Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1921-10-17
STATESMAN OR L o

1t is entirely in keeping with the spirit and poll
Icy of the Fargo Courier-News that that paper should
consider Eugene V. Debs a greater man and more
entitled to honor than the late Senator Knox of PEN
'nsylvania. That view is set forth with unusual frank
ness in a recent editorial in the Courier News. SEN
ator Knox is described as a reactionary who placed
all his ability at the service of special privilege and
it believes that he will stand no higher in history
than the Judgment which is finally passed on the
cause which he served. Debs, on the other hand, we
are told is in jail because he hates war and it is pre-
.dicted that posterity may decide he is nearer right
than the Knox's and other statesmen who keep him
there. In support of this view there is cited the case
of John Brown who was hanged as a felon; vet who,
we are told stands higher than Buchanan, Cass,
Douglas, and other politicians of the day who con-
demned him. He is said to have been splendidly
right in his utter hatred of human slavery, and the
others are described as the cowardly apologists of a
system that had already received the moral condem-
nation Of humanity.
Poor John Brown, dead and gone, has been
made to serve in many a bad cause. He hated slavery
and his peculiar mental makeup made it impossible
tor him to see that in adopting the methods which
he adopted to combat slavery, he was striking at the
government by which alone the slaves could be made
and kept free. He lost all sense of logic and proper
ton, and was taken red handed, heading an insur-
rection against his government in the course of
which he had armed slaves and former slaves; and
while his execution was regretted, it was perfectly
evident that he must either be executed or commit
ted to an insane asylum. In support of the cause Of
liberty he struck at the instrumentality by which
alone liberty could be procured, and in doing so he
subjected himself to the penalty which must always
follow such acts as his.
John Brown was not executed because he hated
slavery; he was not executed because he struggled
against slavery. Thousands of other persons strug-
gled as valiantly as he in the same cause, but they
did not make the mistake of setting themselves in
armed opposition against the government of their
country, nor did they menace society with the arm
ing of a vast population Of ignorant blacks who, had
such movements as Browns been successful, would
have plunged the entire country into a welter of
bloodshed. Abraham Lincoln hated slavery as
strongly as John Brown did, but at no time did Lin
coin ever propose that slavery should be abolish
ed by means of John Browns methods.
Debs is in prison, not because he is a socialist,
not because he hates war; he is in prison for the
single and sufficient reason that he de6ed the gov
eminent of his country and committed acts Of open
and notorious opposition to its lawful commands, in
that he committed a crime and demonstrated himself
to be an~unsafe man to be at large in a critical time.
Nevertheless the Courier News, supporter Of
and apologist for Frazier, Lemke, and Hagan, ties up
to Debs and heaps ignominy upon an honorable citi-
zen and an eminent statesmen whose clay is not yet
cold in it's tomb.