Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 234, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1920 — Americanism [ARTICLE]

Americanism

By LEONARD WOOD

Of courM mob violence ia ■imply on* form of anarchy) and anarchy is now a* it alwaya ha* boon, the hand maid** and forerunMne of tyranny.—Theodor* Roosevelt: Letter to Governor Durbin of Indiana, Anyust 6, 1803. RECENTLY th (Mftha there was mob violence, growing out of race prejudice. The mob tried to set aside law,' and as the absence of law is anarchy, anarchy prevailed temporarily in Omaha. There have been many other cases of temporary mob rule in the United States, and everywhere anarchy ruled while the mob held the upper hand. There can be ho order without law, no safety for the lives of men, women and children, nor safety for property. It is necessary, therefore, that the law should rissert Itself through its duly accredited agents at the moment that the rule of unrule begins. In Omaha order was restored through the agencies *f the law and It was done without firing a shot. The great masses of .yitizens of an American community can be depended upon to stand straight for order. In Theodore Roosevelt’s letter to Governor Durbin, written at a time when there had been an attempt by a mob to override the law, he says that anarchy is now as it always has been the handmaiden or the forerunner of tyranny. Anarchy takes no thought either of proper restraint or of orderly procedure of any kind. In substance it Is license and worse than license. It lets loose all the base passions of men and its sole end is the destruction of those things which make for good government. It has no substitute to offer for the things present, hut has only to do with destruction. The history of the world has shown that when an unbridled mob takes possession of the agencies of government. tyranny has prevailed during the. mob rule, and then almost always has followed in another form the establishment of a despotic government. Despots always are tyrants. TJie road from democracy t* the worst form of autocracy leads through the field of anarchy, and While it is passing through the field -it is in tyranny’s territory. Law and order, government under the Constitution and by the expressed will of the masses of the people—these are the handmaidens of liberty as anarchy is the handmaiden of tyranny.