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Source: John M – Judicial Guest Presentation – Date Unknown.mp3 File: john-m-judicial-guest-presentation-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:52:31
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To attend the conference, my greetings and very best wishes to all independents, my deep appreciation of great work being done in our city by Alcoholics Anonymous. It has become an indispensable Chicago institution. Mayor Richard J. Daley. And here's one address from Springfield, Illinois. On behalf of the people of the state of Illinois, I would like to welcome the 6th Annual Spring Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous Intergroups of Chicago and Nearby Suburbs, and congratulate you. Congratulations upon your important work in this vital field. May you have a most successful and memorial program. Sincerely, Governor Otto Kerner.
And one from the state of Iowa. I sincerely regret I cannot be with you for these two days of stimulating and informative lectures and discussions. The brochures clearly indicate that the program is well planned and that many outstanding persons will be participating. May I convey my best wishes to all of you for a very successful and rewarding experience. As you well know, I am with you in spirit and I continue to be deeply interested in your efforts in behalf of the victims of alcoholism. You may be interested that my staff is presently developing a statewide program of education, treatment, rehabilitation, and increased service to alcoholics and their families, and I am very hopeful of the effects and success of this program.
We hope the project will be launched in early fall. Best regards to all of you. Very true to yours, Harold E. H. Governors of the state of Iowa. And last but not least, Chicago Intergroup Conference, dear folks. Always join me in affection for each and all of you, and in deepest thanks for all the good work going forward, work that is and always will be so meaningful to so many. May time to come endow you with even greater opportunity of service. Ever devotedly, Bill. Bill W.
Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jack. I'm your chairman for this evening. I want to clue you in because Frank clued me in. I'm supposed to start this program by saying hi, then I give you… Can't hear me? Down in front. Frank clued me in to tell you when I say hi, you should say hi. So my name is Jack. Hi. Hi. Word, Frank. Now, in keeping with past practices at regular AA meetings, we begin with a quiet time. Maybe we have one now.
Thank you. I never heard it so quiet in a group of alcoholics, so quiet in my life. Our anonymity, like our sobriety, is a treasured possession. We ask the help of our guests, especially those of the press and radio, in protecting the anonymity of all alcoholics present or mentioned here today. We hope you hear something at this meeting which you can take away with you and use. We respectfully request, however, that you leave the name of all AA members, both those on the platform and those in the audience, here where they belong, in the Fellowship of Alcoholics in Office.
I would like to read you the accepted description of AA. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help other alcoholics to recover. The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. AA has no dues or fees. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution.
It does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
[00:05:09]
For the invocation tonight, we have a very good friend of AA, whom I understand refers more to us than our telephone answering service. With that, I give you the Reverend Milan Swatko of the Northlake Evangelical Lutheran Church. Reverend. May we stand for the prayer. Almighty God, we come before thee in this moment knowing that as individuals who would know themselves, we must first be known of thee and know thee.
We come conscious of the fact, O God, that whether or not we would acknowledge thee or not because of the essence of thy love, your reign, and goodness comes both upon the good and the wicked. But we pray that we who are the products of thy grace may come sensibly before thee and thus as dependent children, acknowledging thee as a heavenly loving father, give unto thee that gratitude and that life relationship that you would expect of us.
We ask of thee in this moment, as we do all moments of our lives, that we would always stay pregnant to whatever you would give to us through thy will in guidance and in wisdom. So use these hours and these speakers that we may ourselves get a better know-how of ourselves, the techniques for the expression of love and forgiveness and discipline within our own lives. O God, our job isn't so much to take the slums out of our life as it would be to let you to take the slum out of us so that all else would follow.
Forbid that any one of us should ever operate for false and haughty pride, for ego, for self-gain, for prestige, and even to blow our own trumpets. But grant, O God, that we would labor and live for the intoxicating joy of serving and of loving because of the love which first loved us, and like the sun with its light and a fire with its heat, cannot do but otherwise. And take us, O God, like untamed steam and electricity, and teach us that these can be tyrants, and make us meek like the great men of history who know that when we're surrendered to thy will, it's only because a mature and an adult people take upon themselves self-imposed duties.
