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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 25, No. 10. 1962.

We Protest [Letter to the editor by Ruth Lake]

Sir,—You may be Protesting against the taking of life, but the effect is that of a Protest For Eichmann—and so for anti-semitism and genocide. Then indeed his trial has "not benefited human society."

Will you Protest if Salan after all receives a death sentence? But why did you not Protest on every day of this year up till June, when every day innocent Algerians were killed by Salan's men? Without trial, without warning, counted by us only in numbers. These nameless, helpless, innocent deaths are the ones that cry for the protection of democratic opinion and human decency.

You Protest for Eichmann. Granted—we untouched people hate to look on while one small human being, shrivelled in the light of the world publicity, faces alone (or almost . . .) the stem faces of his accusers, the long list of almost incredible accusations, the shrieks and tears of bruised memories.

You are not old enough to Protest for 'the six million victims of Eichmann and the Nazi State machine. But it is absurd to think of Eichmann's death merely or mainly, as revenge. Revenge, in Itself is barren as only a contagious disease can be, Six million Eichmann still could not wipe out six millions' suffering that WAS, and is still part of older peoples' lives and memories.

What matters is the future, and the future is yours. What matters is that such millionfold tragedies should be banished from our human future, which is yours. But even while Eichmann's trial was reminding the world of this, a parallel kind of tragedy was, as you see, being enacted in Algeria. Not millionfold this time perhaps, but hundredfold and thousandfold. Would you have the right to Protest Salan's death when you have not protested those of his victims?

And the tragedy could be millionfold in your time. Eichmann's main line of defence for his efficient administration of the Nazi slaughter-machinery was that he merely obeyed orders. Today we are all of us (including Giles!) aware that this is no excuse if in your time some little human Eichmann "obeys orders" and presses the button that starts a nuclear war it is very probable that none of you will be left alive to Protest that he should live.

I am not arguing, of course, that tragedy is worse merely by reason of quantity. Each individual is precious to each of us. The more so because each of us, everywhere, must one day die. But it is just because we realise the inevitability of everyday tragedy that we struggle to prevent the huge unnecessary catastrophes that leave the living (like Eichmann) perverted, that warp men's characters and scar men's minds.

We must think our actions through to logical conclusions in human terms. Your We Protest recalls of course as you must be aware, the J'Accuse of Zola and Clemenceau and Anatole France. But Zola risked his all to rescue one small victim from bureaucracy, the bureaucracy of courts which travestied justice to protect a government's name. You are Protesting for the bureaucrat who, in the name of a ruthless government helped to encompass the deaths of millions of such small innocent Dreyfus victims—and went to his death unrepentant.—Yours etc.,

Ruth Lake