And that day, when the tail-end of the parade of the Red Cross passed the main avenue, it broke off and went a block out of its way and attacked the I.W.W. hall, a good two-story building.  And they broke it into splinters.  The furniture, records, the literature that belongs to these boys, everything was taken out into the street and burned.

[Illustration:  O. C. Bland

Logger.  American.  Resident of Centralia for a number of years.  Has worked in woods and mills practically all his life.  Has a wife and seven children.  Bland was in the Arnold hotel at the time of the raid.  He was armed but had cut his hand on broken glass before he had a chance to shoot.  Since his arrest and conviction his family has undergone severe hardships.  The defense is making an effort to raise enough funds to keep the helpless wives and children of the convicted men in the comforts of life.]

Now, what was contemplated on Armistice Day?  The I.W.W. did as you would do; it judged from experience.

Patience No Longer a Virtue

When the paraders smashed the door in, the I.W.W.’s, as every lover of free speech and every respecter of his person—­they had appealed to the citizens, they had appealed to the officers, and some of their members had been tarred and feathered, beaten up and hung—­they said in thought:  “Patience has ceased to be a virtue.”  And if the law will not protect us, and the people won’t protect us, we will protect ourselves.  And they did.

And in deciding this case, I want each of you, members of the jury, to ask yourself what would you have done?

There had been discussions of this character in the I.W.W. hall, and so have there been discussions everywhere.  There had never been a plot laid to murder anybody, nor to shoot anybody in any parade.  I want you to ask yourself:  “Why would anybody want to shoot anybody in a parade,” and to particularly ask yourself why anyone would want to shoot upon soldiers?

He who was a soldier himself, Wesley Everest, the man who did most of the shooting, and the man whom they beat until he was unconscious and whom they grabbed from the street and put a rope around his neck, the man whom they nearly shot to pieces, and the man whom they hung, once dropping him ten feet, and when what didn’t kill him lengthened the rope to 15 feet and dropped him again—­why would one soldier want to kill another soldier, or soldiers, who had never done him nor his fellows any harm?

I exonerate the American Legion as an organization of the responsibility of this.  For I say they didn’t know about it.  The day will come when they will realize that they have been mere catspaws in the hands of the Centralia commercial interests.  That is the story.  I don’t know what the verdict will be today, but the verdict ten years hence will be the verdict in the Lovejoy case; that these men were within their rights and that they fought for a cause, that these men fought for liberty.  They fought for these things for which we stand and for which all true lovers of liberty stand, and those who smashed them up are the real enemies of our country.