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Montana - The First World War - and Xenophobia WW1 Trench Art or Shell Art

One other area that needs to be touched upon for Decorated shell casings such as this are considered trench
understanding Montana during the First World War is art. Casings from spent artillery shell casings from several
the Montana Sedition Act of 1918. As often happens when di erent calibers were used. e decorative work on these
people paint something with very broad strokes, they end pieces varies widely from crudely “punched” designs made
up grouping segments of our population unfairly and by amateur soldier-artists to more elaborately embossed
unjustly with unintended consequences. However, this and engraved pieces. Common themes used included oral
does not happen with just political issues; sadly, we see it designs, animals, patriotic, unit identi cations, military
happen in Masonry as well. images. Some casings had inscriptions to family and loved
ones. is casing shows the familiar Square and Compass
The Sedition Law was the strictest in the nation and motif.
the model for a nearly identical federal law passed just
months later. It resulted in the punishment of Montanans
with prison sentences of up to twenty years and maximum
fines of $20,000. The seventy-five men and three women
were sent to prison for saying things as innocuous as
“This is a rich man’s war.”
During the First World War, Americans became
terrified of anything or anyone being German; books were
burned across the country, and in Montana, teaching and
even preaching in German were forbidden. Enforcement
of the sedition law was capricious and often motivated by
xenophobia, revenge, or jealousy.

Montana’s sedition law made it a crime to “utter, print,
write, or publish any disloyal, profane, violent, scurrilous,
contemptuous, slurring, or abusive language” about the
U.S. government, its Constitution, military, or flag.

Montana’s sedition law conveniently overlooked the
First Amendment to the same Constitution. “Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the
freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government
for a redress of grievances.”

On May 6, 2006, Governor Brian Schweitzer at a
Pardoning ceremony, greeted descendants of the seventy-
eight men and women convicted of unlawful speech with
a heartfelt introduction about the importance of righting
old wrongs, as well as a personal tale of his immigrant
grandparents, forbidden from worshipping in their native
German during the same wartime hysteria in Montana.
“For those of you who are here to honor your ancestors,”
Schweitzer said, “I say to you: They were patriots.

There are several extensive and well-researched articles “ ere can be no compromise with war,’ it cannot be
written on Montanans Sedition Law, and a book worth reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency
reading, Darkest Before Dawn: Sedition and Free Speech or codi ed into common sense; for war is the slaughter
in the American West by Clemens P. Work. If this brief of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as
overview has piqued your interest - you are encouraged to large a scale as possible.”
read more about it. - Jeanette Rankin

Jeanette Rankin, U.S. House of Representatives from Montana
in 1916, and again in 1940. Jeanette voted No, on the United
States to enter World War I and II.

Montana Freemason Page 38 April/May 2020 Volume 96 No.3