Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER, 30, 1933. LYNCHING BY LAW

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 131, 30 November 1933, Page 12

Evening Post. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER, 30, 1933. LYNCHING BY LAW

After a brief and busy holiday President Roosevelt has returned to Washington to face the gathering strength of his enemies and an outlook more uncertain than ever. He is still without a rival in the confidence of his people, and despite that bitter disappointment at the Economic Conference he is still a leader to whom the world looks with hope. But hardly has he returned to the White House before he has been hit in both capacities a blow which has probably caused him a more acute pain than all his official troubles put together. Lawlessness has long been a notorious weakness of the United States, Hut even a strong man who has schooled himself to its deplorably lax standards must find in this orgy of sympathy with crime and this repudiation of the very foundations of law to which all parts of the country and all sections of society have suddenly yielded a sting and a shame that are beyond endurance. How can the higher morality of America expect to be heard in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia when its lower morality is allowed to run riot in the fashion revealed during the last two or three days, and even to take complete charge of the executive of one of the States? And how are the democratic institutions of the. biggest democracy in the world to be maintained if lawlessness in high places is privileged to destroy the foundations of equality and justice on which they are built? With an irony which is painfully familiar to the post-War world this cruel setback to the hopes of the American reformer has occurred at the very moment when he had been cheered by a considerable success. About eighteen months ago the fate of the Lindbergh baby advertised to the whole world that one of the most abominable of crimes was practised on an, immense scale and with substantial impunity in the United States, but the convictions which, as the result of changes in the law and in its administration, have since been obtained for kidnapping have not been advertised equally well. The latest of these crimes was committed at Santa Clara near San Francisco three weeks ago, and was aggravated by a; peculiarly diabolical murder—an aggravation which, as it is believed to have been prompted by the fear of detection, suggests that, if in California, as in some other States,' the popular indignation has insisted on making kidnapping a capital offence, it may have overshot the mark. In this case, however^ the murder was no protection. Young Brooke, Hart's murderers were arrested, confessed to both crimes, and were awaiting trial in San Jose' Gaol when his body was found in San Francisco Bay on Monday. It was natural and indeed proper that the public should have been horrified by the evidence of his sufferings which was revealed by the state of his tattered and mutilated body, and knowing what an American mob can do the authorities strengthened the guards at the gaol. But the force, was still not strong enough, and after the supply of tear gas bombs had been exhausted the mob broke in and dragged the murderers to the street. It would be pleasanter to leave the details alone, but it would be wrong to suppress information which is essential to a full understanding of the procedure which has received not only the sanction but the enthusiastic approval of the Governor of California, which has brought him the congratulations "in the public interest" of society women in the State, and of the undergraduates' journal in the leading university of the country.

Their clothes were stripped from_them| and they were beatea and kicked' until ■both, became bloody masses. Ropes were then placed round their necks, and the eager hands of men, women, and children pulled them over the branches. Holmes appeared unconscious when strung up. Thurmond was fully conscious and struggled. The crowd, numbering several thousand, shouted, "Hcnv do you like it?" and howled ■with glee.

The treatment given to these wretches was more merciful than usual because it was not a case of prolonged tortures and death by inches, but the end came soon. Otherwise the proceedings seem to have been normal. The howls and jeers of the rriob and the presence and active participation of children were according to rule. In the case which occurred at Princess Anne, Maryland, on October 18, and is mentioned in today's report, the mob was described as including "more than' 1000 men, women, and chjldrem" When Mr. Walter White was investigating a Florida case, in which five negroes had been burnt because a negro pharmacist had tried to vote, a bright little girl of nine or ten told him, with help from some younger companions, of "the fun we had burning the niggers." The exhumation, which is reported from Maryland today, of the body of the lynched negro and the cutting-off of the head, six weeks after the burial, may represent the limit of human ghoulishness, but in devilishness this initiation of children of tender years into the ritual of torture and murder for the sake of its "fun" is surely the worst feature of all.

Such is the American system of lynching which' for nearly; fifty years

has been almost uniformly declining in popularity, but which may now experience a revival if the example of Governor'Rolph of California and the encouragement of Californian society ladies and the Harvard are to prevail. And, oddly enough, this approval applies particularly to that class of cases for which, if it is possible to say so, there appears to be least excuse, and which, notwithstanding the general decline of the practice, has lately been increasing its proportionate share. In California and other frontier States of'the early days the weakness of "the law compelled miners and settlers to organise vigilance committees in self-protection, and similarly today where the administration is inefficient or corrupt the temptation to lynching is strong. But in the cases to which we refer the administration has been forcibly prevented from doing its duty, and its prisoners have been released in order that they may be murdered without a trial. In his."Rope and Faggot" Mr. Walter White says:—

Ten' of eighteen victims of mobs in 1925, twenty of thirty-four .in 1926, and fourteen of eighteen in 1927 were taken from officers, gaols, courthouses, and an insane asylum' and lynched— forty-four lynchings, out of a total of seventy, where officers of the States were directly. responsible.'

Similarly in 1931, when the number fell to.thirteen, no less than ten of the victims were taken out of the hands of the law. It is to this class of cases that additions hay now been made ,in California and Maryland. v

But there is still another feature which further narrows the class of the Californian ca*se and, let us hope, makes :it unique. The prisoners,-as we have said, were in gaol and had confessed. Governor Rolph knew that the mob meant mischief, but he deliberately refused to call out the troops and defeat its purpose. He would not have betrayed his trust more grossly if he had withdrawn all his guards and handed over the key of the gaol, or told them to throw the prisoriers into the street. Beyond question, he has, as the Atlanta Inter-racial Commission says, made himself "in effect an accessory before the fact." But he glories in his flagrant betrayal of his trust.

That was* a fine lesson, he said, to the -whole nation.- There will bo less kidnapping in the country now. If anyone is arrested for the good job, I will pardon them all.

Instead of: discouraging kidnapping Governor Rolph has discouraged the police, given his official encouragement to murder, and made "■ the blackest stain on the honour of his State and his country much harder than ever to remove.