The heart-breaking reading, posthumously by Gil Carter (Henry Fonda), of a letter written by a lynched man, Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), to his wife: ("...A man just naturally can't take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurtin' everybody in the world, 'cause then he's just not breakin' one law, but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It's everything people ever have found out about justice and what's right and wrong. It's the very conscience of humanity. There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody's conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived? I guess that's all I've got to say except - kiss the babies for me and God bless you...")
I was 10 (1972)when I watched the The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) . I really didn't understand it then, but it was burned into my soul. The older I have grown, the more I recall the scene. The way I had goosebumps come across me as a boy, the way it warms me as a man and the way it scares me as I face the future.
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