the Supreme Army Command, with the Oberzensurstelle attached. Censors were formally limited to military matters, but since almost every political question touched the war, they could act against almost any political statement.
- **October 1916.** *Vorwärts* is banned again after criticising war profiteers, which the censors treat as a breach of the *Burgfrieden* (the wartime political truce). The military says the paper will not reappear unless its editing is controlled more strictly; the party executive installs Hermann Müller and then Friedrich Stampfer as editors. The anti-war majority in the Berlin party calls this the "*Vorwärts*-Raub" (the theft of *Vorwärts*).

**France**

- **2 and 5 August 1914.** A state of siege is declared. The law of 5 August 1914 on "indiscrétions de la presse en temps de guerre" bars news of operations, mobilisation, troop movements and the army's composition unless released by the War Ministry's press bureau. The press, inside the *Union sacrée* declared by President Poincaré on 4 August, accepts prior censorship.
- **Blank columns.** Censors struck text from proofs and papers printed the gaps white (*blancs*); the pacifist Pierre Brizon's *La Vague* was one that carried many. Journalists called the censorship "Anastasie", a name French caricaturists had long used for the censor.
- **Autumn 1914.** Georges Clemenceau's *L'Homme libre* ("The Free Man") is suspended after an article on conditions in hospital trains. He renames it *L'Homme enchaîné* ("The Chained Man").
- **10 September 1915.** Maurice and Jeanne Maréchal publish the first *Le Canard enchaîné*, drawn by H.-P. Gassier; *canard* is slang for a false or exaggerated story. The paper targets censorship and *bourrage de crâne* ("skull-stuffing", critics' term for official and patriotic news). Its opening notice says it will print, "après minutieuse vérification, que des nouvelles rigoureusement inexactes" ("after meticulous checking, only strictly inaccurate news"). It stops after a few issues and relaunches in 1916. The official optimism it mocked is covered, with the French and Austro-Hungarian propaganda bureaus, in [Managing the news: France's 'bourrage de crâne' and Austria-Hungary's War Press Office (1914-1918)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/).

![Front page of the first issue of Le Canard enchaîné, 10 September 1915, with a column headed "Coin! Coin! Coin!" and a cartoon strip "Pour faire un Journal en 1915" including a pot labelled "Blanc de zinc" and a scene "Chez Madame Anastasie"](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/wwi-wartime-censorship-canard-1915.jpg)

*First issue of* Le Canard enchaîné*, 10 September 1915. Gassier's strip "Pour faire un Journal en 1915" shows a pot of "Blanc de zinc" (zinc white) and a visit "Chez Madame Anastasie". Public domain (published 1915; artist died 1951). Via Wikimedia Commons.*

**United States**

- **April and May 1917.** On 13 April, a week after the declaration of war, Wilson creates the Committee on Public Information (CPI) under George Creel. On 28 May it issues a voluntary code, the *Preliminary Statement to the Press of the United States*, sorting war news into "dangerous", "questionable" and "routine".
- **15 June 1917.** The Espionage Act makes it a crime in wartime to wilfully make "false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces", or to obstruct recruiting. Title XII declares matter that violates the Act nonmailable, which gives the Post Office power over the mails.
- **July 1917.** Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson's department rules that the August issue of the socialist monthly *The Masses* violates the Act. On 24 July, in *Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten*, 244 F. 535 (S.D.N.Y. 1917), Judge Learned Hand orders it mailed: "To assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government." The Second Circuit reverses him on 2 November 1917 (246 F. 24).
- **1917.** Burleson revokes the second-class mailing privilege of Victor Berger's socialist daily, the *Milwaukee Leader*. The Supreme Court upholds this in 255 U.S. 407 (1921), with Brandeis and Holmes dissenting.
- **6 October 1917.** Section 19 of the Trading with the Enemy Act bars foreign-language papers from printing news or comment on the war or the government unless they first file a sworn English translation with the postmaster or hold a permit. An executive order gives the Postmaster General charge of these rules and sets up a Censorship Board for communications with other countries.
- **16 May 1918.** The Sedition Act amends the Espionage Act to punish, among other things, "any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States".
- **16 June 1918.** Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party's best-known leader and a former presidential candidate, speaks against the war in Canton, Ohio. He is convicted in September and sentenced to ten years.
- **March 1919.** In *Schenck v. United States*, 249 U.S. 47 (3 March), a unanimous Court upholds a conviction for leaflets urging resistance to the draft. Holmes asks "whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent". A week later, in *Debs v. United States*, 249 U.S. 211 (10 March), the Court unanimously upholds Debs's conviction. He enters prison in April.
- **10 November 1919.** In *Abrams v. United States*, 250 U.S. 616, the Court upholds, 7 to 2, the convictions of Russian-born immigrants for leaflets against U.S. intervention in Russia. Holmes, joined by Brandeis, dissents: "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market".
- **1920 to 1921.** Debs runs for president from the Atlanta penitentiary and receives about 914,000 votes. Congress votes in December 1920 to repeal the 1918 amendments, and the repeal becomes law by the Act of 3 March 1921; the 1917 Act stays in force. On 23 December 1921 President Harding commutes the sentences of Debs and 23 others, effective Christmas Day.

