Caught the tail end of this film last night. The concluding speech by the presiding judge (Spencer Tracey) made me think of events in our country today. What he said (or the script writer said) forty-odd years ago is still pertinent today:
"[This] trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs... The murder of children... How easily that can happen!
There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the "protection" of the country. Of "survival". The answer to that is: survival as what?
A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth... and the value of a single human being!"