经典英文演讲100篇23-A Plea for Mercy

Clarence Darrow:

delivered September 1924

Now, your Honor, I have spoken about the war. I believed in it. I don’t know whether

I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined in the

general cry of madness and despair. I urged men to fight. I was safe because I was

too old to go. I was like the rest. What did they do? Right or wrong, justifiable or

unjustifiable -- which I need not discuss today -- it changed the world. For four long

years the civilized world was engaged in killing men. Christian against Christian,

barbarian uniting with Christians to kill Christians; anything to kill. It was taught in

every school, aye in the Sunday schools. The little children played at war. The

toddling children on the street. Do you suppose this world has ever been the same

since? How long, your Honor, will it take for the world to get back the humane

emotions that were slowly growing before the war? How long will it take the

calloused hearts of men before the scars of hatred and cruelty shall be removed?

We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day. We read about it and we

rejoiced in it-if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and

drank blood. Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell you how many upright,

honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved

and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a

cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up

in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they

were in the newspapers that they read; it was a part of the common frenzy-what

was a life? It was nothing. It was the least sacred thing in existence and these boys

were trained to this cruelty.

It will take fifty years to wipe it out of the human heart, if ever. I know this, that

after the Civil War in 1865, crimes of this sort increased, marvelously. No one needs

to tell me that crime has no cause. It has as definite a cause as any other disease,

and I know that out of the hatred and bitterness of the Civil War crime increased as

America had never seen before. I know that Europe is going through the same

experience to-day; I know it has followed every war; and I know it has influenced

these boys so that life was not the same to them as it would have been if the world

had not made red with blood. I protest against the crimes and mistakes of society

being visited upon them. All of us have a share in it. I have mine. I cannot tell and

I shall never know how many words of mine might have given birth to cruelty in

place of love and kindness and charity.

Your Honor knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased growing

out of the war. Not necessarily by those who fought but by those that learned that

blood was cheap, and human life was cheap, and if the State could take it lightly why

not the boy? There are causes for this terrible crime. There are causes as I have said

for everything that happens in the world. War is a part of it; education is a part of it;

birth is a part of it; money is a part of it-all these conspired to compass the

destruction of these two poor boys.

Has the court any right to consider anything but these two boys? The State says that

your Honor has a right to consider the welfare of the community, as you have. If the

welfare of the community would be benefited by taking these lives, well and good.

I think it would work evil that no one could measure. Has your Honor a right to

consider the families of these defendants? I have been sorry, and I am sorry for the

bereavement of Mr. And Mrs. Frank, for those broken ties that cannot be healed. All

I can hope and wish is that some good may come from it all. But as compared with

the families of Leopold and Loeb, the Franks are to be envied-and everyone knows

it.

I do not know how much salvage there is in these two boys. I hate to say it in their

presence, but what is there to look forward to? I do not know but what your Honor

would be merciful to them, but not merciful to civilization, and not merciful if you

tied a rope around their necks and let them die; merciful to them, but not merciful

to civilization, and not merciful to those who would be left behind. To spend the

balance of their days in prison is mighty little to look forward to, if anything. Is it

anything? They may have the hope that as the years roll around they might be

released. I do not know. I do not know. I will be honest with this court as I have tried

to be from the beginning. I know that these boys are not fit to be at large. I believe

they will not be until they pass through the next stage of life, at forty-five or fifty.

Whether they will then, I cannot tell. I am sure of this; that I will not be here to help

them. So far as I am concerned, it is over.

I would not tell this court that I do not hope that some time, when life and age have

changed their bodies, as they do, and have changed their emotions, as they do-that

they may once more return to life. I would be the last person on earth to close the

door of hope to any human being that lives, and least of all to my clients. But what

have they to look forward to? Nothing. And I think here of the stanza of Housman:

Now hollow fires burn out to black,

And lights are fluttering low:

Square your shoulders, lift your pack

And leave your friends and go.

O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread,

Look not left nor right: