Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug 1911-Jan 1912)

36 TEE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE squeal on you. The threat you made within our walls will go no further than them, and it may be established that you shot your man in selfdefense. ' ' "I dont know," Douglas sighed wearily. ' ' It 's all a blank to me. ' ' Once settled in a cosy corner of their social gathering place, the young physician continued to treat Douglas as a special patient instead of as a criminal, dulling his overwrought sensibilities with mild doses, while restoring his mental equilibrium by diverting his attention. "A man drunk," said Rogers, "is a man diseased or poisoned. In the delirious ravings of fever we have the same mental operation visible in the lunatic or the drunkard, a perversion of the mind to an extent that the individual is no longer the director of his own conduct." ' ' Nor can he expect, ' ' said another voice, "to be the arbiter of his own destiny. ' ' Sam Sloane, brilliant young attorney, had entered and joined them unobserved. ' ' We are not savages, ' ' said Sloane, "and cannot tolerate savages in our midst. That is all there is to it. A human being governed entirely by passion, in whom the moral sense has been repressed by low environment, may not be morally responsible, but he is on that account unfit to associate with those who exercise restraint, who live and let live, and who accord others the privilege they themselves wish to enjoy." Douglas shuddered. Rogers was unimpressed. "The trouble with you fellows," he said, 1 ' is that you imagine law to be an exact science, while it is so faultily constructed that we have been continually altering it for two thousand years, and are still at it. In medicine we do not handle all patients alike. Each case is unique in itself, and it is our mission to save, not to destroy. You set out in any criminal case with a set of rules which mislead and misguide you, as well as miscarry their own purpose. I will cite a case. A club member becomes intoxicated within these walls. What is our first duty to him? We should unite to save him from the effects of the poison doled out by our steward. Instead of helping him, we egg him on until he loses his natural identity, and commits a breach of law. We, the sober participants, are more guilty than is our half -crazed fellowmember. He commits a crime, we turn upon him righteously, he is convicted, and we go free, saying, 'Poor fellow, but it served him right.' If we are to live and let live, why not prevent crime instead of punishing it?" The heat of the argument had drawn others to the neighborhood. Sloane looked around at them and smiled. ' ' Doc is about to reconstruct society in twenty-four hours, ' ' he said to the little assembly. "No man's life would be safe if his theory prevailed. If I should haul out a pistol and blaze away at one of you, I could not be held responsible for my acts, because the rest of the fellows might have prevented me if they had undertaken to have reformed my character in time. The responsibility of the criminal is shifted to his community. Let us assume a case. Supposing that Douglas had actually killed Briston, as he threatened to do, when he attempted to brain -him with a decanter ; it would not have been his fault, but ours. By killing an old friend, one of the best he ever had, he would simply have demonstrated to me, and to all other level-headed men, that he was a decadent, a useless cog in the machinery of any civilization, high or low. ' ' Douglas quivered and clenched his hands. Rogers restrained him. "Hold on," he said to Sloane. "It is not fair to judge a man, to measure up his worth, by one act of his life. Who paid the rent of that old couple in Back Street last winter, and took up a subscription in our crowd to provide them with food and clothing? Jack Douglas. Who is known to every kid on the street as a friend of the chil