Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1908-02-09

into sporadic tongues of fire here, at
our very doors, in Mexico, and smoul-
dering everywhere, the nostrils must
be dull indeed and the eyes incurably
clind that cannot scent the odor and
descry the smoke.
barrow expresses most clearly his
conviction that men are so-and-so,
saints and sinners. on the bench or in
the dock-simply because they cannot
help being themselves; that praise and
blame are alike unjustifiable chow he
must be edited by the homilies that
many judges have a passion for de-
liveringD and that they are Just what
they are, for the same reason that
every living creature is just what it Is
because of its environment. He con-
siders that if we want good citizens we
must provide the soil in which good
citizenship can grow, and that the city
slum, the police court and the Jail are
the worst of all soils. quote his exact
words:
Men Are Sick of Bloodshed
Each human being is an entity made
up Of all that is and Of all that has
gone before . All who went
before did their part. and gave their
little mite to make the composite brain
that drives its possessor here and there
Starved bodies can be cured
by food and a rational.
humane world would commend itself
more to thinking men, and to the pos
terfty which will Judge us, by feeding
these starved bodies rather than i'm
prisoning them in pens . Near
ly every crime could be wiped away in
one generation by giving the criminal
a chance The life of a burglar, OF a
thief, of a prostitute, is not a bed Of
roses. Men and women are only
driven to these lives after other means
have failed.
Everything that Herbert Spencer has
to say about the "Sins of Legislators
practically receives Endorsement by
Darrow's pen, and doubtless he would
agree with Buckles dictum, uttered
after an exhaustive survey of an i'm.
mense field, that about the only time
lawmakers are usefully employed IS
when they are repeating the coercive
measures of their predecessors; a doc
trine not greatly in favor with the law
yers, who manage to see to 1t that the
supply of laws over which they may
dispute shall not run dry.
AS natural corollary to these posi-
lions, barrow finds himself entirely at
one with Tolstoy in the doctrine. in
oorsed by Christ, Judge not, that we
be not Judged" On this subject he has
many eloquent passages, and I select
the following:
It requires infinite pains and almost
infinite knowledge to judge ones physi-
cal condition But twelve I'M
tutored jurors and a judge wantonly
and carelessiy set themselves to pass
on the condition Of human soul-a
soul no man has seen or by any
chance can ever sea life they do not
know and could not understand. and
do not even seek TO understand. They
take this soul and, with their poor
light which at the best is blacklist
darkness they pronounce 1t bad, and
in violence and malice deny 1t the right
OF fellowship with its human brothers,
each equally a portion of the great In
finite which takes all of good and all
OF bad and makes them one great,
divine inclusive whole.
barrow leaves his readers in not the
slightest doubt that as gladly as Toll
stoy and Kropotkin, he would make
short work of the whole machinery OF
revenge; the sword, the gibbet and the
iail the institution of government
from which they spring and the dis
trust of man and his capacity for free
dom in which restrictive government
las it's roots. With Tolstoy, he holds
that men are growing sick of blood
shed and that we are on the eve of
vast moral revolution which, loathing
violence, will work itself out in COM
narrative peace. being unwilling to
adoot in practice the barbarous re-
dictionary methods which 1t condemns
in theory.