Show A literature OF CRIME the newspapers have recently reported a number of criminal attempts of a very peculiar kind each of these misdeeds was an effort to the achievements of a notorious character in fiction who Is supposed to combine an extraordinary skill in crime with a high education and a gentlemanly exterior the stories are well told they excite sympathy for a character that possesses hardly any redeeming features and they paint a life of crime deception and cruelty as something worthy of imitation and of admiration they have the natural effect of inflaming week minds and cumulating criminal impulses that might otherwise remain latent and they are mischievous to no ordinary degree it Is not easy to indicate a remedy any kind of press censorship Js out of the question and yet the community has a distinct grievance against any writer who makes crime appear commendable the cost of police ot judges of prisons and of lunatic asylums falls upon the public and the whole of this expensive machinery has set in motion in order to counteract the effects of pernicious literature that is written for personal profit several cases of this kind bavo recently been reported and in some instances the criminal has proclaimed the source of his evil inspiration tho stories in question are widely read throughout two continents and the aggregate of baym that they have done must be very get indeed there seems to be no except first of all an appeal to aba writer himself and secondly a suggestion to parents that they discountenance an entry into their bouses of any literature whatever that exalts a criminal into a hero or makes wrong doing attractive unfortunately this kind of printed matter appeals mainly to children of an age when parental control is weakening and whee they are most liable to receive impressions that may ruin the future life by breaking dort the mental dividing line b tween good and evil P po and the pressure that it can bring is of course the real but public opinion Is apathetic |