Chapter IV: 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.