Insane, Says Adler

LEADER OF SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL CULTURE SO
CHARACTERIZES CZOLGOSZ.

     Professor Felix Adler, accompanied by Mrs. Adler and Miss Adler, returned on the steamer Columbia, of the Hamburg-America Line, yesterday from a three months’ trip through Switzerland, Holland and England.
     “This is sad news, indeed,” he said, referring to the assassination of the President, “and particularly to a returning traveller [sic]. I do not know what to say about it, except to express my deep regret that such a catastrophe should overtake the nation and the man. It is terrible.
     “What should be done with anarchists? That is a question too difficult to answer without consideration. To my mind it is a question of what to do with lunatics—a question of finding them and segregating them from the rest of mankind. I regard this man who assassinated the President and all of his class as insane. Unquestionably the shooting of the President was the act of a lunatic. The real problem is to discover the insane persons.
     “All alienists will tell you that Europe is reeking with insane persons, many of whom are dangerous. Even if the assassination were the result of a plot I would still regard the man as insane. If anarchists were radicals, merely holding the opinions that they promulgate and not putting them into effect, they would be easy to deal with. That they do more than hold or preach such opinions makes dealing with them the more difficult. In the first instance they would be harmless, but in the second they are a menace to civilization.
     “A year ago one of the best and most beneficent monarchs was killed by an insane person—by the act of a maniac, for that is all that Bresci was. The same is true of the man who shot the President. He had no personal pique against Mr. McKinley. There is an absence of motive or result of motive that would in any way benefit the assassin, and for that reason, if for no other, I hold that the man was insane.”