Chapter II

Everything foretells the doom of authority. The killing of kings is no new industry; it is as ancient as the race. Always and everywhere persons in high place have been the assassin’s prey. We have ourselves lost three presidents by murder, and shall doubtless lose many another before the book of American history is closed. If anything is new in this activity of the regicide it is found in the choice of victims. The contemporary “avenger” slays, not the merely “exalted,” but the good and the inoffensive—an American president who had struck the chains from millions of slaves; a Russian czar who against the will and work of his own powerful nobles had freed their serfs; a French president from whom the French people had received nothing but good; a powerless Austrian empress, whose weight of sorrows had touched the world to tears; a blameless Italian king beloved of his people; such is a part of the recent record of the regicide, whose every entry is a tale of infamy unrelieved by one circumstance of justice, decency or good intention.

This recent uniformity of malevolence in the choice of victims is not without significance. It points unmistakably to two facts: first, that the selections are made, not by the assassins themselves, but by some central control inaccessible to individual preference and unaffected by the fortunes of its instruments; second, that there is a constant purpose to manifest an antagonism, not to any individual ruler, but to rulers; not to any system of government, but to government. The issue is defined, the alignment made, the battle set: Chaos against Order, Anarchy against Law.