THE CRIME WAVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 73, 27 March 1920, Page 17

THE CRIME WAVE.

AFTERMATH OF VIOLENCE IN WAKE OF WAR.

REMINISCENCES OF BAYONET SCHOOL. In Britain, Europe and America, there is much discussion at the wave of violent crime which is passing over these countries and of which, even in New Zealand, we have lately bad some experience. Writing in the "Sunday Cbronicle," Mr. Raymond A. Coulson 6ays: Everyone 6eems to he taking this crime wave very seriously. It has been the chief topic of conversation. Citizens in large numbers are threatening to get lethal weapons for self-protection, and no doubt we shall soon discover dear old Paterfamilias of the Comic Papers bidding farewell in the morning' to his wife, who remarks as she gives his overcoat collar a final solicitous pat: | "Got your umbrella, dear? Handkcr-j chief? Revolver? Bowie knife? All right. Don't be late for dinner. Kemember <oi bring those sweet-pea seeds, and we ■ want a new spring gun for the herbaceous border under your window." i It is, of course, a serious matter. The murders of women, the new fashion "»| love-making with a pistol and a bottlt ' of laudanum, the "hold tips" at post audi other offices all over the country, audi the qualification of bank clerking for a. place on the schedule of Dangerous ' Trades —all these things are, of course,.! sufficiently (though not intensely) alarming. ' | But what else could we expect ? Vio-1 lence is the essence of war. There isj no more war. but there is a lot of vio- j lchec left over with tne other surplus, stocks, and we may go on anticipating trouble until it is worked off. j We are getting less of it than America ) (where they are considering die ere.' ' tion of fortified "pill hoxes" in liank.il or any European country, hut we could not expect to escape altogether. Consider the army training. In many : respects it was good. -Normal people | are more friendly and sociable. We shake up together easier than we used. ! Put time training did c tic cat rage the eld Adam of brutality. I The early bayonet fighting courses were pretty mild, but after two or Ithree years they became performances that would have stirred the blood nf a cinema-film producer. The process of natural selection sorted out a elnss of instructors "who were born emotion raiser*. They were magnetic. They radiated waves of irantic and joyous ferocity. They had a note in their voices like the kick of a strychnine pill. Any one of them, without a word cf command, with the mere flick of a finger, could bring a whole class "on guard" with a snap like that of a rifle bolt going home. "Howl, damn yer. howl! Grit your teeth and grunt when you stick your bayonet in. into bis stomach! Kight in! Now get on! Oh, get on! GET ON!" The voice would rise to an inarticu-; late yell, and with howls and glaring, eyes the class would go whirling ahead to the next row of dummies. I have assisted in training Pathans, GurWhas, and Baluchis in this pretty art. ■All three are accounted fairly ferocious by nature. But we taught them something. And for all their dark skins and rolling eyes and flowing hair they never put up a 6how to equal that of a squad ,of "gently nurtured English officers." It was only a minority who ever got in with a real bayonet charge, but nearly every man jack of the soldiers went through the training. And you cannot do this sort of thing wholesale without upsetting the emotional nature of some people. Most of us have settled down again, and personally I find it difficult to realise that I ever ran, leaping trenches, howling like a Dervish, and grunting with joj' when I thrust my bayonet into a sack stuffed and painted to resemble a Hun. But some people do not settle down. They have become used to casual killing and cannot get over the habit. Thus also with property. Sir Robert Wallace, Chairman of the London Sessions, commenting on the "enormous" number of ex-service men who appear in the dock, observed in an interview with the "Evening Standard": "There was a carelessness about property which was natural to campaign life. That is all very well if you are rightly brought up." The trouble was that "habits which were what we may call military but not wicked" had transplanted themselves into civil life. All this is pretty casual of Sir Robert. I did not feel anything like 60 mild and cheerful and philosophic about the man who stole my beautiful new boots at Kantara. But there is undoubtedly a great deal in it. t Tho Army habit of "scrounging," the sound morality of diddling the quartermaster when you could, the general "do as you will be done" principle, must have a relaxing effect on 6ome in civilian life. It was a sort of round game in the Army. I have known an officer with a private income of some hundreds a year chuckle "for half a day because he had done Ordnance out of a hurricane lamp worth 4/G. There was a sort of Bolshevik joy in the opportunity the war gave one of smashing up the old copybook maxims. It is sad, but inevitable, that a good many should have retained in mufti this cheery habit of regarding the world as their oyster, and scooping for pearls into anybody's jewel-box. Yes, the Army was like strong drink. It was good for'the men with reasonably steacfy heads, but bad for the moral weaklings. We must treat tenderly but firmly those of them who are not past repair, and firmly without tenderness those who are. The war inevitably heglamoured mere force in a disproportionate amount ot idealism. That will correct itself, but meanwhile the unstable are not drawn to the simple, steady, homely, and useful occupations. We are all rogues and vagabonds at 19, by desire if not by achievement, but lin normal times the world soon knocks sense into most of us. This has been an abnormal period, and the definite, and unavoidable proportion of weaklings and criminals that is to be found in every hundred thousand have been stimulated to a more conspicuous sort of crime. That is all. Every year produces its vintage of born habitual criminals. For five years the normal rounding up of these unfortunates ceased because they were in the Army. Now they are at large, and the police will have to get busy catching up arrears.