The life even of the most useful man, of the best citizen, is not to be hoarded if there be need to spend it.

I felt, and feel, this about others; and of course also about myself.

This is one reason why I have always felt impatient contempt for the effort to abolish the death penalty on account of sympathy with criminals.

I am willing to listen to arguments in favor of abolishing the death penalty so far as they are based purely on grounds of public expediency, although these arguments have never convinced me.
But inasmuch as, without hesitation, in the performance of duty, I have again and again sent good and gallant and upright men to die, it seems to me the height of a folly both mischievous and mawkish to contend that criminals who have deserved death should nevertheless be allowed to shirk it.

No brave and good man can properly shirk death; and no criminal who has earned death should be allowed to shirk it.
One of the best men with our regiment was the British military attache, Captain Arthur Lee, an old friend.