Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-01-01
BOMBS. MADNESS AND
AMERICAN BOLSHENIkI
Philadelphia Has an Illustration of the
Force That Is Blocking Liberal
Homes Everywhere

owhy the Allies are determined to send
relentless armies into Russia is revealed
in the maevolent bomb outrages perpe-
| trated at the homes of Justice Won
Moschzisker, Mr.. Trigg and Captain
Mills. The incident is in itself an ironic
answer, complete and overwhelming, TO
that pseudo do-humantarianism which is
still disposed to look upon the Bolsheviki
with tolerant pity. Nothing could have
better illustrated the causes which make
of the anarchist detested outcast, as
sured always of the enmity of rational
minds and I. laugh or kick from plain
men who take no trouble to explain in.
stinctive dislike.
Men who gave the world freedom and
those who endured martyrdom for the
sake of humanity did their fighting de-
Gently in the open after a plain state
ment of their case. There is nothing
anywhere to show that the mind and
methods Of snake can ever be applied
in the maintenance of right principle.
And certainly, in the present state of
society, there is no room for a cult that
must employ prowling imbeciles to set
bombs at the homes of sleeping men.
The bomb outrages of Monday night
represent the isolated work Of mental
deficients. The problem is one for the
aliensts as we'll as for the police. 1t is
chiefly as an illustration of the essential
difference between two methods of rea-
sonng now violently opposed in Europe
that the case commands general inter-
est.
Violent radicalsm and anarchy, eN-
pressed actively or as political princi-
pie, are not unnatural in parts of conti-
mental Europe. But we have in America
none Of the conditions which inspire gen
cral unrest elsewhere. Abroad millions
Of people, depressed in sodden masses,
suffering from long and tragic ncgli-
gence and the hideous errors of govern
ments, have a definite incitement to vio-
lence. Anarchy is the product Of CEN
turies of misrule.
There is nothing in America to justify
any shadow of this sort Of thing. Life
here is not fixed in strata. No one is
submerged unless he wishes to be sub
We are a nation of individuals.
We are individualsts by preference.
There are no old sins to be wiped out
no fixed traditions to be broken down
by brute force 1t is for this reason Mat
Socialism does not and cannot thrive in
the United States. And the effort. there
fore, to transplant from the Russian
slums a cult far more radical is not only
a puerle attempt to ape woes which do
not exist; it is a revelation of criminal
which, when it becomes peri
lousy active, demands the harshcst
treatment that the police power can give
it. The wonder is tina, a state of mind
so foreign TO the atmosphere Of America
should be so persistent. And in this
connection it is necessary to say that
the police direction has not acted with
entire intelligence in handling the prob
lem.
1t has been policy Of the police
sometimes to eXaggcrate the Importance
Of any etrewescent idiot who found relief
in chanting red platitudes from a soap
box. Suppressivc methods almost fan
,astica.,y supcrfluous used to be applied
10 Emma Goldman and Ben Rc,tman
and any other radically minded theorist
who happened along. 1t might have been
supposed that these persons carried some
dreadful germ of thought which could
not be looSed in the air Of America with
out the certainty Of political disaster.
Even the incptitudes of small-voiced So
.ialists were in recent times the inspra-
ion FOR raids and charges Of "incl-inr to
riot"
This absurd slant of the City Hall
mind its suspicion of anything it did not
inevitably had an effect di-
'ecty opposite to that which was in
ended The police have consistently
given TO every radical agitator the sort
If background that the radicals wish.
They gave the radicals the exact color of
for which their souls and
,ress agents yearned and prayed
Soap-boX orators always began with
lints Of police oppression and talk Of the
nnions of "a higher power" Without
his semblance Of martyrdom. so oblig-
ngly conferred by the police, the radical
ults would never have had a leg 10
tand on in America. They would have
lad no audiences. The police were their
pest press agents. 1t is the police not
,nly here, but in almost every other
American city, who in times of peace