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William McKinley
A has come over the English-speaking
world. A great and good man, though no titled monarch, has been
bled to death by a cowardly assassin’s hand; killed by a dastard,
the lives of a thousand of whom would be worthless compared with
that of William McKinley.
It is merciful to humanity to be merciless
to Czolgosz and such as he. It is no nice work to shoot hawks, kill
rats, and destroy vermin generally; yet what is to be done when
such interfere with, and terrorise wholesome human life. We read
a week ago of a meeting of 200 sympathisers with Czolgosz. The whole
of these people should have been taken out and exterminated just
as rats at plague time.
The horrible part of the thing is
that the best and greatest of men—the men who do good to the race—are
at the mercy of the most loathsome and vile. We must meet terror
with terror; it is not merciful to the race to be merciful with
these horrible miscreants.
The three greatest (barring Washington)
of America’s choice, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, have gone
down before men who were as dirt to them. One feels almost inclined
to recommend the tortures of Torquemada. Even those would be too
good for such as Booth, Garteau and Czolgosz.
“Don’t hurt him,” said the wounded
President. Aye, but they will find a different man in Rooseveldt,
Vice-President, now President. Such assassins as Czolgosz should
be shot on sight, and Rooseveldt’s little gun has been generally
handy in his hip pocket.
The world’s sympathy goes out to the
memory of the Great Dead, and if there is any power in a world’s
detestation, it will be a poor sort of Hell that is not yawning
for Czolgosz. There is no use for a Hell that doesn’t want him and
his sort.
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