The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1941-04-16
BY JOHN STAHLBERG

Society is the ultimate criminal, the
ultimate brute and fool. 1t never
mitigates a wrong by so much as al
apology. 1t will steal twenty-odd
years of a mans life, to uphold the
Judgments of few vicious, silly peo-
pile; then. with an air of magnanimity
1t will turn him out into a world
which has grown unfamiliar, and
blame only the victim when he fails
to adjust himself 1t never acknowl-
edges an error. 1t will light-hearted-
ly destroy any man who deviates from
the general pattern. and when the
damage is done 1t will strive only to
hide the results.
Last week In Missoula, 1t prepared
to hide one more product of its errors.
George Smith. who killed three men
because he believed himself in mortal
danger was adjudged insane. 1t was
suggested that he had gone mad over
| the loss Of lawsuit. If he ever re-
covers, 1t will be only to face three
charges Of murder.
l talked briefly with Smith three
years ago. He was a bitter, lonely
man with wary, distrustful eyes, who
clearly felt even then that he had no
friends. Later | heard gossip to the
effect that nobody would have much
to do with him. 1t is not likely that
this mans insanity was a sudden con-
sequence of losing a lawsuit. 1t had
been growing for long time, and
its roots were not in decisions, but
In the sober fact-casual to others,
overwhelming to Smith-that his fell
lowmen rejected him. The feeling
that the lawsuit had made him seem
a fool and exposed him to mockery
he could no longer bear, may have
speeded it to full development
Psychologically, Smiths case resem-
bles at one or two points the case
of Marion Zioncheck, the eccentric
congressman from Seattle who killed
himself in 1886 after seven months of
real or imputed high-jinks. Zioncheck
was murdered as certainly as II the
distinguished editorial harlots who
made him the central figure in a ma
tion-wide Roman holiday had held pis-
tolls to his head and pressed the trig-
gers. This would be so even If every
thing the papers printed about him
had been true, which is not at all
certain. Perhaps 1t was true. So
what? Zioncheck was a fool, let us
say; during the latter weeks of his
life he was probably insane. He made
spectacle and nuisance of himself;
gave his constituents the uncomfort-
able feeling that they had sent an ass
to represent them in the congress of
the United States But was this a
fault to be punished so hideously?
Had Zioncheck chosen his defective
brain? Could an ass by taking an
oath have become something else than
an ass? If the voters of Washington
were of sounder mind than he, why
had they seen fit to bestow upon such
a clown the dignity of high office?
Why must the blame for the error
be laid wholly upon him and not
upon them? What sort Of commun-
ity, what sort of press, what sort of
civilization must ii be that cannot
hold it's own against one lonely and
despairlng mental defective without
STOPPING to brutal, planned, deadly In
Justice?
At the moment he determined to
kill himself, a psychiatrist would GER
tainly have pronounced Zioncheck |
paranoid. victim of delusions of per-
secution. And why decisions" in |
the face of the facts? Simply be-
cause "delusion" is one of the pet |
terms Of psychological cant, and the |
psychiatrist is himself deluded by the |
half-voodoo authority of his own jar
gon. A little elementary observation |
and common sense would convince |
anyone above the age of six that in
this world persecution is by no means
invariably a madman's dream.
1t is a fact that there are ill-starred |
people whom other people dislike
Their lot is surely not easy. A man
attacked can fight or flee;
4 man attacked by the hatred and
contempt of his fellowmen has no de-
'ense. There is something about mems
iislike that is more subtly horrible
o a sensitive victim than the worst