The Anarchist at Work

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 17, 30 April 1908, Page 9

The Anarchist at Work

Some one— we cannot give him a local habitation and a name— gave tnis rhyming definition :— .- ' What is an anarchist ? One who, his cosmos, 'With blood red' cement, would- fashion from chaos '. In America, the anarchists (or ' arnychists ', as ' Mr. Dooley ' calls 'them') have lately been mixing their cement with the blood of priests. They shot one at the altar in Denver a. few weeks ago. And now, .in our latest American files, comes the news that the lives of a number of others are threatend, amiT that the public authorities have found it necessary to 1 take active steps to rid the country of what some one has termed •' the riff-raff ' of the assassination clubs of Europe. The ' Congregationalis-t ' commented editorially, as follows; on the brutal murder of Father Heinrichs at Denver : ' The killing of a priest at the altar in Denver, Col., by a coward who shot him through the back as an expression of his hatred for all religion, is a sporadic proof of the insanity of anarchism. The philosophical anarchists will repudiate his act as heartily as" the rest of us— we hope it will show ..them' with what dangerous tQols they are working. The effect of the deed will be to supply the Roman Catholic Church with a martyr, and to make the creed of hate for ail religion more unpopular than ever.'

On tihe surface of the vast fide of immigration that sets steadily to America from the older and more congested—and .usually more oppressed and soldier-riddenr— countries of Europe, there floats westward the flotsam of the criminality of a dozen flags. And in a" country

'that, of all others (with the' solitary exception of Ohinia), is most ridden, by dark-lan tern" associations, it is hardly a matter of surprise" that the imported sectaries and criminals do not at once throw off ihe methods of the cellar-rat. But the anarchist assassin has abused the rights of hospitality, and he must be driven across, or into the sea— if he has not previously had his neck stretched by the slip-noose of the hangman, or (his evil soul chased out of his worthless body' by the high-voltage current of the electric chair. Dealing with the vast body of usually peaceable and moral immigrants that pour year by year into the United States, Bishop Walden (Episcopalian- Methodist) said, a few weeks ago at an inter-denominational missionlary conference at Oakland : ; ' What could we of other der nominations do with this great 'immigrant horde if *it were not for the Roman Catholic Church ? It Is the greatest police power that could be exerted over these new millions, and it holds 'them securely in its conservative grasp. I want to ask you how we could take care of the foreign-born who come to our cities, how our police forces -could handle them and control them, were it not for the conservative influence of the Roman Catholic Church ? I don't want to challenge you Protestants ' Bishop Walden continued, '• but isn't it a fact that the Roman Catholic Church holds its children closer than any other ? And .so long as " this is so, its influence is most important in dealing with the problem of the cities.'