A Savage Proposal

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 41, 8 October 1903, Page 1

A Savage Proposal

For the third time during the past two years a proposal has been put forward in grim earnest by responsible parties in the United States to kill off the weaklings and the ' unfit ' among our juvenile population. The first two of these murderous proposals for the slaughter of the innocents emanated from universities. Professor Powers, of Cornell, couches the idea in language of brutal frankness. ' Kill off the feeble-minded,' he says, 'and those who are a burden to' the rest of society as you would kill off &o many rattlesnakes, not because we hate them, but because they are troublesome to have around you. 1 Such proposals suggest to one's mind the amazed and indignant queries of Truthful James : ' Is our civilisation a failure ? Or is the Caucasian played out ? ' Quite recently a Bill was introduced into the Michigan Legislature for the electrocution of idiot children, which led the New York ' Freeman ' to remark concerning the member who introduced the measure that he ought to thank heaven that such a law did not exist when he was a child. ' Innocent blood,' says Deuteronomy (xix., 10), • may not be shed in the midst of the land which the Lord thy God will give thee to possess, lest thou be guilty of the blood.' But blood-guiltiness weighs lightly on the conscience of the new paganism which lifts its brazen face and advocates a return to the old barbarism from which, Christianity has rescued our race. The ancient cattle-raising Troglodytes or cave-dwellers of Southern Egypt used to carefully strangle off their wornout and decrepit and sickly fellow-citizens. They carried out the execution in a solemn manner , with the aid of a cow's 'tail. Some of the Indian tribes did the , business nwe expeditious'ly— with a bang of a knotty club. Some of our American friends, and a whole school of the medical fraternity, are pining for the revival, in principle at least, of the good old rule, the simple plan of the savage's lightning cure for the physically defective. In the ideal neo-pagan republic of the future the lethal chamber will be equally used to quell puny infants and straying dogs, amd the licensed assassin will replace the children's nurse and the Sister of Mercy. And then the devil's millennium will be at hand.