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MONARCHS AND THEIR MURDERERS.

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[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.] MONARCHS AND THEIR MURDERERS. By LADBROKE BLACK. AN AMERICAN CRIME. In dealing with the assassination of Alex- ander II. of Russia I stated that the Anar- chists were not organised until after the failure of Soborieff's attempt in 1879. Lest there should be any misunderstanding on this point, it would be as well, perhaps, to state that this remark refers to the secret organisa- tion of that section of the Anarchists who carry their creed to the logical conclusion of force. In one sense the Anarchists have been organised ever since 1869, when Bakunin, one of the apostles of Anarchism, with a body of his followers, entered the Conference of the International Working Men's Association held at Basle. Since then, from time to time, these doctrinaire Anarchists or Indi- vidualists have held regular conferences. The last, I believe, took place at Rome, within a stone's throw of the Vatican. But these doc- trinaire Anarchists must be distinguished clearly from their more advanced brothers and sisters who seek to spread the faith by murder and terror. The English owe their freedom from this species of atrocity to the distinction they make between thought and action. An Anar- chist who attempts to propagate hie doctrines by ordinary philosophical arguments may live out a peaceable existence in England; but on the Continent, where the terror inspired by the dread doings of the Central Committee of Combat has bitten deep into the heart of the official world, this distinction is not admitted. A doctrinaire Anarchist is looked upon as an enemy of organised society, and as such is hounded from place to place by the police and their army of spies. It is small wonder that, under these circumstances, men and wo- men are driven from the passive into the active ranks of Anarchism—that from simply believing organised society to be wrong they grow into thinking it right to use every means to destroy that society. Educated persons, who in their ordinary life are quiet and good and inoffensive, have been forced by police persecution into honestly holding it to be a moral duty to murder the rulers of the world. After Bresci's assassination of King Humbert of Italy that criminal decadent received hun- dreds of letters and telegrams from people of every grade of society, congratulating him on what he had done and lauding his heroism. On the other hand, it would be wrong to ascribe to the secret machinations of the militant Anarchists every one of those crimes that have been committed in their name. I have made inquiries here and abroad, and I am almost satisfied that the assassination of President McKinley by the Polish Anarchist who gave his name as Czolgosz was not the result of a plot by the secret societies. I use the word" almost," for it is sometimes im- possible to trace the handiwork of the Cen- tral Committee. They work so ingeniously, sometimes employing through their innu- merable agents men who never even suspect that they are being made to do the work of others, that it is a matter of great difficulty to say whether such-and-such a criminal was in- spired from headquarters. To this day the American police, who possess probably the finest detective force in the world, have been unable to make up their minds on this point. The unfortunate wretch Czolgosz, it will be remembered, declared that he was inspired to commit the deed by Miss Goldman, the cele- brated Anarchist lecturer. Mies Goldman, when interviewed on the subject after the crime, at first declared she did not know the man, but then went on to remark that she scarcely remembered anything about him ex" cept that he had a pale complexion. When pressed to explain how it was that she knew that the man with the pale complexion was the man who killed the President, she an- swered with the somewhat unsatisfactory re- tort, "I guessed it from the newspapers." Miss Goldman played no part, either active or passive, in the death of President McKin- ley, but the fact that she knew Czolgosz and attempted to disguise her knowledge might argue the existence of some carefully-hatched plot against the President's life in which Czolgosz was to play the leading part, but of which Miss Goldman had only heard the merest rumours. There is another matter also which requires some elucidation. Czolgosz, when he fired the fatal shot, had the revolver hidden be- neath a handkerchief which was tied round his hand. A man is supposed to have con- fessed to the police that he had tied this handkerchief for the assassin. He must, therefore, have known about the crime, and, acquainted as I am witE the workings of the Central Committee, I maintain that it is quite conceivable that they employed a long chain of agents, who culminated in the man who tied the handkerchief and Czolgosz. But this is the merest surmise. Whether Czolgosz was a tool in the hands of other and cleverer men, or simply a fana- tical lunatic acting under the influence of his own unbalanced judgment, the fact re- mains that.his deed was hailed with salvoes of <• • r.s and the wildest expressions of en- thusiasm by all the Anarchist societies throughout the United States. A group of Anarchists at Mackeesport celebrated the event with feasts and singing, and the names of Bresei and Czolgosz were acclaimed as those of men who had liberated the world. And this meeting was but a counterpart of similar gatherings elsewhere. The story of the crime must be so fresh in the m:innry of everyone that it hardly needs retelling. President McKinley had been at- tending the Pan-American Exhibition at Buffalo, and on September 6th, 1901, he a great speech, setting out America's new world policy. Afterwards he held a reception in the Temple of Music. As usual, he had to shake hands with a long line of enthusiastic citizens. Among them a well-dressed young man approached and held out hie hand. As the resident grasped it the other fired two shots at him, one of which entered his breast and the other his abdomen. Eight days later the President died. Czolgosz, m a confession made soon after arrest, declared that certain words of l-iss Grid man's had burnt into his brain, and had determined him to (kill the Presi- ) dent. He had hung about the Exhibition f' om September 3rd in the hope of finding n; opportunity. On the fourth day he found 1" chance, and took it. "I killed President I eKinlev because I have done by duty. I don't believe that one man should have so r¡11Ch service and that another man should 've none." Nine days after the President expired Czolgosz was tried, found guilty, and sen- tenced to death. Though at first he seemed Inclined to wish to incriminate Miss Gold- 1 '"in, at the end he frankly took the blame n himself, and actually in the death chair ¡ ;;1dly gloried in his crime. That last scene y, a probably one of the most gruesome exe- cutions ever witnessed. On October 29th, 1901, the death chamber a' the State Prison of Auburn, New York, ^as prepared. A certain number of witnesses bad taken tlieir seats at one end; fronting them was the fatal chair, and in an adjoining rOOIn was the electric switch-board, under the control of an electrician. Shortly after seven, 11 a signal from the chief warden, Czolgosz as brought in, guards on either side holding is arms. He stumbled as he entered, and ha^6^ *°r support he received he would i Vl0 fallen. As hie was urged forward wards the seat of death be again stumbled

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MONARCHS AND THEIR MURDERERS.

MONARCHS AND THEIR MURDERERS.