TOPICS OF THE DAY..
THE NEMESIS OF MURDER.
AT last the English people seem to be awakening from their sleep, or at any rate from their indifference. The murders perpetrated in Dublin on Sunday, when men were killed as rats are killed in a rat hunt, has not only caused a thrill of horror throughout the nation, but has aroused a sense of deep indignation and, what is more, a determination to stop the murdering at all costs. That is right, but in order to stop it effectively the English people must ask the question, "How did such things come about ? How was it possible to form so open and brutal a conspiracy and to carry it out with an immunity which has been almost complete ? "
The massacre of Sunday was the direct outcome of the tolerance, nay the levity, with which for the last year we. as a nation have treated the rising tide of murder in Ireland. On as badine pas amc l'amour. One does not trifle with love. Still truer is it that we dare not trifle with murder. Men must die in dangerous pursuits, in battle, in the prevention of wrong, in the assertion of right, and it is just and becoming not to be terrified by death or to treat the rendering up of human life as the greatest of ills. If we once get death on our nerves and forget the need for the Stoic touch in life, we shall never keep either freedom or progress. In the last resort any civilization worth having must rest on the willingness of men and women to dare and die in a good cause. A community trembling before the shrine of Kali or some other goddess of Death would be the most despicable in the world. But though the mere timer mortis is morbid and contemptible, the conquest of that dread involves no toleration of murder. Murder in every sound community will always be regarded as the greatest of crimes—the unforgivable sin, the crime that cries out, the crime with which there can be no compromise. And by murder we mean deliberate and wilful murder, not mere homicide or manslaughter, but killing with the intent to kill ; killing, not in self-defence or on some instant, immediate and violent provocation such as destroys a man's balance, but killing planned and pre- meditated.
. Our loss of touch with the realities and verities of murder is well illustrated by the way in which the case of Mrs. Quinn has been treated. Mrs. Quinn was killed through the reckless and culpable discharge of firearms—intended, no doubt, to make a kind of barrage of protection or intimida- tion—by a lorry full of constables maddened by the thought of death in ambush for them at any street corner, and by the remembrance of comrades cruelly done to death in cold blood. Mr. Asquith, in his amazing sPeech a week ago, called the killing of the unfortunate woman a ease of wilful murder. "If ever there was a case of wilful murder that was a case," were his actual words. Could there be a more striking example of that intellectual demoralization from which the party politician seems always doomed to suffer ? Mr. Asquith is a great advocate, a great lawyer, and has held high legal office. Yet, incredible as it sounds, he dared to use the words just quoted in regard to Mrs. Quinn's death.
Unless Mr. Asquith is sheltering himself behind some pitiful piece of archaic legal pedantry borrowed from the old definitions of murder, he must have suffered a strange lapse of memory. It has been laid down in the clearest way that, to constitute murder in the true sense, the person who killed 111114 have meant to kill. In order to establish the crime to which the supreme penalty attaches, there must be deliberation, i.e., malice aforethought, and not mere criminal recklessness and negligence. The latter may constitute the grave and severely punished offence of manslaughter, but never in modern times has it been treated as turning homicide into murder. In the past there was iso doubt a theoretical tendency in our law— we can hardly call it more—to regard every homicide as murder till the contrary was proved. That view, however, is now in practice entirely obsolete. For the major crime there must be intent, hence the expression" wilful murder." If Mr. Asquith wanted to find a true example of wilful murder, he might have found it in the newspaper reports of the day before he spoke. Here is a Cork telegram :—
" Sergeant James O'Donoghuo, of Ruckey Street Police Statiorr, was shot dead -in White Street this evening. The sergeant was going home at the time. It is stated that three men, standing in a doorway of a store, fired two revolver shots at him from close range, the sergeant falling to the ground, and then a third shot was fired from a revolver' the muzzle of which was probably placed to the man's mouth. The assassins walked away quickly, and the victim lay on the ground for some time until information reached the police."
There is a real case of wilful murder. To confuse it with a case such as that of Mrs. Quinn is to debase the moral currency.- We have dwelt upon Mr. Asquith's speech at such length because it affords an extraordinarily striking example of how far the indifference to the crime of murder has gone. When an ex-Prime Minister of great sensibility as to the taking of human life, and of conspicuous moderation in opinion, can use the language which Mr. Asquith used at the National Liberal Club on the 19th of November, we can judge what a debility of feeling we have reached in regard to the crime of murder. Mr. Asquith is, of course, as we have always insisted, genuinely horrified by the murders. Yet for all that he and his followers seem unable to avoid using language which cannot but have a most unfortunate effect on the ordinary Sinn Feiner. When Irishmen see that Mr. Asquith calls such incidents as the killing of Mrs. Quinn "wilful murder they realize at once that they are provided with a plausible excuse for sympathizing with the Sinn Fein extremists—the excuse of murderous provocation. What is we fully admit merely the babble of the party and political auction room in Mr. Asquith's mouth becomes a handy piece of apologetics for the members of the Irish Republican Army. "How can you expect men to refrain from murder when they have such awful provocation as the killing of Mrs. Quinn—a crime which even so typical an Englishman as Mr. Asquith admits was wilful murder ? " That is being said in Ireland. Surely Mr. Asquith should have remembered that it would be said, and refrained from words so dangerous.
