Miss Jane Addams, whose sympathies are so broad that they sometimes lead her into fields where she is likely to do more harm than good, recently made the mistake of telegraphing to Senator Borah asking him to "point out the very serious consequences to our international relations of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti." Senator Borah replied as follows:
It would be a national humiliation, a shameless, cowardly compromise of national courage, to pay the slightest attention to foreign protest or mob protests at home. We all know your fine devotion to humanity, but neither humanity nor peace can be served by deferring to foreign criticism or mob violence in the execution of our criminal laws. The foreign interference is an impudent and willful challenge to our sense of decency and dignity and ought to be dealt with accordingly.
There has been entirely too much foreign interference in the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and Senator Borah voices American opinion when he describes this interference as impudent and a challenge to the American sense of decency and dignity.
Apparently Miss Addams is fearful lest foreign nations should take offense at the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and that this resentment might destroy the cordial relations that have existed between this country and Europe. She does not specify any countries, but probably she includes all the leading nations of Europe and South America, Mexico, Soviet Russia and Asia. If any one of them is warranted in taking offense at the operations of justice in America, all of them are.
The plea that justice should be suspended in the United States for fear of offending foreign countries is pusillanimous enough to suit the most abject pacifist, but it is no more illogical than numerous other pleas that have been made. If murder is to go unpunished in the United States because convicted men have been confined for seven years while their friends [have] been blocking the wheels of justice, then technicality thrusts justice from its stool, and the courts become mechanisms for shielding criminals.
Jane Addams has the same right as everybody else to express an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, and as to whether or not they had a fair trial. It does seem, however, that the courts of the United States should have the benefit of the doubt occasionally, when they have performed their work in obedience to law. A jury verdict ought to be entitled to respect, even if seven years of tortuous and ingenious effort has been made by lawyers to pick flaws in the verdict. Why should not Miss Addams and other warm-hearted persons occasionally err on the side of law and justice? Why is it that when radicals are caught in the meshes of the law they blame the law and not the radical?
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