Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/245

Rh particularly horrible significance to me in the recent lynchings on Northern soil. " I am astonished at the brutality of our nation when it is aroused. No matter what other barbarous cruel- ties uncivilized nations may resort to, they do not burn people. Lynchings and killings by mobs of ex- cited people are not unknown in many countries. Our nation, however, seems to carry to terrible lengths its desire to do something new and novel. It becomes fiendish. " It is also only too true that the lynching spirit as connected with the negro is not confined to any particular section of our country. It appears all over the United States. We used to excuse it by saying that it only occurred far South, where the race preju- dice was extreme. We have no excuse today." Barbarous Where Laws Are Equitable By Rev. Dr. Reginald Campbell, the celebrated London Preacher: — " I should hate to think, even for a moment, what I would have done had my daughter been the victim of such an inhuman crime. It is too bad, too bad. '' I admire the Christian manhood displayed by the father of the girl. " There are some crimes that provoke all the in- human that is in a man, and this is one of them. Still, I cannot understand mob violence. It seems a bit barbarous where there are equitable laws to punish such a crime, even to the satisfaction of the most bitter-minded. " No more can I account for the teaching of this minister of the gospel. It does seem decidedly unwise and unbecoming a minister to preach a lynch-law doc- trine from his pulpit. But, on the other hand, one must weigh such incidents in the American scale, not in an English one. So that, after all, my opinions may not be so valuable as you choose to think.
 * ' Lynch-law is practically unknown to us abroad.