GREECE OR ILLINOIS

The civilized world read with unmixed indignation of the execution of six Greek leaders, military and civil, on a charge of high treason,--a charge based, it is claimed, on their defeat at the hands of the Turks, at the same time people in the United States are protesting scarcely less vigorously against the pardon of William Bross Lloyd, millionaire convicted of sedition, after he had served eight days of a five year prison sentence.

The six Greeks, it is reported, went to their death like martyrs. They had done no wrong greater than other political conspirators of the past and present, and, together with the rest of the civilized world outside of Greece, they regarded their execution as a great in-justice. They had plotted to precipitate Greece in the Great War on the side of the Turks and the Germans. They had brought about Constantine's return and had so managed the war against Turkey that the Greek armies suffered a complete collapse. But other Greek armies have collapsed, ever since the day when Lord Byron failed in his attempt to help restore to them the glory which was theirs. Were not these men victims sacrificed by the people at the altar of fanaticism? This was their feeling and the rest of the world agrees with them.

In the State of Illinois William Bross Lloyd has been pardoned. He and fifteen others were convicted of violating a law of the country and spreading seditious propaganda during a national emergency; but Governor Small argues that they accomplished no evil and that the law under which they were imprisoned is not a good law, therefore why should they not go free? Accordingly, the Governor opened the gates of the penitentiary to Lloyd and his companions before they had had the chance to become acquainted with their turnkeys.

It is hard to determine where negligence and foolishness stop, and where treason begins: In Greece the men executed may or may not have been guilty of real treason; their death was brought about by mad, mistaken patriotism on the part of a people gone hysterical. What of Illinois? There too, it can be said with good reason that the charges against the millionaire radical and his associates were due in part to national war hysteria.

Mr. Lloyd's actions and his speeches are entirely opposed to the ideas of the great majority of his fellow citizens. His presence in most civilized communities may amount to a public nuisance. But the longer he was kept in prison, the greater would be the halo of "martyrdom" to gather about his head Lloyd in prison, like Gounaris executed, could appear in the light of a misunderstood, much-maligned patriot.

Nevertheless the Thanksgiving pardons in Illinois are to be condemned, not because they were wrong in principle, but because they followed no principle save that of political expediency. Undoubtedly it is better to have Mr. Lloyd and his friends free to move their soap-boxes from corner to corner unchecked, than to keep them under lock and key. Highly volatile gases are far more dangerous confined than when allowed plenty of room for expansion. But when the Governor of a state overrides a law and frees prisoners at the very beginning of their sentences in the face of a decision by the Supreme Court that the law is constitutional; there is room for a legitimate protest.

Both acts, in Greece and in Illinois, have been condemned--not because the one put six "heroes" to death or the other sets an "arch-traitor" free, but because they represent in themselves a perversion of justice. Perhaps the Greek execution is the lesser of the two.