Page:The "Trial" of Ferrer - A Clerical Judicial Murder (IA 2916970.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/5



When I was at the last International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen, August, 1910, I asked Pablo Iglesias how I could get at the facts concerning the Ferrer Trial. "Over there in America," I said, "we have read a great deal about it in the newspapers and magazines, but they are all incomplete, mixed-up accounts of what has happened, obtained at second hand. I want to get at the facts of the case, sift it to the bottom and learn the truth about it."

"The best thing for you to do," Iglesias answered, "is to read a book which has just been published. I can answer for its veracity and accuracy of statement. You will find there a complete account of everything that has happened." And he promised to send me the book.

It came to me the other day, a large volume of more than six hundred pages written in Spanish by L. Simarro, professor of psychology in the University of Madrid. This is the first of two volumes, the second of which, treating of the movement of protest caused in Europe by the trial, is not yet published. I found the book to be all that Iglesias had promised it to be in regard to completeness and accuracy of statement. In fact, as to the second of the two qualities just mentioned, it is a good example of what the editor of our own Party paper in America (the Daily People) has been preaching to us for a long time:—the author never quotes from a paper without giving the date of the issue, or from a book without giving the page or