Criminal Types

by V. M. Masten

It’s waxing a bit awkward, because Thief’s query plumbs to the crux of the question; a plumbing he cunningly elects shall put society on the defensive. That won’t do, so you switch and let fall your king card in challenge to him to square criminous conduct with the enacting predicates of divine law.

If he believes, after a fashion, in a Supreme Being, you have him there to a degree; albeit the belief seldom strikes deeper than fear of far-removed consequence, the sting of which he is led to depend upon earth-born vicars to draw.

Finally to muss you up mentally, and in part to remove the moral stigma with which the Almighty stamps such as thieving, he will cite the twelfth-hour repentance and shriving of the thief on the Cross.

Here, again, your counter attack won’t carry, unless you can drive home the historical fact that the thief in question had thieved against his intrinsic grain; that he had several times started out to seek the Saviour to be shriven of the unnatural load he had borne; and that he was turned back by fear of fatal strokes at the hands of members of the capital band of murderous marauders with whom he had ridden.

The crucial point to which we have been leading up is, of course, that America deserves the flippant, murderous footpad of all nationalities; first off because she has made no serious effort to understand what he is, and why he is what he is; and secondly, for the reason that she has failed miserably to match either the subjective or objective tools he has employed.

Essentially, America has gone out of her way to make the master criminal welcome, and then to wash his blood-stained hands for him. More than that, she has insisted not only upon his being what he isn’t, either mentally, morally or physically; but further upon attaching to him the least modicum of responsibility for his criminal acts. Having furnished him with the complete formula for anti-social thoughts and deeds, she naturally gets the one from his lawless tongue, and the other out of the muzzle of his automatic.

Nor does the responsibility of America rest solely unto herself for the thieves and thugs she has bidden to her bosom, and there nurtured them with national pabulum that soured on their stomachs, or allowed them to be so nurtured. Thereof, she has complicated the crime problem the world over.

Time and again the forefathers warned against overfeeding of liberty and underwriting of patriotism, foreseeing that did they warn in vain, it would be a question of only a comparatively few years when America would lose her autonomous character, and with the loss, her intrinsically singular meaning in the matter of human progress.

That sterile hour probably will not strike. Americans look up with faith and strength; yet they drift with hyphenates and social wolves; with hyphenates who constantly press for group expression encircled by the restrictive collar of creed; and with social wolves become so bold that they utter lobo howls of defiance on public thoroughfares, where they are suffered to sink poisonous fangs into the very vitals of Constitutional law.

With the former we have begun to deal by determining to make it our business to know that the oath of allegiance to America shall issue from the mouths of aliens who hold mentally in reserve not a thing that crosses that oath. This, primarily, through lengthening the probation period prior to issuance of final papers granting citizenship; and secondarily, through an undercurrent of public opinion so strong as against the conditional patriot, as to make that opinion carry for what it should and must.