And non-enforceable tasks that are ours by thy love and conscience, realizing in our own hearts that no pill or shot, no lob Springfield or Washington, no product of lily or woodberry can wipe the stain of cane off of our face, but these are still the result of your blessed chemistry within us. Lord, we thank thee for the prayers of this group that bolster and sustain us all as we subject ourselves in discipline to your holy will.
Keep us mindful of those past and present whose labors to make us the sons of God are never warped or stunted or shriveled, but who silently and patiently take the ugliness, the sordidness, and the selfishness out of life, and so make us some of the world's solution and not more of its problem. We know, O God, that every one of us will grow from dependence to independence and from helplessness to competency, from irresponsibility to life-giving maturity, and that these come from thee, and that within each of us they can be the keys by which we creatively lay one another upon each other in love.
[00:10:00]
For our sins, O God, for missing the mark, our sad betrayals, our shame of the second best, and our compromises, we pray from a loving Father only the humility and the wisdom they teach us and the love of a Father that can forgive and bring us back to thyself. For this wisdom to guide us and thy power to support us, together with other petitions of body and soul, we boldly ask in the name of him whose own life was voluntarily surrendered to the full tides of the power of thy love, that though it cost him his life, lay it down. Give us that spiritual muscle. Amen.
Thank you, Reverend. And now before I introduce our first speaker for this evening, I'd like to tell you that I had the distinct pleasure of hearing him in Toronto last July at our 30th anniversary. The judge is an administrative judge of the criminal courts of New York, also a devoted worker in our own GSO. And I dare say that this is the first time in my life I ever stood up in front of a judge with no concern or apprehension of the consequences. With that, I give you Judge John M..
Thank you, Jack, Reverend, Frank, members, and friends of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is always edifying to appear before an audience composed of members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Needless to say, it is doubly edifying to address a group as large as this. My interest in alcoholism curiously started, not ended, on skid row. As a non-alcoholic prior to 1950, I doubt that I really reflected on drink as a problem.
Certainly, the average person scarcely begins to identify with the staggering cross that the alcoholic bears. But when I entered the court system in 1950 as an administrator, as the chief magistrate, for the first time I beheld the tragedy of skid row lined up before the bench in groups of ten or a dozen, all charged with disorderly conduct. Having some tendency to be intellectual, to be curious about the rights of individuals, I couldn't help but sense that here lay a question for me not so much as to whether any given individual before the bench was guilty, but rather fundamentally as to the right of society to address itself to this problem in this way.
There have been many times in the last 16 years when I despaired of ever seeing anything much done about society's error. But curiously, out of the blue, within the last few months, there has been a revolutionary development in the law as applied to this problem. Now I say I felt uneasy on the bench when I first viewed the problem. In New York City, unlike Chicago and just about every other city throughout the country, the drunk who is brought into court is not charged with public intoxication.
He is charged with the crime of disorderly conduct. He is charged with the crime of disorderly conduct, and as I say, if you have any intellectual curiosity, you will be disturbed by this, because the law of disorderly conduct, as lawyers know, is a difficult one to prove.
[00:15:17]
You can't just show that a person is a nuisance. You've got to demonstrate that the accused was guilty of specific acts, that his offensive conduct tended to cause a crowd to collect, that he was loud and boisterous, that generally he was a thorn in the side of others. Now, whether it's West Madison Street or whether it's the Bowery in New York, there is seldom anyone less or more harmless than a Skid Row derelict.
He's asleep in a doorway, he is lying prone on the sidewalk, he is sinning against himself, and he is little disturbance to others. I've often remarked that on Skid Row, if we didn't see those fellows, we'd think that there was something wrong, rather than being disturbed by their presence. Nonetheless, as I say, the charge in New York traditionally had been disorderly conduct. They almost invariably pleaded guilty in the past, we imposed a sentence, and we avoided the problem.
I knew it was wrong. I know it is wrong still. But oftentimes we know that something is wrong, as we did for so many years with respect to alcoholism, but we have no answer whatever. I sought the answer initially by trying to get acquainted with those dedicated people on Skid Row who spend lifetimes, like the distinguished Monsignor McDermott, catering to and trying to bring God to the lives of these hapless souls.
I got much encouragement, certainly they inspired me, but I remained largely in the dark. Some months after I began my interest, I had a visit from a stranger, who of course had no appointment. This is the beginning of my AA story. I say my AA story in a real sense. Some non-alcoholics have an AA story too. This visitor, of course, was a 12-stepper, Larry by name. As such, she didn't feel it was necessary to have an appointment.
