When Balmascheff, who shot and killed M. Sipiaguine, Russia's Minister
of the Interior, was asked if he had accomplices he replied: "So many
that it is impossible to name them." He also said that he nor they
expected grace or mercy; that he and they worked for those who came
after. Some will call this the raving of an anarchist. But these know
nothing of the conditions against which Balmascheff and his kind are
warring. The Balmascheffs would prefer to gain their ends by peaceful
means, but know from experience that life is too short for success.
They do not kill for love of killing, or the notoriety that attaches
to it, but that the lot of those whose cause they champion may be made
merely endurable. Whenever the law is wilfully and successfully
disregarded that a minority may be favored there will be found a means
by which this dereliction is brought to the attention not only of the
lawbreakers, but of the world, and as the latter, in all its
divisions, contains lawbreakers who consider themselves above or
beyond the law the punishment of one is usually followed by the
punishment of others, for lawbreakers of a colossal type--like their
executioners--think in common and recognize no cleavage of
nationality. Balmascheff may not have killed the system which was
represented by M. Sipiaguine, but he chopped away a limb. Unless the
trunk is replaced by one that better befits the age it, too, will be
chopped away.
If this be an age of reason, as is claimed for it, men who are
furnished with a capacity to think cannot be prevented from putting
their thoughts into execution. Though Balmascheff was executed on
Friday according to biblical and Russian law, there are many
Balmascheffs in the world, and it is well for the world that this is
so.