From My Point of View

     Mr. H. L. Green, editor of the “Freethought [sic] Magazine,” kindly recommends that “Anarchists and Free Lovers,” including Lucifer, be deported to some island in the Pacific where they shall be compelled to remain “and no schools, prisons, hospitals, or any other institution established by law or allowed there,” and that there shall be no government whatever. Also that a commissioner be sent there once in three months “to see that this law of the United States government is strictly li[?]ed to.”
     This is a brilliant idea; but is not original with Mr. Green. For many years Freethinkers have been advised to “get out” if they do not like our Christian government. As Mr. Green takes so kindly to the idea, perhaps he will agree to go to a free thought island, together with all the other freethought editors, lecturers, and agitators whose ideas are not in accord with those of their Christian neighbors. Why should Mr. Green and his fellow-denouncers of the Anarchists remain here and attempt to keep the Bible out of the public schools, agitate for the taxation of church property, etc.? No doubt funds would be forth- [309][310] coming to buy an island and transportation for Mr. Green and his sympathizers. Of course we would miss them, for self-government in religion is the first step toward self-government in all things, and Mr. Green’s work is quite as useful as the primary department in any school. Nevertheless we would not stand in the way of his practicalizing his scheme, for we believe in individual initiative—and others would arise to do Mr. Green’s work after he is gone.

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     In these days when the Anarchist hunt is on at full cry, there should be some way of distinguishing the Anarchist from his neighbor. Who is the Anarchist? Is it he who criticises existing institutions? Who has not done so? Is it he who advocates violent, illegal methods of punishing wrong-doing? Then are there few, indeed, who are not Anarchists, and those making the loudest outcry against Anarchists are the most lawless.
     Is the Anarchist one, as we claim, whose first rule of conduct is to attend to his own business, to exercise self-control that he may not invade the right of his neighbor to attend to that neighbor’s own business? Then truly are there but few Anarchists. But only through cultivating the true Anarchistic, non invasive, self-governing spirit can come “peace on earth, good will toward men.”

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     Must Mark Twain be “stamped out” as an Anarchist? In “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” (page 163 and 164) he says: “For it could not help bringing up the un-get-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion; it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must begin in blood, no matter, what may answer afterward.” Mr. Twain may be correct in his statement in regard to the past; but it does not necessarily follow that we shall not attain anything by peaceful methods in the future. It is to be hoped that we shall grow more reasonable and less violent as the race developes [sic] from childhood to maturity. Two wrongs cannot make a right; two blows do not neutralize each other.