Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/264

240 the dreadful torture of fire must forever after have the awful spectacle of his own handwork seared into his brain and soul. He can never again be the same man. " Every violent man in the community is encour- aged by every case of lynching in which the lynchers go unpunished, to himself take the law into his own hands whenever it suits his own convenience. In the same way, the use of torture by the mob in certain cases is sure to spread until it is applied more or less indiscriminately in other cases. on, and when mobs, with impunity, lynch criminals for one crime, they are certain to begin to lynch real or alleged criminals for other causes. The Nation Will Suffer " The nation, like the individual, cannot commit a crime with impunity. If we are guilty of lawlessness and brutal violence, whether our guilt consists in active participation therein or in mere connivance and encouragement, we shall assuredly suffer later. " The corner-stone of this Republic, as of all free governments, is respect for and obedience to the law. Where we permit the law to be defied or evaded, whether by rich man or poor man, by black man or white, we are by just so much weakening the bonds of our civilization and increasing the chances of its overthrow, and of the substitution therefore of a sys- tem in which there shall be violent alternation of an- archy and tyranny. Sincerely yours, '' Theodore Roosevelt. " Hon. Winfield T. Durbin, Governor of Indiana, Indianapolis, Ind." Six days after the above high opinion had been published in nearly every newspaper in the United States, and one would have thought that the practice of lynching would have been stayed for a week at least, the following encouraging news came to light, having
 * ' The spirit of lawlessness grows with what it feeds