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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2018
There was more than one crime involved in the tragedy of Mylai. Behind the immediate facts of the massacre lie a host of charges which ultimately amount to an indictment of America as a political society. Since we are prosecutors as well as defendants, we have been tempted to drop the charges and to lower the voice of outrage to a timorous whisper. But that murmur will be insistent and eventually maddening; nations, as well as individuals, can be pursued by the Furies. The accusations must be taken up and examined, for they reflect an inescapable crisis in our political life which taints the present and threatens the future.
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