Yet another point is to be remembered in this context. If Mr. Asquith is prepared to call the death of Mrs. Quinn wilful murder—" If ever there was a case of wilful murder that was a ease "—what language has he left for the con- demnation of such a crime as the killing of the sergeant at Cork which we have just quoted, or for the crimes of Sunday ? He can only weakly call them murder also. But that is just what the Nationalists want. It can be represented by them as equivalent to "It is six of one and half a dozen of the other. There is not much to choose between the two sets of murderers in Ireland." There is in fact all the world to choose between them. Every good citizen will regret and condemn reprisals, but no good citizen will confuse the moral issue by confounding the crime of murder with the offence of manslaughter. Mr. Asquith and his friends, whether in the House of COMM0013, or in the country, or in the Press, are guilty of a grave injury to the dearest interests of the community in using language so careless and so inflammatory that it serves to create palliatives for murder.
Though less culpable, the Government themselves cannot be acquitted of action or want of action that has tended to create a sense of callousness and indifference to murder and to incline men to treat it with a:levity which, as we have said, cannot take possession of any • com- munity without gravely endangering its morale. If they had been worthy leaders of the country they would not have waited till now to rouse our indignation. They have been guilty, indeed, of a double offence in this matter. They did not treat the killing of policemen, officials, and loyal civilians when it began with anything like sufficient seriousness and sternness. They should have instantly obliged the people of Ireland to feel the weight of their hand and made it perfectly clear that, come what might, they would not yield to a campaign of murder. They should have proclaimed to all the world that the sophistries of the Sinn Feiners in regard to civil war would not be listened to for a moment. Instead, they tried to kill murder, if not by kindness, at any rate by passive methods. When the more moderate Irish people saw the way in which the Government took the murders, no wonder they themselves did not trouble to show but rather repress that intolerance of murder which tends to grow up ill almost every human community.
This supineness, and the wretched excuse that it was useless to prosecute people when there was " no evidence," was a further outcome of the demoralized mind of the Government. When policemen, soldiers, and officials were being murdered, literally day by day, it was the business of the Government to afford them protection by hitting back with all their force, that is, by reprisals, for that is all that reprisal in its true sense means. Re- prisals conducted in a proper spirit by a lawful Government are perfectly legitimate.
What was the result ? As was certain to be the case, men lacking protection from their natural protectors took the matter into their own hands and levied war upon those who had levied war upon them. We make no excuses for the police, but there is a perfect explanation for their action to be found in the natural instincts of mankind. Say what you will and do what you will, if men are employed on dangerous and often lonely duties, and while doing so are exposed to death in its most terrifying and awful forms, they will either run away and abandon their duties or will find means of protecting themselves. But it is not the habit of the Royal Irish Constabulary to run away. Therefore they took the Sinn Feiners at their own word and answered with that wild justice of which the motto is "A to guerre corium a to guerre "—In war as in war. We will not say that we do not blame them, for we do. But we blame still more those who failed to give them protection.
How could the Government have protected them ? By the plan which we have so often advocated in these columns —that is, of separating our friends from our enemies and exacting from our enemies guarantees which would ensure their good behaviour. There is nothing impossible in putting down Irish crime and putting it down without any resort to the criminal frightfulness of seizing of hostages and so forth. But it requires action and not helplessness such as we witnessed till the Government found, as we admit they have, a man in Sir Hamar Greenwood. Instead of making all England and all Europe ring with the misdeeds of the murder conspiracies of the Sinn Feiners and of the men who succour and abet them or at any rate find excuses for their crimes, the Government sat weakly down to the task of defending the police reprisals.
An Anglo-Indian statesman was once asked how it was the East India Company dared to interfere with so ancient and 80 religious a practice as Suttee—the burning of widows. The answer was one that is worth while remem- bering in this context. "The Indian Government was quite safe in assuming that there would be no rebellion against this act of interference with religion. Although it was not merely legal to burn widows, but was com- manded by the religious law, all human nature, Indian or Christian, revolted against the practice. It meant that sons murk burn their own mothers alive. Therefore a Campaign against Suttee was sure to succeed." In like manner the present Government will find the sternest campaign against murder easy. In their heart of hearts the majority of Sinn Feiners are ashamed of the murders they now excuse. Anyway, England is ready and eager to put down murder, and by the sternest methods ; and if the present Government will not do their duty promptly in the matter, the people will find other rulers who will know what is wanted of them. If Mr. Lloyd George will act as well as he talked at Carnarvon, we shall be content. If he can merely talk, let him make way for a man of action. Here is his hour of trial.
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