Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/502

 The Nation and the Anarchists. game of tennis, and at fifty-eight years of age can hold his own with the great majority of amateur players irrespective of age. Like Lord Russell, Lord Alverstone is a great friend of America and Americans, and many members of the American bar have enjoyed his hospitality. He twice represented Great Britain in international arbitrations, in which he met leading American counsel and judges, first at the Behring Sea Arbi tration and afterwards at the Venezuela Arbitration. He has been an intimate friend of the representatives of the United States at the Court of St. James, and while holding them all in the highest esteem was particu larly a close friend of Mr. Bayard. Nearly his first public appearance as Master of the Rolls was at the banquet of the Bench and Bar of England to the Bench and Bar of the United States. In proposing on that

THE

461

occasion "Other Guests," that is the guests other than those from the United States, he said : "It has been my privilege to be closely associated with many distinguished mem bers of the American Bar, probably except the Lord Chief Justice, whose absence we so much deplore to-night, there is no one who has had more intimate connection with dis tinguished barristers from the United States. And I desire to bear my testimony to the fact how thoroughly they appreciate not only the principles of law we respect, but the traditions of the great profession in which we have been brought up." It is with gratification that it may be added that among the very first gatherings which Lord Alverstone attended in his official capacity as Lord Chief Justice was the Thanksgiving dinner of the American Societv in London.

NATION AND THE ANARCHISTS. BY EUGENE WAMBAUGH.

IT IS fortunate that Congress is not in ses sion. To decide what legislation should be adopted for the punishment of successful or unsuccessful attempts upon the lives of public officials is a task of extreme delicacy, calling for calmness and wisdom; and to decide what should be done towards punish ing or preventing the mere propagation of opinions naturally leading to such attacks is a task of still greater importance and diffi culty. For such decisions as these the clays closely following the assassination of a President are obviously unsafe. Nor has there ever been a more inauspicious time for decision than this very autumn of 1901. There have been other equally exciting assassinations, it is true; but, although this is the second time that the people of the whole United States have waited far into the night for the tolling of bells, and the third time that a funeral train has impressively borne

from Washington to the West a murdered President, this is only the first time that the murder has been done in the midst of the peculiarly democratic ceremonial wherein the Chief Magistrate by taking the hand of any comer illustrates the equality of all men before the American law, and the first time that the assassin has been a mere enemy of government. Yet although in the midst of anger, how ever just, it is impossible to come to a safe decision, it is inevitable that there should be discussion—particularly among members of the bar. Fortunately, at this very time of excitement the essential feature of the whole matter is brought clearly into view, and this is that the killing of a President differs in kind from the killing of a private citizen, in that the killing of a President disturbs the pursuits of the entire community, takes the irovernment from the hands of the person