Country Notes [excerpt]

     Elsewhere we have expressed our opinion of the dastardly assault upon President McKinley. At the time of writing he is still alive, with fair prospects of surviving the sad experience, no thanks to his would-be murderer. It seems, by the by, that should his victim survive the utmost punishment that can by American law be meted out to the man who shot him is ten years’ imprisonment. Czolgosz is only twenty-eight, so that under the circumstances there would be let loose on the world a homicide not quite arrived at maturity. The law would seem to stand in need of amendment. Meanwhile, it is instructive to note that by Socialists the news has been received with shameless satisfaction. On Saturday two hundred Italian Anarchists met in Pennsylvania to celebrate the occasion, and two thousand Socialists who met at Chicago refused to pass a resolution of sympathy, on the ground that President McKinley represented Capital with a large C. So did the Trades’ Labour Council at Nashville. The New York Socialists held a meeting that ended in disorder through a proposal of the same kind being made. In the centre of the steel-strike district the success of the crime was celebrated with singing.

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     Without wishing to exaggerate these manifestations of sympathy with the crime, it is not unfair to draw the deduction, painful though it may be, that throughout, we do not say the working classes, but society, there is a minority who believe in assassination as a means of propagating opinion. To shut one’s eyes to that fact would be inconceivably foolish. We have heard on more than one occasion a mild-mannered Anarchist, who will if he lives be a candidate for Parliament at the next election, and is in the way of becoming leader of his party here, expatiate by the hour on the virtue of killing kings and presidents as a means of supporting his principles. He came originally from “those States,” and probably expresses accurately enough the opinion of such meetings as we have referred to. This is a matter that shortly will call for the intervention of the Legislature. An Emma Goldman, who sits in her seat promulgating Anarchist opinions, may continue to keep within the letter of the law as it at present exists, but in considering whether she should be allowed to continue doing so we must take into account the effect on dupes such as Czolgosz.