CHAPTER XVIII 



A SAINT BARTHOLOMEW OF BIRDS 



A massacre is indiscriminate slaughter with 

 unnecessary cruelty, but as it is practically never 

 necessary, it is always cruel and outrageous. 

 Hands red with innocent blood make indelible 

 stains, and that people or nation indulging in 

 blood lust is still in the swaddling clothes of a 

 development just commencing. Massacre is a 

 parent stem upon which mob violence is born in 

 the shape of a gnarled and unripe fruit. Mob 

 violence is an emotion often widely divorced from 

 all sober, serious thought, in fact, it is incapable 

 of thought, as thought would destroy the unrea- 

 soning act. The world is just learning the pos- 

 sibilities of unleashed passion with ignorance as a 

 dynamo running wild. 



In Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn" is 

 a poem entitled, "The Birds of Killingworth," 

 and in that poem occur the words that serve as 

 the caption of this chapter. The whole thing de- 

 scribed with prophetic vision a Saint Bartholomew 

 of Birds, restricted to a circumscribed area, which 



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