ROMAN HOLIDAY
“From Heaven what sign?
What writing on the wall?
What whisper running along the wind that power and pride shall fall?”
+Joseph T. Shipley.+[11]
On April ninth, five months before, when sentence was pronounced upon
Sacco and Vanzetti, their spoken words had been wise and beautiful. As
the Defense Committee said of them: “No tremor was in their voices,
no uncertainty was in their bearing. Their eyes looked steadfastly
upon the averted face of him who pronounced their doom of burning in
the electric chair. Theirs was the complete fortitude of idealism and
innocence.”
From the brief address of Sacco--barely five hundred words--return not
only the courage but also the courtesy in his generous reference to
Vanzetti as “my Comrade, the kind man to all the children.” And then
those final words spoken to Judge Thayer: “As I said before, Judge
Thayer know all my life, and he know that I am never been guilty,
never--not yesterday, nor to-day, nor forever.”
After that came Vanzetti’s longer speech, answering why sentence of
death should not be passed upon him: “What I say is that I am innocent,
not only of the Braintree crime, but also of the Bridgewater crime.
That I am not only innocent of these crimes, but in all my life I have
never stolen and I have never killed and I have never spilled blood.
That is what I want to say. And it is not all. Not only am I innocent
of these two crimes, not only in all my life have I never stolen, never
killed, never spilled blood, but I have struggled all my life, since I
began to reason, to eliminate crime from the earth.”
Then had come the pause in which Vanzetti had paid tribute to Debs:
“There is the best man I ever cast my eyes upon since I lived, a man
that will last and will grow always more near to and more dear to the
heart of the people, so long as admiration for goodness, for virtues,
and for sacrifice will last. I mean Eugene Victor Debs.... He has said
that not even a dog that kills chickens would have found an American
jury to convict it with the proof that the Commonwealth has produced
against us.”
These two “criminals” were like that other “criminal” Debs of whom
Clarence Darrow said that his only weakness was his honesty.
And then another pause, this time in courteous apology because
Vanzetti must speak some harsh words to Judge Thayer: “I am sorry to
say this because you are an old man, and I have an old father.”
Finally had come the close on these ringing words: “I am suffering
because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered
because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered
more for my family and for my beloved than for myself; but I am so
convinced to be right that you can only kill me once but if you could
execute me two time, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would
live again to do what I have done already.”
To men like Dr. Dewey and Dr. Morton Prince, having within their grasp
mental tools by which to test the guilt or innocence of those accused
of crime, that Dedham courthouse might well have seemed but the cave
of men living some twenty thousand years ago and the “law” the club
which those primitive men had wielded. At the end of “Psychology and
Justice,” published in the _New Republic_, Dr. Dewey writes: “The
committee’s sole reference to the conduct of Mr. Thompson is that, upon
occasion, his conduct indicated that ‘the case of the defense must be
rather desperate’ for him to resort to the tactics attributed to him.
Well, events, in which the committee had their share, indicate that
the plight of the defendants was indeed desperate; and Mr. Thompson,
above all others, had occasion to realize how tragically desperate.
But, quite apart from the committee’s own conviction of the guilt
of the accused, it was known to them that Mr. Thompson was equally
convinced of their innocence; that he was conservative in his social
and political views; that, at great sacrifice of time, of social and
professional standing, he had made a gallant fight for the accused
out of jealous zeal for the repute of his own state for even-handed
justice. Yet their sole reference to him is by way of a slur. I see
but one explanation of such lack of simple and seemingly imperative
generosity of mind.... Sacco and Vanzetti are dead. No discussion
of their innocence or guilt can restore them to life. That issue is
now merged in a larger one, that of our methods of ensuring justice,
one which in turn is merged in the comprehensive issue of the tone
and temper of American public opinion and sentiment, as they affect
judgment and action in any social question wherein racial divisions and
class interests are involved. These larger issues did not pass with the
execution of these men. Their death did not, indeed, first raise these
momentous questions. They have been with us for a long time and in
increasing measure since the War. But the condemnation and death of two
obscure Italians opened a new chapter in the book of history. Certain
phases of our life have been thrown into the highest of high lights.
