RADICALS: Woe is Me

To his six-year-old daughter Inez, last week wrote Nicola Sacco, condemned to die during the week of August 10. To the child whom he has seen only on her visits to his cell he said: "It was the greatest treasure and sweetness in my struggling life that I could have lived with you and your brother, Dante, and your mother on a neat little farm and learn all your sincere words and tender affection. The same I have wished and love to see for other poor girls and their brothers happy with the mother and father as I dreamed for us—but it was not so and the nightmare of the lower classes has saddened very badly your father's soul. The men of this dying old society, they brutally pulled me away from the embrace of your brother and your poor mother. But, in spite of all, the free spirit of a father's faith still survives, and I have lived for it and for the dream that some day I would have come back to life, among our friends and comrades again, but woe is me." Despondent, indeed, was the tone of Mr. Sacco's letter and gloomy the outlook for both Mr. Sacco and Mr. Vanzetti. For the pendulum that has for seven years swung between life and death last week swung toward death again. Since the publication of sensational affidavits alleging unfairness by Trial-Judge Webster Thayer (TIME, May 16) and the investigation of the Sacco-Vanzetti case by Governor Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts and his Advisory Committee (TIME, June 13), those sympathetic with the convicted men have been encouraged to hope for pardon or commutation. But last week's events, though not necessarily conclusive, led many observers to believe that the death sentence imposed on Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti would be carried out or would be only partially commuted by being changed to life imprisonment. Hunger Strike. Both Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti spent the week virtually without food, having begun a hunger strike which, in Mr. Sacco's case, was still continuing at last reports. Hunger eventually conquered Mr. Vanzetti's starvation program. During the first two days of their abstention from food, Prison Warden William Hendry inclined toward the belief that only the hot weather and lack of exercise were responsible for the prisoners' fasting. By the third day, however, this hypothesis became rather untenable, and discussion turned to the possibility of sending the prisoners to the prison hospital and there forcibly feeding them. It was recalled that in 1923 Mr. Sacco went on a hunger strike that lasted for more than a month, but gave up his starvation idea after having once been subjected to the forcible-feeding process (TIME, March 3, 1923). The hunger-strike is a protest against the secrecy of the investigations and began after a visit from Mrs. Sacco, whose account of her interview with Governor Fuller (TIME, July 25) apparently indicated that the Governor was not disposed to interfere with the due operation of Massachusetts law.