## How it works

Censorship is not itself a technique id in FRAME's taxonomy; the tags below describe the official messaging around it, not the act of suppression.

- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): in his annual message of 7 December 1915, Wilson said citizens "born under other flags" had "poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life" and that "such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out". The label names a group and a disposition rather than an act; "disloyal" later became a category of criminal speech in the 1918 Act. [Beat Back the Hun with Liberty Bonds](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/beat-back-the-hun-1918/) aims the same technique at the enemy.
- [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/): a 1918 CPI advertisement headed "Spies and Lies" (*The Delineator*, July 1918) told readers to "Report the man who spreads pessimistic stories" or "cries for peace" to the Justice Department, presenting ordinary war talk as an opening for enemy agents and informing as the protection. [Destroy This Mad Brute — Enlist](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917/), [Remember Belgium — Enlist To-Day](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/remember-belgium-1915/) and Germany's [Helft uns siegen! Zeichnet die Kriegsanleihe (Help Us Win! Subscribe to the War Loan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/helft-uns-siegen-1917/) use fear-appeal to recruit and raise loans.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the censors controlled which facts reached print. France's 5 August 1914 law let military news appear only once the War Ministry's press bureau had released it, so the official communiqué was the only printed account of operations. In Britain, *Audacious* stayed in the fleet lists after it sank, so the published fleet looked unchanged. The German chart [Sind wir die Barbaren? (Are We the Barbarians?)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sind-wir-die-barbaren-1916/) shows card-stacking in a single poster.

## Then and now

![Loose Lips Might Sink Ships: a burning ship sinking under the slogan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/loose-lips-might-sink-ships.jpg)

*[Loose Lips Might Sink Ships](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/loose-lips-might-sink-ships/), U.S. government home-front security campaign, 1942. Public domain (U.S. government work).*

The 1942 poster and the 1918 "Spies and Lies" advertisement both tell civilians that careless words help the enemy, and both use [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/). The differences are larger:

- **What is restricted.** The poster asks people not to talk about details such as ship movements. The First World War measures went further: the Sedition Act made "disloyal" language a crime, and the Post Office excluded opinion magazines from the mails.
- **Enforcement.** The poster carries no penalty. The 1917 and 1918 laws were enforced with prosecutions, prison terms and mail exclusion, which the Supreme Court upheld in *Schenck*, *Debs* and *Abrams*.
- **Continuity.** The 1917 Espionage Act, kept when Congress repealed the 1918 amendments, was still in force when the poster appeared.

See also [Wanted! For Murder — Her Careless Talk Costs Lives](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/wanted-for-murder-careless-talk/) (WWII) and the case study [The Justice Department's FARA release and public demonstrations](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/doj-fara-demonstrations/) (2026).

