| NTELLIGEN T
HUMANITY.
Has It Risen to Rattlesnake Level?
HEN two joc-
und. dapper, young college men, Loeb
and lLeopold, casually murdered an-
other boy for a “thrill,” the nation,
the whole world, were shocked, horri-
fied. We were further astounded by
the information that of these two
cutthroats still in their teens one knew
some fifteen languages and the other
was a brilliant naturalist. Both were
sons of multimillionaires, and had all
for which heart could wish.
We hoped there would be no other
youths like these, that they were the
terrible exceptions that unaccountably
appear every thousand years or so. But
we hoped in vain. Since the fatal day
when Loeb and Leopold destroyed
their companion for a frolic, there has
been a constantly rising tide of the
bloody billows of crime.
Then came the stunning news that
Colonel Lindbergh's blue-eyed, curly-
haired httle baby had been kidnaped
and killed. It was months before we
could believe this fiendish thing pos-
sible. That Colonel Lindbergh, the most
loved young man in the world, the
tousle-headed, smiling friend of every-
one, Iacky Lindy,” should have this
eghastly reward was just too repulsively
terrible for belief. What irony in the
nickname!
But it was true—horribly true. Some
of us went about hanging our heads,
ashamed that we belonged to the hu-
man race. If this was civilization, if
{his wus the result of liberty, of edu-
cation, of wealth, of leisure, what
would further “progress” along the
same hnes bring?
If, as our university professors tell
us, we have been about two billions of
years reaching our present level, need
we be blamed if we questioned whether
the result justified the expenditure of
WM Page TEN -
By
Earle Albert
ROWELL
Author of “The Bible in the Critic's
Den,” “Prophecy Speaks,” and “© Bat-
ting the Wolves of Society.”
so much tne? And who can blame us
if we wondered how many scores of
billions of years it would take for the
human race to reach the high level of
the despised rattlesnake, which never
harms unless bothered, and even then
issues a warning before it attacks!
If the reader thinks we have drawn
too dark a picture of the human race,
let him read the Lord’s cartoons of the
nations of the world in the books of
Daniel and Revelation, where they are
pictured always as cruel, ravenous,
predatory beasts of prey, lower than
the rattlesnake.
True, there have always been human
beings who with fiendish ferocity lived
bloody lives of terrorism. But never
before in the history of the world has
red-handed violence been so youthful.
As Judge Marcus Kavanagh of Chi-
cago, after thirty years on the bench,
puts it: “Our most desperate criminals
are tragically young.”
The famed G-men of the Federal
Government made a survey of all per-
sons arrested for serious erimes in 1934.
There were more criminals nineteen
years old than of any other age. But
cighteen and seventeen and sixteen
crowded close. There were more burg-
lars cighteen years old than of any
other age, and sixteen was the peak age
for automobile thieves.
What has happened to drive our
vouths into lives of erime? Is it because
they have no opportunity to go to
school?—Hardly, for a larger propor-
tion of our youth are in school today
than ever before in the history of the
republic.
It 1s increasingly the educated youths
who commit the crimes. We are seeing,
or should see, that 1t takes more than
education to keep the young people of
The WATCHMAN MAGAZINE