His presence was announced. My knowledge of AA was just the typical acquaintance. I had heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. I knew that generally speaking, it was a respectable group of people. Beyond that, I knew little or nothing. But being a respectable group, I felt obligated to see Larry, and only for that reason I welcomed him. On that occasion, I got my first lesson in alcoholism. I didn't get rid of him for over an hour.
I learned that an alcoholic is not a man of few words. Like most people, I think I'm a bit cynical. I was sure that Larry had an angle. While he conversed pleasantly, I had my guard up. I figured in one way or another he was bound to have an angle. He talked, and talked, and talked. He talked, and talked, and talked. He paid tribute to non-alcoholics, particularly officialdom, for our good work in helping Alcoholics Anonymous in various institutions.
And he covered the field very broadly. Essentially, he told his story. He told me many things that were interesting, pleasant, and like so many in AA, all in AA indeed, he was an interesting person. But at the end of the hour, he still hadn't put the bite on me, and he left very pleasantly.
[00:20:04]
And I figured that I was through. I knew nothing about 12-steppers. Larry, of course, repeated those visits from time to time. My first inclination was to cut it short, but he was pleasant. And each time I let him in. He was working on 12-step work. Now, in AA, you fully appreciate that 12-step work is a labor. And depending on the object of your work, it is difficult or more difficult. Well, if ever you want a really difficult subject on whom to work, select a non-alcoholic.
You in AA say that you've got to hit bottom before you're receptive. Reflect on the fact that the non-alcoholic hasn't begun to hit bottom. And if we are ever to get just a slight penetration, a slight inkling of what Alcoholics Anonymous is, the 12-stepper has to be a good 12-stepper. Fortunately, Larry, I think, qualified eminently in this respect. Among other things, he had the traditional AA patience.
He went on for almost two years before he did put the bite on me. I often think I have been invited to address AA gatherings since on about 200 occasions. And I've never, with the exception of that first occasion, refused. But on that first occasion, I received the invitation, and being a good 12-stepper, Larry approached the subject very well. He didn't ask me to appear on a given night, but rather he explained the nights on which the group met.
And he encouraged me to appear somewhere in two or three months. It was impossible to have a prior engagement. And only for that reason I accepted. Those months, of course, went by very rapidly. The date approached, and I thought to myself, what in the world can I say to a group of alcoholics? Well, if you think of that subject through the eyes of a non-alcoholic, you will know that it is a difficult question to answer.
As a result, just before the meeting, I phoned Larry and explained that something had developed, and I couldn't be present. But again, being a good 12-stepper, he persisted. He resumed his visits, and finally, after about three years, he tactfully invited me to attend the same group, but didn't ask me to speak. As a result, I appeared. We had then, and we had until a year ago, the counterpart of Monsignor McDermott, a great Monsignor Brennan who spent over 20 years on our Bowery.
Monsignor Brennan and I appeared there together, and I shall never forget. He was astounded despite the fact that he had a considerable familiarity with AA. He was astounded to recognize a number of individuals who he had assumed were in Potter's Field, and there they were, sober, prosperous, and happy in AA. Well, this more than anything aroused my curiosity. Shortly after that, by chance, I enrolled in the only postgraduate course I've ever taken since law school, the course at the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies.
I went there in the summer of 53 to learn a little about the problem. Indeed, ever since I finished those 30 days, it's been my boast that I got my law at Harvard and my alcohol at Yale. That experience was one that has affected my life certainly more profoundly than any period of my formal education.
[00:25:10]
The faculty was outstanding. It was drawn from all of the disciplines. There was little agreement among any of the speakers except on one subject. Everyone was agreed on the efficacy of Alcoholics Anonymous. Most of them, being scientifically minded, might well have been expected to attempt at least an answer as to why Alcoholics Anonymous provided an answer when all of the behavioral sciences combined afford almost nothing.
But they didn't even attempt. The one lecturer who did attempt an answer was a great friend of Alcoholics Anonymous, a theologian, one of the truly great Catholic theologians of the United States, Father John C. Ford. His reference to the doctrine of grace, to divine grace, was as profound as anything that I have heard. Being of his faith, but never having been privileged to study formally in a Catholic school, my knowledge of the faith is simply that largely acquired in a home that was truly religious.
