Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-06-04
BOMBS ARE BooMERANGS AND
RETURN TO THEIR THRoWERS
No More Futile Form Of Propaganda Was
Ever Devised by HysterIcaI
Macontents

Vie mental aJClIuue Oh tne men WnO
plotted the bomb outrages in Phila-
delphia and six other cities on Monday
night is hysterical.
Murder has never advanced any just
cause.
Take the case of Russia. Car Alex
ander was about to sign a constitution
when the anarchists blew him to death
with bomb. There followed the natural
reaction from liberalism when Nicholas
ascended the throne. If it had not been
for the bomb which killed Alexander it
is not likely that Russia would have been
in her present unfortunate state. Rep
resentative institutions would have been
established years ago and the process of
democratiza ation would have proceeded so
far that the empire would not have col
lapsed under the strain of war.
But no reasoning will convince the
bombers of the futility Of their conduct.
They are beyond reason. They are
obsessed by one idea and are proper sub
jects for the pathologist. The insane
asylums are filled with monomaniacs who
differ from these only in that their idea
takes some other form.
The men responsible for Monday
nights outrages can readily be punished
under existing statutes. They are with
out doubt of the same group which
brought about the throwing of bombs in
this city last December and was behind
the conspiracy to kill public officials and
wealthy citizens by bombs mailed in the
New York postoffice on April 80. They
have not yet been caught. Some of the
men charged with the duty of catching
them and bringing them to punishment
are prattling of the need of new laws
instead of doing their obvious duty.
The laws are stringent enough now.
They provide penalties for destroying
public buildings and for throwing bombs
containing any powerful explosive and
for conspiring to do either of these
things. They also provide penalties for
all forms of manslaughter. The officials
should stop talking about the need of new
laws and concentrate their, attention on
executing the laws already enacted.
If it were not for the moral support
given by parlor Bolshevists and l. w. w.
theorists to the views of those who be-
lieve in violence there would be less
bombing.
There are many emotional men and
women who have talked glibly of the
necessity of creating "class conscious
ness" and "destroying capitalism" and
setting up government of the proe-
tariat," who have not perceived whittier
this sort of thing tended. They can no
longer be in any doubt about it.
The man who was blown to pieces by
the bomb which he was trying to plant in
the house of Attorney General Palmer in
Washington had a lot of pamphlets
issued by the "Anarchist Fighters" in
which it was asserted that a time has
come when the social questions solution
can be delayed no longer; class war is on
and cannot cease but with complete vic
tory for the international proetariat."
What rot.
The literature of the l. W. W. is full of
this sort of thing. The Boshevists in
| Russia began their control of govern
mentor misgovernment-ther by put
| ting in effect the social theories of the
"class conscious" by depriving every one
but the members of their "class" of prop
erty and protection. The thing which
they set up was not democracy, but
mobocracy.
There is no finer thing in government
than democracy, for it rests on the theory
that all men are equal before the law and
all have equal rights to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. The only class
consciousness that can thrive under it is
the consciousness that all men are broth
ers, with mutual obligations to respect
the rights of one another.
Living in a democracy is a business of
give and take. The bombers desire to
take everything and to give nothing.
They are sure to learn that the bomb is
a boomerang.
If it were possible for bomb plotters
to consider the facts in America patent
to the most casual observer whose mind
is not warped by passion engendered by
resentment against old world conditions,
they would be engaged in better business.
The rest of US know that a vertical sec
tiOn of American society cutting through
from the richest to the poorest would
show that the roots of the richest and
most powerful are planted fast in the
soil on which the feet of the humblest
rest.
The rich have risen by the force OF
native genius in an atmosphere favor.
able to the development of whateve,
gifts man may possess. There are nc
rigid class lines. There is no permanent
proletariat The daughter of the rich mar
marries the son of the mechanic and tn,
daughter of the mechanic marries the sol
of the rich man.
The apparent chasm is bridged so FIRE
quently that there is no chasm at al
save in the heated Imagination of tn,
L 1. l...nAn,.,nnl