CURES FOR AFTER-WAR CRIMES.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 October 1919, Page 4

CURES FOR AFTER-WAR CRIMES.

!Ever since peace came back to the world there has been a strange increase in crimes of violence. Scarce a week passes without a murder, such as in times ot tranquillity would be enough to keep the general curiosity wideawake for a month. Some of the murderers are caught and punished; others escape the vigilance of the law ; and the sense of public security is not strengthened. Nor is it only against life that savagery is active. Robberies also are. frequent, and the. motor car has added enormously to the efficiency oi the foot-pad and burglar. We have many times been promised, when the war should be over, a new heaven and a new earth. The new heaven has not yet swum into our ken,, and ,the new earth is a vast deal worse than the old one. There is, moreover, an obvious irony in the fact that the world, which has for four years been busy upholding the cause of liberty and justice, should turn by a sudden reaction to violence and disorder. Indeed, the irony need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the optimism of politicians should always paint the future in the colours which seem most attractive to them.

Had they reflected more deeply they might have known that their colours are not the colours of truth.; We cannot attain what we have fought for in . a moment. After a vast upheaval the world settles down with a tiresome deliberation. The convalescence of a fevered man or a fevered country is restless and impatient. We cannot expect a sudden reaction to be reasonable or innocuous.

NO cause; E'OR DESPAIR. We have just emerged from the most serious years that pur own (or any) generation has known, and the half-acknowledged relief expresses itself in a- blatant frivolity. It is; a commonplace of criticism that our theatres have never been so trivial as they are .to-day. Our solemn leaders of taste still write of the theatre as if it were the home of a serious and beautiful art, but they know well enough that nothing that is serious or beautiful would fill the pit or even the stalls, unless it came in the gmse of opera or a Russian ballet. And it is not the exquisite restraint of Karsavina noisily eclipsed by the antics oi those who dance to the blare of a jazz band ? We are not fiddling while Rome burns; we are fiddling from sheer joy that Rome has been saved from burning. When we are far enough away from our present discontents and our present vulgarities we shall be able to see them in a right proportion. Nor need the prevalence of crime unduly depress us, if we remember whence it. comes and remember what has happened in the past. The peace has let loose at home a vast deal of energy that has been pent up abroad. It demands an outlet, just as an undammed torrent demands an outlet. Presently it will be directed into its proper channel of industry and hard work. For the moment it overflows the banks of law and order and devastates our cities like a turbulent flood.

SOLACE PROM HISTORY. As it is, so it has ever been. A sudden act of salvation has always weakened the hold which men have in normal times upon virtue and reason. When by the victory of the Armada England was saved from the menace of Spain, robbers and footpads marvellously increased. The old mariners who had been wrecked (as the saying was) upon Salisbury Plain threatened the peace and comfort of the countryside. Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild brought to an end a tradition of lawlessness, established not long after the glorious campaigns of Marlborough. But the parallel in which we can find the greatest solace is the parallel which our own time affords to the anxious years which followed the victory of Waterloo. The resemblance of the one epoch to the other is complete. In 1816 not merely were there robberies in the street and on the high road, not merely were there mnrders done violently and in the open, but houses and farms and ricks were set ablaze in almost every county in England The incendiaries demanded “Breador Blood,’’ and generally got both. They were active in Suffolk and Devonshire, in Norfolk and Essex and Cambridgeshire, and doubtless they found an added satisfaction in reflecting that they were wantonly destroying that of which the community stood in greatest need. But the outbreak of violent crime ceased as suddenly as it had began, and was followed at no very long interval by a time of great prosperity. And to-day there is no r’eason for despair. The measles is a tiresome disease while it lasts, and happily it does not last for ever. We shall outgrow the fever and the fret, as we have outgrown them before. Greed and violence will case to be popular or profitable, and industry will resume its hold upon sensible folk. The cures of the disease are two and are well known. They are time and work. With the passage of the months the turbulence of the world will be forgotten. The violence, the contempt of life, which are the legacies of a misappreciaiiou of war and its object, will wear themselves out, and the only fires that will be set going and tended are the fires of factory and workshop.

DOCTRINE OF THE FOOT-I’AD. Bat a better cure even than time is work. And work lias of late fallen into a sad discredit. That, in truth, is the worst symptom of the prevailing disease. On all sides we are told that toil is marked by the stigma of disgrace. If we were to believe our modern prophets we should be forced to the conclusion that the sole object of man was to be highly paid for doing as little as possible. Such is the doctrine of the foot-pad. A still worse doctrine commonly expounded is that he who is foolish enough to work is being betrayed for the mere pleasure of another. It may be admitted that the leaders of the Manchester School preached the gospel of work with a noisy eloquence which

was not disinterested ; with the aid of Cobden and Bright they declared that England would be rained if children were nob allowed to work twelve hoars a day in the mills. But the gospel of .Alanphester is preached, no longer. All that is now asked of Englishmen is a fair day’s work for a fair wage. If the work be not done, then not even the highway will present any attraction. For the traveller with an empty pocket laughs in the presence of the robber. Arid though we may twist the laws of economics as we will, one law is permanent and unchangeable: “If any would not ! work, neither should he eat.”