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Show Thoughts on Czolgosz's Fate. S)ME DAY next week (most likely Monday) the assassin of President McKinley will be taken from his cell in Auburn prison and conducted to th'.' chamber of death. Placed in the electric chair, the details of execution will take up not more than five minutes an eternity to the criminal fearing death. When the preparations are completed, com-pleted, a handle on a switch is pulled down. In a fiftieth of a second all is over. The condemned is dead as certainly cer-tainly as though a guillotine had descended upon his neck. The penalty demanded by the law has been paid. Until the execution is over readers of the daily press will be indulged to their heart's content with pen pictures of Czolgosz in his cell, tremblingly awaiting await-ing his fate. Already they see him, paralyzed with fear, aproaching the apparatus ap-paratus prepared for his death the grinsly chair, the headpiece and the straps They reason out his cowardice from the incident at Auburn where a mob of 300 threatened him, and falling down on the floor of his cell, Czolgosz begged the officers not to give him up to the mob. That sort of reasoning is clearly illogical. If the terror of th"e prisoner was analyzed it might be found that not death by lawful means, but rather death by mob violence paralyzed para-lyzed him. He probably read of the recent lynchings, where negroes were burned at the stake, and expected that kind of punishment at the hands of the Auburn mob. . ' Certainly Czolgosz expected death as a penalty for shooting the president. The deed was premeditated; . that shewed he had a clear purpose in view. The shooting was not the prompting of personal malice; that showed the act to be one where the power of will was not controlled by passion, although undoubtedly un-doubtedly influenced by stronger and more depraved minds than his own. If i Czolgosz had the fear of death in his j heart on that fatal day at Buffalo, Wililam McKinley would be president of the United States, instead of sleeping sleep-ing in Canton cemetery. "Thy will be done." These were the last words escaping the lips of the dying president. Would that a large part of our separated brethren could comprehend the Lord's prayer as did this Christian head of the republic; then there would-be pity for this wretched assassin even as there was forgiveness for the dying thief on the cross. That pity need not assume maudlin sentimentality, gifts of flowers flow-ers and fruits and the other attentions bestowed on noted criminals by silly women. It should be pity for one led astray by incendiary literature, anarchist an-archist speeches, rattle-brained com panions. Pity and prayer for one endowed en-dowed with an immortal soul, for whose salvation God became man, and for whose crime and the sins of mankind man-kind He died upon the cross at Calvary, Cal-vary, ) Up to the time Czolgosz went to Buffalo Buf-falo to accomplish his fanatical mission, mis-sion, nobody appeared, to know much about him. Nothing in his appearance indicated cruelty. Had he ever before been in police custody for crime of any description, the record would have been hunted up and published after his incarceration. Jake away from his life the- awful tragedy which has shocked the world, and Czolgosz stands out as the weak victim of stronger j minds and infamous character. He is not so bad as Johann Most or Emma ' Goldmann. He is not so bad as those ' whom the law cannot reach; nor was j his act so destructive of human happi- ness as the acts of legalized plunderers. plunder-ers. He killed the president, but another an-other immediately became president. The republic is safe. The world moves on. With the last words of the martyred president still ringing in their ears, the American people should reflect that God sometimes permits evil out of which good may come. Already it is visible. The tragedy at Buffalo has awakened new thought as to the cause which lay behind it and to the correction correc-tion of evils threatening the peace and happiness of the people and the stability stabil-ity of government. The investigation does not stop over the analyzation of liberty and license. Neither should it stop after passion has cooled and spectacular spec-tacular preachers have consigned Czol-gesz Czol-gesz to the bottomless pits of hell. It should go on and on until the Sermon on the Mount is written on the hearts of all Americans and legislation recognizes recog-nizes the golden rule of "doing unto others as ye would wish they should do unto you." |