NO EXCUSE FOR LYNCH LAW
Gregory, Attorney General
No Excuse for Lynch Law By ATTORNEY GENERAL GREGORY WE MUST set our faces against lawlessness within our own borders. Whatever we may say about the causes for entering this war, we know that one...
...that an honest, adequate and earnest force is dealing with this situation, and that unless the hysteria which results in the lynching of men is checked, it will create a condition of lawlessness from which we will suffer for a hundred years...
...No greater wrong can be done to our soldiers in France than that of lynching Germans in America...
...Having sowed the wind we will reap the whirlwind...
...The people of this country must be given to understand that we have means of protecting those in the field and those at home, and what is being done to accomplish that result...
...The reverse is true...
...For us to tolerate lynching is to do the same thing that we are condemning in the Germans...
...There is another potent reason for sternly repressing these disorders...
...Whatever we may say about the causes for entering this war, we know that one of the principal reasons was the lawlessness of tha German nation — what they have done in Belgium and northern France, and what we would have reason to know they would do elsewhere...
...spies are blowing up our ' factories...
...our boys are being shot in the rear ! and our duly constituted authorities are doing ! nothing to protect us, and we will take tha i law into our own hands...
...Lynch law is the most cowardly of crimes...
...The cry of the mob is that it is protecting the boys at the front...
...From all the facts I have been able to gather concerning the lynching it Robert Prager in Illinois, I doubt his having been i guilty of any offense, j Such happenings grow out ; of conditions of mind I where people say, "The Government is giving ! us no protection...
...I urge you through such machinery as you see fit to adopt, to assist in getting before the people the facts that laws are now on the statute books or will be within a few weeks, which will reasonably protect the interior defenses of our country...
...It is a leplorable thing under any circumstances, but at this time above all others it creates an extremely dangerous condition...
...The two excuses usually given are that there are no adequate laws and that the laws we have are not properly enforced...
...The story of the lynching of that German in Illinois is being considered in Germany today...
...they are giving information to Ger-J many...
...Invariably the victim is unarmed, while the men who lynch are armed and large in numbers...
...Such acts will be seized upon by our-enemies as justfying severe reprisals on ou-soldiers in German prison camps...
Vol. 10 • May 1918 • No. 5
