Biography
William P. Elmer, from Dent County, Missouri, was sentenced to five years in prison for writing a newspaper article. He sewed in McNeil Island Penitentiary from September 10, 1918, to July 27, 1920, when he was paroled. According to the judge at his federal court trial, the portion of the article for which Eimer was convicted concerned the writer's impression of the facial expression of " a local soldier boy " who was "leaving home after a furlough." According to the court, the following excerpt from the article by Elmer was sufficient to find him guilty under the Espionage Act: There is a look in the faces of these boys not there when they roamed like free Americans at home, but a look of resignation to fate, an utter helplessness for the future. They know they are to be manacled, and shackled, and marked for slaughter.
