My dear Mr. Lovett:
I am very sorry to decline my signature to the National Committee about which you wired me. I understand of course that the effort is primarily to shift the matter into federal authority, but I am so profoundly skeptical of the value of anything which comes out of the files of the Department of Justice, that I find it impossible to sign.
I am enclosing copies of the telegram I sent last week both to the Governor and the President, and I am sending a telegram now to Senator Borah, of which I enclose a copy.
It seems to me that the two lines of approach are to get Borah as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to induce the Governor for a longer reprieve or commutation of the sentence, on the ground of the disastrous effect upon our international relations, especially with Latin-America on the one hand, and on the other to convince Massachusetts that their law must some time to be changed so that the Supreme Court may have the right to review the facts in the case as well as the points of law, that this is a very good time to do it and that the men should be reprieved until the legislature convenes, passes the law, and the Supreme Court has a hearing.
I am doing my telegraphing to Gov. Fuller to this effect, and while I hate to seem thus to play a lone hand, I never signed ↑the↓ petition for the appointment of a commission to review the case (although I had previously telegraphed the Governor from Chicago) because I felt the commission would not be a court nor anything else, and having been justified in my scruples at that time, I find it perhaps harder to overcome them in regard to this second request.
May I express my admiration for all you are doing?
Faithfully yours,
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