Dearborn independent. [volume], February 07, 1920, Page 14, Image 14

About Dearborn independent. [volume] (Dearborn, Mich.) 1901-1927

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14
Freedom for Lord French's Assassins
Dublin, refold, Jan.. 1920.
IRELAND is now recovering from the shock which
it received when it became known that Viscount
French, Viceroy of Ireland, had narrowly escaped
isassination. This crime has had no parallel since the
enix Park murders of May 6, 1882, when Lord
Frederick Cavendish, the chief secretary, and Mr.
Burke, under-secretary, were ilain on Saturday after
noon in broad daylight in light of the Viceregal Lodge,
i ord Spencer, who was then viceroy, was actually a
Spectator from one of the windows of the lodge.
On this occasion Lord French was more fortunate.
He es aped absolutely unscathed from a situation which,
were it not for one fault in the carrying out of the well
laid plan, must inevitably have proved fatal to him.
The scheme was in itself perfect. Lord French, with
a imall party and escort, was returning from the County
Roscommon where he had been spending a few days.
He was to leave the train at the small wayside station
of Ashtown and drive over to the Viceregal Lodge m
the Phoenix Park not more than a mile and a halt
distant. Three motor cars were at the station to meet
him. On their way back they had to pass through a
narrow road leading from the station to the park
entrance. This narrow road is crossed by the main
road leading from Dublin to Xavan. and at the cross
ing there is a public house on ere corner and on the
Other is the Phoenix Park race-course, surrounded by
high walls. The assailants arrived at the public house
on bicycles. They went around and prepared their plans
with extraordinary audacity. Inside the hedge behind
the public house they scattered hay and prepared the
ground from which they intended to make their at
tack. An ivy-covered tree had some branches cut off
and against this they placed a ladder from which they
had a view of the railway station and could see the
train arriving. The men had some drinks in the public
house and were apparently summoned unexpectedly by
the man on guard, for their drinks remained unfinished.
Apparently it was intended that an empty farm
By HUGH CUR RAN
Carl irai to be placed across the road m order tO
the viceregal procession and give the assailants oppor
ntv or'thelr deadly assault , At the crucial moment
a policeman constable. McLau,hhn: came on di
at his point, apparently by officia 'ructions. V1CW
of the Lord Lieutenant's arrival. Nunc ot the nun
intimated to him that if he valued In, life ht WOuJd
elear off. He did not do SO and immediately he WM
knocked dow n, and a pistol shot was fired at him. RW
bullet struck his belt and glanced harmlessly to the
ground, another shot in the leg put the constable out Ol
action. The farm cart was hurriedly pulled acrotl the
road but in the hurry it was left in such position that
there was still adequate room for an automobile to pass.
ord French's chauffeur saw his chance, and at high
ipeed, dashed through under a shower of bullets and
hand grenades from the attackers. There were three
cars in the viceregal party. The first contained Lord
French and a lady friend and a detective, Sergt Halley,
w ho sat with the chauffeur. The second car was empty
and the third contained a party of soldiers composing
the escort. Sergt. Halley at once rircd his revolver
rapidly in the direction of the party and had his re
volver shot out of his hand, two tinkers being injured.
He picked up the revolver and tired again with his left
hand. Lord French was the essence of coolness. He
Stood up in the car to get a better view and hred his
revolver repeatedly. The second car, in which the at
tackers believed Lord French to be, was subjected to a
tierce hail of bullets and grenades, but while it was
much damaged, no other harm was done. The escort
in the third car started tiring at rapid rate and it was
to one of their bullets that a man named Martin Sav
age fell with a terrible wound in his head. When the
military car drew closer, the attackers showed signs of
wavering, and after trying to remove their dead com
rade, which they lound impossible, they mounted their
bicycles and rode off toward the city. The lol s pUr.
sued for some distance but their ammunition became
exhausted, and they gave up the chase, wl h they
reckoned to be useless as well as dangerous.
Had it not been for the failure effectively , barri
cade the road, the whole viceregal party wo !
My have perished. As it was. w ith the ev ,on Qf
the detective who was slightly wounded and the po
liceman on duty, the whole party escaped.
This terrible affair has made a most proL, .mi jm
presskm throughout the entire country. It is neces
Itn t say that generally speaking there is , syrn.
pithy with murder, yet at the same time it ca not be
denied that there are in the country a considerable
number of desperate men who are prepared resort
to the most extreme measures. These men a ear to
have banded themselves together with this bject in
view, ami the fact that they enjoy the most complete
immunity from arrest and prosecution shows that they
exercise a certain terrorism which prevei I those
whose evidence might lead to conviction from speak
ing out.
