AUCKLAND SPECIAL.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 215, 17 September 1901, Page 1

AUCKLAND SPECIAL.

THE MI'UDEIiED ITiESIDENT

Special to Tim ks. Auckland. hist night. News ot the hopeless condition of President McKinley on Saturday was received with the greatest sorrow. Following on the earlier optimistic bulletins of the patient's condition it came as a great shock, fn some measure it paved the way for the sad news of the President’s death which was published in the city and suburbs yesterday by extra, but even the knowledge the cable had conveyed that the physicians regarded the ease as hopeless hardly prepared the public for so sudden a collapse. The cables relate graphically the circumstances attending the death of the unfortunate President, and reveal how widespread and genuine is the sympathy felt for our American cousins, more particularly for the invalided widow, to whoso inllueneo the statesman owed so much.

The columns of the local press are crowded in reference to President McKinley's death.

To-night's Star remarks : The death of President McKinley intensified the grief and indignation roused throughout the world by the murderous outrage of which he was the victim. Nothing was wanting to accentuate the tragic pathos of his end. Vet the love of wife and friend, the affectionate reverence of the great nation, the eager sympathy of the civilised world, may well have soothed the dying man's last hours. We have already paid our humble tribute to honor of this dead ruler of one-half of the Anglo-Saxon race. His great- ability, his high sense of duty, and his unimpeachable record as a man and

statesman marked him out from the rank and tile of his people as one born to command. Not even his enemies have ever hinted that he used his high position and boundless opportunities to further selfish ends, or to subvert the interests of the nation. He has finished his course in the fulness of honor. He met death with the calm fortitude worthy of the best irauitions ol his race. For him our regrets arc unavailing, but our deepest sympathy is still due to the lonely woman thus in a moment bereft of happiness ; to the great nation which honors its rulers not less, but more, because they bear no

title, and have no claim to power but the love and trust of their fellow-men. It is easy to understand the fury of the resent-

ment with which American people are turning upon the murderer. The unhappy wretch will have but short shrift it he fails into the hands of the mobs now clamoring for his blood, buthe leaders of the American race can bo trusted to maintain the

dignity ul justice even at such a moment as this. The generous self-control of the victim, who, even as ho received his death wound, called to his friends to spare the miscreant, will suffice to remind them

that justice should never degenerate into vengeance, Of the fate of (Jzolgosz himself there will be little doubt. Fanatic that he is, half-witted as he may bo, there can be no question that the

iut.v of defending society from such dan

gcrous enemies amply justilies their extirpation. The homicidal Anarchist is frequently insane, but the interests of the civilised world none the less demand

his destruction. Wo may pity a mad dog that in his rabid fury suffers all the pain that it inflicts, but in'self-defence we shoot

him down. The chief duty of society is that which it owes to everyone of its members, the duty of protection, and no puerile sentiment should interfere with the discharge of that paramount responsibility, even if it involves the shedding of blood. We arc accustomed to place every artificial value upon some forms of human

life, and it is this sentimental squeamishness which has of late years in England and America done more than anything else to give confidence and boldness to those desperate men and women who boast themselves to be the “ enemies of society.”