Anarchy Prevalent by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 15, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 45.

Anarchy Prevalent.

By Editor

The whole country was startled October 1 by the awful and hellish crime of the blowing up of the Los Angeles Times building and the murder of more than a score of men. Bombs were also placed for the evident purpose of wrecking the residences of Gen. H. G. Otis and Mr. Zeehandelar, the secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, but through some defect failed to explode. A shoe merchant in San Francisco has been threatened by a gang of eight with destruction by dynamite if he fails to pay a certain sum of money in blackmail. Six sticks of dynamite were found cached near the residence of a Portland (Oregon) capitalist after his receipt of several threatening letters. Where will it end? Whose home is safe from the desperate degenerate who delights in the horrible death of his fellows? Where lies the responsibility?—Primarily, we reply, in rebellion against God and His law. Men who have the fear of God before them, who reverence His law, will not plot destruction of property or lives of their fellow men. Men who will reject the Decalogue, can not be expected to have regard for human law which falls athwart their purpose. They defy their own ideas, and worship at the shrine of anarchy. But more than all, the men who, professing to be servants of God, fail to teach the sacredness of His law and the sure judgment that awaits the transgressor, are responsible, and more responsible than the ignorant anarchist who appears in the last act of the tragedy. "The law is slacked," and violence is in the land.