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[Criminal Enemies of Social Order]
If the authority of the courts should be destroyed -- if their
carefully determined decrees are arbitrarily and without
investigation, merely upon suspicion and general belief, set aside
-- if recourse is to be had to blackmail or for terrorism,
sabotage, dynamite and murder -- if the doctrines of direct action,
are the Bolshevist and the IWW -- the weak are the ones who will
suffer in any such decision. I venture to say that with all the
imperfections of human nature from which we cannot escape under any
system the wit of man ever devised, and with all the mistakes the
mind of man, however well intentioned, may sometimes make, there is
not a state nor a city between the two oceans in this great
republic where an honest laborer, seeking protection or justice,
cannot find a judge who will zealously guard his rights, his
liberties, his property, his life, with the shield of the law
against the hand of the despoiler.
Tear down the courts and the law, and there is left the
spectacle of a bloody tyranny -- of ignorance, avarice, cruelty,
imposing their brute will upon all who differ with them or stand in
their way. We see that spectacle in Russia today, and those who
are writhing there in the gratification of their lawless desire for
power are the counterparts and co-workers against law and
established government with the authors of these resolutions and
other propaganda of murder, assassination, revolution, direct
action, sabotage and anarchy which is stalking through the land.
The greatest issue that confronts not only the American
people, but the western world, is the suppression of this arrogant,
insolent, and tyrannical movement. Its leaders must be subjected
to the will of the government. The intellectual vagaries of benign
but irrational visionaries, the abysmal ignorance of masses of its
innocent human tools, and the murderous instincts of avowed
criminal enemies of social order, are the materials with which it
works. Many of its parts are not conscious of their connection
with one another. But it all moves as a cohesive and coordinate
whole on the lever which is worked by the master criminals of
mankind. Their proposed prey is the human and of material
accumulated wealth of the world. It is an astounding occurrence.
And to us, awakened from our long dream of peace, seems difficult
of conception.
These conspirators against the peace and happiness of mankind
have taken the gifts of God, the intelligence that has come with
civilization, the inventions of science, the products of modern
art, and turning them into instruments of destruction, have made
war on their own creator. The good gifts, which were put into the
hands of man for good, have been perverted to evil. It is as
though they had eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, and that they will hear the voice of
God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and saying to
this: "Adam, cursed is the ground for thy sake, and in sorrow shalt
thou eat of it all the days of thy life." It is as though again,
the man be driven out, and again be placed at the east of the
garden of Eden, cherubim and a flaming sword which shall turn every
way. So keep the way of the tree of life.
Listen to this recording.
Listen to this recording.