The Plain Truth [excerpt]

     We can hardly find cause for complaint in the fact that some foreign journals, and more especially those in Italy, should find occasion in their comments on the assassination of President McKinley to point out that only a short time ago we permitted a group of anarchists in this country to hold a public meeting to glorify the memory of Bresci, who murdered King Humbert a year ago. We are now reaping the harvest, we are told, of this kind of sowing. And who shall deny the substantial truthfulness of this charge? We have been too indulgent, too lenient, toward these human vipers. We can see and acknowledge all this now. We fail to see, however, why the English papers should exhibit bitterness over the fact that the United States has hitherto declined to be a party to any international action against anarchists. It should be remembered that with the exception of the Haymarket murders in Chicago, the anarchists have never before committed any overt acts of violence in the United States. The assassination of Lincoln was brought about entirely through political feeling, and that of Garfield was due partly to the same cause and partly to the crazy imaginings of a diseased mind. The anarchists had nothing whatever to do with either of these national tragedies. Their victims hitherto have always been monarchs, or the representatives of monarchical ideas. We had no reason to suppose that their murderous hate would ever turn against the chief executive of a nation where the people rule and the fullest possible degree of liberty under law is vouchsafed to all. But we know better now.