But starting with this experience, my curiosity about theology and philosophy was whetted as it never had been before. This has had a tremendous influence far and all beyond alcoholism on my professional career. Because there isn't a body of human knowledge that is complete without the divine. Without an acquaintance with theology and philosophy, any education is indeed incomplete. Again, as in so many other areas, I am indebted to AA in large measure for this development in my life.
But when I had finished these 30 interesting days, needless to say, I was an expert on the subject of alcoholism. I returned to New York and there was another great priest who was a classmate of mine at the school, a Father Ray Kennedy. I'm afraid I was surrounded by Jesuits. Father Ray Kennedy returned to Syracuse to Lemoyne College, and the next thing I knew I got an announcement from him that he was giving an adult series of lectures on the subject of alcoholism.
He, too, was an expert. So I wrote congratulating him and wound up with an invitation to give one of the lectures on law and alcoholism. Of course, at that point in my immaturity, I regarded myself as highly qualified, so I accepted. I went to Syracuse and I held forth much as I began tonight to discourse on the New York approach. I belabored my audience with the fact that we arraigned them in groups of 10 or 12.
We very methodically have the court officer recite the charge, advise them in detail of their rights, both of which they manifestly ignore, and then routinely plead guilty. And I explain that for that reason and only that reason we were in business. I pointed out to them that any lawyer would understand that if they had the initiative, the courage to challenge authority and to proceed to a trial, they would be acquitted.
Well, as so often happens, that lecture was followed by a question-and-answer period, to my disturbance. There was a lawyer in the house. There was a lawyer in the house who proceeded to ask me why, if I was so dissatisfied with
[00:30:02]
a disorderly conduct charge, we didn't charge them with public intoxication. I was stumped. But any lawyer is equal to double talk, and so I double talked and got out of it in the best fashion that I could. When I returned to New York and I looked up the penal law, sure enough to my surprise, I saw a section of the penal law that prescribed public drunkenness. This amazed me because truthfully, despite the fact that I had been many years in the field of criminal law, I had never heard of the charge.
But when I read the section, I found that the last sentence provided that it applied to the state of New York with the exception of the five counties of the city of New York. And of course, that's all I needed to feel smug and to understand my ignorance. But that too was shattered when sometime later I found a section of the New York City Criminal Courts Act that duplicated the section of the penal law.
Then and only then I understood why there was an exception in the penal law for the city. Apparently, we had the section long before the rest of the state. Well, at this point, I was really challenged as to whether I, and by this time I learned just about all the other 50-odd of my colleagues, were ignorant of the existence of this statute. Then began a program of research. I came across an obscure decision of one of my former colleagues, a fellow by the name of Frank Oliver.
This was our dissenting judge. He was always out of step. Interestingly, it now develops that he was about 30 years ahead of his time. He was the kind of person who was always, like the Supreme Court of the United States, very sensitive to police oppression. The result was that one day in 1936, he had a derelict before him. He read the charge. The derelict, Louis Schleicher by name, was charged with public intoxication in that he was lying on the sidewalk under the influence of drink.
Frank Oliver, on his own motion, dismissed the charge, expressing the opinion that in order to sustain a criminal charge against a drunk, it is necessary to allege not merely his presence in the public, not only his intoxication, but the fact that he is disturbing others. Well, at that point in my career, I had little respect for Frank Oliver. Today, I have tremendous respect, and I figured the old boy was just wrong again.
Well, it developed from my research that four years thereafter, the city got a new chief magistrate, a fellow by the name of Henry Curran, who died here only about two weeks ago. And Henry agreed with Oliver. Oliver had been ignored for about four years, but the new chief magistrate apparently saw the picture the same way he did, and he directed the clerks of court to send to headquarters all the forms dealing with public intoxication, and when he got them, he had them burned.
This was just an administrative device to stop the police from thereafter charging anyone with public intoxication, and that was its effect, and this was the true explanation as to why I was ignorant of the existence of a statute. Actually from 1940 until 1962, the city had a statute against public intoxication, and it never once was used. Indeed, it hasn't been used since only because we had a revision in the law in 1960, and it was my privilege then to reveal to the draftsmen this tremendous wisdom that I had acquired and persuade them to knock it off the book completely.
