The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1915-08-24

to lawlessness ii is a mitigation. how.
ever slight, if the processes of law
have fallen, as occasionally they do
into disrepute and II it seem that out
ragged citizens had to do things which
they disapproved to get justice which
they demanded.
Such considerations are not in.
volved in the Georgia case. There
J had been no miscarriage of Justice.
At its worst assuming Frank guilty,
there had been only a slight depart.
ure from the sternest code, ordered
by the last man who could save
Frank, to meet the pressing and IRE
sistible fear that the convict might be
| innocent.
Georgia did not have an excuse of
laws failure for the sentiment it cul-
tivated regarding Frank. And it did
not have, as we have said, the excuse
of mob passion. Georgia society has
developed men who could carry for
months a premeditated policy of out.
rage against law and cruelty to a tor.
tured human being and execute that
policy in the end by taking the man
away from the state and killing him.
I'VE have said that this is not
wholly explicable, and it is not. The
failure of Georgia to protect the
threatened man, even when he was
imprisoned in a state penitentiary,
reveals a fault in organization.
"The present governor OF Georgia,
when he was told that raiders had
broken into the state penitentiary
and were running away with their
victim to some place where they
would kill him, said feeoly that he
was sure the good people OF the state
would deplore the act We doubt it.
The real protection the raiders had
was the sentiment of the state and
the real disgrace in which the state
stands is that sentiment.
"The murder was not by a mob,
but by vendetta, which is deter
mined, cunning, resolved and cruel
A vendetta is possible in low social
organization, one which has not learn
ed self-control, which has not been
sufficiently trained in the rudiments
of education to submit itself to re-
straints necessary to the orderly pro-
cesses of society
"The south is backward. 1t shames
the United States by il'jteracy and
incompetence. It's hill men and poor
whites, its masses of feared and bul-
lied blacks, its ignorant and violent
politicians, its rotten industrial con-
ditions, and its rotten social ideas,
exist in circumstances which disgrace
the United States in the thought of
Americans and in the opinion of for
eigners.
when the north exhibits a DEM
onstration of violence against law byI
gutter rats of society there is shame
in the locality which was the scene
of the exhibition. When the south
exhibits it there is defiance of opin-
ion.
The south is barely half educated
Whatever there is eXplicable in the
murder of Leo NJ. Frank is thus eX.
plainable Leo NJ. Frank was an atom
in the American structure. He might
have died, unknown or ignored, a !
thousand deaths more agonizing in
preliminary torture and more cruel
in final execution and have had no
effect, but the spectacle of a strug.
Cling human being, helpless before
fate as a mouse in the care Of cat |
will stagger American conplacency.
THE south is half educated. 1t is
a region of illiteracy, blatant self
righteousness, cruelty and violence.
Until it is improved by the invasion
of better blood and better ideas it |
will remain reproach and danger
to the American republic"