Question. Is it not strange that, with one exception, the most notable operas written since Wagner are by Italian composers instead of German?
Answer. For many years German musicians insisted that Wagner was not a composer. They declared that he produced only a succession of discordant noises. I account for this by the fact that the music of Wagner was not German. His countrymen could not understand it. They had to be educated. There was no orchestra in Germany that could really play "Tristan and Isolde." Its eloquence, its pathos, its shoreless passion was beyond them. There is no reason to suppose that Germany is to produce another Wagner. Is England expected to give us another Shakespeare?
—The Sun, New York, March 19, 1899.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE WHIPPING-POST.
Question. What do you think of Governor Roosevelt's decision in the case of Mrs. Place?
Answer. I think the refusal of Governor Roosevelt to commute the sentence of Mrs. Place is a disgrace to the State. What a spectacle of man killing a woman—taking a poor, pallid, frightened woman, strapping her to a chair and then arranging the apparatus so she can be shocked to death. Many call this a Christian country. A good many people who believe in hell would naturally feel it their duty to kill a wretched, insane woman.
Society has a right to protect itself, but this can be done by imprisonment, and it is more humane to put a criminal in a cell than in a grave. Capital punishment degrades and hardens a community and it is a work of savagery. It is savagery. Capital punishment does not prevent murder, but sets an example—an example by the State—that is followed by its citizens. The State murders its enemies and the citizen murders his. Any punishment that degrades the punished, must necessarily degrade the one inflicting the punishment. No punishment should be inflicted by a human being that could not be inflicted by a gentleman.
For instance, take the whipping-post. Some people are in favor of flogging because they say that some offences are of such a frightful nature that flogging is the only punishment. They forget that the punishment must be inflicted by somebody, and that somebody is a low and contemptible cur. I understand that John G. Shortall, president of the Humane Society of Illinois, has had a bill introduced into the Legislature of the State for the establishment of the whipping-post.