Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-01-20
IDA GILBERT MYERS.

@. Schlapp, M. D., and Edward H.
| Smith, author Of Famous Poison
Mysteries" etc. New York: Boni &
Liveright.
A BIG book-tOo big to command
| ~ general attention. The theme is
| "A vital, immediately momentous TO
4 4 everyone. Yet. mere bulk and
the sound of its title are calcu-
lated to bar the door of this book
against the common reader. Time
crowds. An hour Is an inelastic thing
so minutes, no more, no less. And
what with motors and movies and
night free as the air that carries them
what time is there, pray, to stop beside
anything, no matter how important
this may be!
Crime is the subject of this study.
And crime Is the paramount issue of
| the present. Press and pulpit, forum
and street gossip declare 1t. Going
along with such general assent is the
growing conviction that the penal sys-
tenn is a futile thing, that the courts
Of law are not adequate as instruments
Of justice.
Two scientists Of high repute, through
a. partnership of investigation and re-
port, offer by way Of this book survey
| of the field of crime and summary
of the modern outlook upon this field.
| Supporting such survey and summary
is body of authentic information upon
the subject, most of it gathered at first
hand. The whole is projected in solid
array upon the common course Of
crime. And this, in turn, becomes the
general guide for the treatment of
criminals in any era Of civilization.
I eat and drink, work and play,
sleep and wake-and God gives the
issue, or so it seems to me. ALI quite
wrong, in essence. Instead I am chem
istry itself. an internal system of labora-
tories, each creating It's own fluids in 4
perfect automatiSm, each assigning
| these to it's particular functional use,
all operating upon that most amazing
Of inventions, the nervous system, which,
taken by and large, stands as my own
personal destiny. This is a wonderful
story and wonderfully told here. Its
effect Is, on the whole, distinctly terri
flying. Because, you see, some derange-
ment, even slight, in this wonderful
mechanism may eventuate, say, in muir
der, or arson, or bootlegging, or any
other behavior that is clearly against
that wholly external continuance, the
law.
Here is the story of physiology and
its workings, the story of the glands in
their Office and their vital effects upon
human conduct. Here is a veritable
Arabian nights of the automatic inside
of man in its ceaSeleSS adventure of
sustaining human life and determining
human conduct. And, to project the
astonishing tale into efficient useful
ness, here is course in the treatment
of those who fail to conform their lives
with the rules set on the outside as the
1 ~ HHsiv
is, mostly, sickness, according to science.
It's treatment, therefore, should be
curative in intent. not punitive. And
here are set down these better ways of
| looking upon crime, these better ways
OF treating 1t. Hundreds Of cases are
cited in detail, hundreds Of cures are
effected. A most absorbing study, SIM
pie and concrete, almost wholly free
from puzzling terms, wholly concerned
with practical humanitarian issues.
And. slowly, these ideas of law and
Justice are gaining ground. Rather are
the old notions of punishment giving
way, slowly, to such larger and deeper
knowledge of the greatest riddle of all
lfe--man in his interrelations of body
and behavior
| Set off against this new vision of
crime and its treatment is the older
view of crime and its punishment
that clear possession of the devil against
which the anger of q perfect God is
vented in such bodily tortures and
mental anguish as only justice, wholly
pure and heavenly, could devise. Great
book: Better read 1t, just for yourself
not for anybody else.
THE NOT-QUITE PURITANS. BY
Henry w. Lawrence. PHI. D., profess
SCR Of history, Connecticut College.
Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
THE book covers Some Genial Fol-
lies and Peculiar Frailties Of Our
Revered New England Ancestors" ac-
cording to It's subtitle. And here even
before setting out Is a promise that
shapes the readers mind agreeably
have to say. For those Puritans have
been all through the years q perfect
thorn In the flesh to any average
human whose proportion of good and
evil is so different from the 100 per cent
| purity OF those solemn flln-hating folks
| OF Plymouth and Boston and rounda-
bout So, gladly. we go with this genial
professor who So wittily makes clear
that these were, after all, much like
the rest Of us, these Puritans. Court
ing Cotton Mather" is the prime story
here-naybe because this same Cotton
Mather has, of them all, seemed to be
the most impossibly good. A clear Joy
to see Prudence Prynne go after him,
even though the girl lost out. Cotton
was coward-terribly afraid of him
self. and Satan. And, in all of his
recital of frailty-about wicked ap-
parell'' and those blue laws" and the
| whole lugubrious to-do-we must not
forget that we have a decided advan-
tage over the Puritan. For, whether
with reason or no reason, we have
pretty effectually disposed of the devil.
| But to the Puritan Satan was on