The jail, as a gag, is impotent. While it may master the body, it
cannot contain the soul.

3. The new order in America is already finding its voice. Although it
is so young, and so immature, it is speaking with an accent of gifted
authority.

Chaplin is not a dangerous man--except as his ideas are dangerous to
the existing order of society. His presence in the penitentiary, under
a twenty year sentence, indicates how dangerous those ideas are
considered by the masters of American public life. Rich those masters
are--fabulously rich; and strong they may be, yet so insecure do they
feel themselves that they are constrained to hold in prison this
dreamer and singer of the new social order.

Chaplin, in prison, like Debs in prison, is doing his work. He is
resisting the encroachments of those jail demons--hate, bitterness,
revenge; he is holding his mind on the goal--a newer, better social
order; he is keeping his vision of nature, of humanity, of
brotherhood, of courage, of love, of beauty,--clear and bright.
Chaplin, the man, is in jail; but Chaplin the poet and singer is
roaming wherever books go; wherever papers are read, and wherever
comrades repeat verses to one another in the flickering light of the
evening fire.

SCOTT NEARING.