Mercy and Justice

In the death house at Sing Sing, Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel listened intently as the special news bulletin came in over the prison radio: President Eisenhower, after due deliberation, refused to commute their death sentences. The two convicted atom spies were guilty of a hideous crime against mankind, the President said, and they must atone for it with their lives; their crime of giving atomic and other secrets of the first magnitude to Russia "involves the deliberate betrayal of the entire nation, and could very well result in the death of many, many thousands of innocent citizens."

The President's decision was neither hasty nor capricious. He had carefully considered every detail of the case. He had begun to study the case even before he became President, anticipating that Harry Truman would be unable or unwilling to reach a decision in his last days as President. Dwight Eisenhower's answer all but closed the door of doom on the Rosenbergs. There were still a few desperate delaying actions to be made--and Lawyer Emanuel Bloch might succeed in winning more borrowed time--but the only real opportunity of escape lay with the Rosenbergs themselves. If they broke their long silence--if they confessed the secrets of their spy ring--then the President might consider a new appeal for clemency. But up to now the Rosenbergs have clung to their dark secrets, have shown no flicker of regret.

Two days after the President's decision was announced, the world was startled by another disclosure, from an unexpected source. Pope Pius XII, said L'Osservatore Romano, semi-official Vatican newspaper, had personally intervened in the Rosenberg case, had asked the President for clemency. In the labyrinthine phrases of L'Osservatore (which are all but unintelligible to most Americans), it appeared that the Pontiff had appealed directly to Eisenhower. "As he has mercifully done in other similar cases," said L'Osservatore, "so also in this one he has not failed to intervene insofar as it was permitted to him in the absence of any official relations with the competent [U.S.] Government authorities."

In Washington, Archbishop Amleto Cicognani, Apostolic Delegate to the U.S., confirmed L'Osservatore's story but with a distinctly different accent. The Pope, said Cicognani, had received many messages deploring the Rosenbergs' death sentences. Last December, on orders from the Vatican, Cicognani passed this information along, without comment, to Truman's Attorney General McGranery, a Catholic papal knight.

In Palm Beach, McGranery hurried ashore from a yachting party to second the Apostolic Delegate's explanation. McGranery had received the information, he said, but had pigeonholed it since it had no bearing on the merits of the case. He had not thought it necessary to pass the word along to the White House or the Department of State. Then Archbishop Cicognani proved McGranery's point about the tenor of the exchange by sending a new message on the Pope's behalf to the White House--noting that more letters had been received at the Vatican, but still making no comment or plea. The White House firmly indicated that the newest message would not change President Eisenhower's decision.

Execution Date. The differences in accent between L'Osservatore's version of the Pope's plea and Archbishop Cicognani's in Washington could probably be attributed to the differences in political climate between Italy and the U.S. L'Osservatore broke Vatican custom by publicizing the Pope's plea for clemency, and it did so immediately after Italy's Communist L'Unita (with the largest circulation in Italy) criticized the Pope's failure to intervene on behalf of the Rosenbergs. In all probability, L'Osservatore spoke with the critical Italian spring elections in mind, and for that reason reported the papal message as direct intervention.*

This week, as leftists began picketing the White House again for the first time since the inauguration, Manhattan's Judge Irving R. Kaufman solemnly set the date for the Rosenbergs' execution. They must die in the electric chair, he said, during the week of March 9.

* A papal appeal for clemency is grounded on long precedent. As special emissary of Benedict XV in World War I, the present Pope journeyed to Berlin to deliver a fruitless appeal to spare the life of Nurse Edith Cavell. And in 1944, Pius XII again asked the Germans for mercy--and was refused again--in the slaughter of 335 Italians in the Ardeatine caves near Rome. During the Spanish Civil War, Pius XI was successful in persuading General Franco to spare the lives of several Loyalist prisoners.

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