They cannot henceforth be forgotten or ignored. They lie heavy on the
conscience of many, and they will rise in multitudes of unexpected ways
to trouble the emotions and stir the thoughts of the most thoughtless
and conventional.”
During those thirteen days of Boston history there were men and women,
millions of them, all over the United States and in many parts of the
world who, not very well-read in history and without either philosophy
or experience to prepare them for such events as those dramatized, were
robbed of their faith in the integrity of national life, stripped of
confidence in American justice, and heart-broken by this spectacle of
brutality. Before their eyes they saw what Samuel Taylor Coleridge one
hundred years and more ago had described as the special danger of his
own Georgian era: “An inward prostration of the soul before enormous
power, and a readiness to palliate and forget all iniquities to which
prosperity had wedded itself.”
These events they had to see without the perspective of history,
with its tracings of the wavering line of progress, to correct the
distortions of present suffering. It is they, honest, uncompromising,
only in part educated, and their children’s children, who will make
the revolutionists of the future. For the automatic answer of history
to injustice has ever been revolution. And they read about or saw or
were aware of acts of rejoicing that Massachusetts had taken the stand
she had both through her official and committee representatives and
unofficially, and that the men were “out of the way.”
But one, and the latest, manifestation of this spirit to which
Heywood Broun calls attention in the February 15, 1927, issue of the
_Nation_ was the banquet at the Copley Plaza at which seven hundred
Dartmouth men cheered Judge Webster Thayer for five minutes. As
orgiastic as the persecution of Christians on some Roman holiday
must that wah--hoo--wahing of Dartmouth have sounded in many ears.
And, as Heywood Broun says, “If truth and right dogged every step of
Massachusetts justice in the case still there would be reason to object
to long cheers for an electrocution.”... For the sake of Dartmouth
history it should not pass unobserved that much of this cheering
was, it may be, not so much intended _for_ Judge Thayer as _against_
Professor Richardson of Dartmouth who had testified to the judicial
impropriety of Judge Thayer’s statements out of court.
Hardest of all was it for the idealistic young to see, and know, these
things. Denied by their youth that cool-headedness, logic, strategy,
experience, which they would have used towards ideal ends, they saw
these weapons being used by those in power towards the thwarting of the
issue of justice. Nevertheless, even as the older people had still
believed up to the end that strong organization might help, so had the
young believed that, with desperate effort, truth and goodness would
at last prevail. And both had seen their desperate efforts and their
measures fail.
Even within the committees so bravely at work for the defense of
these two Italians, for those who cared to do so, it was possible to
observe angles of selfishness, egotisms struggling for personal power.
It was possible to hear words spoken which were foul or blasphemous,
statements made which were not based on truth. Although it is common to
do so, because of the sentimentalizing of Christianity, historically it
would be a mistake to assume that those who stand at the foot of the
cross, whether in the first century or the twentieth, are blameless.
If, later, those who not only had come together but who had worked
together fell apart, even fell to quarreling, that was not what
mattered. What did matter was that for the time being all, however
separated by class or character, were humane in intention; and all,
however hopeless the issue, struggled together for justice.
To such a nucleus for constitutional justice as the Defense Committee
itself is, the seven bitter years had revealed the worst there was
to know about American politics and decadent aspects of capitalism.
With eyes wide open to the truth, Mary Donovan wrote: “Do not worry
about me--I may go to jail and I may not, but however my case ends we
all realized that the authorities would demand some payment, for our
agitation of the past years, and who would pay, but those of us who
have never received, or expected to receive, any compensation but the
knowledge that we were and are right?”
