"When asked if Debs is a candidate of the Socialist Party for President, Mr. Hillquit replied: "'If any voice or influence of mine could accomplish anything, he certainly will be nominated at the next convention.' "'The Supreme Court has passed upon the conviction of Debs and affirmed it,' said ex-Judge Sutherland, of counsel. 'Notwithstanding this judgment, you still declare that Mr. Debs represents and personifies the attitude of the Socialist Party on the subject of loyalty to the United States Government?' "'I do not say that he represents the attitude of the Socialist Party. I think I said that he represents the highest and noblest sentiments of United States citizenship and American loyalty.... Debs was convicted only for saying things, not for doing things. I do not for a moment doubt he said the things he is charged with having said.' ... "'Do you uphold and approve of, as a leader of the Socialist Party, the words that Mr. Debs pronounced, and for which he was convicted?' "'I haven't got his complete speech before me. I do not want to commit the Party in this general way to every statement. I will say, as a whole, I read his speech at the time and my impression was that it was a perfectly innocent, honest expression of opposition to war for very good and patriotic motives.' ... "'Have you any respect at all for the decision of the tribunal to the contrary?' "'I have respect to this effect: that I know that it is final and binding and in practice will go. I do not have respect in the sense of believing that it is just, impartial, and well-reasoned out.' ... "'Mr. Hillquit, do you wish to be understood as saying that you approve of the words spoken by Mr. Debs for which he was convicted?' "'Are you trying to get me a little conviction, also, Judge?' asked the witness. "'I am not in a position to indorse every word and every phrase because I have not the speech before me,' he continued. 'As a rule, I fully indorsed his statements on the subject of the war, expressed, I suppose, in that speech and in other speeches.... I share with all my comrades the greatest respect for Debs, and cannot think any compliment too high for him.' "'And you think it was that largeness of view, do you, that led Mr. Debs to say the things which brought him into conflict with the law of the United States?' "'Absolutely, just in the same way as it once happened to one Jesus of Nazareth.'" "'And you say that notwithstanding the highest judicial authority known under the Constitution has declared him guilty of doing that, and in contempt of that authority, notwithstanding that authority, you say that he is the man that should be placed in the President's chair by the votes of the Socialist Party?' "'I do.' "'If Mr. Debs were elected in 1920, how would you proceed to inaugurate<sup></sup> him, as he is serving a twenty-year sentence?' asked Assemblyman Jenks. "'The chances are that prior to the time he would be called upon to occupy the chair the powers that be would sober up enough to know that the present conviction is an improper and inhuman act and liberate him.'"
On several occasions at the trial, in spite of Hillquit's studied effort to cast an air of innocency over his party, menacing words escaped from this crafty leader. He could not restrain them even at the end, on March 3, 1920, when summing up the case for the Socialist defendants at Albany, according to the following account in the "Sun and New York Herald" of March 4, 1920: