When the District Attorney had arrived, Mr. Untermyer’s whole voice changed. He spoke sternly to the young man. “Why, Harold, what are you trying to do—persecuting this little woman, so frail and so delicate, the mother of a family? You don’t want to put her behind bars, do you? She’s doing a noble work in the world and here you are behaving like this! Are you representing the Government or are you merely prejudiced in your own behalf?” Mr. Content replied respectfully, “Well, Mr. Untermyer, we don’t want to prosecute Mrs. Sanger, but we want her to promise to obey the law.” “Has she broken the law?” “We have positive proof that she has violated it on a very large scale.” Mr. Untermyer immediately assured him, “Why, of course, she’ll promise not to break any more laws. Is that all it is? You just quash that indictment and forget about it.” Mr. Content left. Mr. Untermyer turned to me genially and said, “Well, you see? We’ve fixed that up.” “What’s going to happen? The law will be the same, won’t it?” “Why, yes.” “What was that you said about a promise?” “Oh, yes, write me a letter saying you won’t break the law again.” “I couldn’t promise that, Mr. Untermyer.” “What?” “No, I couldn’t do that. The law is there. Something must happen to it.” “The law may not be what it should be, but you’ll never get anywhere by violating it. It must be changed by legal methods; gather all your friends and go to Congress.” Again I stated my position. The law specified obscenity, and I had done nothing obscene. I even had the best of the Government as regarded the precise charge. I had not given contraceptive information in the _Woman Rebel_, and therefore had not violated the law either in spirit or principle. But I had done so in circulating _Family Limitation_, and that would inevitably be brought up. I really wanted this, so that birth control would be defined once and for all as either obscene or not obscene. Mr. Untermyer took down one of his ponderous books and read over the section in question. Again he said, “The evidence is that you have violated the law. We don’t separate the spirit from the letter. It is all there. It seems to me that pleading guilty would let you out of your troubles without loss of dignity. You should consider yourself fortunate at the suggested outcome. You can gain nothing by trial. You cannot even get publicity in these days when the papers are crowded with war news and the big events of history are happening.” I still could not admit his interpretation. You had to differentiate between the things mentioned in that law and actual obscenity; the courts would some day have to decide on this. “You have no case,” Mr. Untermyer persisted. “If you have broken the law, there is nothing anyone can do or say to argue that fact away. We must prevent your going to jail, however. I’ll see what I can do.”