GANGSTERS AS DICTATORS

While the press led by Mr. Roosevelt has recognized the assassination of Huey Long as un-American, few people have given thought to the equally un-American death of his assassin. Only the arch-Republican Herald-Tribune has protested the bullet-ridden body of Dr. Weiss.

Weiss was fully disabled by a blow to the chin before sixty bullets left the revolvers of armed bodyguards to pepper his body. From all reports he could have been tied up, taken to jail, and given a fair trial. Courts act quickly in such cases. This is what happened to Zangara, the would-be assassin of President Roosevelt, and to the slayers of Garfield and McKinley; yet the scene in the Louisiana state capitol resembled the settling of accounts between rival gangs.

Thus the two deaths provide a final example of the gangster methods which filled at least an interesting chapter in United States history. Even though the senator himself introduced this mode of government which caused his death, however, a democracy proves itself less effective when it sacrifices normal weapons for those of steel.