Comments [excerpt]

     Kate Austin thinks “it is poor logic, to say at least, after acknowledging the deed of Luccheni or Bresci as vital factors in the great movement against all government, that is sending quaking thrills through every force-propped institution on earth, to deny that fair-faced rebel who died in the Auburn prison on October 29, bearing witness with his last breath that he performed the act ‘for the sake of the good working-people.’” Leaving out of consideration the Gladstonian style of this sentence, I wish to say that those who exalt the deed of Luccheni or of Bresci as a “vital factor” in the struggle for liberty may, with equal justice, applaud Czolgosz’s act; but men of ordinary intelligence, men who are not “deep” thinkers, are of the opinion that all acts of violence do harm to the cause of freedom. But then they may be mistaken; it may be that ordinary people have no right to express an opinion of great historical events!
     There are all sorts of men in the world. While some people, Liberals as well as others, are so afraid of being accused of sympathizing with Czolgosz that they exhaust their vocabulary in denouncing Anarchy and Anarchists, others fear that a mere suspicion that they disapprove of the murder of McKinley would ruin their reputation. Of course, they do not approve of it, but they are philosophers and understand the “beautiful soul” of Leon Czolgosz; and so they do not condemn or approve, but “explain.” Philosophy is a great thing, and ordinary mortals who grope in the darkness of common sense [sic] must acknowledge their inability to grasp the “real issue.”