"The overwhelming focus of post-Halter flag desecration enforcement on incidents with political significance is further highlighted by the clustering of cases around the period of World War I and the postwar Red Scare and World War II, which were times of intensified patriotic-nationalistic fervor and decreased tolerance for dissent. ... The most extreme penalty for oral flag desecration was handed down under Montana's draconian 1918 law: E. V. Starr was sentenced during World War I to ten to twenty years at hard labor in the state penitentiary, along with a $500 fine, for refusing a mob's demands that he kiss the flag (a favorite wartime vigilante punishment for the allegedly disloyal) and for terming it "nothing but a piece of cotton" with "a little paint" and "some other marks" on it which "might be covered with microbes."16"