LAWLESS AMERICA

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 10879, 24 April 1929, Page 5

LAWLESS AMERICA

TWENTY TIMES AVERSE THAN

BRITAIN

PRESIDENT APPEALS TO PRESS

FOII SUPPORT

LAW MUST BE ENFORCED

INCAPABLE OFFICIALS' WILL'BE

WEEDED OUT

United Press Aasn. by El. Tel. Copyright(Australian Press Assn. —United Service)

NEW YORK. April .22. President Hoover, addressing the annual luncheon of the Associated Press to-day, declared that life and property in the United States were relatively more unsafe than in any other civilised country of the .world. Twenty times as many people, in proportion to the population, were lawlessly killed in the United States as in Britain.

“In many of our cities murder ran apparently he committed with impunity”, in: sai/I. “I wonder whether the time has not come to realise that we are confronted with a national necessity of the first degree, that we are not suffering front an ephemeral clime wave, hut from th-e subsidence of our foundations. No individual has the right to determine what law shall he obeyed, and what law shall not be enforced. If the law is wrong rigid enforcement is the surest guarantee of its repeal. If it is right, enforcement i.s the quickest method -pf eonipellng respect. “It is the purpose of the administration to strengthen the law enforcement. agencies by steady pressure. and the steady weeding out of all incapable or negligent officials. Tic.' press is almost final in its potency to arouse the interest and conscience of the people; it can destroy their finer sensibilities, or can invigorate them.

The President appealed to the press to throw its influence unreservedly into the fight for law enforcement. He declared that prohibition was merely pari, of the problem, pointing out that only 8 per cent, of the felony convictions in JAILS' came from that source.