It is hard to understand why so ghastly a tragedy
should be permitted, but we must not forget that it is not deepened by the number of deaths in one place. More die in England every week, and we do not know that the horror ought to be increased by the narrowness of a particular area. It is to be hoped that the majority of the citizens of St. Pierre were asphyxiated suddenly—there seems good evidence for that— and if so their deaths were easier, because swifter, than those of the thousands who perish of painful diseases like cancer, or die, like the victims of many disorders of the throat and lungs, practically of strangulation. When all is said, however, the mystery of useless pain remains unsolved, or solved only by the hint contained in the fact that fear of one of the greatest and longest continued of pains, starvation, is the main source of human energy.
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