![Eugene V. Debs, in a suit and hat, leaving the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, surrounded by a group of men](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/wwi-wartime-censorship-debs-release-1921.jpg)

*Eugene V. Debs leaving the federal penitentiary in Atlanta on 25 December 1921, after President Harding commuted his sentence. Photograph by Underwood & Underwood. Public domain (published before 1931). Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons.*

## Positions on the record

- **The governments' stated positions.** Britain framed its powers as "for securing the public safety and the defence of the realm" and Regulation 27 as aimed at "false reports" and disaffection. France framed its 1914 law as a measure against press "indiscrétions" useful to the enemy. German censors justified suspending *Vorwärts* by the need to keep the *Burgfrieden*. The U.S. Espionage Act is framed against false statements meant to hurt the forces and against obstructing recruitment; in *Schenck*, Holmes wrote that "When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight".
- **Critics' positions.** Hand held in *Masses* that the Act did not reach political agitation short of direct incitement. Holmes and Brandeis, dissenting in *Abrams*, argued that a leaflet posing no immediate danger could not be punished. *Le Canard enchaîné* existed to mock censorship and *bourrage de crâne*. The SPD's anti-war wing called the military-backed takeover of *Vorwärts* a theft.
- **This archive's reading.** The laws, suspensions, mail exclusions, court decisions, repeal and commutation above are documented. The page does not rule on any belligerent's war aims, on whether a suppressed paper's view of the war was right, or on whether a given restriction was militarily necessary. Totals of prosecutions, suspensions and blanked columns are not given, because consistent counts were not established from the sources used.

## Same-method test

The same definitions are applied to all four governments, and the differences are stated:

- **Legal form.** Britain: a statute delegating regulation-making to the executive. Germany: an 1851 siege law handing power to military commanders, with no new imperial statute. France: a state of siege plus a press law and prior censorship of proofs. United States: no prior censorship of the domestic press, but criminal statutes, Post Office control of the mails, a permit rule for the foreign-language press and a voluntary code.
- **Visibility.** French cuts showed on the page as blank columns; British and German suspensions as missing issues; U.S. exclusions and prosecutions in court records, some tested in open court within weeks.
- **After the war.** Congress repealed the 1918 amendments in 1920-21 and a president commuted the best-known sentence in 1921. This page does not cover the post-war history of the British, French or German measures.

Suspending a paper for reporting a minister's hostile reception, keeping a warship's loss out of print, or excluding a magazine from the mails for its opinions would be recorded the same way here whichever government did it.

## How to spot it

- Read the statute or decree itself. Check whether it targets false reports, military secrets or opinion, and whether it keeps them apart.
- Note who decides: a court, a minister, a military commander or a postmaster. Each leaves a different record.
- Treat blank spaces and missing issues as evidence that something was removed, and look for the text in archives or foreign reports.
- Compare official communiqués with later admissions, such as the post-war acknowledgment of the *Audacious* loss.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from this page's sourced facts (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| *The Masses*, August 1917 cover, Frank Walts | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Masses,_Volume_9,_Issue_10.pdf) (Brown University Library scan) | Public domain (U.S. publication, 1917) |
| *Loose Lips Might Sink Ships* (1942) | FRAME gallery | Public domain (U.S. government work) |
| Debs leaving the Atlanta penitentiary, 25 December 1921, Underwood & Underwood | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eugene_Debs_released_from_prison,_1921.jpg) (Library of Congress) | Public domain (published before 1931) |
| Postal Censorship notice, 1916, British government | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Postal_censorship_message_1916_IWM_Documents.8252.jpg) (Imperial War Museum, Documents.8252) | Public domain (PD-UKGov; published 1916) |
| *Le Canard enchaîné*, first issue, 10 September 1915, H.-P. Gassier | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Canard_encha%C3%AEn%C3%A9_-_10_septembre_1915.jpg) | Public domain (published 1915; artist died 1951) |

### Image gaps

- **A French newspaper page with censored blank columns.** None with clear source details and licence was found on Wikimedia Commons in the searches made for this page. French wartime papers published before 1931 are public domain in the United States, so a page from Gallica or a similar archive would be a good next addition. **This gap can be filled.**
- **A public Defence of the Realm Act poster or press notice.** Only the postal notice above was found on Wikimedia Commons. A higher-resolution scan of it, or a street notice, would be a useful addition.
- **The CPI "Spies and Lies" advertisement (1918).** A U.S. government work and so public domain, but no copy was found on Wikimedia Commons, and loc.gov was unreachable from the build environment. **This gap can be filled.**
- **The 1914 or 1916 ban notices for *Vorwärts*.** A copy is on Google Arts & Culture, but its U.S. copyright status and licence are unclear. Not included.
- **The Canton speech of 16 June 1918.** The only Commons photograph found is 400 pixels wide with no author or date information on its file page. Not included.

