WILLING TO DIE FOR HIS COMRADES.
I implore you not to let this difference of action have any weight with you in determining our fate. During our trial the desire of the prosecutor to slaughter me, and to let my co-defendants off with milder punishment was quite apparent and manifest. It seemed to me then, and a great many of others, that the persecutors would be satisfied with one life—namely, mine. Grinnell, in his argument, intimated this very plainly. I care not to protest my innocence of any crime, and of the one I am accused of in particular. I have done that and leave the rest to the judgment of history. But to you I wish to address myself now as the alleged arch-conspirator (leaving the fact that I never have belonged to any kind of a conspiracy out of the question altogether). If a sacrifice of life there must be, will not my life suffice? The State’s attorney of Cook county asked for no more. Take this, then! Take my life! I offer it to you so that you may satisfy the fury of a semi-barbaric mob, and save that of my comrades. I know that every one of my comrades is as willing to die, and perhaps more so than I am. It is not for their sake that I make this offer, but in the name of humanity and progress, in the interest of a peaceable—if possible—development of the social forces that are destined to lift our race upon a higher and better plane of civilization. In the name of the traditions of our country I beg you to prevent a seven-fold murder upon men whose only crime is that they are idealists, that they long for a better future for all. If legal murder there must be, let one, let mine, suffice.
“A. Spies.”
