In Charlestown

After seven years of premeditation, blood was shed beside a so-called cradle of American liberty, Boston. The shedding of blood causes restlessness. The restlessness caused by this particular bloodshed was exceptionally widespread, gloomy and violent because, in seven years, a seed of doubt can grow into a harvest of sincere conviction; and because this particular harvest of conviction had been fertilized by the animus of two irreconcilable philosophies of life, SOCIALISM and CAPITALISM.

Execution. Guilty or not, justly or not, Nicola Sacco, clean-shaven factory worker and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, mustachioed fish-peddler, were informed last Monday evening that they must die that midnight for the murders-- which to the end they denied committing--of a paymaster and guard at South Braintree, Mass., in 1920. Celestino Madeiros, confessed murderer of a bank cashier in Wrentham, Mass., was notified to the same effect. Prisoner Madeiros, in a stupor from overeating at his last meal, preceded his world-famed neighbors to the electric chair.

Prisoners Sacco and Vanzetti refused last rites from the prison priest. They would die as they had lived, they said. Faith in a communistic order of mankind was enough for them.

Five guards took their posts in the death house, two to adjust electrodes, one at the blue lethal door, two to call at the cells. One newsgatherer, W. E. Playfair of the AssociatedPress, was included among the seven official witnesses of man killing man.

Prisoners Sacco and Vanzetti died in the order that their names had long been coupled, seven minutes apart.

Last Efforts. As last week opened, counsel for the defense, led by Lawyer Arthur D. Hill redoubled their activities. Their clients had been subjected to a shock which, psychologically and philosophically speaking, was easily the equivalent of any crime they might have committed against society. Society, through its legal machinery in Massachusetts, had started to bare the skins of Prisoners Sacco, Vanzetti and Madeiros for the touch of Death and then, with a reprieve of which the melodrama was a cheap insult to whatever dignity human life may have, virtually mumbled: ". . . Live on for twelve days longer. Our mind is not quite made up."

Something of the horrid dismay their clients must have felt in the face of such fatal flippancy was reflected in the renewed efforts of Lawyer Hill and associates last week.

They went to the highest Massachusetts court, pleading error and prejudice at the original trial. The highest Massachusetts court replied, in five typed page's, that it could not act.

They docketed the case for review by the highest court in the country hoping a) to give Governor Fuller of Massachusetts grounds for a further reprieve since the case was still, technically, before a court; and b) to give any one of the nine Justices of the U. S. Supreme Court opportunity to request a review of the case, which request would have given Governor Fuller broader grounds for a reprieve.

They telephoned Chief Justice William Howard Taft of the U. S. Supreme Court. Mr. Taft was in Canada. The wire connection was faint. He asked them to telegraph. They telegraphed and Chief Justice Taft telegraphed back explaining that he could not act, being out of the U. S., could not reach the U. S. in time. He referred them to three Associate Justices of the U. S. Supreme Court then in the northeastern part of the U. S.

They went to Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, at Beverly Farms, Mass. He said he felt unauthorized to meddle with a state case.

They went to Associate Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis at Chatham, Mass. He said he must decline to act because of his pei-onal relations with people (his wife included) actively interested in the case.

They went to Associate Justice Harlan Fiske Stone at Isle au Haut, off the Maine coast. He e'choed the reply of his colleague, Justice Holmes, "as to the merits of the application and the action of counsel in presenting it."

They waited on U. S. Attorney General Sargent at Ludlow, Vt. Mr. Sargent listened attentively for three hours to their account of the relation of the U. S. Department of Justice to the case. He said it was the first time he had ever understood this relation, but later announced that he would not act, that Department of Justice affairs were for the' time being in the hands of his subordinates in Washington, D. C.

They went to Acting Attorney General George E. Farnum in Washington, D. C. He said that Department of Justice confidential records would be furnished for inspection to no one save at the request of Governor Fuller or the latter's advisory committee headed by President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University. Neither Governor Fuller nor President Lowell would make the request.

They asked the Massachusetts Superior Court again; were refused. They asked the Federal District Court again; were refused.

