late, Los Angeles, degenerative manifestations, is to inform the public along the lines of the conclusion of this volume. It is also to disclose the deviltry, directed against the young, by the “camouflaged” libertine who deals in the vicious by-products of the sporting life. Hence, the writer bites again and again at the vicious-by-products of sport, by which he, himself, had been so ruthlessly disciplined, when a unit of the professional sporting mass. From having been “done” at it, he doesn’t have to guess.

II

THE CRIMINAL MIND

Rudyard Kipling has been an adjustable man among men. His evenly-balanced mind has sized the stature of his fellows. He has nursed no crotchets by which to be betrayed into half-baked “contentions.” He has painted with pat regard for time, place, and individuals, whether the latter wore nose rings or royal purple. He has not debased a broad culture in hectic pursuit of dollars. He has stuck to a staunch last and striven handsomely.

Since much of so much must have been out of the generous hand of Nature, one could wish Kipling had studied criminals as he has studied other men, and that his “instances observed” thereof were spread as he would spread them in print over the globe.

A pen like Kipling’s would go far to clear away mental cobwebs, spun about the criminal mind by gourd-vine protagonists during the last three decades. As would he with our subject, let us begin at the beginning:

Whether the biblical account of the killing of Abel by Cain be taken as inspired writing, or as pure myth clothed out of man’s imagination, it was the first criminal act imaged by human consciousness. Also, Cain’s reply, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” to those who sought the murdered Abel, shadows forth fundamentally the attitude of mind of the average citizen towards the felon of to-day. It adumbrates, as well, the predilection of the criminal, now as then, to hide the truth with a smoke-screen of subterfuge; this, cleverly betimes, as in Cain’s case, through shunting question with question, though the more common and vulgar method is resort to the clumsily covered lie.

Crass criminals give America cause for pause, only because America either directly or indirectly places crime-weapons in their hands. Along criminous trails they blaze they usually leave easily-recognized marks. In the main, they are scrambled-brained imitators, whom to catch and trip is no great chore.

It is totally different as to the self-determining, self-reliant, mentally keen and resourceful criminal, who is nearly callous to the effects of criminousness, and who seeks life’s zest through matching wits with agents of the law.

Criminals of the latter class will meet you good-naturedly in ethical argument on your chosen ground, where they will catch you unawares “if you don’t watch out.”

For example, you expatiate on individual social service as a duty, and on the cumulative blessings which would accrue therefrom.

“Fine!” replies our man, and adds: “But how many are rendering that kind of service? How many besides those who make a ‘soft’ living at it, and those who first gouged and got theirs?”

You declare that line of argument doesn’t cover the question of individual responsibility; that it doesn’t answer for a thief to point other social slackers.

“All right,” rebuts Thief, “but why ring all of the solemn bells on the retailers? Why not sound the curfew on a batch of the big bandits, and land them where you land hard-pressed ‘pickers’?”

It’s waxing a bit awkward, because Thief’s query plumbs to the crux of the question; a plumbing he cunningly elects shall put society on the defensive. That won’t do, so you switch and let fall your king card in challenge to him to square criminous conduct with the enacting predicates of divine law.

If he believes, after a fashion, in a Supreme Being, you have him there to a degree; albeit the belief seldom strikes deeper than fear of far-removed consequence, the sting of which he is led to depend upon earth-born vicars to draw.

Finally to muss you up mentally, and in part to remove the moral stigma with which the Almighty stamps such as thieving, he will cite the twelfth-hour repentance and shriving of the thief on the Cross.

Here, again, your counter attack won’t carry, unless you can drive home the historical fact that the thief in question had thieved against his intrinsic grain; that he had several times started out to seek the Saviour to be shriven of the unnatural load he had borne; and that he was turned back by fear of fatal strokes at the hands of members of the capital band of murderous marauders with whom he had ridden.

The crucial point to which we have been leading up is, of course, that America deserves the flippant, murderous footpad of all nationalities; first off because she has made no serious effort to understand what he is, and why he is what he is; and secondly, for the reason that she has failed miserably to match either the subjective or objective tools he has employed.

Essentially, America has gone out of her way to make the master criminal welcome, and then to wash his blood-stained hands for him. More than that, she has insisted not only upon his being what he isn’t, either mentally, morally or physically; but further upon attaching to him the least modicum of responsibility for his criminal acts. Having furnished him with the complete formula for anti-social thoughts and deeds, she naturally gets the one from his lawless tongue, and the other out of the muzzle of his automatic.

Nor does the responsibility of America rest solely unto herself for the thieves and thugs she has bidden to her bosom, and there nurtured them with national pabulum that soured on their stomachs, or allowed them to be so nurtured. Thereof, she has complicated the crime problem the world over.

Time and again the forefathers warned against overfeeding of liberty and underwriting of patriotism, foreseeing that did they warn in vain, it would be a question of only a comparatively few years when America would lose her autonomous character, and with the loss, her intrinsically singular meaning in the matter of human progress.

That sterile hour probably will not strike. Americans look up with faith and strength; yet they drift with hyphenates and social wolves; with hyphenates who constantly press for group expression encircled by the restrictive collar of creed; and with social wolves become so bold that they utter lobo howls of defiance on public thoroughfares, where they are suffered to sink poisonous fangs into the very vitals of Constitutional law.

With the former we have begun to deal by determining to make it our business to know that the oath of allegiance to America shall issue from the mouths of aliens who hold mentally in reserve not a thing that crosses that oath. This, primarily, through lengthening the probation period prior to issuance of final papers granting citizenship; and secondarily, through an undercurrent of public opinion so strong as against the conditional patriot, as to make that opinion carry for what it should and must.

With social wolves, it is again “totally different.” It is totally different because an appreciable percentage of them are the offspring of Americans whose ancestry strikes back native-born for several generations. They have been mainly