No sentiment, no slopping over, no morals—they are fed up with that. What is there in common between us? Our viewpoints are entirely different. They're in—I'm out.
They show me a cup presented by Sir Thomas Lipton, inscribed, "We have all made mistakes."
"How do we know but what some of you haven't?" I ask, humorously. It makes a hit. They want me to talk.
"Brother criminals and fellow sinners: Christ said, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.' I cannot cast the stone, though I have compromised and thrown many a pie. But I cannot cast the first stone." Some got it. Others never will.
We must be sensible. I am not a hero worshipper of criminals and bad men. Society must be protected. We are greater in number than the criminals and have the upper hand. We must keep it; but we can at least treat them intelligently, for, after all, crime is the outcome of society.
The doctor tells me that but a few of them are criminals from heredity, that the majority had been forced into crime by circumstances or had committed it in passion. I notice a lot of evil-looking men, but also some splendid ones. I earnestly believe that society can protect itself intelligently, humanly. I would abolish prisons. Call them hospitals and treat the prisoners as patients.
It is a problem that I make no pretence of solving.
The death house. It is hideous. A plain, bare room, rather large and with a white door, not green, as I have been told. The chair—a plain wooden armchair and a single wire coming down over it. This is an instrument to snuff out life. It is too simple. It is not even dramatic. Just cold-blooded and matter of fact.
Some one is telling me how they watch the prisoner after he is strapped in the chair. Good God! How can they calmly plan with such exactness? And they have killed as many as seven in one day. I must get out.
Two men were walking up and down in a bare yard, one a short man with a pipe in his mouth, walking briskly, and at his side a warden. The keeper announces, shortly, "The next for the chair."