They returned to Justice Holmes for a writ of Habeas Corpus. He wrote no writ.

They asked Governor Fuller again, in six petitions. He did not reply. On the execution Monday he showed himself not to have been unnerved by his trying position and said to newsgatherers in front of his office. "Good morning, gentlemen. It is a beautiful morning, isn't it?" Governor Fuller received insistent callers up to two hours before the execution. He could not change his mind.

They wired President Coolidge. Silence answered.

Appeals. Among the joint signatories of an eleventh-hour telegram to President Coolidge were David Starr Jordan, Oswald G. Villard, Glenn Frank Alexander Meiklejohn, Benjamin B. Lindsey, Arthur Garfield Hays, Ida M. Tarbell, Rockwell Kent, Carl Van Doren, John F. Hylan, Floyd Dell, Otto Soglow.

Colonel Alfred Dreyfus, innocent victim-survivor of the most notable similar case in recent history, lying sick at Houlgate, France, said: "When doubt exists, it is fighting providence to commit the irreparable."

The New York World kept up a steady hammering on the point that doubt did exist in so many minds that no public interest could possibly suffer if sentence were commuted.

Editor Waldo Cook of the much-venerated Springfield, (Mass.) Republican, was among those who called on Governor Fuller in person to be'g clemency.

James K. Trimble of Philadelphia telegraphed: ". . . We are members of the New York Stock Exchange and deal in long investments. . . . For God's sake do not canonize two saints for future generations of Reds."

Professor Ellen Hays, 67, head of the English Department at Wellesley College, said: "I feel I must voice a protest." She joined picketers at the State House, was arrested.

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote a poem beginning, "Let us abandon then our garden and go home." She also picketed, was jailed.

Boston Common, for the first time in history, was closed to public orators. Order there and elsewhere was maintained by the full Boston police force on 24-hour duty. Riot squads were equipped with automatic rifles, hand grenades, tear bombs. Exciting looking characters were immediately boxed in by police and marched off "to protect them from mob violence."

Relatives: Machine guns, search lights and fire-hoses were added to the defenses at Charlestown Prison, which none might "approach closer than 1,000 feet. Relatives of the prisoners, however, were admitted to the death house. To reach the death cells they had to pass the electric chair. Prisoner Vanzetti was allowed to leave his cell and embrace his sister, Luigia whom he had not seen for 19 years. Prisoner Sacco saw his wife and 14-year-old son, Dante, to whom he later wrote a farewell letter telling him to comfort his mother, fight the rich, help the weak.

Union Square. In a typical U. S. square (Union Square, Manhattan), 10,000 people stood shoulder to shoulder before a bulletin of the Daily Worker. Toward midnight they read :

SACCO & VANZETTI CALMLY AND HEROICALLY AWAIT END

WITNESSES OF EXECUTION BEGIN TO ARRIVE

THEY ENTER THE DEATH CHAMBER

ONLY WORKERS' COURTS CAN GIVE JUSTICE TO WORKERS (Perfunctory cheers)

STRENGTHEN YOUR UNIONS TO PROTECT OUR FUTURE CHAMPION (Louder cheers)

MORE NEWS TO FOLLOW

A newsboy: "Betcha I know what they'll show next -- Vanzetti or one of them strapped down."

The bulletin: SACCO MURDERED! (Loud but orderly cries of indignation, booes, catcalls. But no fiercer than the noise that a 10,000 base ball-crowd makes when a favorite disappoints. Flares and the Internationale, which soon died.)

The bulletin: DON'T FORGET OUR MARTYRED COMRADES. KEEP ON FIGHTING. (Moderate cheers)

JOIN THE WORKERS PARTY AND FIGHT ON

WOLL-GREEN AND THE SOC PARTY BETRAYED THEM (Angry groans and catcalls) VANZETTI MURDERED! (Cries, as above)

Voices in the crowd: "Take your hats off! Hats off, there! (The 25% of curiosity-seekers kept them on -- Some of them old, dilapidated ones, specially worn for the occasion. But there was no violence.)

The crowd dispersed.