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Show CRIMES OF VIOLENCE. Are crimes of violence on the increase? Is our literature, our theatres, our sentimentality and mock humanitarianism encouraging a degeneracy which will culminate in various forms of insanity? insan-ity? These questions are not pleasant; they are calculated to startle our optimists who are everlastingly ever-lastingly predicting great things for the future; or to disturb the equanimity of those good people who can see only the bright side of everything. Unpleasant Un-pleasant "truths are not palatable, and those who occasionally oc-casionally remind us of our shortcomings are more likely to be given abuse than thanks for their pains. Xations, like individuals, are sensitive to admonition admon-ition and restless under rebuke. But in the matter of increase of serious crimes, like violence, suicide and murder, we can see for ourselves, if we care to do so. Take up the daily papers of our country, and we find jnurder of all kinds premeditated and carefully calculated murder, mur-der, the murder of conspiracy, the murder of temper, tem-per, the murder of the "unwritten law," and murder mur-der on the slightest provocation. Murders have of late been so frequent and in many cases so ferocious fero-cious that they threaten the permanency of civilized civil-ized society. "Pulling a gun" on the slightest provocation prov-ocation has come to be almost a national custom. In our state shooting men or knifing them threatens threat-ens to become a popular pastime. Recent revelations revela-tions in more than one direction are too serious to call just now for comment. What are we to do ? It is surely about time we paused to consider if we are not much too lenient with murderers and with crimes of violence which stop short of actual murder. Do we deal severely enough with outbursts of temper when assault is committed? Are our lunacy laws stringent enough, and are lunatics dismissed as cured who are by no means cured ? We do not ask these questions to meet a passing sensation, sensa-tion, but as a matter which calls for the most particular par-ticular and immediate attention of criminologists and the members of our legislature and of all those, in fact, who take an intelligent interest in the future fu-ture welfare of the rising generation. Is our civilization a veneer, is it spurious, or is it retrograding? Is increasing violence, lawlessness, lawless-ness, suicide and murder a serious menace in front of us today? What is our system of education the most costly of the worlddoing to improve our morals and what are our churches doing? |