The Right Reverend Monsignor S. J. Doucet authors a poem. 1923.

  “Why hoot the coward and applaud the brave,
If acts of cowardice and bravery
Are but impulses of a trammelled will?
Gauged by your soul-enslaving principles,
Is your applause worth more than your dispraise?
Why shackles, gibbets; any penalty?
Why honors, why rewards of any kind,
For crimes that are not crimes, for merit null
And void, if all our actions are constrained?
Vibrations, molecules, environment—
What else appeals to your responsive cells?
From you the traitor and the patriot,
The murderer and the philanthropist,
The tyrant and th’ alloy of liberty,
Claim nothing but a cold indifference,
Or equal admiration or contempt.

  ’Tween men who teach the thraldom of the will,
And hence Man’s irresponsibility,
And those who break divine and human laws,