| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Richard W. Steele. Free Speech in the Good War. New York: St. Martin's. 1999. Pp. x, 309. $45.00.

Can the federal government constitutionally place limits upon free speech, even during the crisis of war? If it can do so, what set of circumstances are necessary, and how stringent can these constraints on free expression be? These are important and enduring questions for Americans, and Richard W. Steele has set out to address the problem through a case study of the American government's actions toward dissidents during World War II. As Steele points out at the very beginning of the book, Franklin D. Roosevelt and his officials did not employ the deeply repressive measures that Woodrow Wilson's government had used during World War I, at least in part because of a liberal backlash against the ways in which the Justice Department had abused its power. FDR and his three wartime attornies general understood the necessity for the government to protect free speech, not destroy it. And yet, Steele argues, any comparison with the excesses of World War I neither explains nor excuses the repressive behavior that did take place during World War II. In this spirit, Steele sets out to explore the campaign against extremism and its consequences. 1

Steele's strategy is biographical; he examines the question of the limits placed on free speech in the United States, 1939–1945, through a discussion of FDR's three attornies general: Frank Murphy in 1939; Robert Jackson, who served from early 1940 to mid-1941; and Francis Biddle, who took over from Jackson and remained in place through the end of the war. Looking at their records on a case-by-case basis, Steele assesses their accomplishments and failures and explores the extent to which government excesses were due to the attornies general's own beliefs or the pressures mounted on the Justice Department by the president and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). . . .

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