GANGSTER'S RULE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 263, 30 June 1932, Page 3

GANGSTER'S RULE

RETURNED NEW ZEALANDER STATES U.S. JUSTICE ,IS - A FARCE. IN A LAMENTABLE STATE. WELLINGTON, Wednesday: Speaking to an Evening Post representative yesterday, Mr. Bertram Potts, of Wellington, who returned the Maunganui from a trip to the United States, said that American justiee seemed to be nothing but a farce — a very inferior land, of farce. The newspapers openly laughed at Uncle Sam's antiquated system, magazine. writers openly scoffed, and the man in the street when questioned, considered that unless a man had money his case was practically hopeless. "According to the newspapers in

Los Angeles, said Mr. Potts, "gangsters are daily holding up firms and citizens in Los Angeles streets and getting away with it. The American policeman seems to have lost all caste; he is accused even of shielding the increasing criminal element, and at times terrible exposures are made of official laxity and official participation in lawlessness. "The average American shows little if any interest in these matters. He makes no public outcry — crimes happen in his own street and he makes no audible comment so long as they don't happen to him. The newspapers on a Monday morning have remarked that there were, for example, only fifteen hold-ups during the week-end, instead of a higher figure — the average. "Gangsters, according to occasional editorials, run the country, dictating even to ' Coiigress. The position is fast growing more and more complicated, and the problem se'ems to many Americans to be beyond solution. It seems to be that there are two things possible to clear the air in the United States and bring the country baek to a sense of values and morality. One is that civil war may break out, the decent American versus Gangsterland — or that an American Mussolini may step forward, raise an army about him, and overthrow President and Congress, hecause of their failura to deal with the menaee. Certainly the present lamentable state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely."