Whenever I hear protests from the South that it should be left alone to deal with the Negro question, my thoughts go back to that scene of brutality and savagery.  I do not see how a people that can find in its conscience any excuse whatever for slowly burning to death a human being, or for tolerating such an act, can be entrusted with the salvation of a race.  Of course, there are in the South men of liberal thought who do not approve lynching, but I wonder how long they will endure the limits which are placed upon free speech.  They still cower and tremble before “Southern opinion.”  Even so late as the recent Atlanta riot those men who were brave enough to speak a word in behalf of justice and humanity felt called upon, by way of apology, to preface what they said with a glowing rhetorical tribute to the Anglo-Saxon’s superiority and to refer to the “great and impassable gulf” between the races “fixed by the Creator at the foundation of the world.”  The question of the relative qualities of the two races is still an open one.  The reference to the “great gulf” loses force in face of the fact that there are in this country perhaps three or four million people with the blood of both races in their veins; but I fail to see the pertinency of either statement subsequent to the beating and murdering of scores of innocent people in the streets of a civilized and Christian city.

The Southern whites are in many respects a great people.  Looked at from a certain point of view, they are picturesque.  If one will put oneself in a romantic frame of mind, one can admire their notions of chivalry and bravery and justice.  In this same frame of mind an intelligent man can go to the theatre and applaud the impossible hero, who with his single sword slays everybody in the play except the equally impossible heroine.  So can an ordinary peace-loving citizen sit by a comfortable fire and read with enjoyment of the bloody deeds of pirates and the fierce brutality of Vikings.  This is the way in which we gratify the old, underlying animal instincts and passions; but we should shudder with horror at the mere idea of such practices being realities in this day of enlightened and humanitarianized thought.  The Southern whites are not yet living quite in the present age; many of their general ideas hark back to a former century, some of them to the Dark Ages.  In the light of other days they are sometimes magnificent.  Today they are often cruel and ludicrous.

How long I sat with bitter thoughts running through my mind I do not know; perhaps an hour or more.  When I decided to get up and go back to the house, I found that I could hardly stand on my feet.  I was as weak as a man who had lost blood.  However, I dragged myself along, with the central idea of a general plan well fixed in my mind.  I did not find my school teacher friend at home, so I did not see him again.  I swallowed a few mouthfuls of food, packed my bag, and caught the afternoon train.