by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

“Is Frank Victim of Mob Violence” headlined the Capital Journal’s lead editorial. The hallmark of American justice lies in our jury system. That ideal is produced upon the principle that a jury of one’s peers is best able to weigh the evidence presented in an adversarial setting and then reach a conclusion of guilt or innocence.

The principle of a jury of disinterested peers has been challenged, most recently by grand jury decisions within the past year in Ferguson, Missouri and in New York by decisions that have the appearance of representing the bias of the jury. There is nothing new here, as the case of Leo Frank a century ago demonstrates.

The paper’s editorial purports to look at the issue disinterestedly, though close reading will show that a distinct bias is evident:

The supreme court holds out no hope for Leo M. Frank, convicted of murder at Atlanta, Georgia, one of the most widely discussed criminal cases in years. The principal defense is that public prejudice was responsible for the verdict, which was not supported by the evidence, resting mainly on the testimony of a negro, who was himself implicated in the crime. Seldom before has the evidence of a negro counted for much against that a white man, but in this case, it is alleged, an epidemic of heinous offenses had made people hungry for a conviction and the police were anxious to do something which would appease the popular clamor. Many persons who have followed the case closely gravely doubt if Frank’s guilt had been established, and even the supreme court of the United States was divided. Justices Hughes and Holmes, two of its ablest members, dissenting from the majority opine, the latter voicing his objections in these words:

“Any judge who has sat with juries knows that in spite of forms they are extremely likely to be impregnated by the environing atmosphere. And when we find the judgment the expert on the spot, of the judge whose business it was to preserve not only form, but substance, to have been that if one juryman yielded to the reasonable doubt that he himself later expressed in court as the result of most anxious deliberation, neither prisoner no counsel would be safe from the rage of the crowd, we think the presumption overwhelming that the jury responded to the passions of the mob.”

President Wilson, speaking to reporters from the United Press, spoke out against “an abominable libel of ignorance

[at] suggestions that America would be divided should it have to enter the war at the present time.”

The President appealed for “real neutrality.” arguing that it was the duty of America to think of America before Europe. The test of neutrality is not sympathy with one side or the other Rather, he said, it is to be ready to aid both sides when the time comes.

“Whatever may be said about the present condition of the world’s affairs,” he said, “it is clear that they are drawing rapidly to a climax and at the climax the test will come, not only for the nations engaged in the present colossal struggle – it will come for them of course – but the test will come to us particularly.”

Looking to the future, the President stated that:

I am not now thinking so preposterous a thought as that we should sit in judgment upon them – no nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation – but that we shall some day have to assist in reconstructing the processes of peace. Our resources are untouched; we are more and more becoming, by the force of circumstances the mediating nation of the world in respect to its finance. We must make up our minds what are the best things to do and what are the best ways to do them. We must put our money, our energy, our enthusiasm, our sympathies into these things; and we must have our judgment prepared and our spirits chastened against the coming of that day.

So that I am not speaking in a selfish spirit when I say that our whole duty for the present, at any rate, is summed up with this motto:

“America first.”

Let us think of America before we think of Europe, in order that America may be fit to be Europe’s friend when the day of tested friendship comes. The test of friendship is not now sympathy with one side or the other but getting ready to help both sides when the struggle is over.

The basis of neutrality, gentlemen, is not indifference; it is not self interest. The basis of neutrality is sympathy for mankind. It is fairness; it is good will at bottom. It is impartiality of spirit and of judgment. I wish that all of our fellow citizens could realize that. There is in some quarters a disposition to create distemper is this body politic.

Wilson spoke to the 1915 silent majority:

America: is not it vocal just now? It is vocal in spots. But I for one have a complete and abiding faith in that great silent body of Americans who are not standing up and shouting and expressing heir opinions just now, but are waiting to find out and support the duty of America. I am just as sure of their solidarity and of their loyalty and of the unanimity, if we act justly, as I am that the the history of this country has at every crisis and turning point illustrated this great lesson.

We are the mediating nation of the world. I do not mean that we undertake not to mind our own business and to mediate where other people are quarreling. I mean the word in a broader sense. We are compounded of the nations of the world. We mediate their blood, we mediate their tradition, we mediate their sentiment, their tastes, their passions; we are ourselves compounded of these things. We are, therefore, able to understand them in the compound, not separately as partisans but unitedly as knowing and comprehending and embodying them all. It is in that sense that I mean that America is the mediation nation. The opinion of America, the action of America, is ready and free to turn in any direction.

Wilson stressed that America’s ambitions were not driven in one particular direction. America, he said, “has no hampering ambition as a world power. If we have been obliged by circumstances, or have considered ourselves obliged by circumstance in the past to take territory which we otherwise would not have thought of taking, I believe I am right in saying that we have considered our duty to administer that territory, not for ourselves, but for the people living in it and to put this burden upon ourselves not to think that this thing is ours for our use, but to regard ourselves as trustees for the general business for those to whom it does really belong, trustees ready to hand over the trust at any time when the business seems to make that possible and feasible.”

Further addressing his commitment to neutrality, the President stated that “My interest in the neutrality of the United States is not the petty desire to keep out of trouble. To judge by my experience, I have never been able to keep out of trouble. I have never looked for it, but I have always found it. I do not want to walk around trouble. If any man wants a scrap that is an interesting scrap and worth while, I am his man. I warn him that he is not going to draw me into the scrap for his advertisement, but if he is looking for trouble, that is the trouble of men in general, and I can help a little, why then, I am for it.

The substance of this speech is important, because it lays out what Wilson would attempt to achieve after the war at Versailles. But by then, the best laid plans of 1915 were to be undermined by our eventual entry into the war two years later.