Now that sounds like just an interesting anecdote. Actually, it has much greater significance than appears. This is something, again, that I am indebted to, to AA, to Father Ford, and to my interest in alcoholism. Having become something of a Thomistic scholar as a result of that awakening of my interest,
[00:35:07]
I have some appreciation of what a sound philosophy of criminal law is. The Thomistic philosophers basically put the emphasis on an effect on the common good. They say, in effect, that there is a moral law, a divine law, and that basic to our criminal law, our human law, is this moral law. But intelligently they point out that it is not, it was not ordained by the Lord that we take his law and we as governments, judges, police, what have you, presume to enforce that in total.
That on the contrary, as trustees of the divine law, we are trustees in a most minute sense, and that it is our responsibility or authority to enforce the moral law only in that very narrow area where violations of the moral law affect the common good. They spell out much, many more restrictions, but that is the basic one that is important on this subject. Now if you reflect on this analysis, you soon see that whether Frank Oliver was a Thomistic philosopher or not, this is essentially what he was saying.
He was saying, in effect, that even if a statute broadly stated that it prescribed drunkenness in public, an intelligent reading of it limited it to a drunken act that affected others, that interfered with the public peace. And so quite properly he read that limitation into the section when he applied it. Now why again am I laboring this? Primarily because, interestingly, the revolution that I referred to earlier is now taking place.
For some 15 years, I have decried the absurdity that takes place in our court. Oh, for a few years, I attempted to be a pioneer in rehabilitation, so I ran into difficulties. And until increasingly, I recognized that the function of the law in this area is questionable at best, that in the main, we don't belong in the business. Then out of the blue recently, Civil Liberties Union and some of our dedicated friends in this problem began to conspire and to challenge the law in this area.
It is my regret to a slight extent that combined, they misunderstand the problem to a degree, and so while progress is being made, I have some misgivings. Now I'm referring to the widely publicized, or publicized particularly in alcoholic circles, the Easter case, the driver case, and now the Budd case, which is approaching the Supreme Court. The first one to receive prominence was the Easter case, but the first one to be decided by an important court was the driver case.
Basically, this is a typical Skid Row derelict who had been arrested about 200 times, had spent half his life in jails, and who presently was spending two years in jail in North Carolina for nothing more than public drunkenness. And so proceedings were begun to challenge the right of society to deal with a hapless soul in this fashion. The tact that was taken was to challenge the validity of the public intoxication statute as applied to an alcoholic.
The highest court in the state affirmed the conviction. Then under a widely used current procedure, an application for a writ of habeas corpus was applied for in a federal district court. The judge, of course, made a short shrift of it and denied the application.
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Then there was an appeal to a very important federal court, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. There to everyone's surprise, there was a degree of enlightenment. A unanimous court dismissed the case, reversed the law court. Now there are two respects in which I have a slight quarrel, but I emphasize slight because it is a very healthy beginning. Number one, there's special privilege involved.
The benefits are restricted to alcoholics. I say this justly, but actually I say it to a degree seriously because it affects the validity of the reasoning. Basically the court, speaking as we lawyers and judges tend to do, specific provisions on which to hang their hats combined two famous amendments in the federal constitution. The 14th amendment which provides for due process, the 8th amendment which provides that there shall be no acts that constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
And they reasoned that as applied to an alcoholic, this statute violated the United States Constitution. What I should prefer them to have done, and from an intellectual, from a legal standpoint, it would have been much sounder, was to borrow from a Frank Oliver and say in effect that regardless of whether the fellow was an alcoholic or not, if his state of degradation was such that he was drunk in public but was not disturbing another person, that then an intelligent reading of the section would limit it to cases in which he was disturbing the common good.
But this isn't the rationale they used. They used the rationale that as applied to an alcoholic, it is cruel and unusual punishment. Now a second reason that I am unhappy with it is that practically speaking it isn't workable. Even if we were to limit it to alcoholics, and most transgressors could qualify, or a great portion of them could, there is the insuperable difficulty of proving the fact that a fellow qualifies.
