NATION AND LITTLE CHILD.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1932, Page 6 (Supplement)

NATION AND LITTLE CHILD.

THE LINDBERGH BABY. If good can come out of evil the astounding case of the Lindbergh baby, found dead near its home after a pitiful search of nearly three mouths, may .awaken the people of the United States to a sense of their responsibility to the laws under which they live. The Law is the greatest thing on earth. No people can systematically treat i.t lightly and survive. When the news of the kidnapping of the child from its nursery was first cabled to Europe it seemed almost a practical joke. Even the report of a ransom demanded by the kidnappers seemed too absurd to be true. - As week after week went by and the baby was not restored to its parents it became certain that this was no joke, but a cruel and wicked crime. Every detail which confirmed its reality added to the astonishment felt in Europe that such a thing could happen. The strangest thing of all was that the astonishment was confined to Europe. In the United States it caused none. Kidnapping for ransom had become feo common as to be a recognised way among American criminals of making money. In one year there were nearly 300 kidnappings in the United States investigated by the police. Half as many again were probably never reported because the sufferers from them preferred to deal directly with the kidnappers instead of adopting th© course of calling in the police. In short, kidnapping has become a highly organised American industry. There are others of the same kind.

Bootlegging, which means the sale of liquor in defiance of the Prohibition Law', is so well known and so profitable that it hardly calls for mention. Its profits could never have reached their huge dimensions of hundreds of millions of dollars a year unless a vast number of people had deliberately become lawbreakers by buying the liquor. The opportunity of unlawful ■ profit threw wide open the gates to further law-breaking, which steadily grew more criminal. Bootlegging demanded criminal organisation, and the organisation stopped at nothing. Murder was a commonplace in it. The 12,000 murders in the United States were nearly all organised by gangs. The murder of the little Lindbergh baby is just one more. Witfi the development of this form of crime came the opportunity of, using the organisation for other criminal purposes on a large scale. The most prominent of them was and is racketeering, the operation of holding a man’s business to ransom by blackmail. If the man is a builder putting up a factory ho must pay blackmail to a racketeering organisation which, if he refuses, will burn down his building or attack his workmen.

Businesses in any industry are subjected to this blackmail. The baker who makes biscuits must pay a levy to the racketeers. He may have to buy his flour at an enhanced -price from a booblegging organisation which has an interest in a flour mill. Even ginger ale may have to pay a tax to these brigands, who are the American equivalent of the robber barons of medieval Europe. It was calculated that through the hands of the chief gangster of Chicago some £25,000,000 a year passed. Only a-portion of his profits were made from the sale of liquor; the rest was made up from levies on nearly every- form of business activity, honest or illicit., But when this extraordinary gangster finally fell into the clutches of the law it was not for the crimes with which his ■ profits might have been associated, but for evading Income Tax, for not paying the State enough on his ill-gotten gains. It was the only way in which he could bt> reached! All other tracks of the criminal organisation were covered up. Their successful concealment was due to the fact that millions of money were spent in stifling evidence and in bribing officials who might have made it -public. Here is the foundation of the deep canker in American life. It exists because the American people have not really a deep sense of law and of obedience to law. Through the larger American cities there is an absence of that civic spirit which makes the law, its observance and its enforcement in small things as in great, the most important thing in the "life of a community.

TRAVELLER FROM JAPAN. WHAT HE- SAW THERE. So he is home! We rushed round to see him, this English boy who had returned from Japan. What wa>s the feeling of the people out there? Were they talking of the recent trouble in China? Were they very excitable and war-like? “I stayed far up in the country,” was Robert’s disappointing answer., “Saw and heard nothing of militarism.” “Then tell us a little about Japan,” we urged. “What surprised you?’ “Many things,” he said. “Their gaiety and charm fascinated me. , There was held what they call a night festival when 1 was there, and I saw an insectseller with a booth. This fellow was selling grasshoppers, -and what they call pine insects and grass larks, and all sorts of tiny creatures, which formed a sort of orchestra concert! He was selling quite a lot of them. “They talk a good deal about earthquakes, and there was very often a tiny tremor of the earth. They are not afraid. But many people think of building reinforced concrete houses. “I saw many small electric-motors at work, draining land. “They are fond of proverbs. By the way, I heard one of the sayings of Samurai which stuck in my brain: .Life is as light as a feather, but Rectitude is as weighty as a mountain. Pretty good, I thought. “What do they eat? A tremendous amount of fish, more than twice,, as much as the Americans get through.”

HELEN KELLER. Helen Keller, who went from America on a visit to England, is one of the wisest women in the world. Although she started life deprived of three of the most precious blessings of mankind (sight, hearing and speech) she has triumphed over her difficulties. Only a short time ago, when she was about 56, she learned to speak, and although her diction is not yet very distinct she can make herself understood, and can speak and write in three languages. In America Miss Keller is a famous author and social reformer. -She has many interests in life, uses ’the type-writer, and enjoys swimming and diving. The degree of Doctor of Laws is being conferred on her by Glasgow University. It is good to know that the achievements of this wonderful woman are appreciated.