and Guidance in the Home
By J. Edgar Hoover, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
have an aimless, directionless milling of
the herd which can result only in mental
panic and a thorough disregard for the
rights of society.
It is time for America to resurrect that
standard of discipline which did much to
give this country its rugged, stalwart
honesty of purpose, its determination, its
achievements. I refer to that parental
discipline and guidance which did so much
to create law-abiding, successful, and for-
ward-looking citizens. Too long has that
old-fashioned standard been transformed
into the wine card of the cocktail bar;
into the sapient belief that an immature
mind can be granted utter freedom of ac-
tion without disastrous results. Its lesson
nas been supplanted by the dangerous one
of the roadside tavern, the parked auto-
mobile upon a lonely road, by the constant
apathy-engendered desire to get what it
wants by fair means or foul.
If the parents of America cannot realize
for themselves that a lack of kindly
guidance, of unswerving vigilance, has had
much to do with the tremendous rise of
crime among the young, then youth must
teach parentage this lesson. It would be a
shameful yet nevertheless eye-opening ex-
perience for a number of our parents if the
youth whom they have betrayed were to
Rs
JANUARY, 1942
assemble facts and were to display to them
the numerous ways in which they have
failed to do their duty to their offspring.
The parent who allows any child to run
willy-nilly through life obeying every
selfish impulse, following the wild ravings
of any agitator who orates from a soap
box on the corner, is not only doing a
foolish thing, but is doing a manifestly un-
fair and unkind act to the child. It is not
generous for a parent to turn its off-
spring free from all fetters and allow it
to run wild in a world which contains as
many jungles of eriminality as does ours.
It 1s unfair to that offspring to believe that
an immature mind can perceive the
hundreds of pitfalls which may lie ahead
in the tangles of multi-sided existence, yet,
unfortunately, that is what thousands
upon thousands of neglectful parents have
done in allowing what they so blithely call
the freedom of youth.
The most unfortunate axiom which
America possesses is that our crime all too
often starts in the cradle and that our
greatest aids to criminality are the fatuous
father and mother who believe that, while
there may be problems for other children,
their offspring can do no wrong. There is
need that youth tell age the truth which
vouth knows so well. Youth must be
taught everything it knows: taught to
walk, to eat, to converse, and to obey the
laws of civilization. These acts do not
come about through any magical workings
of the brain. They arrive through the old
law of cause and effect. If a child is un-
hampered in any of its desires, then indeed
1s it unfair to say the child is a criminal.
Rather, it has been the father and the
mother who allowed this child to tread
any path it chose who have done the
criminal act and yet it is youth which
must suffer through the fact that of every
hundred persons who fall into the hands
of police seventeen are boys and girls.
From the High Chair to the
Electric Chair
Thirty million homes hold the solution.
If the younger generation is properly
trained and the proper examples set be-
fore 1t, the safety of tomorrow is assured.
The time has come for America to resurrect
that standard of parental discipline and
guidance which did so much to create
law-abiding, successful, and forward-look-
ing citizens in the past. Criminals develop
in our homes through errors of commission
or omission. The course is from the high
chair. It is up to the parents to see that
the end isn't the electric chair. The
American home holds the ultimate solu-
tion to our crime problem.
aoul-Searing World Events
(Continued from page 3
India, and other Oriental countries, and
bring them against the West.
These world forces will eventually clash
at Armageddon. the scene of so many
sanguinary struggles in the past.
Who will win? No one. Instead, the
struggle will be cut short by the appearance
of our Lord Jesus Christ in the clouds of
heaven as King of kings and Lord of lords.
The brightness of His return will de-
stroy those of every nation who have not
prepared themselves in heart and life for
the kingdom of heaven. (2 Thessalonians
2:8; Revelation 11:18.) But those who
have been redeemed by the power of God
and the surrender of their lives to Him
will be delivered, to become citizens of a
better world than this,—a world wheremn
“dwelleth righteousness.” 2 Peter 3:13.
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered nto the heart of man, the
things which God hath prepared for them
that love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9.
Very soon the clock will chime the
closing note of probation’s hour; men will
(Continued on page 18)
AAY 22L
rd ARN)
¥ Three students ranging in ages from four-
teen to sixteen being taken to court in Bel Aur,
Maryland, to be arraigned before the magis-
trate on a charge of murder. The sixtecen-year-
old lad was charged with having slain a man
who had given hom and his two schoolgirl com-
panions a ride while they were out hitchhiking.
Mr. Hoover points out that such conditions do
not ordinarily arise from contact with other
creminals but from wrong influences at home.
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