There is no doubt that this unfortunate and most
regrettable occurrence is the direct outcome of the
chaotic political situation which at present exists or(j
French is not personally unpopular, but as tin i.ead of
a government which has played and is playing fast
and loose with Ireland's aspirations he has to 'Mulder
all the Opprobrium which is not and never should be
attributable to him personally. He is the instrument
of the government at Westminster. It is unf rtunate
for him personally that during his viceroyalty the agita
tion for Irish settlement has developed into a demand
tor complete separation from Kngland, a demand which
it is impossible for him to grant. And it i link
satisfaction to him to know that if years ao ti e mod
erate claims of the constitutional Nationalists had been
granted, the cruel impasse which now exists would nev
er have come about.
A Paris Specialist in Bolshevism By paul tyner
ran. France, January. 19JU.
DR. GUST AVE LE BOX. an eminent French
scientist who for many years has specialized
in the study of "the psychology of the crowd."
recently gave me a diagnosis of Bolshevism, which he
insists on reardinu as a mental malady. The old
medical maxim, "Correct diagnosis is half the cure,"
should lend special interest to this point of view.
A- he rose to greet me when I was shown into
hil study, the doctor presented a striking picture of
the traditional savant. At tirst. in the dim light, I
noticed only his big reddish-brown beard falling oyer
a gr.y woolen robe, and then eyes twinkling with
good humor above a prominent nose with the curve'
that denotes mastery. After he had welcomed me
with an easy gesture to a chair and stated himself
opposite me. the light from a pointed arch window
above him brought out a grey head surmounted by
a monastic skull cap and the vital tint of his dark
ruddy complexion. He might in this light have sat
as a model for Dr. Faust, or for Rembrandt's
phil opher. One might find his prototype among
the savants whom Jean Paul Laurens loved to paint
in a setting of dark oak-paiu led walls and heavy
carved furniture.
"The rapid spread of Bolshevism in Russia, its
propagation in Hungary, in Germany, and even among
ourselves here in France, astonishes you?" he quer
ied with the pitying smile that a child's naivete
might call forth. "It i. however, only a well known
phenomenon of collective mental aberration, of epi
demic insanity, of mast-suggestion. Reasoning or
reflection does not enter into Bolshevism any more
than it does into the bubonic plague or Asiatic
cholera. If Bolshevism were, as its apostles pretend,
a serious social and economic doctrine, it would not
have succeeded with the mob. It is a religion, a
faith and a blind faith at that. That is what gives
it its strength."
On my remarking that this view seemed a bit
paradoxical, and asking him if he saw no deeper
n ason for Bolshevism's expansion. I )r. Le Bon threw
up his hands in a characteristically Gallic gesture.
"Why must you have other reasons? Bolshevism
comes from the Orient like all other mystical doc
trines, and it has its apostles. There you have the
essential : the apostles. These it certainly does not
lack. But all the same, it has a lack. Among us,
the intellectual and reasoning people have been
puzzled to account for it. If Minerva, on the other
hand, had had place in her worship for apostles,
who knows she would perhaps not have succumbed.
"And the remedy? I do not see any. In a
healthy body a disease causes only curable ravages.
If closely watched, relapses of the disorder may be
prevented. On the hom .pathetic plan, I would say
that we" should bring apostles to oppose apostles,
propaganda to counteract propaganda; and above all.
we should unite ourselves to resist Bolshevism's
further advance. Do we know how to maintain
such a union of inferior people --by- inferior I mean
the ignorant, those inferior in thinking power and
instruction? They know. They form themselves
into solid phalanxes or blocks to accomplish the
purposes to which their emotion stirs them. What
have reflection and study, independence of mind and
diversity of opinion to say?
How about legislative and other governmental
measures I asked.
"Us k II ' was the instant response of the sage.
"The Romans say: quid leges sine moribus9 What
can laws do without the sanction and force of
custom and usage? Minds must be trained. I am
preparing a book on The New Spirit. In it, I have
fully noted my observations. Take a walk down the
street any day. Watch the conductor of the street
car or the motor-bus, the newspaper vender, the
grocer's boy on his delivery tricycle. Xote word and
gesture all denote a new spirit."
"How will it all end? Will the crisis culminate
peacefully ?"
"Read' the 'Ancient Democracies' of Croiset.
Four hundred years before Christ. Athens knew the
same anxieties that the whole world is experiencing
today. That ancient democracy was not able to resist
them and its civilization succumbed. Study Lu
chaire's 'Italian Republics of the Middle Ages.'
Florence and Vienna passed through similar tests;
they were several times destroyed. When anarchy
develops freely, it accomplishes all the destruction of
which it is capable. In the midst of ruin, it again
seizes power."
