Page:Haiti- Her History and Her Detractors.djvu/375

Rh putting their rulers to death. Charles I was beheaded by the English, Louis XVI by the French, and Iturbide was condemned to be shot by the Mexicans. States, like individuals, commit errors. The errors of others are allowed to sink into oblivion, but not so with those of Haiti, which meet with implacable and lasting severity. Her most insignificant deeds are purposely exaggerated and misrepresented, with the sole aim of creating the impression that she is incapable of governing herself. People hasten to dignify mere riots or disturbances which elsewhere would not even have attracted the attention of the public, with the name of revolutions or insurrections. Some of the strikes in the United States, for instance, are more bloody and fraught with much more danger for the safety of the peaceful inhabitants of the disturbed locality, and cause many more victims, than many of the so-called revolutions in Haiti. The Washington Evening Star of May 3, 1905, printed the following concerning one of these strikes which occurred at Chicago: "There seems to be no power in the city to check the excesses and crimes of the mobs. The streets are not safe for the pedestrians. Traffic is crippled, trade is being ruined. Losses are mounting into millions and lives are being sacrificed. The processes of government are defied by the mob."

At Frankfort, Kentucky, the Governor-elect, Mr. Goebel, was murdered in the streets in broad daylight by his opponents, the disturbances which ensued lasting many weeks.

In Russia very grave events have taken place recently; for a while no life was safe and horrible massacres were of frequent occurrence.

All these things passed almost unnoticed; a few lines in the newspapers, and the cases were dismissed. But if, perchance, such events had occurred in Haiti, endless would have been the charges preferred against the character of the people; foreign Powers would have hastened to despatch men-of-war, under the fallacious pretext that the lives of their respective citizens were