The Latest Socialist Crime

WE will not attempt to add anything to the formal and conventional expressions of grief which have appeared in the Press at the murder of Mr. McKinley beyond saying that responsibility for the crime has not been traced to the right quarter. The socialists have hastened to dissociate themselves from the anarchists, as they always do after an assassination; but they are the real criminals. It is their denunciation of capitalists which inspires the anarchists to murder those whom they regard as the creatures of the capitalists—kings and presidents. When labouring men hear the “present system” denounced, and they are told that it can be ended only by constitutional means, it is not surprising that an occasional listener of ill-balanced mind and morbid temperament, too impatient for the slow remedy of constitutional methods, should resort to the pistol, the dagger, or the bomb. If there were no socialists, there would be no anarchists. The socialist preaches in the “don’t-put-his-head-under-the-pump” style; the anarchist, impelled by more fanatical inclinations, acts. That nothing is really accomplished either for anarchism or socialism is always evident; but, then, anarchists cannot see things that are so clear to the rest of mankind. If they could, they would not be anarchists. The only result in the present case is that Colonel Roosevelt takes the place of Mr. McKinley, who might not have been shot if he had been guarded by a posse of police.