The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-27
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us Dy almost Qauy.a 1ne lnulAAeIchc0 to the rights of others in the stealing of automobiles, in joy rides, jazz parties, betting parties, freedom in sex rela- tions and the mania of speed on every turn. They do not gain our attention because they are not so startling, so terrible. And yet by accretion these lesser deeds in the Dangerous Age,"i coming in such numbers all about us, are not less important and if a spec tacular murder was necessary to direct attention it may not have been without it's good as well as it's evil.
 Concerns All
 It concerns you, mother and you, fa- ther, and you, teacher, and all of our institutions responsible for the future of the race through that childhood which is. left as divine trusteeship in our everlasting arms.
 Not that these youths should not be held responsible as individuals for the foul deed they have brought on their community, but the lesson of such a tragedy would altogether fail if we could not fairly and justly reckon with its causes. In criminal courts the judge deals only with the thing the per son does. Did he commit murder? Then the judge looks to, direction in book and there he finds the states remedy in it's vengeance. But the judge knows little or nothing of the causes of the thing or the person that did it.
 Back to these causes~we must go. For. either hanging these boys or put ting them for the balan of their ex- istence behind stone walls does not rid us of our problems of misdirected youth. Tt holds out little promise that, without more, we may not expect re- currence, even though from different angles not so spectacular, of misfOr- tune which may threaten modern civih- zation. Even with the best of parents and teachers, such things in individual cases may happen, but they are not so likely to happen if parents and teachers live up to their full responsibility.
 For days the papers have been filled first with the details of this wretched crime, first a mystery and then, like a bolt out of the blue, with the confes- sion of its perpetrators turning out to be nothing but children themselves. So the outstanding murder of this genera tion will always remain in history us a murder of child done by children.
 Children In Laws Eyes
 Advisedly | speak of them as chill dren, not in mitigation of the crime but to remind yop fathers and mothers that at law, for hundreds of years, all per sons under the age of twenty-one years are and have been just children, or as the law more technically expresses it, infants. That is to say, they are so regarded as9being Inferior to adults be- cause as yet there does not exist in their brief careers up to the age of twen- ty-one thet experiences that comes with maturity end agey
 Yeu, as laymen, know they cannot deal with property, they cannot be trusted with dangerous mechanical ma chinery, they cannot get married, they cannot do many, legal things without the consent and advice of some adult, legally related to their lives. But when you think of this difference between adults and minors, it is with reference to property and the laws of property Yet why should there be this distinc-
 
 to morals; manners and behavior? If the child needs advice in dealing with his property until he is twenty-One, does he not all the more need sucL advice and guidance in dealing with Lis mind and his morals until he iS twenty
 And now, though not trusted with property nor acknowledged in legal ria tA fASasI ePswY llNy by law to adults, yet the are allowed mentally and morally to forego their way through every field of literature, through every weird cult, to delve into every strange philosophy with no more direction than that of their Cwn im- mature minds, without life's real expert ehce to guide them. Thus these men, tally alert and emotionally unbalanced youths were permitted to drift where they would, with-no guide but their own untutored egotism, their own eager, wild, undisciplined minds.
 lf Thus it is w. account for this ex- treme and exceptional crime of two in- fants (at law, as to their property, even if not as to their morals and mentality) who, unbridled and undisciplined, are allowed the mental freedom, without adult direction to roam at WilI-against the pitfalls that adult civilization open ed up to them.
 Two Childhood WreeIs
 They drifted- into the dangers that certain adult minds have made for all misdirected youth. Thus in Loeb and Leopold we find two childhood wrecks, beating against the rocky mental shores of the Schopenhat- rs and the Nietzsches with their pessimism, their atheism, their materialism, to which is added the filthy sex eroticism of the sixteenth century. In the midst of it's mental storm and wreck are two youths who might have been glorious in their fine capacities, if rightly directed, nor abased by this adult pessi lism and de- spair, doing murder of a poor child to satsfy their jaded appetites and pep Verted brains. And for what? New sensations, new adventures, new thrills. The pity of it, when we consider all the big purpOses to which those marvellous intellects might have been directed!
 What have parents and teachers to say about the failure of these two minds to interest themselves, as an eminent Jewish rabbi has well said, even in the problems of their own race ito say nothing of all the great prob lemR of all races--instead of surrend- ering themselves to wild and unnatural passions?
 Why is it that two youths with such native ability should be without ideals and without responsibility in life, should be allowed to drift into this moral anarchy when they might have busied themselves through their God given talents in noble serViee9
 How many other parents are there in this nation who are dense to the fact that the great stream of modern youth is flowing by them with all fha Tnnyyar Of q v,fghkIxy ,.s,,a.. esn5