Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Subjects:

Darwinism, Evolution, Politics, Radicalism, Industrial Chemistry, Military Technology, War

    Reports that the trial of the anarchist Auguste Vaillant, who had thrown a bomb into the French Chamber of Deputies and was given the death-sentence, 'was chiefly notable because of his posing as the logical executant of the ideas of "the Reclus, the Darwins, the Spencers, the Ibsens, the Mirabeaus". Whencesoever the ideas are borrowed, the execution goes on' (118). Also warns of the prospects of a coming 'scientific massacre' in Europe, where a 'new explosive, Schnebelite, named after its pious discoverer, Abbé Schnebelin, was tested near Paris, and found to possess enormous shattering and penetrative power', and 'an Austrian inventor perfected an automatic mitrailleuse, said to spit forth death at the rate of 480 bullets a minute—eight per second'. These new 'explosives and weapons suggest' that 'civilised Europe' is 'rehearsing for [a] carnival of wholesale destruction'. (119)