he longest life is little better than a sample of

living; to each of us the days of our years are precious things. For this reason we are especially vulnerable concerning time, its loss, waste, theft-and it is precisely here that we, as Society, strike the individual when he has violated our laws. We decide that a "crime" has been committed and that the only way the State can again function smoothly is by taking from this "criminal" a certain number of his days. Time is nothing to be confiscated for the good of the commonweal, divided among the people and enjoyed. It is a possession of value only to the individual and not to be traded, loaned or retrieved. But it can be stolen and even when the theft is regretted by the State, no restitution can be made. A life shortened and death brought nearer are immutable facts, crimes never to be mitigated and, by those with a belief in the dignity of man, never to be forgiven. It is shocking and incredible that a whole Society could make a mistake. That it should pluck from its finest citizens, one accomplished and admired, and fling him vengefully low, is frightening and profoundly angering. Then to stand about his little mound of earth with long faces and shake sad heads over his "tragedy", moan in post-mortem over his "blight", regret for him his willful sins, in spritely melancholu recall the front-page gossip and sau too-bad-how-unfortunate-a-shame:and otherwise so fine a man! At times like these, we listen tensely to the little mound for surely this is so bitter a scene that the dead must cry out in anger or anathema. There is silence, and only then do we fully know the heinous theft for what it was. To take a man's days from him on barbaric pretext and take from him the towers he has built, is to hold a mirror to the collective face and see on it historic humiliation that will stare hack at us down through all the days of our own years. And we know with sinking heart that the vindictive are not strong.

Saul K.

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