Notes of the Week [excerpt]

     Mob law and mob vengeance is a terrible thing. It is a return to the primitive savage and the primitive justice of the savage, and when organised law and the resources of civilisation are set at naught by the decadents of civilisation perhaps it will be found that mob vengeance is the only deterrent. The anarchist is a noisome fungous growth flourishing in the dark places of civilisation. He is a savage lacking all the savage virtues. To him defiance of the law is glorification. The law for him has no terrors, but the fury of the mob which he would invoke againse [sic] authority is terrible when it turns against him. Czolgosz gloried in his crime. Before Judge and jury he was nonchalant, even contemptuous. Certain death at the hands of the public executioner he regarded as glorious martyrdom in “the cause,” but when the vengeful crowd at Auburn prison-gates cried for his blood and sought to tear him from his guard he collapsed on the prison floor screaming in abject terror. Rulers may yet find the antidote to anarchism in some such popular uprising against its instruments.