## Sources

**Full text in this archive:** [Wilson's war message of April 2, 1917](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wilson-war-message-1917/).

- Defence of the Realm Act 1914 (4 & 5 Geo. 5 c. 29), 8 August 1914, and the Defence of the Realm Regulations, Regulation 27. Text in *The Defence of the Realm Manual* (HMSO, successive editions).
- House of Commons, "Suppression of 'Forward' Newspaper", *Hansard*, 10 January 1916.
- "Contumacious Newspaper Punished", 8 November 1915, via [Trove](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110059820) (suppression of *The Globe*).
- *The Historical Journal*, ["The Press Bureau, 'D' Notices, and Official Control of the British Press's Record of the First World War"](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/press-bureau-d-notices-and-official-control-of-the-british-presss-record-of-the-first-world-war/DBBE36A3580106F37716505521AEAB88).
- On HMS *Audacious*: the Royal Navy's decision to withhold the loss at Jellicoe's request; see [HMS *Audacious* (1912)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Audacious_(1912)) and its cited naval histories.
- Prussian Law on the State of Siege (*Gesetz über den Belagerungszustand*), 4 June 1851; 1914-1918-Online, "Civilian and Military Power (Germany)" and "Stellvertretendes Generalkommando".
- PR-Museum, ["Organisation: Organisatorische Verbesserungen 1915"](https://pr-museum.de/organisationen/institutionen/amtliche-oeffentlichkeitsarbeit-im-ersten-weltkrieg/organisation-organisatorische-verbesserungen-1915/) and ["Zensur I"](https://pr-museum.de/organisationen/institutionen/amtliche-oeffentlichkeitsarbeit-im-ersten-weltkrieg/zensur/) (Oberzensurstelle, Kriegspresseamt).
- *vorwärts*, ["Der Vorwärts-Raub"](https://www.vorwaerts.de/geschichte/der-vorwarts-raub) (October 1916 ban and editorial takeover).
- Loi du 5 août 1914 réprimant les indiscrétions de la presse en temps de guerre; Musée de la Grande Guerre, ["État de siège, censure : un passage brutal à l'état de guerre"](https://www.museedelagrandeguerre.com/fr/espace-pedagogique/dossiers-documentaires/mobilisation/etat-de-siege.html).
- Gallica (BnF), ["Les premiers pas du 'Canard enchaîné'"](https://gallica.bnf.fr/blog/19122016/les-premiers-pas-du-canard-enchaine), 19 December 2016; *Chemins de mémoire*, "1915-1916: Les deux naissances du *Canard enchaîné*"; Musée Clemenceau, "Clemenceau et la censure".
- Committee on Public Information, *Preliminary Statement to the Press of the United States* (1917), [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/18002144).
- Committee on Public Information, "Spies and Lies" advertisement, *The Delineator*, July 1918.
- Woodrow Wilson, Third Annual Message to Congress, 7 December 1915 ([Miller Center](https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-7-1915-third-annual-message)).
- Espionage Act, 15 June 1917, ch. 30, 40 Stat. 217; Trading with the Enemy Act, 6 October 1917, § 19; Sedition Act, 16 May 1918, 40 Stat. 553.
- *Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten*, 244 F. 535 (S.D.N.Y. 1917), reversed, 246 F. 24 (2d Cir. 1917).
- *United States ex rel. Milwaukee Social Democratic Publishing Co. v. Burleson*, 255 U.S. 407 (1921).
- *Schenck v. United States*, 249 U.S. 47 (1919); *Debs v. United States*, 249 U.S. 211 (1919); *Abrams v. United States*, 250 U.S. 616 (1919) ([text at LII](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/250/616)).
- National Archives at Chicago, ["Eugene V. Debs: Canton speech"](https://www.archives.gov/chicago/highlights/debs-canton); The First Amendment Encyclopedia, ["Debs v. United States"](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/debs-v-united-states/) and ["Sedition Act of 1918"](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/sedition-act-of-1918/).