Anarchy

THE murderous attack on President McKinley, which excited a thrill of horror throughout the civilised world, has once more called attention to the vile work of the anarchist and assassin. With mistaken clemency America has received with open arms a number of the pestilential band, who were the cause of the sad and ill-fated end of Elizabeth of Austria. That atrocity, which happened only two years ago on September 10th ’98, when the revered but defenceless Empress was stabbed at Geneva by the Italian anarchist Luccheni, is still fresh in the minds of everyone. Italy has always been the stronghold of the anarchist, but notwithstanding the devilish cunning and ingenuity with which they concealed their connection with the crime, and the fact that the secret was preserved by the assassin, as it always is in this baleful brotherhood, the police discovered that Luccheni’s act was part of an extensive anarchist plot, and Europe was too hot to hold the originators of it for the time being. In America they found a refuge, and the laxity of the law there in dealing with capital offences as well as the safety from pursuit was a double attraction. Now they have in a startling manner brought home to the American Republic the danger of allowing unlimited license to such characters under the guise of liberty and freedom. The stern repressive measures used by the Continental Governments in self-protection against these pests of society have considerably lessened the danger to which the rulers of Europe were constantly exposed, but it has also had the effect of sending them afield and of making other countries, particularly Britain and America, the strongholds of their machinations.
     Anarchism is the cancerous growth, the excrescence of our modern civilisation. The futility and sheer insanity of its methods of endeavouring to redress grievances, fancied or real, against society, might excite some feeling akin to pity, did not the horror and brutality of such methods repel every right minded man. Our pity is rather for the victims of the cowardly assassin, for the defence [sic] woman who all unsuspectingly is done to death by stiletto, dagger, or revolver, or, as in the case of the United States President, for the man who frankly gives his hand to the wretch who at the same moment would strike him fatally. Anarchy is a law unto itself. It acknowledges no ruler and is totally opposed to law and order as the average man understands it. The utter senselessness of such a waste of life is appalling to sane minded people, as it is not conceivable how the displacing of one ruler by killing him (though in his own person he is in every way unobjectionable) is going to affect any issue, seeing that a successor steps into power immediately. To the anarchist this is a matter of no moment, his creed is to kill and he strikes blindly without fear and without compunction. It might have been supposed that democratic America would have been free from the atrocities of anarchism, but apparently the President of the United States has as much reason to fear the sudden stab or the stealthy bullet as the despotic ruler of all the Russias. For the third time now in a little over three decades an American president has had his life attempted, the two first unfortunately with fatal results, though there is great hope that the assassin will not be successful in his design in the present instance.
     Lincoln and Garfield were sacrificed, and now McKinley, a man that is beloved by the people has been brought to death’s door. President Lincoln’s murder in ’65 by Wilkes Booth the actor, was certainly the act of a madman, and the shooting of President Garfield at Washington by Guiteau in ’81 was also suspected to have been caused through insanity. The act of Czolgosz was no less demented, but there is unfortunately method in the madness of an anarchist. Society is his pray [sic] and its rulers he looks upon as his lawful victims. America has had this fact illustrated for her in a disastrous manner, and it is to be hoped the lesson will serve. To harbour such dangerous enemies to social order is criminal on the part of any civilised nation, and we knew that America has done more, she has given them a license to hatch plots, and to disseminate their pestiferous views by means of lectures and literature and in every way that they might be promulgated. Small wonder that the evil birds thus incubated have come home to roost.