Life — July 5, 1917 — page 19: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

re lly SS. ets, et nd he ne ur ee ry ar eC, he is e i ~ “I DON'T GET THE IDEA” The talk was all of war; the singing was of war. At Harvard the central feature was a parade of the Harvard regiment. Something like that hap- pened at Princeton and several of the other large universities, though in others the young soldiers were truly and honorably conspicuous by their ab- sence. We do not realize what is going on. By mere reading of newspapers we neither realize what we are in for nor what we are doing about it. But at the commencements this year one did get a glimmering of current proceed- ings, and apprehension of the great fact that the war we have read about for nearly three years is now our war. The various training camps, as they fll up, will have this effect of bringing the war home visually to spectators. Plattsburgers and dwellers near the other camps now running must feel that we are at war. People who can, will do well to visit the camps and share that feeling. We need some- thing more than columns of print to wake us up. We have read so much and so long of war that printed words have lost their power over us. We need the sound of drums and fifes and the beat of marching feet to tell us where we are. he aia ie! Q <n 'HE Ruth Cruger case has driven the war news to the inside pages of the papers. It is something we can realize and understand. It is some- thing that should not be suffered to pass out of the public mind without lasting results. Things happen now and then which make one feel the need of a public 19 gallows in Union Square, where the more atrocious malefactors could be strung up for public edification. That method, however, of making crime ter- rible was thoroughly tried out genera- tions ago, and discarded because it was a failure, We might amend the Sullivan law, and let girls go armed, but that wouldn't work well, either. We shall have to wait and see what the authori- ties can do under the laws as they are, or as they may be bettered, to make New York safer for young women. It is well to remember that no degree of police vigilance could have saved Ruth Cruger, except, indeed, by dis- covering beforehand the character of her murderer. Where the police fell down was in callousness and too ready acceptance of a theory prejudicial to the character of a reputable girl. If, besides that, there were motives for shielding a scoundrel, that will come out, and no one will work harder to bring it out than Commissioner Woods. If the Police Department under his administration has not improved in morale and efficiency, all signs fail, and we need to be shown, There are five million people in New York, and naturally that great popula- tion includes many bad ones. Five million people of any breed will include due proportion of criminals, but New York is under the special disadvantage of being the favorite dumping ground for bad characters from Europe, and especially from Italy. For years that country has been sending us in gener- ous numbers scoundrels as dangerous as this world can produce. It is hard to keep tab on them and handle them under our laws and police system, Progress that had been made in doing so was checked by Mayor Gaynor’s high passion for personal liberty. Read the police news any day, and observe what proportion of crime is credited to Italians. They excel in crimes of violence, as do our imported Jews in crimes of cunning. The Sullivan law against carrying firearms was invented chiefly in the interest of a reduction in Italian homicides. To civilize our South Italians and restrain the bad ones from crimes is a big job. Any- one who knows how big and hard it is will be slow to denounce our Police Department.