The Commoner

Do We Need Riot Bullets?

The war department of the Roosevelt administration of the United States has notified the governor of every state that it has succeeded in perfecting a new kind of "riot bullet" capable of causing widespread death and destruction when fired into a mob, and it is prepared to furnish each state with as large a supply of this ammunition as may be desired. It is explained that the riot bullets are not designed to be of any use against an army or in regular warfare, but are useful only against mobs, where they are efficient beyond anything ever before invented.

This notification has been sent, as we say, to the governor of every state, with an invitation to order a supply of these invaluable riot quellers. We do not know whether any governor has as yet availed himself of this rare opportunity, but we do know that congress ought to ask for more light about this extraordinary ammunition. Who ordered it? Who designed it? And what for?

It is wholesome at times to learn how we look in the eyes of other people.

This performance of the war department, which has passed almost unnoticed in our own country, seems to have amazed and puzzled people elsewhere.

A Canadian newspaper inquires, not without reason, Where are the mobs that are to be subdued by this ingenious device? As the bullets are useless for regular warfare, it must be that the gentlemen of the war department have designed them for use against their fellow-Americans. It cannot understand this except on the theory that we are in a state of violent but secret disorder, and it draws a somewhat humiliating contrast between the peace and security of Canada and the terrible turbulence that must exist in a nation where the government provides "riot bullets" for use against its own citizens.

We do not understand it any better than the Canadian newspaper understands it. Even the reflection that this is a strenuous administration, conducted by a strenuous person, throws no light upon the mystery.

Where are the riots that these bullets are to suppress, and who are the rioters? We have not heard of any disturbance anywhere requiring the wholesale destruction of Americans to quell it. What danger does the strenuous administration foresee?

Hitherto we Americans have justly thought of ourselves as a law-abiding people. We have supposed that our patriotism was of too real and too sturdy a quality to make it necessary to overawe any of us with troops. Garrisons and "riot guns" and overpowering force we have always supposed to belong chiefly to the monarchical countries of Europe. This being a popular government, it has never been supposed that it was necessary for the people to turn their power against themselves.

But there must be some error about this. We must be, in fact, a very riotous and dangerous lot, full of evil intentions against our own government, because the war department has designed a fine new "riot bullet" and the governors of all the states have been invited to accumulate supplies of it.

But, on the whole, we think it will hardly be necessary for the governors to order up large supplies of the war department's "riot bullets." They might be in the way, and the need of them is not apparent to the ordinary mind.

There are no riots in this country that the police cannot subdue, and not likely to be any.

Moreover, we do not think that the time has come yet to introduce "strong government" methods into this republic. There have been disagreeable indications at Washington lately of some movements in this direction, but they seem to us entirely unnecessary.

The only "strong government" acceptable in this country is a government strong in the affection, confidence and respect of its people. That has been the American conviction for a long time, and will be for a long time to come. - New York Journal.