The evening times., 1899-12-07
THURSDAY. DECEMBER Z, 1899
The Kentucky Horror.

Inc horrible and slckenlng atr0clty OF
the lynching reported today from Mays
vile, KY. a town in a Republican
State and just across the river from Ohio.
will not go unpunished. The immediate
criminals may escape the vengeance OF the
law, but the Commonwealth in which the
crime was perpetrated and the whole
American nation will have to suffer for 1t
for years to come. in the loss of respect
for our institutions and in the contempt
for our alleged civilization which it will
breed throughout the wide world
The wild and bloodthirsty Apaches. in
their worst days, never held such orgies
over victim. and never tortured one with
the refinement of hellish cruelty that mark
ed the conduct of this Maysyille mob. Yet
there is small doubt that local public opin-
ion will uphold the offenders, and that ef-
forts to bring them to Justice, even IL
conscientious on the part of the authori-
ties, will be futile. 1t is pertinent to ask
what use to the nominally civilized COM
munity of Maysville. have been its religious
bodies. its churches. and Young Mems
Christian Associations, and its outwardly
high standard of religious life? Have all
these influences worked for naught, and
are the results of that work mere pretence
and humbug?
II is not our province to indict a whole
people. because some, even many. indi-
viduals are savages and capable of COM
mitting the most diabolical offence against
humanity in the annals of mankind, under
may make certain allowances, and assume
with more or less conviction that the peo-
pie Of Kentucky and of the Union generally
will view this latest horror with utter sor-
row and loathing. Grant that they will:
it will not save state or nation from the
Indignation and sneers of other peoples,
especially of those whose own compara-
lively mild cruelties and inhumanities we
have been ever ready to condemn and cry
out against.
Who are we now, that We should point
the finger of scorn at Spain for Weyler's
butcheries in Cuba, or at Turkey for the
Bulgarian atrocities, or for the massacres
in Armenia? The history of all combined
does not hold single instance of an act
ds lHSduell uSuuiou slS ludl d. -hdy oN me,
kentucky.
II has put great humiliation and shame
on the name and fame of America. If the
world shall say that institutions
under which such things are pos
sible are rotten delusions, what
sufficient answer can We make?
In truth, what with the wholesale murder
OF Italian subjects awaiting trial in one of
our prisons, and presumably under the full
protection of American law and solemn
treaty with their sovereign, the massacre
of unoffending Cinnamon on the Pacific
Ccast, and the frightful burnings at the
stake of Southern blacks, We are playing
dangerously with the fire of world senti-
ment. 1t must not be forgotten that the
great moral force this people have been
able to exert in the past, in behalf of the
oppressed of other lands, is being wrecked
and sunk in an ocean of universal 6isdain
for country which erects its angry crest
when Indian mutineers are shot from
guns, or barbarian pashas bastinado few
Armenian Christians; which yet permits
mobs to burn prisoners of the law at the
stake in city market places, varying the
entertainment by gouging out their eyes
and filling the sockets with red pepper.