EUTHANASIA.
[TO TEE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.1
Sat,—In the Spectator of January 25th under this heading you say " It is reported in the telegrams from the Continent that a Deputy in the Saxon Parliament recently introduced a Bill permitting doctors to put patients whose recovery was hopeless to death at their own request." You then say that the Bill was " snuffed out" as "the Saxons are not faddists." But the idea is not new, and suicide under legal and medical control was advocated by the late Alfred Nobel. Mr•. Nobel told me the year before his death, when I was spending an afternoon with him, that be had offered to his Excellency Crispi, then Prime Minister of Italy, to create at his own expense at Milan and Rome establishments where anybody who desired it could be pain- lessly suffocated by a gas he had invented. The cost of each house would have been £10,000, plus the salary of a Govern- ment official to register deceases, and of a doctor. Mr. Nobel was prepared to give a first-class dinner washed down with good wine at a fixed hour to the guests. After dinner, when cigars had been handed round, the smoking-room was to have been instantaneously filled with the deadly gas. The bodies were to be cremated in the morning at the expense of the institution. His Excellency Crispi thought that there was much in the idea, and that the scheme was well planned, but that the reactionary parties in Italy were still too strong to permit of the Government availing itself of the kind and generous offer. I mentioned to Mr. Nobel the reputed fate of Dr. Guillotin, and said that possibly he might one day at Milan be invited by the sovereign mob to dine at his institute with a few other men of advanced science, for Mr. Nobel held that in the future cultivation and infidel education would reduce very many of the class in English called "Hooligan" to join with the hopelessly diseased at these festive meetings. Mr. Nobel held that means should be taken to prevent the increase of the pauper, criminal, and diseased members of society. I regret that Mr. Wells apparently never knew Alfred Nobel, for had he known him "Anticipations" would have been still more interesting. Nobel was quite prepared to carry out his views, which were that when he should die he would be as dead "as a tree cut down at its roots." He should use a poison he had invented and well tested on animals, which he said was instantaneous and impossible to detect. This he intended to use, be told myself and a friend, if ever• he contracted a mortal illness. He had the preparation inside wring he always wore, and also in a small bottle. As a fact my esteemed friend died of suddenfailure of the heart during an attack of bronchitis. I did not agree with any of his views; but on many matters Lord Kelvin could not exceed him in knowledge on certain subjects. I venture to trouble you with this letter because there is so little difference between the suggestion of the Saxon Deputy and of Nobel, excepting that the latter had really arranged for the carrying out of a "theory," and was prepared to pay the costs of the experiment, under Government supervision.—I am, Sir, [Could any stronger proof be required than that contained In our correspondent's letter of the absolute necessity that society, even apart from Christian feeling, should set its face against anything approaching euthanasia ? If depraved and fantastic plans for endowing a Suicide Club, such as that which we are assured was seriously made by Mr. Nobel, were to be tolerated, they world soon be developed and improved. The half-witted, the dull, the tiresome, the disagreeable would soon follow the hopeless invalids, and Europe would become a shambles like Dahomey, The lust of death would grow till it utterly demoralised the nations. There is only one sound principle,—life must be held absolutely sacred except when it has to be taken as a penalty for crime. Men will, of course, rightly risk their lives for a thousand reasons, great and small, but the private intention to kill or be killed can never be allowed. The Almighty has set " His canon 'gainat self-slaughter," and no sophistries can conceal the fact. Free suicide will soon be followed by free murder.— En. Spectator.1
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