CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In your article under the above heading there is the following sentence : "It was gravely proposed . . . that the murderer alone should be allowed the right of euthanasia. To secure that right you would only have to commit murder I"
I do not know whether it is of any interest to recall the fact that there is some historical justification for this suggestion. Thackemy, in the sixth chapter of Barry Lyndon, writes of the Prussian Army of Frederick the Great "The life the private soldier led was a frightful one to any but men of iron courage and endurance. . . . Many men would give way to the most frightful acts of despair under these incessant persecutions and tortures ; and amongst several regiments of the army a horrible practice had sprung up which for soma time caused the greatest alarm to the Government. This was a strange frightful custom of child-murder. The men used to say that life was unbearable, that suicide was a crime ; in order to avert which, and to finish with the intolerable misery of their position, the best plan was to kill a young child, which was innocent, and therefore secure of heaven, and then to deliver themselves up as guilty of the murder."—I am, &c.,
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