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The World War lasted four years and was duly chronicled as an international episode. The case of Sacco & Vanzetti is seven years old and is still an international episode. It is a tale filled with blood and tears, with Reds and bigwigs, with bombs and laws. . . . April 15, 1920. A paymaster and a guard were shot to death on the streets of South Braintree, Mass., and robbed of a payroll of $15,000 by two men who "looked like Italians." May 5, 1920. Two Italians who lived near South BraintreeNicola Sacco, shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, fish peddlerwere arrested as suspicious characters. The U. S. was then on a rabid radical hunt. Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti were on the Red lists. July 14, 1921. A jury found Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti guilty of the South Braintree murders on the following evidence: Factory-window witnesses, who had previously identified other Italians as participants in the crime, swore that Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti were the killers. But, 20 Italians said they had purchased eels from Mr. Vanzetti at the hour of the crime, and the Italian consul in Boston swore that Mr. Sacco had been in his presence at that time. However, the police who arrested them swore that they had drawn guns. This was interpreted as "evidence of guilt." The jury was asked to do its duty as "did our boys in France"an effective plea, considering the fact that Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti were pacifists as well as radicals. 1921-1927. Motions for a new trial were repeatedly turned down, while radicals flung bombs at many a U. S. embassy, while liberals such as Anatole France, Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Fritz Kreisler, Albert Einstein protested against the injustice being done to the fish peddler and the shoemaker. . . . Mr. Sacco went on a month's hunger strike. . . . Mrs. Louis Dembitz Brandeis, wife of the U. S. Supreme Court Justice, turned over her Dedham home to Mrs. Sacco so that she could be near her husband and cook for him while he was in the Dedham (Mass.) jail. Last week in a Dedham courtroom, there was a scene, wherein seven years of emotion simmered and boiled over. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts had finally and flatly rejected evidence for a new trial on the grounds that there had not been a "failure of justice." Judge Webster Thayer, clad in black robes, with a face as still and as pallid as an ancient cameo, entered the courtroom to sentence Messrs. Sacco and Vanzetti to the electric chair. Bluecoats fingered sawed-off shotguns. Secret service agents with crimson rosettes in their lapels posed as Reds. Women sobbed. The clerk droned: "Nicola Sacco, have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon you?" In the prisoners' box, a clean-shaven Italian, with a high forehead and a son named Dante, stood up. "Yes, sir, I, I am not an orator," said Nicola Sacco. "It is not very familiar with me, the English language. . . . I never know, never heard, even read in history anything so cruel as this court. . . . My comrade, the kind man, the kind man to all the children, you sentence him two times . . . and you know he is innocent. . . . I forgot one thing which my comrade remember me. As I said before, Judge Thayer know all my life, and he know that I am never guilty, nevernot yesterday nor today nor forever." The clerk droned again: "Bartolomeo
