5 AUGUST 1916, Page 3

Roger Casement was executed on Thursday morning. There had

been a movement for his reprieve, but it had no more force, whether on grounds of law or expediency, than can be drafted into an argu- ment for the reprieve of any one condemned to death. Such argu- ments, whether intentionally or not, really strike at the death penalty itself. It would have been impossible to reprieve Casement without permanently injuring the accepted social theory on which the extreme penalty rests.