If you're dragged into court in the traditional fashion, you usually get 10, 15, or 30 days. Now under the driver case, if you're brought in before you qualify for these progressive ideas, you will have to undergo all kinds of tests to establish the fact that you're The period of institutionalization during which this is determined would probably be more cruel and unjust than a period in the workhouse.
But that is the present state of the law. Now moving on to the District of Columbia, the Easter case followed, and that was decided to the same effect. Now again, going back to the driver case, the primary objection I have to it is that proceeding on this thinking, it directed that the case be returned to the state court, there to be dismissed unless the state court proceeded to incarcerate him by process civil rather than penal in nature.
Now again, that would permit the state to incarcerate him for a long period of time under proceedings labeled as civil rather than criminal. Again getting back to basic philosophy, whether you call it civil or criminal, where is the right of the community to confine a person by process under any name simply to the state
[00:45:04]
made, I think we are pioneering in the last two months, and I confess that it took me 16 years to reach this point, but in the last two months, we have made a great step forward. I refer to my early thinking in which I was repelled at the idea of accepting pleas from these hapless souls and committing them. The only alternative to accepting the plea in those days was for a judge to be a maverick and like Frank Oliver, to take the initiative himself and in case after case dismiss the charge, even though the fellow pleaded guilty.
Recently, there has been a trend nationwide as the result of the famous Gideon case to bring assigned lawyers into courtrooms. We again in New York had made considerable progress before the Gideon case. Currently, we are assigning counsel in every case, even an offense charge, with the result that in the last two months, in a part of court known as Part 10 that deals exclusively with our Bowery habituated, we had somewhat over 2,500 cases in two months' time, and in each case, we had a so-called legal aid lawyer assigned.
Well, naturally, when a lawyer is assigned and he is aware of the law, something different happens. In considerably less than 10 percent, the defendants still insisted on pleading guilty and were given short terms. But in over 90 percent, the plea was not guilty and they all stood trial. The number who stood trial exceeded 2,000, and of that group, three, yes, three and only three were convicted. All of the others were dismissed, following again the early reasoning of a Judge Oliver.
It was ruled in case after case after case that these fellows might have been drunk in public, but they were not disturbing a soul other than themselves. Now if we are to pass moral judgment, these fellows, to a greater or less extent, may be sinning against God. That is something that we cannot truly assess in this world. Basically, the sin of an alcoholic or any drunkard is largely a matter between himself and the Lord above, something for judgment day.
We in the role of a human judge are not equal to assessing the matter. Our only function is to operate when the peace is being disturbed. So limited, the arrest of drunk and derelict is constitutionally unwarranted. We are fast approaching the day when all of this absurdity will end. Currently, about a million and a half such arrests are made nationally each year. Just short of 50 percent of all criminal arrests, from murder down to disorderly conduct, offer nothing more than public intoxication.
A process that has no basis in law, that is constitutionally in error, but has been acquiesced by society only because we have nothing better to prescribe. Again talking of Alcoholics Anonymous, you may not see a relationship between this development and your great organization. But if you could see the phenomenon of Alcoholics Anonymous through eyes such as mine, those of a non-alcoholic, you would realize the tremendous educational impetus that your example has been to the world.
This judicial progress is manifestly a breakthrough for Alcoholics Anonymous. We who are not close to the problem are gradually being educated by your divine example.
[00:50:00]
We are beginning to recognize a phase of human weakness that has been concealed from us all too long by our own health. You it is who are guiding us to wisdom, people such as myself who have had the good fortune to begin to know you and to work with you over the years, are greatly indebted to you for a netifying example, for an inspiration that could be found nowhere else. Alcoholics Anonymous, to my mind, is Christianity in action.
You have in this great organization a tremendous message, not only for the alcoholics, but for all of us. To the degree that we are human, we are weak. All of life's problems, be it alcoholism, or some of the more serious problems, or our day-to-day problems, are problems that are met successfully only when we learn our dependence on a power greater than ourselves. You have mastered something that would have sent most of you to an early grave by learning that divine message that if you have the humility to depend on your fellow man and on God himself, then and only then are you equal.
By acquiring this message, you have proved yourselves to be giants. You have proved yourselves equal to being an inspiration to all the world. My congratulations on this successful gathering. You are to be greatly congratulated for a life being well spent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Judge M.. And I know I speak for everyone here when I say thank you for your help and understanding to our problem.