Published in the radical, left-wing magazine The Masses in 1916, Robert Minor’s At Last a Perfect Soldier shows a delighted army medical examiner presiding over a hulking, headless recruit – an ideal fighter for his brawn and lack of a brain. The cartoon, amongst other controversial caricatures by fellow cartoonists including Art Young and HJ Glintenkamp, prompted the US Post Office to stop delivering the magazine, citing a violation of the Espionage Act, resulting in a legal battle and the eventual closure of the publication.
The legal action that followed forced The Masses to cease publication. In April, 1918 the jury failed to agree on the guilt of the defendants. The second trial in January 1919 also ended with a hung jury. As the war was now over, it was decided not to take them to court for a third time.
After being released from prison Minor found work with the New York Call. He was sent to Europe and covered the Russian Civil War and the Spartakist Rising. While in Germany Minor was arrested and charged with spreading treasonous propaganda among British and American troops.
Minor was at first critical of the lack of democracy in Russia. He wrote that: “There is no more industrial democracy in Lenin’s highly centralized institutions than in the United States Post Office”. However, when Minor arrived home he published I Change My Mind a Little, and announced he was going to join the American Communist Party.
