he Guillotine

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

Since Lilliland was a neutral country, like Switzerland, everything was generally very peaceful. But many years ago, before the Baron was born, there occurred tragic murders over the love of a woman.

The French police department sent a guillotine to Lilliland as a gift. While the gift was never used, it was accepted as a gesture of good will. The guillotine, over the years, remained in boxes in the Lilliland prison, rusting away.

The Baron and chief advisor, Professor Hamblin, often talked about the history of guillotines. Basically if a person was convicted of killing another person in cold blood, he had his head cut off in the public square for all the townspeople to witness. The idea was to show people that crime did not pay and they should reflect on their intentions before killing anyone.

Both the Professor and the Baron thought the use of the guillotine was not a good idea. They also thought that public hangings were not good either. Lethal injections were not good. The convicted person was just as dead one way or the other and did not bring the victim back.

They both agreed that there was really no good way of treating a convicted killer. They also concluded that it might be best to just let the person stay in prison for the rest of his natural life, with no one to talk to and not be included in any social interaction. The prisoner should be given the silent treatment.

The logic was that two wrongs do not make a right. The first killing was wrong and the second killing, by guillotine or hanging or injection, was also wrong.

Lilliland would not engage in war and would not engage in death as a punishment. The convicted person was removed from society and remained in prison for the rest of his life without any chance of parole.

In the rare case of mistaken identity, and the real murderer was found, then the falsely convicted prisoner was still alive and could be set free. Not so if the man had been guillotined, hung, or injected.

The Baron said that dealing with this subject was one of the saddest parts of being the leader in Lilliland.