Excommunication Rejected

     Notwithstanding Wat Tyler, I am not inclined to recede from the position I have taken in considering Leon Czolgosz’s act of political significance. If the acts of Caserio, Angiolillo, Luccheni, and Bresci can be said to have any political significance (and they certainly can), that of Czolgosz appears in the same light. The attempt to brush the latter aside on the grounds of alleged insanity, remains to be proven. Dr. Channing does not even positively assert him to be insane, but simply that his case “furnishes more grounds for diagnosis of insanity.” This is certainly very weak evidence on which to declare a man a lunatic, in view of the fact that Dr. Channing failed to examine the most important witness—Czolgosz himself.
     The reliability of the evidence on which this hypothesis rests may well be questioned. In a pamphlet on “Responsibility and the Czolgosz Case,” by Dr. J. Sanderson Christison, based on “personal investigation,” and announced to be the leader of the “theory that Czolgosz was insane,” several questions of fact contradict Dr. Channing’s results. On whom can we rely?
     Besides these experts show a tendency to prove the world insane on no matter what ground. One of the reasons for Czolgosz’s insanity is stated to be as follows:

     Moral Chaos, e. g., He declared that he did not believe in government, nor in law, nor in marriage, nor in God.

     This probably puts Wat Tyler in the direct way of being declared a lunatic. Certainly all Anarchists come under this head. “Wat Tyler” bears a rather suggestive pseudonym to be engaged in the attempt to excommunicate Leon Czolgosz. I reject it utterly and entirely.