Lethargy In This Case a Blot on State and Nation

Primarily it is up to the State of New York, through the District Attorney of New York County, and the City of New York, through its police department, to find the killer of Carlo Tresca and his accessories. But the Mayor of the City also has a clear obligation to make sure that Tresca's slayer and the individual or group who hired him are brought to justice. And the Federal Government cannot escape responsibility in this quest, simply by pleading lack of jurisdiction. If legal technicalities prevent that government from stepping into the case, they should be removed, and if necessary the Rogers bill should be revived and enacted into law.

The lethargy which has characterized the prosecution of this case stands as a blot upon the names of both this state and nation, and its continuance would stamp the constituted authorities as derelict in their duty to protect the freedom and democracy of the United States from political assassins, so alien to American life.

Mussolini is dead. The man who murderd Marreotti and unleashed the forces of oppression and slaughter in the world has met his own kind of justice. But the man who murdered Carlo Tresca is still at large.

Tresca
Memorial Committee

Norman Thomas, Chairman
Angelica Balabanoff
William Henry Chamberlin
Frank Crosswaith
John Dewey
Varian Fry
Aron S. Gilmartin
America Gonzales
Sidney Hertzberg
John Haynes Holmes
Sidney Hook*
Harry Kelley
Liston M. Oak
A. Philip Randolph
Sheba Strunsky
Oswald Garrison Villard
M.R. Werner
Edmund Wilson
Bertram D. Wolfe
October, 1945

*I am grateful to Sidney Hook, the only member of the Carlo Tresca Memorial Committee I was able to locate, for raising no objection to this republication of the Committee's pamphlet.