The Committee and its attorneys felt, and will always feel as no one
else can, the mental courage of Sacco and Vanzetti. This strength
Attorney Thompson, in no sense sharing their social views, has set
down about Vanzetti in a record published in the February, 1928,
_Atlantic Monthly_: “In this closing scene the impression of him
which had been gaining ground in my mind for three years was deepened
and confirmed--that he was a man of powerful mind, of unselfish
disposition, of seasoned character, and of devotion to high ideals.
There was no sign of breaking down or of terror at approaching death.
At parting he gave me a firm clasp of the hand and a steady glance,
which revealed unmistakably the depth of his feeling and the firmness
of his self-control.”...
In August, during these thirteen days of indecision, many generous
minds grieved because they thought men’s hearts were dead. Whether
these minds were liberal or conservative or radical, they were alike
in seeing that in this crisis of injustice the selfishness of class
warfare and social ignorance were in the ascendant. Here were race
hatreds, and their senescent forms in the institutionalism of court
and state. Here, working their will, were unscrupulous ambitions. Here
were riches which had lost all expression of fellowship and sympathy,
as wealth once held in trust for the common good in this country had
kept them, and as wealth here and there still keeps them. John Maynard
Keynes has said in _The End of Laissez-faire_: “I do not know which
makes a man more conservative--to know nothing but the present, or
nothing but the past.”... Here was a death struggle. Here were human
beings who were good about many things but ungenerous or bad about this
issue of justice. Here were indignant angry friends of justice who
spoke of the Clayton anti-trust act in one breath with its guarantee of
free speech and free assemblage, and in the next spoke of the vengeance
of God. Here, too, were men and women whose only wish was to get rid of
men of the Sacco and Vanzetti type.
And, most hopeless reaction of all, coming out of this chaos the
thought: “Thank God, it is over!”
Probably the lowest point in the spirit of _laissez-faire_ was reached
in an editorial in the _Boston Herald_ published the morning after
the execution. The caption of this leading editorial was: BACK TO
NORMALCY. Its concluding paragraph read: “It has been a famous case. It
has attracted the attention of the world to an extent quite without
recent precedent. It has presented phases which no serious student of
our public affairs could fail to regret. _But the time for all such
discussion is over. The chapter is closed. The die is cast. The arrow
has flown. Now let us go forward to the duties and responsibilities of
the common day with a renewed determination to maintain our present
system of government, and our existing social order._”[12]
And there we are with the good old word “tradition” implicit in
“present system” and “existing social order”! The _Herald_ says nothing
of the records of history. And for all its consciousness of evolution,
this editorial--probably written as the men were being executed--might
as well have come from the mountains of Tennessee. “Tradition” should
be a means of communication, a bridge by which human beings step
forward into the future. As soon as it denies the principle of growth
and forbids progress, in short as soon as tradition becomes a barricade
and not a bridge, is it an advantage to human intelligence?
What so often many had read about and glibly discussed, in the
execution prepared for and postponed and prepared for, they had seen
dramatized in class warfare and race hatred. No intelligent student
of issues during that time could fail to perceive decadence in act
after act. The mighty, and triumphant, wish to put an end to Sacco
and Vanzetti was not only an act of hatred for these poor Italians
but also the desire to maintain the _status quo_ in which wealth and
privilege should be able to go upon their way of the world untroubled.
Here was the creed of our present economic system--a creed become
hereditary--taught to the full extent of its powers. Violation by
opinion of the established order of things had been punished by death.
It is not improbable that many who loathed the act done nevertheless
pitied some of those men who did this thing,--men familiar with the
struggles of conscience and the desire to do right, men of moral
integrity, yet caught in this Roman holiday of a brutal economic order
as Marcus Aurelius had been caught in the Roman way of celebration,
which turned Christians into burning torches. Marcus Aurelius, good
and innocent, even tender, “persecuted” the Christians who were good
and innocent. The gravamen of the charge against Marcus Aurelius is
that he allowed the Roman Constitution, with its cruel criminal laws,
to take its way. It is a fact that Roman Stoics of the days of Marcus
Aurelius did not know how pure, how innocent were those Christians
whose persecutions they permitted. It is probable that some of those
who are in power to-day do not know how pure and innocent are some of
these radical idealists.
