Sept. 3, 1927
My dear Miss Addams:
Your note reached me upon my return to Washington. Miss Addams, I dislike to express my disagreement with one for whom I have such a profound respect. But the quotation from Edmund Burke has no application to the subject to which it is applied in Mr. Brown's letter. There could never be a time when a nation could permit foreign criticism to overreach the deliberate judgment of its courts. If our courts are incompetent or corrupt it is for us to deal with that matter.
Besides, these people who were denouncing us abroad knew no more about the facts than I did and I knew practically nothing. They were not proceeding upon the theory that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent as shown by the record or that the proof was insufficient as shown by the record, but solely upon the theory that they must be rescued, innocent or guilty. It was mob law. Mr. Brown says, "When many conservative journals in America and England express doubts, when Mussolini goes as far as diplomatic comity permits, a [situation] arises," etc. Imagine the courts of the United States yielding to the judgment of conservative journals abroad or of Mussolini neither of whom knew the facts or read the record or know anything whatever of the evidence upon which the jury and the courts rendered judgment.
Pardon me, but I feel very strongly about this matter as I have had some experience with the demands of mobs to take guilty men from the clutches of the law. Of course I do not know that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty, but neither do those who were talking of the record [page 2] know they were innocent, in fact they were not proceeding upon that theory.
Very respectfully,
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