convicted?'

"'I haven't got his complete speech before me. I do not want to
commit the Party in this general way to every statement. I will
say, as a whole, I read his speech at the time and my impression
was that it was a perfectly innocent, honest expression of
opposition to war for very good and patriotic motives.' ...

"'Have you any respect at all for the decision of the tribunal to
the contrary?'

"'I have respect to this effect: that I know that it is final and
binding and in practice will go. I do not have respect in the sense
of believing that it is just, impartial, and well-reasoned out.'
...

"'Mr. Hillquit, do you wish to be understood as saying that you
approve of the words spoken by Mr. Debs for which he was
convicted?'

"'Are you trying to get me a little conviction, also, Judge?' asked
the witness.

"'I am not in a position to indorse every word and every phrase
because I have not the speech before me,' he continued. 'As a rule,
I fully indorsed his statements on the subject of the war,
expressed, I suppose, in that speech and in other speeches.... I
share with all my comrades the greatest respect for Debs, and
cannot think any compliment too high for him.'

"'And you think it was that largeness of view, do you, that led Mr.
Debs to say the things which brought him into conflict with the law
of the United States?'

"'Absolutely, just in the same way as it once happened to one Jesus
of Nazareth.'"

"'And you say that notwithstanding the highest judicial authority
known under the Constitution has declared him guilty of doing
that, and in contempt of that authority, notwithstanding that
authority, you say that he is the man that should be placed in the
President's chair by the votes of the Socialist Party?'

"'I do.'

"'If Mr. Debs were elected in 1920, how would you proceed to
inaugurate[12] him, as he is serving a twenty-year sentence?' asked
Assemblyman Jenks.

"'The chances are that prior to the time he would be called upon to
occupy the chair the powers that be would sober up enough to know
that the present conviction is an improper and inhuman act and
liberate him.'"

On several occasions at the trial, in spite of Hillquit's studied effort
to cast an air of innocency over his party, me