This was not in Rome but in Boston. This was not the Roman attitude
toward Christianity. This was the attitude of a Christian government
towards the attempt to educate other men along the lines of political
development. These Italians were “pagan” because they were radical, and
the authority which persecuted them was Christian. And the educational
and political elements of the case were “framed” to robbery and murder.
To-day Senator Wheeler knows whether the frame-up is _de facto_ in this
country or not. It has been rather a long history of frame-ups from the
Chicago anarchist cases to the recent disturbances in Colorado and New
Jersey in which corporations either through their own armed guards or
through controlled local police, have carried on warfare reminiscent of
the Middle Ages, bulwarked by a perverted use of the injunction. The
long list of cases sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union adds
its testimony particularly to the prejudiced attitude of many of the
lower courts.
Only the sentimentalist could have failed to see that the truth,
because it was the truth, had no power whatever to stay these
executions. The sole advantage during those days of indecision which
truth had was not temporal, but that, although truth might be “killed”
symbolically in the patient bodies of two humble Italian idealists, it
could not be put out. Consumed by the fire of their own acts these two
would rise again. Immortality by means of the resurrection of truth
was theirs, and they knew it. Yet a strange thing had been done: in
a country which had been established by those who were radicals in
religious opinion, two who were radical in political thought had been
executed.
It was plain that those in power did not hold their authority in
what has been called “the consent of the governed,” but from some
other control. For, as we could see, the “governed” had no power
whatsoever. We were put through the gesture of being consulted, of
being considered. We were kept in a “politic” state of hopefulness.
But behind it all something we never saw, that never became definite,
was in control, and waiting to strike. And it was equally plain that
whatever this Power was, it considered these executions politically,
socially, morally, desirable. For some this Presence incorporated
itself in the word “Reaction.” For others it found explanation in a
“Fear Complex” or “Capitalism” or “Class Warfare.” For still others it
found exact definition in what James Oneal has called “the drift to
Empire,” and in which Sacco and Vanzetti were but one episode in more
than fifty years of preparation.
During those days in Boston the police were an outward manifestation
of the real mastery. No doubt many of them were performing what they
thought was their duty and probably their sense of duty was in many
instances not consciously servile. Yet they, too, were prostrating
themselves before a Presence that was never seen,--a Presence of
Enormous Power. And for the sake of “Prosperity” they were ready to
palliate and forget. This Presence was not the Governor, though he
represented it. It was not President Lowell and the Committee, though
they expressed it. It was not Chief of Police Crowley though his
uniform seemed to be its livery. It was not Warden Hendry though he was
its kindly jailer. It was not even Judge Webster Thayer though he was
the mouthpiece of its law.... Is it not true that it is society which
prepares the so-called “crime,” and that the “criminal” is but the tool
which executes it? And when “society” prepares two innocent men for
the electric chair what is to be said of the inversions of so-called
justice?[13]
FOOTNOTES:
[11] From “America Arraigned,” edited by Lucia Trent and Ralph Cheyney.
[12] The italics are mine.
[13] Conspicuous among friends who were not only loyal over many years
to the condemned men but who also understood many of the forces at work
in this inversion of so-called justice were Alice Stone Blackwell,
Mrs. Cerise Jack, Sacco’s teacher of English; Amleto Fabbri, Secretary
of the Defense Committee, 1924-’26; Mrs. Gertrude L. Winslow, Leonard
Abbott, Roscoe Pound, Francis H. Bigelow, Mrs. Elsie Hillsmith;
Mrs. Virginia MacMechan, Vanzetti’s teacher during six years of his
imprisonment; Maude Pettyjohn, Mrs. E. A. Codman, and H. W. L. Dana.
For letters to these and others among the greatest friends of the
condemned men, _vide_ “The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti,” edited by
Marion Denman Frankfurter and Gardner Jackson, The Viking Press.