Most of us know of almost similar cases. I think of a man who has repeatedly tried for a federal judgeship in New Mexico, who has literally been guilty of every crime on the human calendar. Yet we don't at risk of life push these cases to retribution. Is that one of the lessons the past has for us? Spanish power fell in New Mexico because there came a time when there was neither justice nor retribution in any of the courts. Other panoramas there were beneath the age-mellowed beams of the Palace ceiling, panoramas of Comanche and Navajo and Ute and Apache stalking in war feathers before a Spanish governor clad in velvets and laces. Tradition has it that a Ute was once struck dead in the Governor's presence. Certainly, all four tribes wrought havoc and raid to the very doors of the Palace. Within only the last century, a Comanche chief and his warriors came to Santa Fe demanding the daughter of a leading trader in marriage for the chief's son. The garrison was weak, in spite of fustian and rusty helmets and battered breastplates and velvet doublets and boots half way to the waist--there were seldom more than 200 soldiers, and the pusillanimous Governor counseled deception. He told the Comanche that the trader's daughter had died, and ordered the girl to hide. The only peace that an Indian respects--or any other man, for that matter--is the peace that is a victory. The Indian suspected that the answer was the answer of the coward, a lie, and came back with his Comanche warriors. While the soldiers huddled inside the Palace walls, the town was raided. The trader was murdered and the daughter carried off to the Comanches, where she died of abuse. When these tragedies fell on daughters of the Pilgrims in New England, the Saxon strain of the warrior women in their blood rose to meet the challenge of fate; and they brained their captors with an ax; but no such warrior strain was in the blood of the daughters of Spain. By religion, by nationality, by tradition, the Spanish girl was the purely convent product: womanhood protected by a ten-foot wall. When the wall fell away, she was helpless as a hot-house flower set out amid violent winds.