"You are hardly reassuring; yet you speak of all
this very calmly?"
"Do not deceive yourself! I do not cease to re
peat that we must be vigilant, to have the will and
to be united. But what can I do?w
And his long arms dropped on the grey robe
with an expression of utter discouragement. Like
all wise doctors, Dr. Le Bon would let nature heal.
That is the last word of their wisdom. After all,
nature is never far wrong. We shall see how the
wise universal mother takes care of the present
chills and fever in the body politic.
It will be noted that the good doctor identifies
Bolshevism and anarchism. This, indeed, is a very
general assumption. The testimony of Colonel Ray
mond Robbins before a Congressional Investigating
Committee and his magazine articles, as well as the
evidence of Arthur Ransome, the English journalist,
would go to show, however, that the assumption may
be a gratuitous one. They tell of bitter struggle! in
Letrograd and Moscow between the anarch. stl and
the official representatives of Bolshevism, the People's
Commissaries.
Insofar as the Bolshevist movement is inspired or
dominated by anarchistic theories or motives. l)r. Le
Bon is undoubtedly correct in diagnosing it as a
mental malady. May I be permitted to recall that
in this connection I delivered before the Medico
Legal Society in New York, soon after Mckinley's
assassination, an address on "Anarchism and Ata
vism." In this address, which attracted some at
tention among both alienists and sociol 'gists, I
endeavored to show that all insanity is, in a large
sense, a reversion to primitive traits. In the worst
cases, such reversion is apt to be marked by a re
surgence of the destructive instincts of the -avage
and the brute, with more or less complete .trophy
of the constructive and conserving tcndci de
veloped in the age-long upward struggle ii d the
beast to civilized man. The fury of the lynching
mob, I pointed out, was only a collective . nB of
such atavism, an intensification of the ( tional
storms generated among both negroes and tes at
"revival meetings'1 of a certain order, and ev in big
national conventions when the crowd is ca ed off
its feet by a wave of enthusiastic feeling I cast
ing reason to the four winds, abandons it- to
frenzy of howling and hat-waving for forty r fifty
minutes at a stretch.
The ideal remedy for anarchism, as I other
forms of atavism, I suggested, would be fou I to lie
in the same direction in which mental tin :' ha
won its most marked successes; that is, in pi nq the
individual anarchists under sane, norma! kindly
human influences, especially in quiet villa. com
munities, where they would be naturally led t ngage
in honest industries in workshops, farms and trdens.
Such settlements for the insane have prove partic
ularly successful in Belgium.
Lifting South Carolina Out of the Mud
TWO years ago the General Assembly of South
Carolina started to lift the Palmetto State out of
the mud. and wonders along that line ha"e been ac
complished. But the half has not been told nor done,
according to Governor R. A. Cooper, who urges the
legislature which began its midwinter sessions a few
days ago to complete the program of crisscrossing
South Carolina with a chain of hard-surface and
modern highways that will make the commonwealth
the best paved of any state in the Union.
It may be of interest here to say that already many
of the more progressive counties of South Carolina
have modern highway systems; that would amaze those
who have not been in these counties for a period of
two years. For instance, Anderson County is now
building a county system of roads costing more than
$2,000,000. The citizens of that county, under act of
the legislature of 1918. voted road bonds amounting
to $1,725,000. The federal government augmented
th is um by $600,000 and modern highways are now
nearly complete in that prosperous county which
make travel in it in any direction about as pleasant
as travel would be in the well-paved city of Columbia
This port of program has also been carried out
in Greenville County, Spartanburg County, Charleston
County and Richland County. Governor R. A"
Cooper, says, "good roads are cheap; bad roads very
costly. "
I he legislature now in session is planning to ex
tend all the state aid that may be needed to connect
up and complete the system which will make Soutn
C arolina one continual road of pleasure in a short
time. It is expected then that the Palmetto State win
become the playground of the South, since it fJJ
in scenery from the beautiful mountains at Walnaia
to the placid sea at Charleston.
The fjood roads programs have been boosted won
derfully by automobile owners and the increase in autos
in the state has been remarkable since the g(1 roa
programs started.
The State Highway Commission is alive to the im
portance of efficiency and permanency in roads sj
commissioners are Robt. G. Thomas, of Charleston,
Hale Houston, of Clemons College; M. G. Holmes, oi
University; C. O. Ncaron, of Spartanburg; Thomas u.
t-othran, of Greenville. v
ii wRoy Pennell is State Highway Commissioner,
H Murray, chief of construction ; R. T. Brown, cmc
v cUrACy,s ; Josel,n W. Barnwell, bridge engineer an
' Anderson, chief draftsman.