FLAMING YOUTH

Evening Star, Issue 18852, 29 January 1925, Page 9

FLAMING YOUTH

The problem to which a popular novelist has attached (he catch phrase of “ Oar Flaming Youth,” is causing widespread consternation among tho magistrates and educational authorities of the United States, says W. F. Bull.ak, in a despatch from New Fork to the 1 Daily Mail.’ While tho most divergent views prevail as to its causes, there is no difference of opinion regarding its . appalling dimensions as revealed in the crime calendars of New York, Chicago, and other big cities. To quote the words used by Judge Alfred J. Talley m welcoming recently a ■new colleague to the busiest criminal tribunal in the country—the Court of General Sessions in New York —“ the United States has in recent years become the most lawless nation on earth,” and its adolescent children its greatest criminals. You will bo heartbroken, - ’ ho remarked, 11 by discovering that the vast majority of the defendants brought before you are under twenty years oi age.” According to the testimony of Mr Rowland Sheldon, a well-known social worker, the youth of America have been overcome by a wave of 11 emotional instability ’’ which is causing thorn to “ run counter to the prescribed conventions of society.” Everywhere, it. is reported by Hie Jewish Board of Guardians, “magistrates arc confronted by the necessity of sending boys still in their teens to prison for acts almost inconceivable in any but hardened adults, while young fellows in their early twenties are found guilty of the most dariim, reckless, and revolting of crimes. Desperate parents arc besieging the courts fur help in enforcing parental authority against wnvwanl buys who are idle and who flaunt all restraint. Bcienlists associated with t:ie Municipal (dime for Defective Children are recommending glandular diagnosis and treatment for the youthful criminals. , But Judge Talley frankly dcdai “neither heredity’nor inviromnent ” is responsible for the flaming youth problem He attributes it to the secular schools of America. “Wo have been so much afraid,” lie declares. “ that one religion would pain an advantage over another that we. have adopted the cowardly course of eliminating all rchpmip from our schools.” “Our young criminals, he adds, “ without religions •instnicliun have grown up as pagans.” Other authorities ascribe the muse ot the problem to the. lack of a proper home life in the great cities of the country, Their remedy is a sensational one. lliey argue that just as a motor car owner is held responsible for defective brakes, poor IHits. or excessive smoking exhausts, so parents should be made “ criminally .liable, for the behaviour of them o.fNo" one, they contend, has the right to inflict a destructive adult on the munitv, and thei prediction is that, the problem of America's flaming youth would speedily shrink into normal pioporlions if parents whose offspring run amok and commit murders were to be fined, placed in gaol, or even threatened with ilio gallows,” Iho suggestion embodied in this prediction is a hijgnly interesting one; but though a thousand points of behaviour arc now the sulijoet of legislative regulation, it is a suggestion which is obviously destined L> remain in tho domain of academic discussion.